STRIKE WITCHES: THE QUEST FOR DRY PANTS

You are a fighter pilot of the 442nd Night Fighter Squadron, rated for the P-61A Black Widow, and as suits the death-dealer of the dark skies, you're currently squelching about in waterlogged jeans and no shirt, kneeling by a rotary phone to listen into a conversation.

Leaning over the phone, you very, very carefully lift the metal "Y" cradle in which the handset hangs, but you don't remove it, to avoid making any telltale clicks or clanks that can be heard on the line. It's a trick you learned at home, in another life.

"-ny more then you'd want a trio of schoolgirls running around *your* base," you hear Minna's voice saying. "So come collect your people, would you?"

A beat.

"Hell no," says Frank Luke.

*Two* beats.

"The fuck did you just say," Minna's flat, cold voice cuts across the line.

"I said, I'm not going to stand on my head just to run and fetch three of my boys who had their ride shot out from under their asses saving yours."

You can almost hear Minna bristle over the line. "I'll get a fishing boat and let them row, you bastard."

"No," Luke says, sounding smug, "you won't. I've already contacted Maloney about making them the first liaison crew."

"You are out of your tiny mind," Minna hisses, "-if you think I'm letting any of the 442nd onto my base - MY base - after the shit one of your meatheaded testosterone-swilling chumps pulled on me last night!"

"Bouncing your transport?"

"AND risking their own aircraft with risky maneuvers to evade identification and punishment?"

"How risky?" His voice is carefully neutral, and you gulp.

"He dove for the deck and left in the weeds. Or so says Sanya, because her magic couldn't make him out against the ground clutter."

"Five hundred feet, underneath overcast," Luke says thoughtfully, and you try to melt Minna's fucking brain with a mental hate-ray. God damn dames and their big goddamn mouths. "And how many incidents does this make, Commander?"

"Eight!" she says, and you hear her slam her fist into the desk all the way across the hangar. "In almost as many months."

"Bingo," Luke says. "What you don't get, Wing Commander, is that there's a lot of fucking resentment among the conventional forces for you Witches. You've got magical shields and shit, and all these men have are finicky machinery and a little luck. How many Witches have been killed in action in the last eight months, Commander?"

Minna is silent.

"I've lost nine crews in my own command in the last six months. And the daylight fighter squadrons - " Luke sighs. "And this is on top of what both sides lost in the Battle and the Blitz."

"The war has been tough on everyone, I know-"

"I really don't think you do, sweetheart," Luke growls, stressing the disrespectful appellation. "The Joint Wing is a good idea, and I supported it, but the friction its causing can't be ignored anymore, and you've ignored every single fucking request of your allied Wing Commanders to address it, set up an exchange program, yadda yadda. And it isn't just political, god dammit. How many 'night' Witches do you have?"

"What? Three, at least."

"They can all find things in the dark with magic?"

"They don't have to-"

"Just one, then? That Sanya?"

"So? She points, the rest shoot. We know what we're doing."

"So you've got exactly one pilot inherently capable of night-fighting. What happens when the Martians figure that out and try to kill her sorry ass?"

You hear Minna's handset creak and groan.

"Already have, huh? Gee, sounds like you need some supplementary night fighter assets."

"You don't dictate what happens with my girls, on my base,," Minna says coldly. "And if you try, I swear to god, I'll take it out of your ass."

"Try?" Luke says. "I already have." The receiver slams down, and the call ends.

Several seconds later, there's a tremendous crash on the other side of the room as a table is upended. You have to wait several more minutes, shivering a bit in your soaked pants, kneeling on the cold, hard hangar floor, before you see Minna walk out of the hangar.

Well, that was interesting. Now what?

Check your plane?

Loot the area?

Get back to the Estrogen Enclave?

Don't they have ground techs here? Male ground techs?

You slowly walk out to get a close-up look at your fighter. The damage you saw earlier surprised you, but when you get up close, probe each ragged bullet hole with a finger, smell the acrid stench of burned and warped plexiglass, the battle comes rushing back to you in horrible, crystal-clear clarity. The fierce battle between wills and nerves to play chicken with heavy autocannons, the instant where you were sure your friend had just died not ten feet behind you, *because* of you, and most of all, that cold, empty moment of resolve when you were sure you were going to die.

The shakes hit you, right then, and you sit down on the cold floor, leaning against the right-hand landing gear. Your instinctive solution is to get the hell out of there, move it towards buddies and cold beer, but in the hangar, at least, nobody can see you shaking like a leaf.

You lose track of time. When you get up, the last rays of the sun are vanishing behind the horizon of the Channel, and your legs are stiff and cold. Shivering a little, you trek to the back of the fighter, where the bladed cone of Sean's position gapes open, cracked by shrapnel from a Martian spiral-rocket. You locate a step-ladder and go rummaging about under Sean's swivel-mounted seat.

"Scooooooore," you crow softly, removing an impressively large flask. Oh, booze. What can't you fix?

Next you make a point of hunting down the engineers that service the Witches Striker units. There's at least a few who know their way around a Double Wasp radial pretty well, and they confirm what you already know - the Widow's airframe is still sound, but the port engine is proper fucked. A replacement will have to be flown in before the plane will fly again, and even then it'll be ferried straight to a base for repair.

No big surprise. You think, briefly, of what your OWN crew chief will say when he gets a look at the 'Widow, and for the first time since you landed, you're glad you're not back at your own airstrip.

Very, very glad.

Entering Castle Barin proper once again, you track down your crewmates, who are in the lounge, putting it to its intended use. You quickly inform Sean and Ian of the conversation you overheard.

Their faces when

"We're in a difficult situation," Ian is saying. "We've been stuck in the middle of a military-politics maelstrom, and - are you even listening?"

"Yush," you say around a mouthful of brandy. "Yeah, maelstroms, it sucks. Sean?" You pass the flask to your radar operator, who shrugs.

"How'd you know I had this, anyhow?" he asks, taking a slug.

You shrug in turn. "Your mom talks in her sleep a lot - HEY! HEY! CONCUSSION!" you say, palms raised to ward off Seans wielded pillow. He settles for a crotch-shot.

You slip the pillowcase off the pillow, wait till Sean turns his back, and pounce, yanking it over his head. "Instruments-only, bitch!"

"DHUMASS MUFFAFUFFA," he roars through the pillowcase. His flailing hands find your ankle as you try to flee and he reeeels you in, getting you in a pretty good lock.

"Cut the shit, guys," Ian says.

You manage to work a foot behind Sean's ankle, and drop him to the couch, where you both continue struggling.

"Stop screwing around or I will break my foot off in your ass," Ian's voice whispers through the air like a knife on a whetstone.

The Ian Voice never fails. You and Sean stop horsing around and stand up.

"Oh," you say, embarrassed. "Hello, Sakamoto." Sean salutes the far wall before Ian can yank the pillowcase off his head.

"You boys drinking?" Sakamoto says sternly.

"Did we forget to invite you?" Ian asks.

"Yes, you did," Sakamoto says, taking the flask and plopping down on a couch.

"So how are you settling in?" Sakamoto asks. All three of you offer the standard pleasantries.

"Ah, settling in for an entire day until your rides arrive, right?"

"Well, um, uh," you begin intelligently. You realize, belatedly, that Sakamoto has caught all three of you at a disadvantage. She's drinking as well as any of you, but she looks like a tough bitch and you don't doubt she'll hold her liquor well.

"News travels fast, I see," Sakamoto muses, passing the flask. "At the speed of sound, when certain people are pissed. Speaking of," she asks you, "-how are you getting along with Minna?"

"I think she wants to skin me and upholster her furniture with my hide," you say seriously. Sakamoto snorts in a most unladylike fashion, fighting down laughter.

"It's just the suddenness of everything. Minna works hard to keep everything organized, so when something disrupts that, and there's a person she can blame for it..." Sakamoto shrugs. "I understand the whole thing is a bit of a shock for you, too. You have any questions about... this?" she waves her hand at the entirety of Castle Barin.

"Yeah, I've got one," Ian says, leaning forward. "How many Witches have been killed in action since the Invasion?"

"Worldwide?"

Ian nods.

"Eight," Sakamoto replies immediately.

Sean chokes on his brandy. "What? This whole time? WORLDWIDE?"

Sakamoto nods. "A Witch is a supreme concentration of force - small in number, but we make up for it in potency. And with Striker Units, it's hard to pin us down long enough to overwhelm us."

The flask reaches you, but you pass it on with but a token sip. "Then why the Joint Wing?" you ask. Before the formation of 'Joint Wings" like the 501st, most Witches served in their nations own military, in units of three or four - single flights - evenly distributed throughout the forces.

"Yes, why?" Ian says, puzzled. "The clever chaps poured all their resources into battleships, and that didn't prove as useful as they'd thought."

"Witches would take off with a squadron of escorts and come back alone," Sakamoto says simply. "Depending on the Witch, they all took it differently, but none of them took it well."

"It's not like it's 'nevah been dun befo'," Sean says mockingly, punching you in the shoulder. "The Krauts were doing it on the Eastern front when they ran low on pilots."

"How do you know?"

"One of 'em told me!" Sean says, laughing. "Remember, we're on the same side now, right? They'd get one 'Experten' to actually make the attacks, and eight nuggets who didn't know their control stick from their dick and would always be yanking on the wrong one at the wrong time to fly high cover so nobody could bounce the ace."

"That's what was happening," Sakamoto agrees. "Especially against particular targets - their bases, or their dreadnoughts - Witches are devastatingly effective... but in a... what do you Americans call it, a hairball?"

"Furball," you say.

"Right. In a huge, uh, 'furball,' Witches are easy to kill. Usually by a bullet they never saw coming. And the Martians always keep their escort swarms within the range of their dreadnoughts."

From what you've heard of the dreadnaughts, they're like Calais pre-Invasion, and Calais was colloquially known as the location of the School For Frustrated German Anti-Aircraft Gunners.

You bristle a bit at Sakamoto's insinuations. "So we're just meatshields for the magical girls?"

"Ha!" Sakamoto says. "That bitterness. The end result of that strategy."

You blink. "What?"

"Today, after you made your first attacks, why did you keep on fighting, after you'd spent your advantages?"

"... there was nothing else to do," Ian says, when you struggle for words. "That other Witch still had a whole gaggle on her ass."

Sakamoto nods, pleased. "There you go. Without shields, pilots have to rely on mobility. And when you're tied-down by babysitting a Witch... 'meat shield.' A very good term. That's why they segregated the units."

"Except that's got problems too. Like Sanya. She's the only night-fighter you've got... or instrument-capable Witch, for that matter."

Sakamoto gives you a penetrating look. "You're rather well-versed in Witch tactics, hmm?"

"No, I'm just a sneaky spying bastard."

She laughs gustily at that. "Whatever works. Whatever works!"

"So they're looking to get conventional units into the Witch wings, now?"

"Ah! Not just anybody. No meaty shields. Concentration of power!" Sakamoto says, driving her fist into her palm with a loud SMACK! "The best aces, with the best planes, covering each others deficiencies!"

"Only aces?" you say, intensely curious.

"Only aces," Sakamoto repeats. "Speaking of that, we've confirmed three of your kills. The ones that blew up immediately, we all saw those. Your Major Luke received shore spotter reports that confirmed one of your two probables, the one chasing Trude."

"What about the one I nailed in the downward spiral?" you ask.

Sakamoto shakes her head. "That one made it back to France. I saw him running."

God shit fuck DAMN. In your mind, the "ACE IN A DAY - WORLD TAKES A KNEE TO SUCK PILOTS MASSIVE VICTORY DONG" headlines begin to fade.

"Hey," Ian says, "I got one during that defensive spiral. He blew up real good."

"You what?" You recall a sharp explosion above your ship during the spiral, but you were addressing your own gunsights at the moment.

"Yeah, he managed to slow down when he saw his buddies over-shoot. I look up out of the canopy and I saw him, fifty feet away, just hovering there in the air right above us. So I flip the turret guns to 90 degrees and blam!"

"Ian, you glorious sonofabitch!" You slam a thunderous high-five with him.

"I don't understand?" Sakamoto asks.

"A crew shares credit for the kills," you explain. "Usually it's just the radar operator and the pilot, for night intercepts, but since this was a daylight scrap..."

"I see," Sakamoto says. "We're not familiar with how conventional forces track kills."

Sean waggles his eyebrows. "Does this mean Minna thinks we're ineligible?"

Sakamoto looks Sean dead in the eye, and doesn't say a single fucking word.

Sean nods, and Sakamoto laughs boisterously again.

"Good night, gentlemen. I'll see you tomorrow." Bowing slightly to each of you, she gathers her things and leaves.

"I think I could fall in love with that woman," Sean says. "Wait... where's my flask?"

Sleep/Timeskip to morning?

Night Time Trolling?

Other?

Food time.

Sean and Ian ate while you were still conked out, but your stomach is growling like mad. You descend the steps to the basement, where the kitchen is kept.

You locate the battered frigidare, wondering idly where the power comes from, and crack it open to find fish oil, a gallon of some nasty-smelling herbal tea, blueberries, milk and a carrot casserole.

"What the fuck?"

You settle on blueberries and milk. Stomping over to the table irritably, you fill the bowl and begin munching grimly.

A few minutes later, you hear a light tread coming down the staircase, and look up to find the fabled Night Witch entering the kitchen, probably for breakfast before she flies night patrol. You're familiar with the schedule, you fly it yourself.

"Ho," you say, waving at her with your spoon. She starts upon seeing you. You wonder why, and look down at your bare chest.

"It's okay, I've got pants on," you say. This doesn't seem to reassure her much.

"What's with all that gook in the fridge?" you ask.

"G... gook?"

"Fish oil and shit. What gives?"

"Oh... eyesight."

You choke on your blueberries, making Sanya flinch. "Are they still force-feeding you girls that crap? In flight training we just pitched that shit right out the window when the watchdogs turned their backs. We still do."

Sanya fusses, not quite meeting your eyes.

"It doesn't work. Don't bother with it for one minute, okay?"

She nods, still looking at the floor, and starts edging for the door. You can't tell if she's shy, or if you're just that much of a freak in your current condition.

Wat do?

"Uh..." you proffer the tin of blueberries. "Blueberries?"

With a final, muted squeak, the Night Witch's courage fails, and she flees up the stairs.

Yeah. Stellar future wingman, there. This new job is looking better and better all the time. You finish the blueberries in disgust, offer a silent prayer that there's coffee in the morning, and stumble upstairs to the room you've been provided. Pushing it open, you see your mostly-dry shirt and flight jacket awaiting you, and even your sidearm, flight helmet and parachute neatly stacked on the end table to one side.

With a sigh of relief, you collapse into the sheets and fall into a dreamless sleep.

Some time later, you feel somebody shaking you awake. You moan and bitch, fumbling for a GI-issue shoe to fling at whatever asshole is announcing flight assignments for the day. You remember you're not in your barracks about the same moment a hand clamps over your mouth.

You come awake instantly, kicking madly and taking hold of the offending hand with both of yours, doing your best to pry it off. You don't get very far.

"Fuckhead, it's me! Sean! Sean!"

You blink at the foul-mouthed shadow hovering over you, and calm down a bit. He takes his hand off your mouth.

"I don't swing that way, you asshole. What's your damage!?" you hiss. However much sleep you got, it wasn't enough to improve your mood.

"Can it." You feel the cold wooden grips of your Colt .45 as Sean shoves it into your hand. "Somethings wrong. I think we've got aliens in the castle."

"What the hell have you been smoking, and where can I get some?" you hiss, but despite yourself, you don't put your gun down. You've flown with Sean long enough to trust him, and this isn't the kind of prank he plays.

"Shut up and follow, flyboy." You mutter darkly, but follow him into the dark hallway, barefoot. Sean motions you closer to the wall, then begins creeping down the hallway like a commando. Feeling incredibly stupid, you fumble to secure your standard-issue shoulder holster with one hand while holding your gun in the other.

"Ian?" you ask quietly, but Sean just shoves his palm at you, accompanied with a "shut-the-fuck-up" gesture.

He freezes outside one particular door.

Then he kicks the fucking thing in.

You blink, absolutely dumbfounded, as Sean rushes into a room occupied by an underwear-clad blonde girl like a night-time bandit bent on pillage and rape. The girl screams, and scrabbles away from Sean frantically, freshly awake and confused. She presses up against the closed window shutters, and her hand darts for a nearby table drawer.

You see where this is going, and open your mouth to shout, when a tentacle thicker then your arm smashes through the shutters, wraps around the blonde, and hauls her out, still screaming.