"No, it is as Hebert said, Miyares is the real hero," Nataliya told one of our classmates for maybe the third or fourth time, just that day alone. I would've thought that the JROTC grape vine would've passed all the gossip to everyone at Doolittle by now, but there were always those that wanted to hear it straight from the source, even if that meant talking to the bitchiest girl in school. "Neither of us were aware of just what was about to happen, but Miyares was in position to see what was happening, much less act. Were it not for his decisiveness, Davis, McNeal, Connor, Hebert, and myself likely would still either be in the MTF or we would be dead."
Her tone wasn't so much grave as it was starkly matter-of-fact. The sun was yellow, wind blew and grass grew, we'd all be dead if it weren't for Miyares. Her calm statement was made all the more striking given that she said it while in ABUs specifically for her Changer state, in between careful bites of her hearty-looking Caesar salad. Then she paused and thoughtfully added as the other student left our table, "It is well past Easter, but I think I will bake him paska as a thank you. Hebert, I expect you to help."
I rolled my eyes at her decree, then shot Davis a look that promised retribution when he made a 'Wha-Kssssh!' sound and mimes the cracking of a whip. Fortunately, McNeal punished him adequately with an elbow to the ribs.
"Ow! Damn it woman, why do you keep hitting the exact same spot?! And how?!" he loudly complained as he rubbed his chest.
"Because Davis, you are dumb and say dumb things, and eventually Pavlovian conditioning will set in, even if common sense won't," she said in between bites of her hamburger, and pretended to ignore his hurt look with a shamelessly apparent smirk.
"Cadet McNeal," Tech Sergeant Patrick calmly drawled as he ambled past, "Keep that up with him and it'll start constituting as pleasure, and we're not in that business."
It took McNeal a moment to decipher just what the older man said. Then she blushed right to her ears as she got just what exactly he had implied. Admittedly, my face was no better, and Nataliya, thanks to our link giving her the necessary insight, got it next and promptly turned pink.
"... I'm not sure that I get it and at this point I'm a little afraid to ask," Davis said after a moment of glancing between the blushing faces of us three girls. "So… obvious subject change! Hebert, how come you and Sokolova aren't taking PT with us anymore? Also, haven't seen you in some of our classes this week."
I paused and tried not to grimace or pout, but ended up pouting a little anyways. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nataliya's twist in a similar expression of discontentment.
"Given the nature of my powers and now Sokolova's, it was decided that we needed more focused physical training," I grumbled. Both Davis and McNeal made sympathetic faces at that. "It was also decided to let us both test out of Calculus and Marksmanship. Our powers give us both an unfair advantage."
I very pointedly gave Nataliya a look, and she had the decency to blush despite somehow managing to come across as supremely smug at the same time. Like me, her altered vision gave her an acuity that the average 'mere' human could not hope to rival, but unlike my attempts to downplay it, she positively reveled in it during the first and subsequently last time we were on the firing range after coming back to school.
Scoring perfect bullseyes was one thing. Scoring perfect bullseyes on other cadets' targets was quite another.
Doing it while laughing triumphantly like a stuck up rich girl lording it over the peasants really was uncalled for though.
"That laugh was kinda weird Sokolova," McNeal said offhandedly and Davis nodded in agreement, which made the Ukrainian girl's embarrassed blush grow far more vivid.
"I got lost in the heat of the moment!" She said defensively and avoided eye contact as she stabbed at her salad with her fork.
"But it is as Hebert says. The two of us continuing those three courses is regrettably a waste of everyone's time," she petulantly said, so much that I didn't even need our link to know that she was being sincere. She honestly believed that there was the possibility that she just might miss out on something that would positively affect her already-perfect grade.
"I was told that we'll be getting a training course to fill that time. Apparently there's some former Marine that's being asked to train the two of us specifically, but will also offer additional training to any Cadet that asks," I added, but our two friends both blanched.
"Jarhead training? I'd rather piss glass," Davis very eloquently said. Gross, but I couldn't blame him given the horror stories that I'd heard already about Marine basic training. I mean, come on, a book of matches just to burn off the leeches that might get stuck to you? If that was true, then that was insane. "Also, no such thing as a former Marine."
McNeal nodded in agreement around a mouthful of her burger, chewed, swallowed, then asked, "Any plans this Saturday? Other than the baking you two are so obsessed about lately?"
"Hmph! I will have you know that our raspberry and white chocolate toffee squares are absolutely sublime," Nataliya said defensively.
"Not that he'd ever get to know, you never let us share them because you try to eat them all," I snarled, which brought another blush to her polymer cheeks.
"A-anyways! Hebert and I have a prior engagement with Captain Hatheway," she continued as if I hadn't undercut her, despite Davis and McNeal's snickering. But I couldn't help but grin at the same time as Nataliya did.
"I'm finally getting some flight time in," I said happily. "and Sokolova's also going to get in the air for the first time."
Nataliya and I spent a good several minutes carefully stretching and limbering up, with Nataliya changing into her other form and stretching all over again just to be safe, she was so anxious. But she was also excited, and so was I. I mean, who wouldn't be? Flying was probably one of the best powers for a reason. Hell, flying was what ultimately freed me from Winslow.
"Hebert, Sokolova," Captain Bastard drawled out as he eyed us both with thinly veiled exasperation, but I was too keyed up to be annoyed at him and Nataliya all but adored him and as such was hardly bothered by anything he said most of the time.
We both immediately stood at attention and tried not to smile, and failed. At any other time, I might have been embarrassed by what we were wearing. But damn it, I was about to fly again! I would have worn a tutu and carried a mop if it got me in the air where I belonged!
Our sage green flight suits were… snug. They had to be, to minimize the damage they'd take once we were in the air, which made me realize that either I was absurdly lucky that I didn't end up mostly (or entirely) naked during my first flight or that some aspect of my power had partly protected my clothing and thus, my modesty. The tightness also was to make sure that we had plenty of 'support,' especially Nataliya, as our flight suits left the entirety of our backs completely bare. The suits were thick, as much with insulation as from protective layers of Kevlar to make them more durable, and to make our zippered pockets as flush with our bodies as possible to keep them from getting ripped open or ripped off.
In addition, we both had small, insulated leather satchels held against our bellies by a harness that buckled tightly around our hips and thighs, and also connected to integrated straps built into our flight suits that looped firmly around our shoulders and legs. The satchels were mostly for an emergency first aid kit, energy bars, two bottles of water and finally an emergency transmitter slash locator, but they also had just enough room for my footwear too. They also had parachutes, though I hoped to never need to test them. While I was assured that the straps built into my flight suit kept the entire assembly as tight against my body as possible, I still had the niggling fear that if I had to use my parachute, it'd rip the entire flight suit from my body and leave me plummeting to my death in just a pair of panties. Or worse, snap my neck and back like twigs.
No wait, falling to my death in just my panties would definitely be worse.
I just had to tell myself over and over that I didn't look completely ridiculous. Nataliya's feeling of reassurance as well as her obvious jealousy whenever she looked at my legs helped. They also made me blush furiously, but they helped, even as I wondered just when exactly did my legs get so long and how I'd missed that development.
"As you were girls," Bastard said with probably-deliberate boredom. "I hope you both thought to go to the bathroom already, otherwise you're going to be holding it or pissing yourselves, and I'm pretty sure that frozen pee stuck to your crotch will be both painful and uncomfortable and I'll never let either of you forget it if that does happen."
Eww. Bastard!
No, wait, I should at least try to be a little nicer in my thoughts, because not only was Captain Hatheway finally granting me some proper flight training, I was also finally granted permission to test my wide variety of ordnance, including my drone manufacturing and control capabilities. That, to my utter joy, meant that I was finally considered to be fully flight capable. All four of my turrets were fully operational (though loaded with practice ammunition, not that I expected to use them), the internal structure of my wings was now considered to be fully repaired, and both of my drone manufacturing and maintenance bays were online (though getting the one unit reinstalled back inside my wing after it had been initially removed had been nerve-wrackingly tricky, despite the fact that it had shrunk or folded or something once it had been brought within scant centimeters of touching my wing). I'll admit to being a little confused by why they were being referred to as 'drone manufacturing and maintenance bays,' but that's what they were called according to my blueprints, apparently.
I was also still stuck communicating solely via the device built into my choker whenever I wasn't using radio, but all I could get out of maintenance was that I'd have to push hard into my power again before anyone was willing to even consider seeing if the problem was a mechanical issue rather than a biological one.
A part of me was oddly conflicted about Nataliya taking my 30mm cannon. On one hand, I trusted her, more and more each day it seemed, and at the time she'd taken it it had probably saved us both from being killed, despite the fact that I'd literally been shot in the head and only had scratches to show for it. I wasn't exactly keen on testing just how much small-arms fire I could take while pulling on my power, and the Air Force wasn't inclined to test my durability either. On the other hand… damn it Nataliya, that was my main gun!
I wasn't as bothered by not carrying any of the six warheads that I'd surrendered over to military custody for study. Hell, not carrying those monsters around was a relief and I hoped to never see the damn things again. But … there was this odd hunch, a feeling almost, that ... [Ordnance Manufacturing Capabilities: On Standby] … well, I tried not to think about it.
"I also hope you both rigorously studied your maps and the flight plan for today," Captain Hatheway drawled on in that bastardly way of his, then he paused and sighed as we both furiously nodded like two headbangers at a sold-out concert with similarly manic grins. "Stop that, it's weird. Both of you, get your wings out and go get into position on the runway already behind my bird. Take-off order is me, then Hebert, then you Sokolova. Get to your positions girls, and both of you listen for your cues from ATC. Especially you, Hebert." He tossed me one of the two helmets that he'd been carrying and the other to Nataliya, then jogged over to his waiting plane.
Bastard, I thought with a vivid blush as I turned off my throat speaker by carefully pressing a button woven into the thick fabric of my choker (thank you again, Fitz-Simmons), then pressed the mental 'switch' in my head [Accessing Local Communications: Air Traffic Control] that connected me to local radio frequencies. Next to me, I felt Nataliya do the same through our link, and watched her eyes get a sort of distracted, glassy quality for a brief moment. Then with a smile and a nod, I jogged several meters off to the side and pulled off my boots and socks to tuck them into my belly satchel, then drew out my wings.
My wings usually felt eager to slide back out into the world as they emerged from my back. But that day? That glorious day? It almost felt like the very first time I let them out, like a limb I'd never known I had was suddenly there, ready and waiting to be used. Every inch sang readiness to me [Status report: All Systems Nominal], and on what was swiftly becoming reflex I tested my flight control surfaces and savored at just how smoothly they responded. Harder was pushing my power just far enough that only my feet, ankles and lower legs transformed further but I'd been practicing, transforming them into wheeled landing gear formed in a mechanical mimicry of human feet.
I made sure that my hair was still in its tight neat bun, then I started to pull on my helmet… and immediately scowled when I saw just what was painted on the side.
'Oh that utter fucking Bastard,' I thought furiously as my face grew hot, and with a growl I pulled it on, trying my hardest to ignore the stylized owl painted around the tinted full-face visor and already dreading whatever callsign I was going to be addressed by. One day I will have my revenge, and it will be swift and terrible.
Off to the side I watched Nataliya fully draw in her power for the first time outside of a hangar. Her wings came out differently than mine, snapping out of her quasi-mechanical back rather than folding out in a head-hurting fashion as mine did, then rapidly growing out. Her wingspan wasn't quite half the width of mine, and her twin engines were somewhat smaller yet more prominent where they sat side-by-side against her back.
I couldn't help but think as she tested her flight surfaces that she looked… whole. Complete. Majestic even, though like me she wasn't exactly thrilled by Captain Bastard's sense of humor when she noticed the chocolate candy bar painted onto her helmet if her irritably muttered deprecations were any indication. But then, she hadn't been that happy either to have it pointed out to her that a lot of her seemed like it was cribbed directly from Pavel Sukhoi's design notes, who was apparently some genius Russian aviation engineer.
"Cadet 1, callsign: Owl, prepare to transit runway," I suddenly heard in my head, and my eyebrow began twitching as the roar of a jet launching itself into the air drew my attention to Captain Bastard's takeoff.
Oh, my revenge would be swift and terrible indeed.
But I pushed that aside for now, and leaned forward as I set my feet and skated forward out of the hangar, before I throttled up my engines; the first and only time I'd been foolish enough to do so while in a hangar a maintenance chief had nearly smacked me over the head with his boot, he'd been so livid. It was sort of like roller skating, not that anyone other than a Tinker was ever crazy enough to roller skate with a pair of absurdly-powerful engines attached to their back. The weird thing was that I could feel the tarmac underneath my wheels as if they were still skin, tissue and bone. I had to resist the urge to wiggle my toes, because I didn't want to humiliate myself and stumble or worse, faceplant. Bastard would never let me live that down of course, but neither would anyone else save for maybe Nataliya. Maybe.
I dutifully followed the ATC's instructions to take my place at the end of the runway, and as I crouched in place I checked all my pockets again and made sure that my helmet's visor was down and locked firmly in place. And then I simply rested my hands on my knees and anxiously waited. Tried my absolute hardest not to fidget. Fidgeted a little bit anyways. I was so amped up that when the order to take off finally came, I didn't even think. I just slammed my throttle forward.
My engines snarled out their furious joy, swallowing massive amounts of air that I could feel circulate furiously within their chambers as if they were two extra hearts pounding eagerly within my chest, then expelled it out, almost instantly rocketing me forward on my wheeled feet. My lips spread into a teeth-baring grin as the runway tarmac underneath me became a blur of motion as the distance between me and the end of the runway rapidly shrank. I leaned forward and let my wings take more of my weight, and within moments my feet left the ground completely and I was flying, soaring smoothly up into the air before I'd even cleared half of the runway's length, instinctively straightening out my legs and locking feet together as I crossed my arms over my chest.
I couldn't help but let out a whoop of joy which swiftly became giddy, unrestrained laughter. I was flying again, and it was glorious.
I didn't even realize that I was transmitting my joy for everyone to hear until an exasperated air traffic controller asked me to calm down, but I was too giddy to be embarrassed and was still giggling hopelessly a few minutes later, when Nataliya broadcasted her own joy into the airwaves as she took to the air.
Captain Bastard, in a display of surprising generosity, gave both Nataliya and myself a good ten minutes just to get the joy of being in the air out of our systems. We both needed it, but Nataliya especially so. From the intoxicating, in fact almost overwhelming surge of emotion through our link, I was almost certain that she was crying, she was so happy. And I couldn't blame her for that. Feeling the cold wind as I could, as she now could, flowing not just across our bodies but the wing surfaces that were the extensions of our own flesh, feeling our control surfaces like an extra set of fingers, the slightest mental twitch allowing either of us to dance through the air, the sheer and unbridled freedom of true flight…
I had tears in my own eyes just thinking about it, and couldn't help but pity any Parahuman that somehow flew without wings of her or his own.
Eventually Captain Bastard wrangled the both of us into formation, and from there drilled us both on practicing various flight maneuvers of varying complexity. It wasn't the sort of thing either of us could practice in a simulator. Neither of us flew quite like real planes; in particular, I was almost absurdly agile in the air for a strategic heavy bomber. But Nataliya?
Quite simply, she made me look like a riced-out ice cream truck doing donuts in the street.
Once she got the hang of maneuvering through the air, which she did within minutes it seemed like, she became a creature of nigh-impossible grace, as she wasn't limited by actually being the size of the Sukhoi aircraft she emulated. She laughed through most of the maneuvers we practiced, and it was a pleasure just to watch how much she enjoyed herself. Hell, even Captain Bastard sounded amused by just how much fun she was having.
Though he was decidedly less amused when she playfully flipped upside down and flew underneath me, so close that she was able to reach out and poke my belly despite the turbulence coming off of my much-larger wings threatening to either send her spiraling out of control or make her crash into me. I'll admit to getting a bizarre and enticing sort of thrill out of it though and feeling an odd flush of heat.
Was it stupidly dangerous?
Oh very much so, and he verbally tore a strip out of both of us for recklessly trying to play patty cake an instant later. I had to literally bite my cheek to keep from giggling over my radio, and I could feel Nataliya struggling with her own mirth.
Ordnance testing on the bombing range set up for our use was less fun, but still exciting. It was in truth, an isolated field well away from any living areas that was being leased for our use, and had been liberally decorated with various vehicles that had been towed into place, salvaged from surrounding junkyards all over the state. Fortunately, it wouldn't be our job to clean up the mess that we were about to make. That job was for the EOD teams and the clean-up crew on standby with observers and a security detachment. And we absolutely made one hell of a mess of that field.
My various air-to-surface missiles and bombs, despite being fairly small when they launched from my internal weapon bays, swiftly grew to full-size like everything else that left my wings did, and from Captain Bastard's low whistle of appreciation at my test use of one of my bunker-buster munitions, which made a crater big enough to swallow two houses, they were more than adequate. But the real show was seeing Nataliya practice her own offensive abilities, and then when I unleashed my drones for the very first time.
The GAU 37/C Harkonnen, a 30 millimeter rotary magnetic induction cannon, was quite simply an eight-barreled monster of a weapon system, and I finally saw that for myself once it materialized in Nataliya's hands. From end to end, the massive gun looked every bit as long as the transformed Ukrainian girl was tall, and looked like it should've been mounted on a turret or something. [Actually Hebert, we originally had a bigger version of that bastard mounted on tanks and occasionally APCs I think.] Despite its weight, and that thing just had to be heavy, she didn't seem burdened at all by its mass as she made her first firing run.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!
For a brief, terrifying moment, I honestly thought that she was going to stall herself out trying to fire that thing, but at the last moment she put more power to her engines and literally blazed over the target range in the blink of an eye. And when she did, she also carved a literal trench through almost a third of the entire site. Her initial target, an old truck, well, to say that it had been effectively sheared in half would imply that it might have been possible to reconnect the two halves.
Instead, everything between the driver's side headlight and the passenger side tail light looked as if an almost meter-wide chainsaw had carved the vehicle apart. That line of destruction continued on through several more junker vehicles and only stopped when it merged into one of the bigger craters I'd made. From my altitude I wasn't exactly sure, but that trench of destruction looked to be half a meter deep in some places.
"...Cookie, can I adopt you?" Captain Bastard asked after a quiet moment of reflection.
"Scarecrow, that would be a very emphatic no," was Nataliya's smug reply.
"Heh. Well then kid, continue on," Captain Bastard said with a chuckle. "Get a feel for whatever other flavor of mayhem you can dish out."
"Actually Scarecrow," I could hear the frustration in her voice as she dismissed my stolen cannon in shimmering light while the three of us leisurely circled the makeshift ordnance range. "I think that there is little else I can do short of flying down and hitting or kicking a target. It feels as if I need to take other weapons before I can use them, like I did Owl's main gun."
"Hmmm. Unfortunate Cookie, but there's nothing we can do about that for now," the older man mused. "Owl, feel free to release some of those drones of yours. There's more than a little interest in just what your airborne manufacturing capabilities are capable of."
"Owl copies, proceeding," I answered distractedly. Something about that comment sparked a thought in my head. With a thought, I shifted my focus towards the 3D printers.. No. That wasn't the right word. [Phased…] ...Phased Disassembler Arrays, that was it. I carefully gauged how much raw materials that I had to work with [Internal Mass Reservoir Capacity: 32%] and figured that it should be plenty to work with for a demonstration, as long as I didn't get too nuts. With a thought I could feel the mechanisms come to life with a subtle vibration that was almost completely drowned out by the steady rumble of my engines. I felt my stock of raw material shrink as I slowly became aware of sudden extra extensions of my … my body? My will, perhaps?
Then they were complete, and the hatches in my wings yawned open to birth them out into the world.
My drones dropped below me, and their folded wings snapped into place as their engines hissed to life, then they swiftly fell into formation around me, eight of them in all, and it was like opening an eye again after keeping it closed and covered for over a week, only I could see and hear and feel, and it should have been overwhelming, having so many additional sensory inputs and eight extra bodies to control. But it was like I'd had an extra finger for each of them, only the finger was really an entire limb with eyes and ears-
"Owl? Are you alright?" Captain Hatheway firmly asked, and I couldn't help but give a shake of my head to clear my thoughts, then gave Nataliya a wave and more importantly sent feelings of reassurance through our link.
"Apologies, Scarecrow," I transmitted. "I was briefly distracted by the extra inputs from my drones. I've adjusted to compensate, won't happen again."
Four of my drones, my recon drones, were a dull matte black, and shaped like my wings were. In fact, they looked like little person-sized B-2 spirits in miniature, only instead of hidden weapon bays they were absolutely packed with precision sensors which gave them an even thinner cross-section. Ironically, I could only just barely detect them without looking at them, and I think that was only because I was controlling them directly. But through them, my senses were expanded. My already preternatural vision expanded past the normal visual range to show me colors that I didn't even have names for well beyond the nearly 180 degree vision humans possessed, and through them my ability to hear into the radio range was similarly expanded. For a brief moment, processing so much visual and audio information made my head hurt fiercely, but the spike of pain went away as quickly as it had arrived. [Electronic Countermeasures: Online; Drone Control Systems: Online]
My other four drones, bomb drones, were very similar in appearance. Only instead of packed with precision sensor suites, each bomb drone carried a single predetermined payload transferred from my own bomb bays, either to be launched remotely from the drone to help obfuscate my position, or carried by the drone all the way to the target, which would cost me said drone but result in said ordnance being harder to shoot down or evade.
I demonstrated the former by having my bomb drones drop their dangerous payloads on very specific targets, then had them return to the shelter of my wings to reload and recharge their power cells, and then sent them back out to blast their assigned targets again, all within the span of a couple minutes. It was easy. Hell, it felt like that was what my bomb drones were meant to do. [They were. Made getting shot down by conventional ground forces a hell of a lot less likely.] But I kept thinking about Nataliya's comment, about taking.
It was more a whim than anything else that I produced one more drone, but put actual thought into it, rather than just letting my power do whatever it wanted. I knew that it would irk Nataliya just a tiny bit, but I very firmly kept Russian aircraft in mind as I pushed my Phased Disassembler Array to build this one particular drone a certain way, though ultimately I wasn't exactly sure just how the design had come to me. [What are you… oh. Ooh. Either we're bleeding through even more than I thought or someone's been doing some serious research.]
The result was only a little bigger than one of my strike drones was supposed to be, with a pair of electric engines rather than just one. That would cut its operational time by more than half, but if my hunch was right, that wouldn't matter in the long run. Unlike the typical stealthy flying wing design that my drones and I shared, this thing was undeniably built for speed, ferocious agility, and fighting, which was emphasized by the energy weapon pods under each wing.
For a moment, I was a little surprised when it came out vibrant blue and yellow rather than matte black. I hadn't even known that my PDA could even apply paint, though in retrospect it was kind of a no brainer. I was making carbon fiber stealth drone aircraft, for crying out loud. Compared to that, different colors were nothing.
Then I mentally shoved my creation, which for some reason I wanted to call an Su-57 strike drone, at my mental link with Nataliya as hard as I could [Strike Drone #01 control transferred to Allied Unit: Tilly].
"Tay- Owl, what the fuck?!" she yelped and her flight actually wobbled for a moment, and I could feel her surprise and elation. Hell, I could see as she slapped her gloved hands to the sides of her helmet roughly where her cheeks were, and squealed out. "...O, Bozhe~!"
"What? Cookie, Owl, report. What the hell is that?" Captain Bastard asked with just a touch of bewilderment, even as my former drone broke formation, no longer under any form of my control, and veered in close to Nataliya until she was able to reach out and brush a fingertip against the tip of one of its wings. Then the nimble, lethal little craft rose and waggled its wingtips, almost experimentally, then flipped with a smooth, almost lazy ease to fly in position on Nataliya's side a few wingspans away.
"Owl gave me one of her drones and it is beautiful~!" Nataliya happily squealed out. "Scarecrow, requesting permission to test its armament!"
There was a pause, and I swear that even through the thirty meters separating his F-15 from me, I could feel his stare. Mercifully, my helmet hid my embarrassed blush.
"Well, I did bring you girls up here to let you show off and get some flight time in," he eventually sighed out, which resulted in another giddy squeal from Nataliya as he said, "Cookie, you're weapons-free again. Go nuts, kid."
The moment he said that both Nataliya and her new drone slid into a Herbst maneuver with a turning curve so frighteningly tight that I winced and flinched just to watch it, because that was definitely something that Captain Bastard had not let us practice. Had I decelerated and turned as fast and as tightly as she did, I think I would've either blacked out or strained myself hard enough to damage something critical, yet Nataliya was laughing joyously as she opened up the throttle for herself and her drone and rocketed away in the opposite direction, as if physics was her bitch in that very moment.
By the time Bastard had turned his jet around to follow I was only just coming out of my own turn, but Nataliya and her drone were already making their attack run. Fortunately, my recon drones ensured that I didn't miss anything. She was cackling like a loon as she followed in her drone's wake, just far enough above the supermaneuverable little craft that she could have reached out to touch it again if she'd wanted to.
Instead, her attention was fully focused on her chosen target, a broken-down garbage truck. A heartbeat later, the energy weapon pods slung underneath the wings of her drone unleashed bolts of light that were so painfully bright that I was thankful that I wasn't actually seeing it with human eyes. Those energy bolts were every bit as hot as they looked, because they peppered that abandoned garbage truck, punching fist-sized molten molten holes along its length, and the few bolts that missed were hot enough to leave glassy patches where they punched into the dirt.
Nataliya and her drone repeated their shockingly-tight turning maneuver again, and strafed the truck from a different angle that allowed the drone's weapons fire to pepper the length of the vehicle viciously enough that the truck's huge rusting bin began sagging in on itself.
"Owl?" Bastard called out to me as Nataliya fell back into formation with the two of us.
"Owl copies, Scarecrow?" I hesitantly replied. I had no idea that the energy weapons I'd slapped on that drone were so ... potent.
"Can your fancy 3D printers make more drones like that one that can be conventionally controlled?"
"Ocá!" Nataliya suddenly butted into our conversation. "It's name is Ocá!"
"... Ugh. Fine." I could taste his exasperation, and it tasted like chocolate-glazed strawberries. "Can your tech build any more of those… Osa?"
"Ocá!"
"Whatever, Cookie."
"Absolutely, Scarecrow," I wheezed out as I tried to hold back laughter [Strike Drone #01 redesignated: Ocá-Pattern Strike Drone].
Nataliya was giddy all the way back to Barnes ANG. The moment the three of us landed, she was fawning all over her Ocá as if it were a puppy and not an incredibly lethal combat drone, despite the fact that its wingspan was only a little longer than the width of her outstretched arms. I didn't doubt that the maintenance crews were literally itching to study the little craft.
That made what happened all the more mind-boggling, because one moment, Nataliya was draped over her drone and hugging it, even rubbing her polymer cheek against it. The next moment it sparkled, and she jerked back as it shimmered and flowed into her. And then her metal and polymer skin began glowing, though only for an instant, and though she'd pulled her wings back in, they burst anew from her back.
But they weren't the wings she'd just flown with. Instead, they were the blue and yellow wings of her Ocá, and her exposed skin for that matter was suddenly in shades of blue, black and yellow. As she blinked rapidly, utterly dumbstruck, she stared down at her hands, where lenses had appeared in her palms that resembled the apertures of her drone's energy weapons.
Captain Hatheway and I stood and stared as Nataliya kept on blinking and staring at her hands, and I found myself hoping that she wasn't about to accidentally fire off one of those energy cannons.
"Hebert?" he calmly said.
"Y-yes, Captain Hatheway?"
"... You Parahumans are really fucking weird sometimes."
"... Yes, Captain Hatheway. Yes we are."
"You'll be able to produce another of those of course? As well as blueprints for manufacture?"
"Of course. Though…" I paused and considered the matter as Nataliya finally transformed completely back to human and climbed to her feet. "Making the energy weapons that small… It should still be in the blueprints, so it shouldn't count as Tinker te-"
That was when I was tackle-hugged by roughly a hundred and forty or fifty-something pounds of happily-squealing Ukrainian who then proceeded to shower my cheeks with kisses an instant later.
