Whatever it takes

Red Menace

Morrgan, a Rayleonard  03-AALIYAH with a grey and purple paint job, and a Omer LAHIRE set on the flight deck of the USS super carrier 'Retribution.'

Strayed leaned up against Morgan's right leg as Victoria approached him "Any updates sir."

"No, and you can stop being so formal."

The cat ears on top of the girls head flattened "sorry."

"No need to apologize, have you thought of a name yet?" Strayed motioned towards the Rayleonard NEXT.

"No" Victoria stayed silent as she looked at the ground before her gaze came back up to Strayed "what about Revolution."

Strayed tilted his head "not the weirdest name I've heard."

The third NEXT pilot aboard the carrier approached them and Strayed called out "What about you Lycan."

"Mm?"

"Your NEXT name, what is it?"

"Feral."

"Makes sense." Strayed read up on his file surprisingly demi humans weren't the only magical creatures as his nickname suggests he's a werewolf. Strayed was originally surprised but after some questioning he learned thet there were whole tribes of them and that unlike what he thought, they could control there powers. "When we get back I'll put them in the database."

Lycan gave a questioning look "but why are they so important if we can just change to a different NEXT?"

Strayed looked at Lycan "it's important to name your NEXT gives it a personality and most names have meaning behind them."

"I understand Feral but I'm curious about Revolution." Strayed tilted his head again.

Victoria kept her head down the ears on her head almost invisible as they hid in her hair. Lycan spoke up saving his fellow pilot from answering.

"I'm not sure if you know but demi humans are strongly discriminated against due to past events in are history."

Victoria looked up "my country used to own half the world until the humans showed up and plunged us Into war as we were pushed back and lost so much territory that we were reduced to an island nation where country's go for slaves and cheep labor, are leaders are to scared to stop them and just let it happen."

The group stayed silent after that Strayed looked at the cat gril Infront of him and put his hand on her head as he ruffled her hair "when you plan on blowing some shit up let me know."

Strayed lifted his visor up to let her see his smile as the mood quickly improved. But there conversation was quickly Interrupted by a soilder that ran up.

"Sir we have an update." Strayed nodded for the soilder to continue "are spys have confirmed that it is a NEXT and have sent us the location of the facility, but we lost communication with them and believe that they've been captured."

"HQ is worried that they'll kill the spys and reverse engineer the NEXT so there sending you a Rayleonard NEXT with no markings."

"So they want me to rescue the spys and the NEXT disguised as a unmarked unit."

The soilder nodded "we have other groups working on a disinformation campaign to make it seem like a terrorist group plus they don't know we have NEXT's so get in and get out."

2 hours later

The unmarked Rayleonard landed on the deck as the cable's detached and the helicopters that had carried it left.

As Strayed was embarking the NEXT Victoria and Lycan asked what there orders were.

"If anything goes wrong your to launch and provide support." They nodded as the cockpit closed.