It took all the willpower that Avery possessed to keep herself from tearing open the large box she was carrying and devouring its contents- that and ASH keeping an eye on her to make sure the package got to its destination safely. Even then, though, it was no easy task. The aroma from inside floated gently upward and directly into her nose. It smelled absolutely delicious, which was precisely what made this assignment borderline torture.

"Don't worry, we're almost there," ASH told her with a wry smirk on her face. "Y'know, you're very brave for doing this."

Avery scoffed. "You say that as if I had any say in the matter."

"Newest person in the squadron is always the snacko- just how it is," ASH replied with a shrug.

"Then why'd you come with me?"

ASH smirked as the two of them rounded a corner. "If my memory serves me correctly, then you were the one that was practically begging me to tag along."

"You could've just said no," Avery pointed out. "I would've just dragged Pad with me kicking and screaming."

ASH chuckled at the mental image that gave her. "Who knows… maybe I just enjoy spending time with you."

Avery smiled. "I thought that was a given, especially after the party when we took back Presidia."

"Hey, for all you know, that was just a release for me- a way to let out all the tension that had been building up."

"Did you actually manage to get yourself to believe that?" Avery asked with a teasing smirk. "It's a shame, I guess. And here I was thinking that we should try to recreate the magic, so to speak."

ASH's eyes gravitated towards the floor. "Well… when you put it like that, then maybe we should take another shot at it. Although, to be honest, I never would've imagined you to be this direct about it. I would've thought that you would just try to keep dancing around it without actually saying it."

"You say that as if that isn't what we're doing right now," Avery pointed out.

ASH laughed. "Fair enough…"

Avery looked around at the numbers on the doors. She'd never been to this part of the barracks, so all she had to go on was the number that Shepard gave them. After what felt like ages, she finally had a match, and both pilots stopped in front of the door. ASH gently tapped her knuckles against it, waiting for Shepard's muffled voice to usher them in from the other side. Upon stepping inside, Avery found herself looking around the room- the layout, the different beds, the desks… they even had a TV mounted on the wall.

"Okay, what the hell? How come your quarters are so much better than ours?"

Shepard chuckled lightly. "Privileges of being an O-4, Glade. If you stay with the Air Force for 15 years, then maybe you'll get quarters as nice as this someday."

Padlock was more focused on the box that Avery was holding. "C'mon, c'mon, let's open up the goods already!"

Avery set the box down on one of the desks. It was shaped into a large cube made up of several layers. The new and improved Blazer's logo was plastered onto every side. Moving slowly and deliberately, she pulled out each layer from the frame, which in turn made it into six smaller boxes- all loaded to the brim with chicken wings.

Cutter sighed wistfully. "God, what a magnificent sight that is. Makes me wanna shed a tear just looking at it."

Shepard put a hand on Avery's shoulder, smiling. "You did well, Glade- damn well."

"What can I say? I'm just so happy to do my duty," she replied with a shrug. "The duty that you so kindly voluntold me for, I would like to point out."

"Ah get over yourself- we've all been the snacko at one point or another," Pad told her. "Just think, once this is all done and behind us and we finally get some fresh blood in this squadron, then you can boss them around."

"Alright, alright," Shepard said, standing up while the others all sat where they could. "Jackson knows what this is all about, but as for you three," he paused as his gaze shifted to Avery, ASH, and Padlock. "It's been something of a tradition in this squadron for quite some time now that whenever we're put on a sortie at some ungodly hour of the night, we spend the hours leading up to it together. That is why we're here." He opened his mouth, but stopped before any sound could come out. He wanted to carry on, telling them about how the tradition started and why it was important, but he could see the fire in their eyes burning hotter than the one on the Blazer's logo. All he could do was smile at them and say, "Dig in."

Each of the boxes was labeled with a different flavor and colored accordingly, and they'd all been organized from least to most spicy. Looking over all of them damn near gave Avery decision paralysis. They all looked so good and there were so many to choose from. How could she possibly know where to even start. Eventually, she closed her eyes and reached out her hand, letting her subconscious decide for her. She picked up a perfectly middle-of-the-road buffalo wing, and that was just fine for her.

"Alright, I've got an important question for our friendship," Cutter said as he took his first bites. "When you go to take a wing, do you go for the drumsticks or the flats?"

Padlock gave him a confused look. "The hell are you talking about? It's not like there's a difference between them. They taste the same."

"What?" ASH asked in disbelief. "Pad… Pad, please tell me you're not serious." She paused for a moment, picking off the last of the meat from the bone in her hands before tossing it aside and licking the sauce off her fingers. "For the sake of our friendship, I need you to tell me that you're not serious."

"It's not about the taste. It's about…" Cutter trailed off as he searched for the right words. "…the experience of eating the wing."

Padlock rolled his eyes before tossing his bone cleaned of all meat aside. "God, you guys are weird."

"Hey, I'm pretty sure it's a requirement to get into this squadron, so you're right there with us, Pad," Avery teased him.

Shepard chuckled. "Ah, you caught me. I actually slipped that requirement in under the radar years ago." He picked up a parmesan garlic wing and bit into it.

"Okay, so aside from Padlock, drums or flats?" Cutter asked.

ASH scoffed. "Oh, come on, flats- no doubt about it."

Avery nodded in agreement. "Damn straight. Drums are just such a pain in the ass to get all the meat off of, and there's so much of it that you just cannot eat because it's too hard."

"That, and the fact that with flats you can do this." ASH pressed the wing in her hand against her plate, pushing all of the meat off the bone and allowing her to eat it all in one bite. She smiled as she licked her fingers clean of sauce. "Can't do that with drums."

Shepard let out a sigh. "It's a shame that you're all wrong," he said as he picked up another drum. "With drums you get so much more meat on. Besides, this…" he paused, holding the wing in his hand up high for effect. "This is the quintessential chicken wing. I bet you money that 90% of people that hear the words 'chicken wing' will first think of drums over flats."

"What? You can't be serious, Shep," Avery replied. "Flats are just better in every sense of the word."

The older pilot shrugged. "It's okay, you're entitled to your opinions- even if they're wrong. Go on, tell them, Jackson."

Cutter shook his head. "Sorry, Mitch. I'm with them. If you actually prefer drums over flats, I think there is a dangerously high chance that you might be a psychopath." He picked up a sweet barbeque wing and followed ASH's lead, pushing the flat down against his plate and biting all the beat off at once. "Damn, this really works, ASH. How have I never thought to do this before."

"That's how we do it in Magadan," ASH said, cracking a smirk.

Pad stood up, meandering over to the TV and switching it on. "Alright, let's see if there's anything good on."

Shepard scoffed. "This late at night? Good luck with that."

Cutter grabbed the remote and started flipping through channels with Pad. "No harm in looking, at least."

While the two of them started flipping through the channels, Avery felt a buzz in her pocket. She blinking curiously to herself, she reached in and pulled out her phone. Normally, it was all but dormant all day long, so she couldn't help but be surprised when she saw a text from Statts waiting for her. For a moment, she completely forgot that she'd even given him her number at all.

First, they give us an op with jack shit for air support and not 5 minutes after we're back at the FOB they've got the gall to send us on another mission about 10 miles away. I swear they have it out for us.

They won't even give us a lift in the choppers, either- found that out the hard way when they ditched us at the exfil the last time.

damn that sucks :

Tell me 'bout it. We didn't even have time to restock on ammo.

I mean they're not even sending us out on ops with other units anymore.

Shit's leavin' me wondering if I did something to piss off Grayson.

maybe I could have Shepard talk to him?

try to get him to find someone else for the op tonight

Cute of you to offer- as if Grayson would EVER make a decision like that on such a last-minute basis. Especially when it would be something that inconveniences anyone other than my boys and I.

idk is there anything at all I can do?

kinda sucks that you've gotta deal with all this bullshit

Nah, don't bother. It won't do any good anyway.

I'll have to take care of it myself.

Don't worry, though. We'll be ready and waiting later tonight.

groovy- see u then ;)

"Aha! Here we go!" Pad's voice caused Avery to look up as she slipped her phone back into her pocket.

Gazing up at the TV, Avery almost immediately rolled her eyes as she saw what they landed on: Top Eagle. It was a movie that came out a little over six years ago and was almost immediately rejected by most audiences for being absurdly cheesy. It was about a Federation pilot during Oceania that was meant to be some big hotshot, and because of how comically bad it ended up being, it was mostly deemed to be taboo in the Air Force. However, it seemed that in their struggle to find anything good on TV, desperate times called for desperate measures.

That didn't mean Avery had to like it, though. "Are you serious? We've got over a hundred channels and this is what you settled on?" she asked Pad, raising an eyebrow at him with a smirk.

"First of all, no, there is quite literally nothing else on that is even remotely good," Cutter said, coming to Pad's defense. "Second of all, if we can't find something good to watch, then what better way to enjoy ourselves than to watch some hot garbage of a movie and rip it to shreds together?"

"That's… actually not that bad of an idea," ASH admitted as she picked up another chicken wing.

Pad grinned. "Of course it's a good idea. I came up with it."

` "Easy there, Pad. We wouldn't want you to an even more swelled head than you already have. You might not be able to fit into your helmet otherwise," Shepard teased him.

The movie had only just started, and already, there was no shortage of things to point out that the movie had gotten wrong- sometimes to a laughable degree. Naturally, all of the scenes with the planes in the air were CGI, and bad CGI at that. The physics, or lack thereof, was an easy target for them to make fun of. With the way the F/E-4s were moving in all of these scenes, they almost didn't look real. Worse than all of that, though, the one aspect of the movie that all five of them were consistently poking fun at the whole time, was the fact that no matter how many missiles the protagonist fired, they'd always have more in the next shot- like they were regenerating somehow.

"Okay, seriously, what the hell is up with that?" Avery asked as they passed the halfway mark. "Like… was there a single person that was even remotely connected to the Air Force in the slightest that helped work on this movie? It's like they're not even trying at this point."

Shepard chuckled. "Oh, you think it's bad now? Just wait until you see the ending. It may very well drive you insane."

"Oh, she passed that point of no return a long time ago," ASH teased her, giving her wingman a slight nudge with her elbow.

Avery took another wing from the rapidly dwindling supply. "This dialogue isn't much better, now that I think about it- both in terms of how it's written and how it's delivered."

Padded nodded in agreement. "Yeah, this guy could've at least made the shitty script work, but I don't think he even cared enough to see it through."

Cutter scoffed as he let his eyes wander around the room. "Yeah, well in that case, he definitely isn't the only one to- woah shit!" he exclaimed as his eyes found their way toward the clock: 2216 hours. He reached for one last wing and picked it clean just as quickly as he grabbed it. "We've gotta be down to the briefing in four minutes, let's go!"

Avery looked at the clock in disbelief, then checked the one on her phone just to be safe. "How in the absolute hell did that time go by so fast?"

"That's my genius on full effect for you," Pad replied.

"Alright, alright, lock it in, you guys. We've gotta get this show on the road," Shepard reminded them, even though he still had a smile on his face.

Slowly but surely, the squadron began filing out of the room before making their way down to the briefing room together. As usual, Avery brought up the rear, but she didn't have a problem with that. It gave her that little bit more time to think as they walked. As much as she liked to give him grief- and she wouldn't dare admit this to his face- Padlock was right. She never would've thought that there was any enjoyment to be had from a movie like Top Eagle, and yet, here they were. Things may be rough, both with the Federation still not having an advantage against the Cascadians and the actual personnel on the basis still not even giving her the time of day, and yet all Avery could think about on the walk down to the briefing room was just how lucky she felt to be in such good company.