So, I've recently been getting into the Ace Combat series. Specifically, I recently picked up Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, although this isn't my first Ace Combat game; a couple of years ago I played Assault Horizon. I enjoyed it though it is seen by many fans of the franchise of not being a true successor of the Ace Combat name. According to what I could find online, Skies Unknown seems to have redeemed the Ace Combat name once more. This is more of an aside more than anything else, just a little background of my experience with the series. I watched a video made by Snickty Slice covering the game's history as he did with the Persona series. Apparently, Ace Combat Zero is considered the best of storytelling in terms of the series according to some of the people I speak with regularly in a Discord I'm in, so I picked up an ISO for that for a PS2 emulator. So, I do intend to get more into this series as, again, Assault Horizon was my entry into the series but isn't representative of the series as a whole.

Now that I've covered my historical knowledge of the Ace Combat series, now to the other side of this equation: GATE. If you're a reader of my content, you know that I'm not too keen on the GATE franchise as a whole due to it feeling like a propaganda piece for the JDSF rather than an interesting tale that just so happens to contain the JDSF (basically why I hate certain things in Western media). I mean, I like dumb popcorn flicks like Battleship and Independence Day which glorify the US Navy and Air Force respectively but I know that they're dumb popcorn flicks that the Department of Defense chipped in on and therefore are glorified in it. I do want to know from anyone that may be Japanese if they see GATE in the same way: a dumb popcorn anime in which they're wholly aware that it is glorification or propaganda for the military. But anyway, I like the initial concept of the anime, that being that an invading army pops up from another dimension in whose culture is reminiscent of our ancient cultures, like the Empire of the Falmart continent being like the ancient Roman Empire.

I wanted to run these two together mainly because I've seen two fics that have crossed these two franchises over and… I wasn't satisfied with them. One moved way too fast and the other was abandoned. So, I decided that I would take a shot at this setup with my own writing style and "flair".

Title:

Summary: Six months after the Eursian war with Osea concluded at the Lighthouse space elevator, Erusian and Osean forces are forced to go to war once more, but not against each other but against a primitive, reality-jumping force that attacked them without cause and remorse.

Pairing: Trigger x Princess Rosa

Rating: T+

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my copy of MS Word and my PC. Ace Combat belongs to Bandai Namco, and GATE – JIETAI KARE NO CHI NITE, KAKU TATAKERI to Yanai Takumi and Sao Satoru. See the foreword for the full disclaimer.

WARNING: Soft spoilers for Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown's ending is incoming. If you haven't played the game and want to, please skip this entry until you have. If you have or don't care, note that this is your final warning before proceeding.

XxXxXxX

If you were to ask me nine months ago how you thought my career was going to go, I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly, but I can certainly say that I didn't expect it to be where I currently am and how I got here. Let's summarize. My name is Trigger. Ok, well that isn't entirely accurate. My callsign is Trigger and I pretty much let everyone call me that, so I just run with it. I don't correct them about what my legal name is because I sort of don't care what people call me. I am a fighter pilot for the Osean Air Force and squadron leader of Strider squadron, alternate callsign of Strider-1. I started a few months ago as the new guy in Mage squadron right before the war with Erusia began out east. Then the war began in full and we were mobilized. We tried to fight Erusian forces, but they deployed drones and we lost a few good people. Brownie was one of them, although she wasn't downed by a drone, but an ace pilot.

I'm not quite sure what I considered Brownie to be. A friend? Rival? She went down behind the cloud cover. I saw on my HUD as her wrecked F-16 dipped in heavy cloud cover. I couldn't see if she was able to eject or not. It's only been a month since the war ended and I've used whatever connections that my fame earned me to find out what her fate was. I convinced HIGHCOM to hand over our telemetry data from the AWACS on station that day to see if that would help in the search. So far there hadn't been any news but I wasn't expecting anything any time soon. The Erusian and Osean navies weren't in the best of shape. Honestly, I just want some closure and if anything, I wanted to be the one that informed her surviving family; it just felt like the right thing to do.

After this the war started to heat up with our assault on the Lighthouse to recover a VIP, former President Harling, and the founder of the company that built the Lighthouse itself. That ended in failure. Failure would be a massive understatement. During the exfiltration when they were confident that Harling was on the way out, the helicopter stopped responding and started to fly erratically. As everyone, including him, was trying to reestablish contact with the VIP, a QAAM launched from an F/A-18 flew under his wing and slammed into the helicopter. Harling was presumed dead and the helicopter's remains hadn't been recovered either so there was no way to confirm his death, but it was assumed that he was dead on impact, missile or ocean. However, his wingman Mage-2 didn't see said F/A-18 and I was charged with the murder, wrongfully, of ex-President Harling. This led me to be transferred to an airbase in Zapland under the 444th squadron, a dummy squadron to make the Erusians think our airforce was stronger than it actually was.

However, it didn't take long for me to gain the moniker of 'Three Strikes' due to the 'sin lines' painted on the rudder of whatever craft I was thrown in. And it also didn't take long before the dummy squadron became a real squadron, in fact, one could argue that his squadron became 'real' when they were allowed to engage the bombers attacking the Zapland airfield. After racking up quite the kill count, the base commander got a brilliant idea, that being letting them wander farther from the base being an avant-garde to the enlisted forces. May as well let the people serving life sentences leave some positive mark on history, and then reap all of the rewards for himself. And reap the rewards he did, many a medal got pinned on his dress blues. Eventually, after a long few months ground-pounding, I got to face off against the same man who killed Brownie, Sol-1; otherwise known as Mihaly Shilage. His appearance was a personal challenge and we faced off; our battle in the lightning-filled valley ended in a stalemate and his retreat.

It was much longer after that that the Scrap Queen pulled a Hail Mary and used some contacts to get her, Count, and me off the hook; well, that is with a catch. Count and I had to escort our soon-to-be former base commander to his new FOB. This is when I ran into a new generation of drone that Wiseman, leader of Cyclops squadron, had problems in taking down. While it may have looked easy to my comrades, it wasn't easy in the slightest. I put it off as being lucky, which was part of it; the thing was able to bank and turn faster than any human would have been able to just due to G-Forces themselves. But battling with it for a few minutes, I started to see a pattern and exploited it when it pulled out of an evasive dive. After this I was made the head of Strider squadron. To this day, I don't know what kind of witchcraft the Scrap Queen had to pull off to get me in this position, although she denies it to this day that she had anything to do with it.

This was the turning point in the war, we started to push farther into Erusian territory after using one of the remaining cannons in the Stonehenge installation to take down one of the two Arsenal Birds. From there assault after assault on Erusian held territory left them demolished and demoralized leading to many surrendering when our forces arrived and turning on their government to provide secrets to help us in our ventures. Although, I believe part of their surrendering may have been my appearance on the battlefield as the 'fearsome Three Strikes'. We took Farbanti which led to the reappearance of Mihaly who eliminated Wiseman, Cyclops-1, leaving the rest of Cyclops squadron to fall under my command. At the end of our second duel, all communication satellites were taken down. With the military capture of Farbanti the country split between those that honorably surrendered seeing that there was no way to win, and radicals that wished to continue in a scorched earth campaign utilizing the Arsenal Birds.

Mihaly and I dueled once more above an old Erusian castle and I emerged victoriously. Shockingly, Mihaly survived and has been forcibly retired; though, having no feeling in your lower body tends to retire most people from the fighter pilot profession. Then came the final push, the push towards the Lighthouse with the revelation that the Belkans were involved in another war scheme. Said scheme involved drone factories. At the time the Arsenal Bird was sending commands to keep building, so, they needed to take down an Arsenal Bird. Thanks to Princess Rosa in finding a way to mess with the Arsenal Bird's defenses, I was able to slip in and take it out permanently. We lost Tabloid as well in that fight, crushed by debris. Avril said that he had started to turn around as a person before he died.

We had to then rearm on the abandoned carrier Admiral Anderson and return to take out two advanced drones that had been upgraded with Mihaly's data that were trying to then upload their data to all of the drone factories; such a thing, were it to come to pass, would create a never-ending war between man and machine. This ended with me chasing a laser-equipped, extremely maneuverable drone down a tunnel underneath Gunther Bay with Count, destroying it, and then flying up and out of the space elevator itself. We had done it, Erusian and Osean together, had stopped the war.

From there, things settled down. The Osean higher-ups had me go from base to base to help with morale as well as appear on late-night talk shows on both Erusian and Osean networks. When on the Erusian networks I highlighted how working together with the Erusian air unit Sol squadron was paramount to our success in stopping the war and that I never took any pleasure in downing the Erusian air or naval forces, it was just my job and that I tried to target each craft so that those aboard would have to abandon ship or punch out. This garnered appreciation from most, that being I wasn't some unhinged murder hobo like you would see in a tabletop game's campaign, but someone who tried to mitigate losses whenever possible. You know, because how else did the legend of 'Three Strikes' propagate? Apparently during the war, the veterans were telling the rookies on how if you screwed up three times, I would show up. As for the Osean networks I remained humble, didn't brag, and just said similar talking points as I did on the Erusian networks.

Around this time there was a ball that the Erusian provisional government, headed by Princess Rosa herself, held in honor of the ceasefire and truce with the Osean government the day prior. There wasn't a former surrender as both sides were manipulated by the Belkan Grey Men to go to war. I had to attend both of these events, mainly because of my fame garnered by the war. This would be the first time that the Princess and I met face to face. As with most balls or celebratory events, drinks were had, words were said, and somehow this led to aggressive and passionate 'negotiations' between the Princess and myself in a coat check room. We kept it on the down-low and no one knew, but the public started to pick up on something going on between the two; it didn't help that the Princess was inviting the war hero Three Strikes to private events and functions. Not that anything did happen, I'm not the type of guy who would kiss and tell.

But she and I hit it off and started going on social excursions to 'Lighthouse Town' as it was being called by the refugees as dates under the cover of it being of humanitarian efforts in origin (although that did happen). I suggested that I give her flying lessons and I took her up in an F/A-18 Super Hornet. She took to it well, although in hindsight I maybe should have started with a simulator or a prop-driven plane. But she said that she had fun and enjoyed the flight. She asked that I start to play music as I had mentioned that I had played acoustic guitar during college but stopped when I joined the air force as there wasn't that much time to do so; even less so after the war started. While my playing isn't total garbage, it would be easy to tell that I'm beyond rusty. I could possibly play some traditional folk tunes, but there's no way that I'm performing any power ballads anytime soon.

I looked at the clock in the corner of my computer screen, it's about noon now. I've probably been sitting here for hours now typing up the most recent flight report to command. Nothing happened, no one did anything, no one engaged us. It was just quiet. However, command didn't see it that way; they wanted reports in excruciating detail that described everything. What time they took off, who was sortied, and with what craft. Mileage. Take-off and landing weights. He knew that it was all for the pencil pushers back home, the guys who had to figure out how much things cost to fly. In short, it wasn't cheap. I leaned back and felt several vertebrae pop as my spine realigned. I really should stop slouching forward when doing this. Maybe one of those standing desks or ergonomic chairs would help. I shook my head as I realize that this would never happen, not with the budget the way it was after the war. Carriers and other naval vessels aren't cheap after all, but God forbid spending under two hundred for a decent chair.

I looked at the picture on my home office's desk. It was from my graduation from college around two years ago. My parents and close family gathered around celebrating the completion of my Bachelor's degree from Oured University in computer science. I never got the highest marks, that, of course, was reserved for someone else but I did well. Well enough that when rumors of war started and I signed up for the Osean air force the recruiter was shocked that I wanted to be a pilot rather than a tech on an AWACS, but seeing the potential skill I had in a simulator, they sent me to flight school instead. That picture felt like it was taken such a long time ago, after all, the world had changed.

I looked at the back of the picture where dad had left a message prior to me shipping out. "Whether it be on the ground behind a desk or flying in the blue skies, you make us proud, son." I should probably take some of the much-earned R&R time and visit them again. Maybe the Princess would like to tag along and meet the folks? Nah, I wouldn't do that to her, not unless whatever we were got actually serious; we were just kind of going with it to see what happened. Plus, gramps was one of the many pilots that fought in the Continental War in the ISAF and still sort of has an ax to grind with them. How a man of his age flew, I have no idea, but then again Mihaly was in his fifties to sixties and he still flew circles around the Spares, Strider, and Cyclops. The ISAF was desperate, that much was certain. Apparently, he had met the legendary Mobius-1 at some kind of veterans meet up.

Before I could have any other thoughts, my phone rang. Looking at the caller ID I saw that it was Count. "Count, what's going on?" I ask.

"Trigger, turn on ENN. Some weird shit's going down in Selatpura," Count replied. The tone of his voice hinted at the urgency. I turned on the TV in my medium-sized apartment; it was a one-bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a medium sitting room which also served as an office.

On it the anchor was already describing the situation in downtown Selatpura. "If you're just tuning in, a massive object appeared in downtown Selatpura twenty minutes ago. It appears to be constructed out of classically made Emmerian columns that appear to the marble. Police have cordoned off the area due to the unknown nature of this structure. Wait! Do you see that?" the anchor said. The camera panned to look at the unnatural black space in the center of the structure. A figure on a horse appeared who appeared to be wearing ancient armor akin to ancient Emmeria or Erusia's imperial days almost two millennia ago. "It's a… centurion?" the newscaster said in disbelief.

Before anyone else could say anything further, the figure was surrounded by a plethora of creatures that resembled those of folklore and legend. Orc, troll, and so on. Then something even more unexpected happened: a full-blown dragon emerged from the darkness followed by others that followed behind it. The first man on a horse drew a sword and held it over his head and shouted something in a completely unknown language. At this command the dragons started swooping down on the police forces that were made up of a dozen police cruisers that blocked the street. Fire emerged from their mouths and burned the men and women of Selatpura's finest to ashes. The rest of the armored and armed creatures charged out of the darkness. Well over a thousand strong emerged and were followed by hundreds, if not thousands more. The newscaster and his cameraman were overrun and were stampeded down upon by horsemen. As the camera hit the ground it was replaced by the image of 'transmission interrupted'.

"Count, call the airbase and tell them to arm and prepare my F-35 for immediate take-off. Tell them to arm AGMs as the secondaries," I order as I dig into the pile of papers on my desk to find the keys for my motorcycle and find the helmet for it on the small, four-person kitchen table.

"Wilco, boss," Count replied.

XxXxXxX

Itami Youji was not having a good day. He was in Selatpura for the reestablished anime and manga convention that had been announced completely out of the blue as a way to increase the area's financial situation with the end of the Lighthouse War being not too long ago and money being a necessity of modern life, it was thought to be a good idea. And it would have been, considering that the economy needed the cash boost, but an invading army that would have been better suited for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign were currently invading the city. Complete with dragon riding air support.

He had found a nearby police line and got on the radio to contact HQ regarding this as well to coordinate with police forces. They had decided to fall back to the Selatpura football stadium with as many civilians to hole up for as long as possible. Getting his hands on a 9mm handgun wasn't too difficult considering the police were pretty much handing them out to anyone that could shoot straight. They heard a roar and a dragon passed over the partially domed stadium, but then another roar was heard, this time one of a mechanical nature.

He looked up to see an F-35 Lightning II. But not just any Lightning II, but one with an eagle's claw marking three lines on it. "It's Three Strikes!" someone shouted.

Perhaps they would make it out of this after all.

XxXxXxX

"What do we have, Long Caster?" I ask as I look down on Selatpura from ten thousand feet up.

"Unknown hostiles as seen on ENN. Thousands of foot-mobiles have assaulted local infrastructure and those dragon creatures are assaulting the local police forces," AWACS Long Caster explained. "Strider, provide close air support for ground forces."

"Roger, Long Caster. Count, with me; we're going after those dragons. Lanza, Jaeger, Huxian provide ground fire near the emergence point; cut off their reinforcements," I order.

"Copy that, boss," Count replied.

I rolled left and descended towards one of the dragons and Count followed. During my descent, I viewed how the dragons were exceptionally maneuverable but slow and tanky in organic armor. I picked one of them that was in a straight-away and lined up my gunsights.

"Guns, guns, guns," I announced into my radio. The 30mm autocannon rounds streaked at supersonic speeds towards the oversizing lizard and the bullets hit the organic armor chipping parts off. As the dragon jerks in annoyance and maybe pain, a few rounds slice through the membranous wings. I line the shot up again and let loose another burst, this time the pilot/rider was splattered into a pink mist as the rapid-fire rounds sliced through the ancient armored rider with little resistance. Like a chainsaw through butter. Seeing as I was getting too close, way too close for a missile not back blasting on me, I pulled away in a high-G maneuver. Specifically, a post-stall which allowed Count a clear shot.

"Fox 2," Count announced. One of the missiles from his F-15 slammed into the dragon's back, dead center. The payload designed to take down fast attack craft exploded easily through the chitinous armor and forced the dragon to the ground in a bloody, smoking heap. "Splash one lizard."

"Nice shot," I complement my wingman.

"I try to please."

"Confirmed, one air hostile down," Long Caster confirmed. "Five more marked on your HUD."

"Missiles are highly effective, guns aren't as much," I report.

"Duly noted, Strider-1."

I noticed on my left over the skyscrapers another dragon. It was hunting season, and it looks like I was one behind Count. I pull into a turn and line up a missile shot of my own and let it loose. Soon too, this dragon was also a smoking heap of meat on the ground.

XxXxXxX

General Tullius' plan had crumbled. It had started so well, too. They marched from Alnus Hill through the holy Portal as they did multitudes of times throughout the Empire's history to raid resources and slaves from foreign places. They found themselves in many strange and surreal worlds when they passed through. But none compared to this one. This one had streets of paved stone larger than any of the cobbled highways of the Empire. Buildings of glass and stone that stretched far into the heavens as far as his eyes could see. But then there was the massive spire in the middle of the sea. If the buildings they had been surrounded by had been reaching out to the heavens, this massive piece of engineering stretched so far into the sky it dwarfed these buildings. 'What sorcery and magic had they used to construct it?' many of his men thought to themselves.

The people of this metropolis ran in fear from their might and things were going well, that is, until they saw one of their dragon riders go down in a ball of fire followed by a roar that no beast could make. Five giant metal birds streaked out of the blue sky and started eliminating their forces starting with their mighty dragons, but then their explosive and impossibly fast arrows were turned on the ground forces. Their minotaurs and orcs fell to fireballs and what sounded like an impossibly fast saw. His men and the subjugated races were shredded into mincemeat and turned into burning piles of slagged metal and meat.

"Retreat!" he shouted to his men and underlings. His charges didn't hesitate to listen to their leader and ran towards the holy relic's opening.

As he was retreating on his horse another fireball and accompanying explosion threw him from his horse. His ears were ringing and when he saw what looked like phantom images of his troops running back into the portal's maw. As he tried to stand up and was kneeling on all fours. He looked up to see a man wielding a weapon of some variety and he was bashed in the face. His entire world went dark.

XxXxXxX

"Good job, Strider. RTB," Long Caster announced.

"How bad is it?" Huxian asked.

"Unknown," he honestly replied. "Local police are still trying to round up the last of the stragglers with the help of the Erusian and Osean garrisons."

"And the Lighthouse?" I ask.

"None of the foot mobiles were able to get into the tunnels due to the remote controls closing the blast doors, the bridges were able to keep a line of demarcation across both onramp and offramp bridges and prevented all attempting hostiles from crossing. Lighthouse Town has been left completely out of the line of fire." I breathed in a silent breath of relief. I knew that Princess Rosa was doing more of her outreach today in Lighthouse Town.

"Who's responsible for this?" Count asked.

"Unknown, although there have been some prisoners taken. We'll know soon enough," Long Caster replied.

We returned to base and another after-action report was written by yours truly. The entire city was placed into lockdown to sweep for hidden hostiles for an entire week. Hospitals were filled to full capacity with those seeking medical assistance as well as those seeking possibly lost loved ones. The final casualty counts were three hundred civilians and three dozen law enforcement officers. Most of the latter's casualties were from close-quarters combat, the dragons, and the enemy's cavalry; there were still people missing. From those that were recovered from the upper floors of skyscrapers, they claimed that they saw men, women, and children taken through the massive gate; the numbers of which were completely unknown. The final enemy counts were close to a thousand enemy combatants and several dozen prisoners. They were interrogated and when the public cried out for answers for who was responsible, the Osean military provided it: The Empire.

Initially, the public laughed at that and asked the public version of 'no, seriously who's responsible?' They had the head of the attack explain it in a live, public address on TV. Albeit it was with a translator. He explained that he was a general in the Empire's military. Every one hundred years they prayed to their gods and they responded by opening a portal to another place, they didn't care where it was as they were too preoccupied with raiding wherever it led of resources and people. This caused immediate outrage and calls for retaliation.

Two weeks passed as Osean and Eursian militaries and governments convened to make threat analyses. It was decided that a first strike and recovery mission was required to reassert control of the gate that appeared in the city. With it open and an overtly malicious force controlling the other side that could strike again at any time, it was decided that war was the only answer. Negotiations were not going possible with a force that attacked without even attempting to speak to those whose property they were walking on to.

Every citizen in Osea and Erusia had no misconceptions about what this meant: they were at war.

XxXxXxX

Months passed and military forces were built up. The portal was called a GATE. It was an acronym but it was something like 'Gateway to an Alternative Terrestrial Environment' or something like that. Although, some of my contacts in the ground forces have started to call it the 'Special Region'. One of these men happened to be Itami Youji. They had met one another after a military meeting where he had been presented with a medal for his actions in keeping as many civilians as possible safe from the invading horde in the football stadium. The GATE had a no-go zone barrier set up that was managed by the Army and so far, no one had emerged from the GATE at all. According to Itami, the Army would be initiating a first strike on the ground to establish a beachhead; after this then the Air Force would be brought in to provide air support for the ground forces. They estimated that it would take several weeks after the beachhead and base were secured that the Air Force would be brought in.

I was working on my laptop when I heard a knock on my door. I saved the current progress on a blog post I was working on and walked the short distance to my door. It was something that one of the therapists I had gone to shortly after Brownie's disappearance suggested that I do to clear my mind about things that I'm not sure about at the time. Obviously, I couldn't discuss anything that was considered Top Secret, but old things and current thoughts about current events were fair game. Speaking of Brownie, she was found after her plane went down. She was taken in a POW camp and because of an injury she was in a coma and wasn't transferred over to Osean care until after both the war had ended and until she had woken up to establish her identity. She was currently in a military hospital back in Osea recovering further, going through physical therapy last I had heard.

I opened the door to see the Princess herself. "Hello, your highness," I greeted.

She seemed to pout, something that she was really effective at doing. "You know you can call me by my first name," Rosa complained.

"Yes, but you never know who's listening," I chuckle as I usher her into my quite simple abode and close the door behind her. "What brings you by?" She was silent for a time, taking a seat on his couch. She was wearing her 'statesman' attire, that being her white ensemble of a knee-length skirt and suit coat which had an accompanying red rose, the Erusian national flower. Underneath she usually wore some kind of blouse that worked with white, usually it was also white. Her bright, blonde hair was done up in its usual bun. She looked the part of an immaculate statesman ready to lead her people.

"I hear that Strider squadron is going to be deployed to the Special Region after the beachhead is established," she finally said. The tone that she used showed she was genuinely concerned.

"That's true, we got our sortie orders a few days ago. Worried about me?" I joke with a smile, trying to break the sort of depressing mood.

"Of course, I'm worried!" she blurted out. "We have no idea what this Special Region has militarily or what capabilities they have. If we underestimate them, you may not come home!"

I sat down next to her and pulled her in close, her head laid on my shoulder. My right hand thumbed over her right shoulder in what small comfort I could provide. My left hand took her left hand and just held it. "It'll be alright," I say. "After all, I don't think they have ace pilots like Mihaly, or the legendary Yellow-13, Mobius-1, or Razgriz squadron," I try to make a joke again.

"True, but you shouldn't underestimate them," she chastised. "They have gods of some kind or something that they consider a god that's able to open interdimensional portals or portals to other worlds. They may have ways to counteract us in some unexpected way."

"Well, even if they do have something, I'll make it back even if I have to walk a thousand miles." This didn't seem to reassure her. "I tell you what, when I get back on leave let's go take a small trip."

"To where?"

"Well, when I was a kid, we used to go camping out in the Great Lakes area."

"The same that used to be in Belkan territory?"

"The same," I confirm. "The area is beautiful and while there are a few small towns, it's pretty much deserted. It's only you and nature. We could go out there, maybe take Strider as well, and just enjoy the weekend. Away from the pressures of both of our social lives as well from the public."

"I'd like that," she replied.

They sat in silence for a while. "You know," I spoke up, "I still have that set of 'incognito' clothes you wore the last time we went out in public in my closet. Do you want to go do something?"

She looked me in the eye and smiled, the same genuine smile that she always showed the world. "I'd like that."

To be continued…?

XxXxXxX

This is all I have for this story idea. As I mentioned in the beginning, this was spurred on because of stories that I saw taking on the same subject and I wanted to try my hand at the idea. The big thing is that I felt that one idea that explored the subject kind of rushed the idea. While I think that mine was also rushed, at the same time this is just a place for me to explore some interesting ideas for franchises that I normally don't go into heavily.

There is one thing that I do wish to mention about the place mentioned at the end. As Strangereal echoes our world, some areas and landmasses look similar to our own. In Osea there's a region that looks a lot like the Great Lakes area but it isn't marked anywhere on the official maps on the wiki on what cities are there or what the actual lakes are called. But seeing that they were pretty large lakes, it sort of made sense for the kind of vague but apt descriptor that I gave.

As you saw during the pilot, I swapped between first and third-person perspectives; specifically, first-person for Trigger as he is the player character and third for everyone else when their specific perspectives on a situation is required. This would be something that would continue onward, specifically first person with Trigger, third with others. As for the story, it would mainly follow the plot and characters on the ground that mainly happens in the manga/anime. Some of the biggest obstacles are trying to keep this interesting. It would be so easy to just have Trigger in an A-10 or F-35 making bombing runs and just killing everyone in his path. There is another fic that ran into something similar, that being not quite knowing how to make it interesting, and decided to buff the Empire in different ways while still keeping them technologically inferior. If you're interested, that fic is "Ghost Recon: The Gate" by Peacekeeper 37 (id: 12728855). It, unfortunately, hasn't been updated in a year, but it was a very interesting read when it was actively updated and I recommend checking it out.

That's all I have this time around. Let me know what you think in the usual places. See you all in whatever I decide to do next.