STRIKE WITCHES TWO: PANTSU BOOGALOO
Deep in the ancient stronghold of the Strike Witches, a young pilot, wounded in battle, faces one last foe.
THAT FUCKING CLOCK.
Reaching out, you seize the goddamn thing and twist from the hips as you hurl it at the open window. The annoying beeping contraption arcs into the free air and drops out of sight.
You hold your breath and count.
One...
Two...
Three...
*CRNCHTINKLE!*
Nothing, in all the wide world, can be sweeter then the sound of a delicate and complex torture device being brutally destroyed.
Looking about, you first check your legs to make sure they're still attached, then your hands. Every pilot fears the permanent loss of the body parts necessary for controlling an aircraft more then actual death. You don't care how many kills that Bader fellow has, you'd rather do things the old-fashioned way. With that taken care of, you're hungry as hell, and there's no -
Sean!
You slap your forehead, which makes your head hurt so bad you instantly wish you hadn't. But still, Sean! Is he wounded? Is he even alive? You have to know!
Jumping out of the bed, you almost rush off down the hall when you remember you're in a medical ward. Nurses are about. Casting about for a covering, you settle on stripping the bedsheet and forming a quick toga out of it. You turn and dash down the hallway until you find the top of a large staircase. The hallway stretches out before you, lined with doors.
Wat do?
Having just come from the empty medical ward, you know neither of your crewmembers are there. And you doubt they'd be in what looks like the dormitory areas.
That means they're probably recuperating in the lounge areas, kitchen, or... no, if Sean's alive, he's certainly in the kitchen.
You hop down the stairs two at a time, ignoring the pounding pain in your head with each impact, and reach the ground floor. You hear voices coming from one side. One voice carries the Tone Of Authority. You have certain reflexes vis a vis ranking officers, which induce you to take cover behind a row of potted plants.
"-and Yoshika? Put these on him." The clink and rattle of articulated metal reaches your ears.
A young, tremulous voice replies. "But-! But he saved Tru-"
"By being a psycopath," the other voice replies sternly. "Bravery and lunacy can be hard to tell apart sometimes, and until I know for sure, I don't want him running around this place on his own."
The other girl tsks. "He's wounded and exhausted. Who would go running around stark naked after all that?"
You shrink behind the potted plants a little more, fuming.
reveal?
lay low?
follow the boss?
"Start naked my dying ass," you snort, leaping out from behind the potted plants.
A young girl, whom you take to be Yoshika, leaps away from you so fast she falls on her ass, then scrabbles backwards in shock. The other one, a pretty redhead in a green officer's coat, takes a step back in surprise, but stands her ground.
"Sh-sh-sh-sheet!" Yoshika stammers, blushing furiously.
"To-GA," you say slowly and deliberately. "Just like the Roman engineers that first built this place, in fact," you continue, gesturing to the castle about you. "I dare say I'm more dignified then you are right now, miss no-pants."
The leggy redhead steps in front of her stammering colleague. "Do you know who I am?" she demands angrily.
You stroke your chin thoughtfully, trying to remember everything that proceeded the Big Ouch in your skull. "Smalltime," you say, snapping your fingers as recollection alights.
There's a strangled giggle from the floor, and the redheads face flushes dangerously.
"I am Wing Commander Minna-Dietlinde Wilcke of the Luftwaffe, JG-3, and you, mister, are one more word away from a court-martial!"
Fucks given?
"Big words from the bitch who was SHOOTING AT ME," you growl, as you remember something else.
"Wha- What!?" Minna breathes, shocked. "We - I - nobody -"
"Then what was that fantastical orgasm of flack and shellfire, that blossom of shooty death that greeted me as I tried to land?" you seethe, spreading your hands dramatically to illustrate.
"The - the - what?"
"The anti-aircraft?" Yoshika says, clamoring to her feet, back pressed against the wall. "They were shooting at the aliens following you!"
Oh. That kind of makes sense.
"With three-inch timer-fused flak shells, thanks a whole fucking bunch," you mutter, not about to give any ground in the Lair of the Pantsu. "Where's my crew?"
Minna shakes her head. "You don't ask the questions around here. I do."
"Where's my crew?"
"Stand down, *Lieutenant,*" Minna snarls, and there's enough steel in her voice to send shivers down your spine.
You take a step towards her, your own voice growing dangerously soft. "*My* aircrew, *my* responsibility. Where are my people? Is Sean alive?"
Minna opens her mouth for another hot reply, but Yoshika cuts her off. "They're okay!" she exclaims, all bright and bubbly. "No serious injuries. I can bring you to them!"
"Splendid!" you say, skirting past Minna and streaking down the hallway, Yoshika hustling afterwards, before Minna can react. Yoshika directs you through a few turns, but hauls you up short before you enter the last room.
"Uh, every... everybody's in there," she says shyly. "And you're... not dressed..."
You pointedly look at her legs, then slowly back up to her face, making the young girl squirm and blush furiously.
"But... but you're a boy, you know?"
You sigh. On one hand, you want to see your people badly, and compared to everything else today, do you really care?
On the other hand, what pilot walks in wearing a toga? Bad enough to not have your flight jacket, but utter blasphemy to be less cool looking then your own aircrew! In front of dames, no less.
Wat do?
... FUCK IT.
You just shot down ALL THE ALIUMS, which makes you a God, for this day, at least. And you just told a fucking Wing Commander - equivalent of a Major - to take a hike. At this point you're moving like a plane with a burning fuel tank - if you slow down, the loss of airflow to blow the flames back will let them bunch up on the tank and blow you to kingdom come.
Much like a shark, you must keep moving to live. You enter the room.
Conversation ceases.
You hear Minna come sprinting up behind you, gasping for breath. "You... you can't... you're... you're under arrest!"
"Nice. Where's my crew?" you say, casting about the room. You spy Sean sitting on a couch, a young Witch on either side of him and a cold beer in his hand.
With a shout of glee you bound across the room and tackle him happily. "You psychotic motherfucker I thought you were dead!" you holler. "I ordered a cake and a crate of party hats and everything, thanks for spoiling it, asshole!"
Sean laughs, enveloping you in a bear hug and hurling you onto the sofa with little apparent effort."Who do you think was manning the turret, you dumb fuck?"
You shake your head, trying to remember. "I had other things to think about," you point out. "When you stopped talking, I assumed you had to be dead, god knows nothing else could get you to shut the fuck up."
He laughs, and points to the swath of bandages along his jawline and neck. "Spiral-rocket nailed the starboard boom. Shrapnel took off my mask, mic, and fucked my intercom, too."
You sigh with sudden disappointment as you rise from the couch. "Still..."
"What?" Ian says from an easy-chair kitty-corner to the couch.
"I'm in a robe surround by girls in their underwear. I thought I was in heaven, but if YOU assholes are here..."
Sean unceremoniously trips you and sends you sprawling over the couch again, eliciting a chorus of laughs from the whole room - which, you now realize, is indeed full of young women in their underwear.
How awkward.
"YOSHIKA!" Minna yodels, her command presence slipping more and more by the minute. "Arrest him!"
You regard the 14-year old Yoshika with a jaundiced eye, and proffer your wrists with a dramatic flair, holding them at eye-height, palms inward, like a boxer. Yoshika approaches, looking apologetic, and tries to put the cuffs on you.
She stands on tiptoe, stretching as far as she can go, but she can just barely touch the sides of the cuffs to your forearm. The room explodes in laughter once more, and Yoshika shrinks, turning her face to the floor.
With what little dignity she has left, Wing Commander Minna spins on one heel and executes a proper military march out the door.
Now what?
With the BitchWitch Minna out of the room, and your crew alive and well, you settle down a bit. Yoshika is still looking mighty low, so you pat her on the shoulder forgivingly. "Sorry about that," you say. "That was Minna's mistake, not yours."
This seems to mollify her embarrassment. She whispers a barely audible thank-you.
"Come, now. Make room. I want to meet the hero of the hour." You turn to see an asian woman about your height approaching - she looks about your age, too. A striped eye-patch covers one eye, and she wears what looks like a Navy dress shirt - and a sword on one hip.
You offer a silent prayer that the sword is part of a dress uniform and take her offered hand, shaking it. "Sakamoto Mio, Imperial Japanese Navy," she says by way of introduction.
You introduce yourself in turn. "Army Air Corps, 442nd Night Fighter Squadron," you say.
Mio's eyes narrow, and her grip tightens on yours. "The 442nd, eh? Yes, your boys are very good at the surprise attacks."
"We are?" you say, sudden terror fueling your stellar bluff.
She looks at you suspiciously for long seconds, crushing your hand...
... and then throws her head back in a loud, powerful laugh, making you jump. "Never-mind me. Just a run-in we had with a 442nd pilot just the other night. You're nothing like him. He ran. You stood and fought."
"Hahahahahaha right, right," you say, your laugh dangerously brittle.
Who do we talk to next?
Over the course of the next round of introductions, the bigger picture of the morning's engagement is explained to you. The Witches, down by two (their Night Witch, exhausted from night patrol, and Minna, who's Striker wasn't flightworthy,) had been ambushed during morning exercises by a massive number of Martians, and the nearest two radar emplacements on the coast had been surgically destroyed at about the same time.
"If you hadn't surprised them, they probably would've drawn us apart and chopped us up," Mio concludes. "Starting with Trude."
"Who?"
"The one being chased, remember? You saved her."
"He did not," a chestnut-haired girl in the corner objects.
"Rank?" you whsiper to Mio.
"Wing Commander. JG-52."
You gulp. Christ, you really stuck your pecker in a hive of officers, here. "Yeah, I just, you know, helped."
"Lucky not to get killed," the girl says. "Why did you stick around after that first pass? You can't dogfight in a plane like that."
"But he totally did!" comes a high-pitched voice from the other side of the room - the Italian pilot, Luuchini. "He was like WHAP and ZOOM and BAMBAMBAM!"
You shrug again, suddenly getting nervous. Half-naked in front of women is one thing, but you're in the middle of Officer Country, and you're getting nervous. "Ah, Commander-"
"Just call me Sakamoto," the IJN commander says. "You need to talk to your people, right?"
"Yeah. They probably think I'm dead." You look out the window, at the setting sun. "Have I been out all day?"
She nods. "It's taken almost the whole day to work this shitstorm out. I'll show you to a phone."
A few minutes later, you place a call to your home plate. A few phone shuffles later, and you hear the gruff voice of Frank Luke on the other end. "Luke."
"I really do have a concussion now," you say cheerfully.
A long moment of silence stretches across the line.
"SON OF A BITCH," the man on the other end roars. "You really are a lucky cocksucker, you know that?"
"That's what I've been told," you admit.
"Damn, son! Last I heard, the shore observers saw you in a defensive spiral with half the alien fleet chewing on your ass. Your crew?"
"Alive. And the plane's still in one piece." A charred, dented piece is still a piece, right?
"You put her down!?" Luke's voice is incredulous, but respectful. "Where are you? We'll send a driver."
You pause, trying to come up with the perfect, absolute perfect, phrasing to spring the truth on Luke. You owe him one for that asskicking last night.
"Best make it a boat, sir."
You can feel the coldness of Luke's sudden horror right through the phone line.
"You... didn't... land on-"
"OOOOH~ I'm down in SPAR-KLE-CITY, there are no pants and the GIRLS ARE WITCH-Y, oh won't you please take me home?"
Frank Luke, famous balloon buster and fighter ace, chokes in absolute horror.
"Yes, sir, I'm up to my ass in, well, ass," you say casually. "Oh, by the way, how many kills did I get?"
"I - uh - oh fuck," Luke says.
"Sir? Kills?"
"Eight confirmed, a few probables, some damaged, don't know which ones are yours and which are your gunners until we talk to the other-" a pause - "pilots."
"I think I can take care of that before I leave," you say.
"Yes..." Luke says, and you get that itchy feeling on the back of your neck again. "You will. Because you're not coming home till tomorrow afternoon at the latest."
WAT
"Sir, uh, what?"
"We have no transports and no pilots to spare for a ferry flight, all the ferries to the island have shut down by now, the Witches are too drained to physically haul your fat ass over to the mainland, even if they wanted to, so unless you want to swim, chap... well, yeah."
"Oh. Okay," you say, nonplussed.
Luke pauses again, and when he speaks, the tone in his voice lets you know you've stepped into a noose. "Actually, you might have to stay longer. You said your plane is still in one piece?"
"... yeees?" you say cautiously, wondering how the Major is going to take that accomplishment and fuck you with it.
You aren't left in suspense for too long. "That's MY plane, pilot. I need it back here, and that means a ferry flight. And oh look, I've already got a pilot right there."
Oh shit oh fuck oh doom on you. "Sir, I've got patrols to fly-"
"NOT ANYMORE~!" Luke shouts, and hangs up the phone as he cackles like a madman.
It would seem Luke is up to something, and you're now his little bitch.
Trapping you on an island with the Witches you pissed off last night probably didn't disappoint him, either.
"Everything worked out?" Sakamoto asks you, poking her head in from the next room.
"Yes sir," you say, tacking on the honorific reflexively. "I can't get out till-"
"-tomorrow at least, I know," she finishes. "We've got a room ready for you, and your crew, of course."
"One more thing," you ask. "My clothes...?"
"Oh, we put them in the wash. They're on the line right now. Should be dry by tomorrow," she says casually, and walks out of the room.
WAT FUCKING DO
WELP.
With that all settled, it's time to do what you can. Being a 20-year old fighter pilot, full of rage and testosterone, your priorities are thus:
1. Booze.
2. Food.
3. Fornication.
4. Sleep.
But above all is:
0. Don't tarnish your reputation.
There's very few ways a man who potentially made Ace In A Day could ruin the legend of such a feat. Being murdered to death by pissed-off little girls with magical powers because you were dogpiled by jailbait is definitely one of them.
So. PANTS.
Trekking deeper into the castle, following instructions from Luuchini, you eventually locate the laundry, and from the closest outside door, the laundry line. Cackling with glee, you find your pants and put them on. To hell with the damp - it's better then inglorious death.
Out of the corner of your eye you spot red hair and long legs vanishing around the corner of the castle. Hmm. Interesting.
Follow?
Yeahnahyou'
You decide to follow. You do need to come to some sort of terms with the base commander if you're going to survive for any length of time around here, so you may as well see where her office is.
Or you could follow her down a dark side passage and murder the troublesome bitch to death, but that's just wishful thinking.
You'd have to make it look like an accident if you wanted to survive, after all.
In barefeet and on tiptoe, you stealthily squelch after Minna, following her around the side of Castle Bairn. Minna enters the big hangar at the end of the runway, and you squeegee your way across the tarmac to hide behind some 55 gallon oil drums.
Poking your head out from behind the drums, you get a good look at your Black Widow, and catch yourself before you gasp.
The plane has been shot to fucking hell. Almost every inch of her shows some sort of bullet or shrapnel damage. The starboard tail boom has a gaping hole in it, and looking at the canopy over your own cockpit, you can see it's been slagged and melted by a Martian maser blast - one you don't even remember being hit by. In the middle of the charred and slagged spot, there's a neat hole punched by an explosive cannon shell - probably explains your concussion.
"Crazy, stupid son of a bitch," Minna comments, and you can't help but bristle. The urge to jump up and confront her swells in you, bolstered by your soggy jeans -
"Brave," Minna murmurs, almost too softly to hear at the distance.
You freeze.
"Too brave," she says. You recognize something worrisome in her eyes - the twenty-foot stare in a ten foot room you get from guys who've seen too much. "Too brave to run. To goddamn brave. It just won't work."
"Maybe he's just good?" another voice interrupts.
Minna and you both jump a country mile. A Witch you haven't seen yet comes around the corner, wearing a loose-fitting mechanics shirt and not a whole hell of a lot else. She swings a wrench idly in one hand. "You were in here listening to a radio the whole time. You didn't see what he did up there."
"I saw enough," Minna says, a bit stuffily.
The newcomer isn't fooled. "C'mon, Minna, you didn't even see him LAND."
She snorts. "Okay, okay. You know he thought we were trying to shoot him down?"
"Refusing a plane with a flaming engine landing permission probably didn't help his mood any," the other redhead says drolly, twirling her wrench.
"I didn't know! I was in here!"
"Right."
Minna sighs, backed into a corner. "So what DID he do, anyways?"
"Christ, what didn't he do?" the buxom redhead says, tossing the wrench over her shoulder. It smashes into your oildrums and nearly scares your heart out of your chest. "He bounced those Martians chasing 'Trude damn good - twice, in fact, with a zoom-climb - but after that he kept on fighting. Tried to pair up with 'Trude, but when he couldn't he fought like a man possessed."
Minna eyes the wrecked P-61 and sniffs. "Head-on attacks?"
"With four cannons, a ton of armor and no maneuverability to speak of? He's even got a turret," the other girl points out. "And he knew when to get the hell out. And he got his crew down safely. The stupid-brave don't last long in planes like this - their crews don't appreciate it much, you know?"
Minna shrugs noncommittally. "Doesn't mean he's good, Charlotte - just lucky."
"Yeah," Charlotte agrees. "'Good' comes in with that port-side engine."
"How do you mean?"
"He came in with it running, and it's completely fucked," Charlotte says bluntly. "And I do mean fucked. Half the cylinders are trashed, one of the fuel lines is ruptured - getting it started again is tricky, hard, but tricky, but how he ran it without shaking it apart is something else."
Minna gives Charlotte a cutting glance, and the air temperture seems to drop by five degrees.
"Experience," Charlotte says quickly. "I'm the same way. You work with an engine or an airframe that long, you can feel how its running just by the vibrations. Kind of feel its limits, where it'll shake apart. He's just good at what he does, Minna. Don't saddle the poor bastard with a martyr complex just because he did his job."
"Charlotte" turns and stalks out of the hangar with casual grace, seeming to know a good exit line when she hears one.
As soon as she leaves, Minna heaves a deep breath. (Despite yourself, you note her bosom heaving with interest.) Then she walks towards one wall of the hangar, and even across the distance, your sharp eyes can see she's making for a phone.
A place this old probably only has a few phone lines, and you can see the crew chief's collective "office" by the interior entrance doors.
You squelch across the hangar as stealthily as possible, past your shot-up Black Widow, slip under one of the tables, and reach for the phone, ready to listen in...
A bit (turned out to be a LOT) of background to what is basically Planefag's own Strike Witches AU, this is coming straight from the horse's mouth from the end of this very thread:
The setting is not the Strike Witches default setting - it's basically our world, adjusted for the reality of Witches, dating back to pre-history. The socio-political effects of Witches have been significant; women have not been nearly as badly treated through the ages, though historically mild patriarchies was the rule. Still, the political, social and military might of Witches has given women a voice in the world.
This is most significant because it means the traditional cultural centers of human history have usually hosted Witch academies, and so far fewer have been destroyed then were in our own history. The Witch academy in Poland, for example, was instrumental in the decisive raping of the Mongol advance armies when they attacked Poland
One big effect of these semi-permanent Witch academies, the status of Witches as symbols of resistance to patriarchy/symbols of powerful, liberated females, etc, and the constant border wars and raiding that characterized war in the pre-industrial age meant that Witches, historically, have had very strong bonds with their sisters, that bond often being stronger then nationality or even blood. That doesn't always hold true, of course, and when Witches go full-bore, for blood, it usually results in battles remembered throughout history, but it's pretty rare.
Think of the "mutual respect" fighter pilots have for their opponents in war, the code of air chivalry, and multiply that a bit, and you get the idea.
Now those relationships turned out to be pretty damn important when WWII broke out, and the aliens attacked, and absolutely everything went to shit.
Then what is a Witch, exactly? I assume that they haven't ALWAYS been lolis with jets, then.
Indeed so. The traditional conveyance was the classic Broomstick. The "magical engine" which forms the basis of the modern Striker Unit is an industrial-age revolution that brought Witches up to par again, with the first examples being produced around the time of the first commercial steam engines.
Magic - real, tangible, obvious magic - has always been exclusive to women. Unlike the stock Strike Witches setting, witches don't lose their full potential after they get past the age of 20 or so, but with so few Witches, recruitment is pushed very, very young. Real WWII soldiers and pilots were often as young as 17, and anybody 21 or older was called the "old man," so it's not entirely without precedent.
Through the ages there have been many rumors and tales of males who can wield magic, but this has always been, and will always be, a very touchy social and political topic, because it's seen as a threat to the strongest source of power and independence women have had for centuries upon centuries. For this reason, the "official" stance of most scientists and magical scholars is that male magic doesn't exist. Certainly, overt magic like what Witches wield is conspicuously absent.
Some famous inventor (Yoshika's father if my memory serves correctly) invented the Striker unit for use by Witches to fight against the Neurai. It was massive leap forward in tech from the previous unit - none at all.
IIRC in the original anime setting, there were magic engines before Dr. Myafuji's design, but his was a huge revolution in the technology - like what corned powder did for cannons.
Anyways, when War broke out in 1939, the existence of Witches skewed things a bit from our known timeline, but not by a whole lot. For starters, the Polish armed forces fare much better, and most of them escape into the Balkans because of the very, very strong presence of Witches in Poland, because of the aforementioned ancient academies. Ensuing Soviet and German attempts to invade various Baltic states falter badly because of the support of the Polish armed forces in exile.
It hardly needs be said that Stalin, who murdered 50% of his officer corps before the war, has very little trust or faith in the Witches, whom are too valuable to fire, but too powerful to quietly murder. Hitler, likewise, begins transferring as many Witches as possible to the most dangerous front-line assignments, because the regretful Witch "sisterhood" thing has negative consequences to his attempts at a "final solution."
As October 1940 opens, Chinese Nationalists and Communists finally fall into open fighting immediately after scoring a major blow against the invading Imperial Japanese Army. The ancient Witch bloodline families of China are deeply divided; young Witches seeing final promise of true, non-begrudging respect for women in the Communist rhetoric, whilst their families recoil with horror at the idea of losing centuries of social class privilege. This divide serves the Imperial Japanese Army well, since they are very light on Witches, not much impressed with their 'bushido' and especially wary of their inability to control them closely. Their few remaining Witches are still being transferred to the Imperial Japanese Navy for service as aerial spotters/scouts for battleships, conventionally considered by most nations to be the most valuable role for Witches. This also reflects the deepening divide between the mostly educated, professional Imperial Japanese Navy, and the batfuck insane lunatics who had taken control of the Japanese Army (and indeed the entire government) by that point.
And then Black Thursday happened, and the shit hit the rotational air displacement unit with a vengeance.
In the opening hours of the Alien War, conventional forces were utterly overwhelmed and in disarray. Witches, however, need very little prep time to be effective, and hit well above their weight, so wherever they were concentrated, the aliums got their fucking asses kicked. Washington DC, London, and every targeted locale in China fared reasonably well. Berlin, which had been emptied of Witches by a paranoid Hitler, was absolutely clobbered. Rising tensions between the Witches and the SS over rumors of murders and exterminations in Poland didn't help matters much, so the few Witches in town didn't make much of an effort to save Hitler and his SS cronies. Rommel, who'd been flown in sick from North Africa, organized the successful defense of the Reichstag from his sickbed, and Ernest Udet successfully fought his way through three waves of Martian aircraft in a Bf-110 heavy fighter, with Albert Speer aboard, but Hitler was found by Martian ground troops inside his mountaintop resort and messily devoured.
The Imperial Japanese Navy, having all the Witches, did a lot better then the Japanese Army. In fact, Yamamoto got so fed up with the IJA's bullshit that the whole affair ended with twelve 18-inch shells from the Yamato's main guns impacting the IJA's primary headquarters in the wake of the initial attack's chaos. Coup, counter-coup - Japan is run by the marginally sane, now. Stalin survived, but was wounded, and now sports mechanical... enhancements. Or so it is rumored.
And that about wraps it up. Amelia Earhart is still around; helping work out dangerous air ferry routes to England via Iceland before the aliums hit. The Graf Spee evaded her fate at Montevideo because her assigned Spotter Witch detected the trap in time, at the cost of serious injury. The Arizona is just out of a three-month drydock visit following the Close Action at Mobile Bay.
A lot of stuff like that is lurking in this little word document. I'm a fucking nerd, sue me.
So Planefag's psudo rant/ history lesson over, this is also a kinda crossover between Strike Witches, Metal Slug – from which the squid like Martians come from and the World War Series by Harry Turtledove – at least in that a World War 2 age humanity has to come together to fight an alien threat.
Someone also wrote a WW2 timeline in the spacebattles thread that'll probably put SOMEWHERE, though god knows where.