Author's Preamble

I've had this in the works since I put up Chapter 11, but I had no idea how I was going to use Offline – whether it would be the same vein as An Englishman's Side Quests, where it just ended up being snippets I didn't want to kill but couldn't keep either… or smut, or whether it would actually have a proper story focusing on the world of Strangereal in the 1960s/1970s.

I'm still not sure which it'll be, but I think it'll be more structured than the Side Quests: still focusing on stuff going on outside the confines of the airbases, but also showing the members of the cast in less life-or-death situations, and more personal stories that would just bloat the main story.

Either way, this one isn't quite explicit, but… it's certainly a bit more NSFW than the main story.

Also for anyone keeping track, this takes place between Chapters 11 and 12 in ACES.


One Night at Avalon


The first evening at Avalon had been spent getting accustomed to how things worked around here, and trying not to get lost, not to mention allowing the adrenaline to wear away.

The second evening however, felt as if there was an entirely different atmosphere. It was strange how, despite having only met them the day prior, he felt quite at ease around the Rectans.

It was strange, Jet thought, just how at ease he was around them, considering that the Belkans had described them as barbarians, terrorists, monsters and lunatics.

In retrospect, maybe believing the enemy's propaganda wasn't quite such a good idea...

Commander Herlentz was genuinely a hero, in his opinion, the man having all kinds of war stories from his time in the League of Nations Army Air Force during the last war and having saved whoever he could during the retreat from Cor, as well as being an honestly impressive commander, even offering him plenty of advice about being in charge. Liena's comment about him feeling like a father figure to the pilots he commanded felt a bit off, more like a cool uncle, perhaps.

Then there were the girls of the group. Liena had a sort of cool, composed vibe around her, in a hard to explain manner - almost like the girl at the top of the leaderboards, but still willing to stop and help anyone who needed it, whilst Eydis was... Eydis. That really was the best explanation in his eyes, he'd never met anyone quite like her before, and probably never would again.

He'd not really had much time to talk to Captain Fanatio, but both Eydis and Liena had told her that she was very much a woman of action, rather than words, so in lieu of his own experiences, he'd take theirs as gospel.

Even the two mercenaries, Pito and LLENN, seemed alright - okay, maybe that needed rephrasing: LLENN was alright. The smaller girl clearly acted as the "common sense" in their friendship, he reckoned.

Pito, on the other hand, was a madwoman with a wicked sense of humour, and a penchant for ignoring any orders if she found them inconvenient to her current conquest.

Still, after Bercouli's training flight earlier, he'd worked up a hell of a sweat, pulling G against the rapidly approaching mountains, and that close call with an Osean F-8 hadn't exactly helped his nerves either!

By the early evening, he'd decided that a nice, long and relaxing shower was absolutely what he needed to unwind, and so, he found himself stripping off his his shirt and trousers, folding them neatly, and placing them in a neat pile alongside his boots, socks inside them, with his underwear on top.

Turning on the shower, he let his thoughts wander as the water poured over him. He couldn't help but think about what had happened at Rechlin, and the people his strategy had killed, before his morbid thoughts were interrupted from behind the wall.

"~Neunundneunzig luftballons, jeder war ein grosser Krieger, hielten sich fuer Captain Kirk...~" He heard Eydis sing. She had a surprisingly pretty singing voice, but he hoped for love of all that was holy that he hadn't walked into the women's showers...

Well, there went any hopes of a relaxing shower.

Settling on the best course of action in his mind, which was to quickly wash himself down, and scarper before she noticed his presence, he rushed to try and clean himself, before...

Eydis walked around the corner, and stopped in her tracks, looking him over. She looked surprised at the presence of someone else, and he quickly put his hand over his eyes.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry! I think I'm in the women's showers, and-" He apologised, the words coming out as fast as his Phantom in full reheat.

"It's mixed showering. No need to apologise." Eydis said, as if she wasn't giving him a view that his RIO would be dying to see... in no universe could Sierra ever know the showers were mixed, he'd decided instantly.

"Yeah, but it's still rude to barge in and..."

"What, look?" She asked, almost amused. "I'm surprised you can do that with your hands over your eyes! Mind you, gives me a better view... not bad. Not bad at all."

He had two choices in that moment - cover his unmentionables, and protect his dignity from Eydis's prying eyes, or continue to cover his eyes, but know that she was either looking him over like a piece of meat... or saying things to get a rise out of him.

"Hey, can I ask a favour? Would you mind doing my back? My arms don't really reach there!"

Well, there went the idea of staring at the tap, or covering his manhood.

He paused as he went round the corner, an action Eydis had clearly noticed. "You don't have to act like I'm gonna hit you for looking, you know? Besides, I asked you to wash my back!"

"Err, right, yeah." He took a deep breath. This was no different to having to help his sister wash after she'd broke her arm a couple of years back, he told himself... except that this was completely different. That had just been uncomfortable, whilst this was... kind of pleasant, in an anxiety inducing way.

Eydis was a beautiful young woman, and here he was, with his hands on her, rubbing gently against her soft and glistening skin, and trying his hardest not to take any liberties. Not that he would, mind you - he wasn't Sierra, and even then, he knew his RIO was all talk when it came to womanising; he had as strict a sense of morals as he did when it came to the fairer sex.

In regard to Eydis though, she was a colleague, that was all, and washing each other was absolutely something colleagues did in the times of war... yeah, that was it.

If anyone ever asked, that was his story, and he was sticking to it!

"I never got chance to ask, but, you aren't Japanese, are you? Either of you?" She turned her head slightly to look at him.

"Nah, I'm British. Only moved here a few years back. Sierra's a Yank, but he's been here since he was a kid." He replied, rubbing the soap on.

"Huh, I'm German. Natively anyway, mom and dad moved here a few years back. I kind of miss then, all three of us, playing about..." As she spoke, he recognised a sadness in her voice; a longing to go back to the past, to see her parents. "I wonder if they'd even recognise me now..." It was a sad fact now that none of them were the same people they'd started off ACES as. Whether that was the pressures of the chains of command, or the constant anxiety and feelings of loss that Eydis probably felt, they'd all changed in these past few months...

Deciding that the least he could do was to cheer her up a little bit, he changed the topic of conversation. "You've got a nice voice, you know. I, err, kind of heard you singing just. Not, you know..."

"Thanks, it's not something I usually show off, but... it's nice to be complimented on something that isn't, you know..." He did know, mostly because his hands were currently on a very fixed course around her back, and absolutely nowhere else, despite her wriggling around... "Anyone would think you're buttering me up, you know?" She teased, and he was pretty sure he saw her wink at him... she wasn't seriously doing what he thought she was doing, was she?

Playing along with it, he teased her back. "Nope, just lathering you up instead."

"Ohh, you do have a sense of humour then!"

"I take offence at you thinking I didn't!" He joked back. "Nah, I'm just a bit on edge." He didn't find that particularly surprising, when he was doing his utmost to keep his hands moving in a perfectly straight line, whilst he rubbed the suds off of Eydis's back.

"Maybe you need a good rub too, it's really soothing!" He almost immediately burst into a coughing fit - partly from what he hoped was an innocent innuendo, but mostly because he'd accidentally swallowed some soap too.

"Err, what do you mean by "a good rub"?" He asked, recovering from his best impression of a two-stroke engine.

"You know, like what you've just been doing!" She explained.

"Ohh, a massage! I thought you meant... heh, sorry, I really am on edge if I thought that was what you meant!" He laughed, though he noticed her smirking at him.

"I could do that too."

It was at that point that the already slow operating system that was Jet's mind crashed and displayed a blue screen.

There was absolutely no way this was happening, was there? Eydis was, well, for want of a better term and to borrow one from Sierra, fit as fuck, whilst he was a lanky, nerdy, ginger with a funny accent that he did his best to suppress.

When he put it that way, maybe Zeliska had a point about him having self-esteem issues.

Anyway, the psychological evaluation of himself aside for now, he had a beautiful girl stood in front of him, both of them completely naked, and... "Ooh, someone's gotten bold! Your hands are wandering..."

Shit!

Well, there was only one way this was going to end, so maybe grovelling was less embarrassing than freezing to death outside Avalon, completely naked... "I'm so sorry, I wasn't-"

She turned around, and give him a look at her, without his eyes being covered. She really was incredible to look at, being blessed in all the right places, and... he was staring now, wasn't he? "How about we wait till we're out of the shower, and then we can get to know each other a bit better?" She winked, and placed a hand on his chest and rubbed it up and down his abdomen. "Though if you want, I could return the favour now?"

"Uhh, yeah, I'd like that." He answered, before he turned around. Eydis was a fair bit shorter than him, so even on her tip toes, she only barely reached his ears in height.

She knew this too, and whilst he'd been as distant as he reasonably could when washing her, she didn't have the same compulsion, her hands often wandering from his back, usually winding up on his arse or his abs, whilst she made sure he was thinking about in that moment, as she pressed her chest against his back.

"See? I told you this was fun!" She whispered into his ear, her breathing against the side of his face rousing something in him – something she'd noticed as her hands wandered… "Someone's definitely enjoying themselves!"

"You try having a beautiful woman running her hands across you, whilst she whispers in your ear..."

"Oh, chance would be a fine thing there..." He distinctly felt one of her hands move behind him, and he could swear he'd managed to make her think of something that had properly turned her on... "I think that's as clean as we're getting. Maybe we should move to somewhere more comfortable? My room, perhaps?"

As Eydis walked out of the shower to pick up her clothes, he couldn't help but spare a glance at the way her hips swayed as she walked, and down at her butt.

A fast jet pilot with two confirmed kills to his name, he may have been… but he was also still a hormonal teenager, after all.

/-/

Walking into her room, it was surprising how much she'd made it her own. Posters on the wall of places she'd either been or wanted to go shed some light on her life at home, whilst a picture she'd saved to her NerveGear at some point took centre stage on the wall - herself, a young girl that looked awfully like her, a blonde girl with blue eyes, a much younger girl with hair that looked closer to ginger than blonde, and a blonde boy with green eyes, all of them huddled up together in some kind of field, probably at an event of some kind.

Underneath them though were newspaper cuttings of every engagement so far in the Osean conflict – like a running tally of the lives lost in the war.

He couldn't help but feel a sense of horror. He'd said it was just a small-scale skirmish back on the Harrier; a prelude to the real war even, but when hundreds had died before then?

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the war had raged long before the Fall of Rechlin, and he'd never noticed it...

His thinking was disrupted as Eydis returned from behind a privacy screen she'd put up, wearing a frilly bikini that showed off her ample breasts and a pleated skirt that only barely covered her panties and reached her legs.

Still, having seen everything else in her room, a realisation had come to his mind - was she just doing this as a distraction? He wouldn't blame her if she was - from what she'd told everyone, she'd seen things no person, let alone a teenager, should've seen as their friends disappeared, one by one too, and yet she kept up the impression of someone who's ability to cheer everyone up was unrivalled by anything short of a small army of adorable puppies or kittens…

The problem with distractions though, was that they were, by their nature, a temporary solution. They gave you a chance to think about other stuff for the time being, but you'd still have to face the original problem eventually...

"So, how do I look?" She gave a slight twirl, allowing the skirt to waft up gently and give him a view of her panties. Despite having a view that most guys (and probably a fair few girls too) would kill for, he struggled to think of anything but the last few moments and the realisation that had bought him.

"Eydis, can I ask you something?"

"Anything but butt stuff."

"Oo-kay, not what I was gonna ask, but are you always this forward? I mean, we've known each other a day, and well, here we are... "

"We're gonna die someday, right? May as well make the most of life! Have fun whilst we can!" Despite Eydis's cheerful declaration, it was clear she wasn't happy. He knew all too well how easy it was to put on a smile, even when you were crying inside, simply not to worry everyone.

He knew, because he did it regularly.

"Eydis..." He spoke quietly.

"Besides, it's just sex, right?" Eydis grinned; "Anyone would think I was asking for you to fall in love with me..."

"Can I ask something? Why... umm, why me? Why not Sierra, or there's got to be other guys here, right?"

"You're cute, and I trust you more." She answered bluntly, before her expression dropped. "And it's not that simple, I just..." He noticed the tears forming in her eyes and pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket to hand to her. "I'm just lonely. Maybe it is only sex, but if it's enough to make me feel like I'm not on my own for a bit, then it's got to be worth a shot, right?"

"It just makes the moments after feel worse, you know, Eydis?" He looked down at the floor, remembering that night with Kureha; how beautiful she looked, how much he'd thought about it, the feeling of absolute bliss as they didn't give a damn about propriety... the sinking feeling he got in the moments after they both fell back onto the bed, and the awkward silence it led to. "Trust me, I've made that mistake before. I regret it more than anything else I've ever done."

"They were a friend, I take it?" Eydis asked, sitting down on the bed beside him.

"Yeah. She's my number 2. We never quite confronted our feelings IRL, and well? Both of us were confused teenagers, lonely and trapped... and so, the first night, we slept together. It was amazing, the best thing in the world... until we both stepped back a moment and realised how big of a mistake we'd made."

"At least you know she's alive, right? You could still fix all of that." Eydis smiled, an unhappy smile at that. "I don't know if she's even still alive. I had two friends I logged on with - we got separated, and I almost dread checking the obituaries, just in case I see their names."

"Umm, if you don't mind me asking..."

"Yeah, I'm bi." She shrugged.

"Again, not what I was going to ask." Eydis looked away, a bashful look on her face. The first time he'd actually seen her show embarrassment at something, and it was misinterpreting a badly worded question… "What are their names?"

"Alice and Eugeo."

He thought about it for a moment; the first name wasn't quite so distinctive, there were probably hundreds of people called Alice in some way, but Eugeo was certainly a distinctive name, and it was one that rung a bell in his mind.

"You've gone quiet, you know them?" She asked, her eyes going a little wide as she sat a little prouder, almost as if she was anticipating the next bit eagerly…

"Not personally, but the names are familiar. I think they were at the fall of Rechlin."

Eydis almost slumped into her shoulders, deflating as he told her that. "Did... did they get out?" He didn't miss the anxious tone in her voice at that question, and the way she'd asked that question – not "are they safe?", but "did they escape?"…

"I believe so, yeah."

He looked towards her, and at the tears of joy she was now crying at the news that her friends were probably still alive, and pulled her into a hug, as tight as he could. "Th-thank you!" She sniffled, as he wiped tears from her eyes. "Jet?"

"Yeah?" He answered, before being cut off as he felt her lips on his, and he leant further into the kiss. Maybe he was being daft, but it didn't feel like she was looking for a distraction anymore, rather that she trying to show her affection for him.

"You asked "why you?". If I was looking for meaningless sex, then yeah, I'd have gone to Casanova. I don't know, I don't think I ever wanted that. I just wanna feel less alone, like I'm actually wanted somewhere again."

"You're always welcome to join our misfit squad, you know? Same goes for being my RIO too. Well, if Casanova ever gets his own plane, anyway."

"Heh, I think I'd like that." She laughed a little. "You know what I got called in Recta? The Abyssal Knight. Came from my callsign apparently, "Abyss 10". Felt more like a cruel joke after too long, seeing everyone die around me and yet, I was still there."

"Survivor's Guilt. You start to wonder if it should've been you instead, and it just spirals from there."

"Cute and well read. Not a bad kisser either. Shame about being a bit dense, but... it's kind of charming. Sometimes anyway." She grinned at him. "You were right though, you know, about the regret stuff. I don't wanna regret any of this, and well..."

"Wait, so... you actually like me?"

The look he received from that comment could only be described as completely deadpan, with a hint of teasing in it. "Nope, I just teased you in the shower because I enjoy having power over men."

"Seriously?" He played along with the joke. He was dense, she was right there, but even he knew she was joking there.

"No, you dummy! I was trying to tell you I like you, and that... I guess that I'm really bad at saying what I mean."

"Yup, makes two of us then." He laughed. "So, with all our cards on the table, what do you want to do?"

Eydis looked away, a redness in her face. "Erm, would you mind if... you stayed with me? Tonight, I mean! Not sleeping together, but uhh, sleeping together."

"Sure." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Besides, be nice to sleep with someone who doesn't snore like they swallowed a two-stroke." He joked.

Even before he'd finished his sentence, Eydis was holding back a laughing fit. "Casanova snores that badly!?" She coughed.

"It's like sleeping with a running lawnmower!" He laughed.

"You reckon he's wondering where his bunk mate is right now? It is kinda late..." Eydis thought aloud as she got into bed beside him, and used his chest as a pillow. Probably not a very comfortable one, given she was leaning on the upper part of his ribcage.

"Nah, knowing him, he's tied up doing his records." Unbeknownst to him, he had absolutely no idea how accurate his assessment was...

"Huh, I always had him down as the work-shy type."

"Nope, we give him all the paperwork to do. Between me and you, I do wonder if he's a bit of a masochist sometimes. Only explanation I've got for liking paperwork..." He answered, running a hand through her long, light brown hair. Exactly why he'd done that, he couldn't say, but the fact Eydis didn't immediately throw him out of bed was a good sign!

In fact, she actually seemed quite content with it, cuddling up closer to him as he ran his free hand through her hair, whilst she began to fall asleep, probably as exhausted as he was...

/-/

Sierra had had an interesting evening.

He wasn't exactly sure where things had gone so wrong to end up being ridden like a horse by a sadistic mercenary pilot, with her nails dug into his back as she did so, but he had decided that his captain was never finding out about this.

Ever.