Hold Up, I'm An Arsenal Bird Now?!

Act 17 - Foreign Craft

I currently reached halfway toward my destination. So far, only wild dragons have tried to stop my trip, only to get sniped by my ADF-01's Tactical Laser System. During that trip, I just watched a bunch of videos I found within my system. Every video involves aces in their best battles, from Ace Combat 3 or something to Ace Combat Zero. Weirdly enough, I even saw AC: Assault Horizon and Infinity. From what I heard and saw, both of those games take place in the real world.

They also included the best songs from each game, like Zero, The Liberation of Gracemeria, and Megalith Agnus Dei. However, I'll listen to Blue Skies from AC Infinity for the trip. I heard it the first time I put the list of videos into a random order

Another thing I found out is that I can monitor my F-14Ds through the cockpit. Everything seemed fine. The squadron is two-thirds of the way to Autrius, and nothing stops them. Then, the irregularities came in when I saw the stats and control history.

The Cipher AI is fucking random.

There are several times he flew away from his squadron to check over the T-72s and ZSU-23-4s up-close, firing his guns and missiles at the ground with no targets at all and also flying under the Mobile Launcher Platform from time to time. That is literally like every Ace Combat player ever! The fucker even discovered he could do post-stall maneuvers in an F-14D of all planes. Within seconds, he began to spam that shit and started flying backward. He's doing it right now.

Belkan witchcraft, amirite?

(I still can't figure out how people pull those moves.)

Anyways.

In summary, only a few have tried to stop me and ended up getting blasted to the afterlife, and Cipher being an Ace Combat player. What else?

...

I think I saw smoke.

In the distance, pillars of smoke smudged the sky. Curious, I left my course and led myself to the smoke. The sound of propellers and jet engines around me are the only things I hear.

I arrived at the origin of the smoke pillar, and it was a destroyed city. I took control of one of the A-10Cs and lowered my altitude close to the ground. I examined the city walls, and half of it wrecked. Most of the buildings there are destroyed, either by explosions or fire.

Bruh

I flew back to the squadron until something came up on the radar. I returned to the Arsenal Bird and checked what was in the area and discovered three unknowns coming in our direction. I commanded my planes to a defensive formation until they were close. Using the gap, I magnified the camera and analyzed the incoming planes. At first glance, they looked like something ripped off from a sci-fi movie, and I realized that those planes were identical to the one I saw in the AC6 video.

Fuck.

I forgot their name.

—————————————————————
///WARNING///
|
HOSTILE SQUADRON DETECTED

OBJECTIVE:
DEFEAT THE SQUADRON
0/3
—————————————————————

The enemy planes opened their internal bays on the fuselage and the belly to reveal black boxes that started spewing out missiles. An uncomfortable amount of missiles.

I commanded my squadron to split up to prevent them from getting hit. The swarming missiles hurdled toward my direction and impacted several AAM launchers, rendering them useless. With the remaining weapons, I launched my hail of anti-air missiles and lasers at the planes, and they dodged away. MQ-101s dropped from their docking bay to aid my aircraft in pursuit of the unknowns. I took control of a drone and tried to bring it down with a well-timed AIM-9 Sidewinder hit. Using guns, I attempted to put the enemy in a position to strike it. Firing lead in their direction, it pitched up and rolled away to the left. I launched an AIM-9 Sidewinder at the enemy plane, and it released flares to knock them off. I fired my guns again and got a couple of hits on the aircraft. Before I could switch to the missile, two projectiles impacted the fuselage and got destroyed.