Fire Flyers: Wings of Passion

Chapter 5: Minus One

The next day Kevin walked to Mr. Mangosta's classroom.

Kevin: Good evening, Mr. Mangosta.

Oscar: Good evening, Kevin. Mavis sent a message earlier.

Kevin: What did it say?

Oscar: She and Marcy will be taking some time off, meaning the Kestrels are down a plane. It's just you and Jeremiah for now.

Kevin: Ok.

Oscar: I'll be honest, the timing could've been better. There's an important announcement I needed to make.

Kevin: Jeremiah or I can relay the message to them.

Oscar: If you can, that'd be great.

Jeremiah arrived not long later.

Jeremiah: Hey guys.

Kevin: Hey.

Oscar: Good evening, Jeremiah. Now that everybody's here, I have an important announcement to make. First, have you heard the news, Jeremiah?

Jeremiah: Yeah. Marcy and Mavis are out until further notice.

Oscar: Good. Now the next thing is news from the fire flight higher-ups: The points given to gun hits have been adjusted. Apparently there's a pilot out there who goes by the title of "The Last Gunfighter". They use guns only to win their air matches. The council believes this pilot has been abusing the points system to win, so they lessened the points. The points have been lessened to 0.1 point per bullet.

Jeremiah: That bad, huh?

Kevin: Judging by our own performance when dealing with Warhawk squadron, I'd say that's reasonable.

Oscar: This change has already been implemented, so we have to comply, like it or not. For now the Kestrels is a two flight squadron, so both of you should be in your best form if we wanna move up in the rankings.

The two pilots: Got it.

...

Unfortunately, Marcy still wasn't available when it was time for their fire flight match with the next school.

Oscar: I don't think I need to remind you two about the bad news, so I'll just skip ahead to the good news: The team you're going up against is Cornrow Tech's Ground Pounders from Nebraska. As the name suggests, they specialize in ground attack matches. By some miracle, the match this time round is co-op ground attack. That means you two won't be fighting them directly, but competing with them by doing a better job of destroying the same base. The location of the match will be on our home turf.

Kevin: Phew, that's a relief.

Jeremiah: Your plane was designed for this task.

Oscar: So is theirs. They have 3 A-10s. These are the best ground attack aircraft America has produced. Even the military itself is having trouble replacing them. We have to compete with them with just 2 jets, and only one of them has proper ground attack capability.

Jeremiah: I can equip my Tomcat with unguided bombs. I'll fill all available hardpoints with them

Kevin: Harriers can easily carry rocket pods. I'll do the same with those. Working with the opponents means we don't have to worry about the air, just the ground.

Oscar: Alright, I'll make the arrangements. You two pilots better get your ground attack skills refined.

...