As a Mercenary Pilot, Planes were an understandably considerable part of Peter "Diplomat" Kennedy's life. They were the tools of his trade, through which he and his squadmates earned their livings in a dangerous world. One observation he had made throughout his years of flying was that different pilots seemed to hold drastically different amounts of respect for their aircraft.
His own plane, a MG-29, wasn't anything all that special, but he was happy with it. Monarch and Prez had helped him with the camo scheme, plus the tail and nose art, and what he was left with was a nice looking plane. It flew well, carried enough ordinance to get the job done, and that was all he could really ask for. He didn't have a steadfast attachment to it like some other pilots did with their planes, but he would be lying if he claimed he felt nothing at all for the humble multirole fighter.
Comic was a bit more cynical when it came to planes, there was no room for sentimentality with her. A plane was a tool, nothing more, and could be discarded at any point if a better tool became available. Her current craft was a F/C-15, and Monarch and Prez had probably put more effort into its painting than she had. It wasn't her first plane, and judging by her track record, wouldn't be the last either.
…And then there was Monarch.
It went without saying that Monarch was a bit unusual, even to the people who knew him. He wasn't much for socializing, only really talking when he had to. Rarely ever showing much expression either, although that was probably because nine times out of ten, he was wearing his flight helmet. What few things he did have passion for, however, he showed great enthusiasm for. To that end, Peter probably shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when learned that Monarch had a fiery love for planes.
Unlike the majority of Sicario's pilots, Monarch owned more than one plane, probably the most out of everybody in the Company. It was rare to see them all in one place however, since Monarch was well-known for letting the rookie pilots of Sicario use them until they could afford their own set of wings. He had more recently been letting the Pilots of the Cascadian Independence Force use them if they wanted, but most of them already had their own planes, and more to the point, weren't eager to collaborate too closely with their mercenary allies.
It was exactly the kind of unbelievable, but not inappropriate behavior that Peter had come to expect from Monarch, and whenever he asked him about it, Monarch always said the same thing to justify his aeronautical egalitarianism.
"It's not fair if I have all of the fun."
Out of all of Monarch's planes, however, there were two that he flew more than all of the rest, and by no coincidence, they were the only two that he didn't let anybody else fly. The first was his F/S-15, which was, all things considered, probably the strongest plane that anybody in Sicario owned. It could carry almost double the amount of ordinance that his own MG-29 could, all while being considerably more maneuverable, faster, and tougher.
Monarch only brought it out whenever they were expecting to encounter heavy opposition, and both Peter and Comic had to work harder than normal to stay on Monarch's wings as a result. Truth be told, Peter kind of wanted one, but Monarch had been surprisingly tight-lipped about where he had gotten it, and Kaiser didn't want to talk about it either. Perhaps they'd stolen it from somewhere? He was pondering the mystery when a rogue idea came to him.
Wait a moment, what about Prez? She knows where all of our planes come from.
He found Prez where she pretty much always was, elbow-deep in the guts of somebody's plane. As per usual, she was utterly covered in grease, oil, dirt, dust, and just about everything else that would inspire a normal person to take a shower. Prez, however, was just in her element that way.
"Hey Dip. Have you seen Monarch? I've been meaning to ask where he left his toolbox." She said, not even taking her eyes off of what she was doing.
"No clue. Wait, hold on, here it is." He said, before grabbing the ridiculously heavy little red toolbox and bringing it over to her. "Actually, I came to ask about him. Do you know where he got his F/S-15?"
"Sure I do." Prez said.
She remained silent, and he sighed with annoyance as he realized that was all she was going to say. "Don't tell me, you're gonna go all silent on me too, huh?"
"Sorry Dip, I can't help it. If Monarch and the Boss want to keep it secret, I ain't gonna snitch on them." Prez answered. "Tell you what though, if you're looking to get one, you're shit out of luck. I'm sure he'd let you fly his though."
"You think so?" He asked.
"Sure. You and Comic are like siblings to him. The only thing I know he wouldn't let you fly is, well…" Prez trailed off.
"I get it." Peter nodded in understanding. There was one plane that came above all others for Monarch; so it wasn't hard to guess which one he wasn't around to poke around with. "Well, thanks Prez."
"Don't mention it." She said. "And if you see Monarch, send him down here will you? I've got a few revisions to make to the Tomcat, and I'll need his help."
The Tomcat, or as the rest of Sicario crudely called it, "Monarch and Prez's Love Child," was a heavily-modified F/D-14. Its name was taken from the pre-calamity cousin of the plane, the F-14D, which had served in a bunch of old wars that were all but forgotten by most of the world. It wasn't just Monarch's favorite plane, it was Prez's too. The end result of what happened when one of the finest pilots of his generation teamed up with one of the finest mechanics of her generation to create a monster.
He could still remember the day when Prez and Monarch had come back to base with the plane under a tarp, chatting with one another like excited schoolchildren, only to take off said tarp and reveal, well, a real piece of junk. The Tomcat had been a rusted, beaten up old plane that looked like it had been shot down… four or five times. To say that it needed work was an understatement, but Monarch and Prez were nothing if not determined to get their baby airborne.
It had taken months to even get the thing flying, and they hadn't stopped working once it was functional. Practically every part of the thing had been modified or replaced in some way that boosted the plane's overall performance. It seemed like every day a new part was being shipped in from some far off country that he had never heard of to be placed on the Tomcat. Occasionally, Monarch and Prez would even forge their own, or have the parts specifically engineered for them from black market clients using Monarch's ridiculous fortune.
The Engines were tuned like a goddamn racecar, and produced considerably more force than their standard-issue contemporaries, requiring heavy reinforcement of the airframe. The computer system that controlled the sweeping-wings had been completely gutted, instead being manually operated by Monarch while they were in the air. Hell, even the hardpoints for the plane's weapons had been replaced with lighter-weight mounts just to improve the thrust-to-weight ratio even by that tiny amount.
Prez had kept track of the various upgrades and changes that they had made in a large leatherbound book, because apparently the number of changes necessitated a whole book just with the volume of them. Originally, they'd given it alphabetical additions to its designation to keep track of the revisions, such as the F/D-14A, F/D-14B, etc. That had changed once they had run out of letters in the alphabet. By now, she and Monarch were on their 127th version of the Tomcat.
"Hey, Dip, you still in there?" Prez asked, her face might've been covered in grease, but he could still tell she was worried. "You did hear me, right?"
Got a little carried away in thought there. "Yeah, sorry. Hey, when are you ever gonna just call that thing done? How many more upgrades can you possibly make?"
The smile she gave him exuded a terrifying confidence. "I don't know. I guess we'll find out. One thing I know for sure is that one day we'll pass Mach three, and that'll be good enough for me."
Mach three… Peter's stomach turned over at even the thought of pulling combat maneuvers at speeds like that. Then again, if anybody could do it, it'd be Monarch and Prez. "Hey, you do you. I'm perfectly happy with my boring-old military issue plane, thank you very much."
"If you say so, you're welcome to let us know if that ever changes. I can think of a few upgrades already…" Prez said. "See you later Dip!"
"Take care Prez!" He called back.
It took a little while to find Monarch, who was in the Mess Hall, cleaning his pistol.
"Whatcha got there? Looks tasty." He jokingly commented.
"Model Twenty-Nine, and no, you can't have any." Monarch dryly replied. "Something's wrong with the trigger, it's not as crisp as it should be…"
"Have one of the Ronin guys take a look at this, those dudes love old guns like that." He suggested. "You've bailed their asses out enough that they probably owe you one."
Monarch grunted in half-acknowledgement, he was listening, he just wasn't interested in the idea for whatever reason.
"You know… Prez was looking for you. She says she's got some ideas for your kid." He teasingly said.
As expected, Monarch's eyes lit up, and he began to put his pistol back together rather than take it apart. He didn't say anything, or even chastise him for referring to the Tomcat as his and Prez's kid. At this point, he and Prez had pretty much embraced the joke.
"She also said that you'd let me fly your F/S-15." Peter added.
"Sure." Monarch answered. "I'll run you through some of the basics once me and Prez are finished."
Peter sighed, sometimes it was hard to tell when Monarch was joking or not. "I think I'll die of old age before you and Prez are done with that thing."
Monarch gave a hum of thought, maybe even agreement. "Let me rephrase that. I'll come get you later today, how's that sound?"
"That sounds great." He said. "Thanks Monarch."
"Anytime." He replied. "If you don't mind, can you put this thing back together for me? Just stick it in my locker."
"Sure." He said. Working with handheld guns wasn't exactly his specialty, but he figured he could at least reassemble a revolver.
Unfortunately, he had vastly overestimated his own skills, and by the time he realized that, Monarch was already long gone.
"Having some trouble with that, flyboy?"
He looked up to find himself face to face with Captain Kelleher, the leader of Ronin, Sicario's SOF unit. Peter didn't know him that well, since the Ronin guys largely kept to themselves, but they all seemed like down-to-Earth people.
"Thank the Dust Mother… Captain, can you please-"
Kelleher didn't even answer, he just grabbed the pieces of the gun out of his hands and began to put them together. It was a little bit embarrassing for sure, but it would've been more embarrassing to hand Monarch his pistol back in pieces after offering to reassemble it.
"Trigger needs replacing, barrel's starting to corrode, the finish is awful…" Kelleher muttered all of the flaws of Monarch's revolver aloud, before placing it back onto the table in one piece, reassembled in less than a minute. "Don't tell me, Monarch's pistol?"
Peter nodded. "How'd you know?"
"Because no pilot who is actually expecting to get shot down would carry a piece like this." Kelleher grumbled. "Say, you know him pretty well, do you think he'd complain if I fixed this for him? Just looking at this bothers me…"
"Probably not. Heck, I even suggested that he ask one of you guys to take a look at it." He said. "He just asked me to reassemble it so he can go work on his kid with Prez."
Kelleher chuckled as he pulled a cleaning kit out of his chest rig and began to work on the pistol. "Is that so? You know, Comic and I started a betting pool yesterday, all you've got to do is place your guess as to when those two are gonna hook up."
"It might be longer than you think." Peter said. "Don't get me wrong, they're good friends, but I don't know if they really feel that way about each other. Monarch especially… I don't think I've ever seen him show interest in anybody."
Kelleher nodded and gave a hum of thought. "Gonna put your money where your mouth is Dip?"
Peter shrugged, a little wager wasn't something he was afraid of. "Sure. Whatever you put down, I'll match it. I'm gonna guess more than a year, if they do at all."
"A thousand credits." Kelleher confidently said. "As for how long… I say sometime within the next two weeks."
Peter was about to express his surprise when he noticed something, Kelleher was exceptionally confident, almost unnaturally so. While it was fairly typical for the Ronin guys to carry themselves with confidence, this was different. "What was Comic's guess?"
"Same as mine, two weeks." Kelleher answered. "You sure you don't want to reconsider? I mean, by all means, stick to your guns man, I'll take your money."
He let out an exhausted sigh, clearly Kelleher and Comic knew something that he didn't. "Alright, I'll say two weeks. Who the hell else got in on this?"
"Oh, nobody really." Kelleher said. "Just Kaiser, Galaxy, half of the Circus, all of Ronin, Stardust and a few of his pilots…"
"Alright, I get it!" Peter said as Kelleher laughed. "How come nobody ever tells me anything around here?"
To his surprise, it wasn't Kelleher who answered him, but Comic, who had walked up to them when he wasn't looking. "It's because we know you'll snitch, which is why Kelleher and I agreed not to tell you, right Captain?"
The Ronin leader raised his hands in mock surrender at her pointed remark. "Sorry ma'am, I couldn't help myself. Besides, Dip deserves the chance to place his bet, can you believe his first guess was over a year?"
Comic looked staggeringly unimpressed. "Seriously Dip?"
Peter just shook his head. "You guys are all really overestimating Monarch's interest in women, that's all I'm gonna say. He has two true loves, Chess, and Planes."
Kelleher just continued to grin widely as he looked up at Comic. "Are you gonna tell him?"
"Only if he promises not to snitch." She said, giving him a glare that was somehow both amused and incredibly intimidating.
"Fine, I'll keep my mouth shut." Peter promised. He didn't really think of himself as being loose-lipped, but apparently Comic did. "Now what do you know that I don't?"
"I caught him ordering in fancy chocolates from out of country." Comic answered, looking incredibly smug as she spoke. "He confessed on the spot when he noticed I was looking over his shoulder."
Peter let out a low whistle. "Wow. Alright, now I get it. Damn, that just… it doesn't seem like him, does it?"
"I think it's sweet. I mean, I had to remind him that Prez has a peanut allergy, but he's clearly trying." Comic said. "I will say, I don't think the poor guy has ever had a crush before. He looked genuinely stressed, like, more than when we're in combat."
"Yeah… that sounds a lot more like Monarch." If there was one thing that Peter just took as given when it came to Monarch, it was that he was absolutely fearless in a fight. "You think he's got a chance?"
Comic shrugged. "Hell if I know, but I… well not just me, it's more like half of Sicario, we're all rooting for him."
"I'm betting on yes." Kelleher interjected. "I've seen what happens when Monarch sets his mind to something…"
"So have we." Peter pointed out. "Usually whatever he's focusing on explodes."
Kelleher chuckled. "Well, I've heard love feels a bit like burning, so maybe that's a good thing. Here."
He handed Monarch's pistol back to him, it looked like an entirely different gun. "Wait, you're done already?"
"Yeah. I'll send Monarch a list of some of some parts that I'd grab if he gets the chance… but apparently his mind is on other things." Kelleher said as he stood up. "Now, if that was all, I should probably go make sure my boys are behaving."
He left the two pilots to their own devices, all while Peter was still trying to make sure that Kelleher hadn't discretely replaced Monarch's pistol with a similar-looking and considerably cleaner one. "Holy shit Mic', just look at this thing. You think he'd do my pistol if I asked?"
"You should know by now; the Ronin guys are just built differently." She answered. "You know, you could always ask Prez to have a look at it, if she's not busy with Monarch that is…"
He groaned in irritation. "You guys are like teenagers, you know that? There's a freaking war going on, and this is what you're all focusing on?! Monarch's just trying to open up a little!"
"Well yeah, this is more fun. You should try having a little sometime." Comic said, patting him on the shoulder. "And like I said, we're rooting for him, maybe you should too."
With a sigh, he went to put Monarch's pistol in his locker. As he passed the Hangars, he noticed Prez and Monarch still excitedly working on their Tomcat, and he couldn't help but smile to himself as he remembered what Comic had said.
Good luck buddy. He offered a silent word of encouragement to his friend. I hope it turns out well for you two.