Chapter 7 - A Cloud on the Horizon

A few days later…

The clouds had covered the Zuikaku all day, the overcast skies giving a somehow comfortable threat. Not that it mattered whether it would rain or not for the team. With no instrument training, save for one, the risks of flying were too great to be legal regardless.

Good thing Tsubame had a plan. "As I've discussed with Instructor Iwani, it's too cloudy to fly, so we're going to have you take on the simulators today. Except for Morimoto, Nakahara, Suzuki, and Abe. You four are with me."

Tsubame didn't respond to the faint, "I said you guys can call me Kaito."

The four of them followed the captain into the side room. While the room was now certainly more than an echo of an office, it clearly wasn't yet one of its own. So while there was an unsettling amount of space, there was at least a whiteboard opposite the new monitor and the boxes and dust were gone.

Tsubame took a seat behind the desk and began, "As you may have noticed, we have nine planes. Nine. The first round of the tournament allows for 15 planes per team."

Michiko chimed in. "That's called a death sentence. We have wingmen for a reason. Even with a superior plane, you're more likely than not to lose if outnumbered."

Tsubame grabbed a marker and fiddled with it. "Precisely. So we need more. Any ideas?"

Katsu brought his hand to his chin. "Well, what's our budget?"

The captain sighed. "Not much. We get money for moving up in the tournament, but that obviously hasn't happened yet so we're mostly low."

Kaito spoke up. "Well, why not buy a bunch of low-cost planes, like biplanes?"

Ryu, Michiko, and Tsubame answered in unison. "No."

"But we could-"

"No."

"While that would solve the numbers problem," Michiko explained, "each of those planes would barely be able to do anything. Take the CR.42 for example. Beautiful biplane, but not very useful overall. 7.7 mm guns or 12.7 mms for later variants, and a max speed of 430 kph. The guns are, at best, annoying to anyone in a halfway-capable monoplane, and the speed can't catch anything but a Hawker Fury. The biplane, not the superprop." She gave a soft chuckle before realizing almost nobody else got the joke and straightened up. "Numbers don't matter if your planes aren't remotely competitive. You need both numbers and capabilities."

Ryu agreed. "Numbers are huge, but if you can't catch anything or shoot it down if you did, you might as well just have bought yourself targets."

"We're going to have to go against some of the richest, most skilled teams if we want to win. We can't just swarm them and expect that to work." Tsubame finished.

Katsu gestured to the others. "Back to the point, I saw a video of foreign sentouki-do, and they mentioned an Aira… it wasn't an Airacobra…"

"Airacomet?" Michiko guessed.

Katsu looked down and to his left. "No, it was a, uh…"

"Airacuda?"

He pointed at her. "Yes, that's the one! An Airacuda! I don't know how good it would be, but maybe we could get one for cheap."

"Unfortunately, that's a prototype, so we can't use it over here. JSA's really strict about those. It's also rare, so it might be really expensive anyways," Michiko replied.

Tsubame erased what she was writing as Katsu acknowledged her point, and changed the subject as she re-filled the next line. "I'd like to get some P-40s, but I don't know if we could even afford that. At least not many of them."

"That bad, huh?" Ryu inquired.

"Unfortunately."

He raised an eyebrow. "Where did our other planes come from then?"

She looked at the door they entered from and back at him. "Oh, we found them. Mostly in the hangar."

Michiko chimed in. "I still find it weird that the Tempest was just sitting in that forest though."

"What?" This was, understandably, the first time Ryu had heard of this.

She looked at him and repeated with an incredulous face. "Yeah, it was just sitting there in the forest."

"Well, I'm not complaining." Tsubame chuckled.

"No, me neither, but that's still weird, right?"

"Oh for sure," Kaito commented.

"What about Bf 109s? Like, early variants." Ryu asked.

"Yeah, okay, I'll put it on the board."

Ryu remembered something as she wrote. "Ooh, Hurricanes too. Should be cheap. Cheaper than Spitfires, anyway."

"That might be pushing it, but I'll see."

Kaito had another idea. He was pretty sure it was gonna get shot down but it was worth a try. "We could use a bomber as a gunship. That would be pretty cool."

"Cool? Yes. Practical? No. While bombers are allowed, there's a reason it's called sentouki-do*. Bombers, especially heavy bombers, are little more than massive targets."

Kaito was disheartened, but once again, Katsu brought in a much-needed distraction. "What about Zeros? Light, not too fast, common, they should be cheap."

Tsubame didn't have to think long. "Yeah, alright, I like that."

"Add Hayabusas too," Michiko noted.

"What about early American fighters? Being overshadowed by the Mustang, perhaps they're cheap." Katsu asked.

Michiko liked the idea. "The CW-21 Demon wouldn't be a bad addition. Maybe P-36 Hawks or F4Fs if we can afford them."

Tsubame checked the list she had made:

PLANES TO GET

Check rest of ship

Airacobra

P-40s?

Early Bf 109s

Zeros

Hayabusas

CW-21 Demon

P-36 Hawk

F4F

They would certainly need more ideas, but even so, another question took precedence: Where would they even get these planes from? New planes were more expensive, so it was probably best to look to current users. But unless Saunders was liquidating its P-40 stocks or something, it seemed unlikely to find anyone who would sell to their rivals.

And then the computer pinged her. An email? From whom?


The Akagi

Kojiro stopped turning his plane for just a moment to let his blood resettle, before Mushashi peppered him with tracers again. No rest for the weary, it seems.

It was the second battle this week. Perhaps it would be a mock battle if there wasn't so much real animosity between them.

His vision was turning black again, so he stopped for just long enough to catch his breath and restore his sight. The only thing he could think about was how exhausted he was. But he couldn't even rest for a few seconds as his opponent bore down upon him once again. He had to keep fighting, keep turning. Musashi only had to get him once. He had to avoid her every time. Eventually, and probably soon, she would get the shot she needed, and the battle would turn into a turkey – er, peregrine falcon**, as it was – shoot. He'd be forced to admit that he was worse than her, and then, his dreams of a revitalized Zero-sen-tan would be shattered – and his honor along with them. He couldn't allow himself to be humiliated like that. So even if he was going to lose, he would take down as many Zeros as he could. He had no other option. Or so he told himself.

But unbeknownst to him, the situation had developed not necessarily to Musashi's advantage either. Her initial grand strike had failed to eliminate the biggest threats like Kojiro himself, and ignoring the Hayabusas was a worse and worse strategy by the second as more Zeros began to fall. She didn't have the speed or energy to keep up with him forever. She only had enough to make flying in a straight line a bad idea. As she grit her teeth and followed him in yet another extremely sharp turn, she saw that he was beginning to pull away – just a little bit, but enough to scare her. If he got away, he could dictate the battle, and with the state her team was in, she'd be done. And then, traditional Zero-sen-tan sentouki-do would be forgotten, replaced by an arms race with the other schools. Her honor and her team would be left to the dustbin of the school's history, while what the school stood for would be forgotten. She refocused in anger and resisted the temptation of the pseudo-sleep of a blackout. If she could just get a single good hit with her cannons, a single decisive blow, then she could win. Or so she told herself.

Neither could afford to give up. They had invested too much in the outcome, they had too much to lose. And so the battle raged and tracers lit the overcast sky above the Akagi. Both realized they couldn't afford to fight much longer, both were just hoping for a miracle. It wasn't a good option, it was just the best bad option to preserve their dignity.


* "Sentouki" means, "fighter plane"

** "Hayabusa" means, "Peregrine Falcon"


A/N: Consider this a Christmas gift… of sorts. Lol. Anyways, I'd love to thank Nazz11 for his glowing review, it's always lovely to see, and to LoFiFozzy for some help along with the chapter, along with the usual suspect RosyThePIAT-teer. And to all of you for sticking around.

Also, I put out a one-shot recently for GuP's 10-year anniversary. Check it out if you like.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!