EVERYONE: Not Top Gun: Pokémon Adventures Edition

[DRX.maliant]

Um... let's see. What do I wanna play? Oh, I can cue this.

now playing Nerds on Mushrooms

Much better. Let's go.

---

Hello. This's been quite a long time coming, as I'd initially had this planned to be my very first upload, but... well, an event came up. Anyhow, I'm here to introduce Not Top Gun.

Any other names that aren't straight from the Pokémon Adventures manga are actually names from the Bulbagarden discord (psst you should join nobody bites). I also did get permission from those users to place them into this, because it's nice to ask.

I highly recommend clicking on the title of each chapter and listening to the associated track that I wrote along to for immersion purposes. Also there's going to be a lot of lingo that's going to need explaining, thus there'll be a post later on with a full list of all the meanings and notes for said stuff.

SETLIST:

I. Blacklight
II. Unarmed
III. Dancing Naked
IV. Untitled Beat
V. Psycho
VI. ID
VII. Figures
VIII. ID
IX. Ocean Man
X. ID
XI. You're No Saint
XII. Animals
XIII. HYPER★DRIVE
XIV. Save The World / Reload / Heart Is King / Don't You Worry, Child
XV. Focus

This post will be updated as I upload chapters, hopefully with working links to each post (if I can get that to work somehow). For now, well, enjoy.​

 

[DRX.maliant]

I. Blacklight
​

“Woohoo! This’ll be fun!”

sigh “No, this won’t. We need to be serious here.”

“C’mon, Crys, don’t ruin the mood like that.”

As the two make their way through the halls of the newly-repurposed SS New Mauville, Gold can’t shut up about how excited he is and fun the operation will be, and Crystal can only try her best to curb said excitement. As she gets more depressed at the sound of Gold’s voice, she remembers one thing that she can use.

“Look, Gold. Remember the mission,” she says as she stops and turns to look at him. “We’re only there for one purpose and one purpose only. Absolutely no horsing around. We get there and then leave.” Gold stops and looks back at her, initially confused (but how), but only for a brief moment before he chuckles and starts walking down the hall again.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replies and waves off the remarks at the same time. “I understand. C’mon, we’ll miss the view.”

“‘I understand,’” she mimics. “Also what view? It’s the middle of the day.”

“That’s the point. We’ve been inside the ship for days. Gotta at least get some sunlight.”

“That’s… not how it works, but okay. If you say so.” At this point, it isn’t that every time Gold speaks, Crystal gets emotional damage. It isn’t even that every time he does something, she gets emotional damage. Even Gold just physically being there is enough to give her emotional damage, but she knows that since she’s fallen so far down the rabbit hole, there is nothing she can do about it, and thus, she follows Gold up the steps and onto the deck.
The first thing the two hear is the roar of a jet as its engines are cranked to full afterburner in preparation for takeoff. Because it’s so loud, Crystal puts on her helmet and also brings the visor down over her eyes, so as to shade them from the sun. Gold stops to admire the plane—an E/A-18 Golf “Growler”—as it sits on the cat, before putting his own helmet on and walking towards the plane that the two will be flying: the F-14 Alpha “Tomcat”. It isn’t as modern of a plane as the one on the cat is, but despite its old age, it can still kick some ass. Gold is eager to climb in and get the plane going; Crystal, not so much. Once they do climb in, though, Gold starts rambling about his excitement again, which makes her sad and very much annoyed again.

“Gold, you’re lucky there’s all this stuff in front of you, otherwise you would’ve gotten a kick to the face already,” she growls, to which he cannot help but laugh.

“Thanks for sparing me, then,” he replies. She can already imagine the widest grin on his face, and decides to give up talking. The silence between them is interrupted by two things: the “Growler” launching off the cat, and…

“Soul 1-1, this is the bridge,” the radio blares. It’s Cresselia92 (not to be confused with the Pokémon Cresselia), the one who calls the shots on the bridge. Crystal immediately picks it up, as she does not want to hear Gold’s voice and subject those on the bridge to it as well.

“Soul 1-1. Go ahead, Admiral Cress,” she replies.

“There’s been some developments, especially after your briefing. We’re working as fast as we can to get you out there.”

“Roger. We’ll get it done.”

“Good.” With that, the radio cuts out, leaving Crystal to try and relax to the roars of jet engines. Why does she even bother, anyway? Her pilot is Gold; that guy just doesn’t know how to contain himself.

“What’d they say?” he asks.

“Nothing important,” she lies. “Start the engines. We’re next in line.”

“Yes, ma’am.” After a while of fumbling around, Gold finally gets the plane started, and the hum of the two TF-30 engines joins the already bombastic symphony of the surrounding jets’ engines.

“Alright, what’s next?”

“You absolute idiot… Taxi us out behind this leftmost plane on the cat. Make sure to sweep the wings forward once we get the space, because we need the lift on takeoff.”

“Yes, ma’am.” It doesn’t take that much time for their plane to reach the designated area behind the retractable blast deflector, which gives the two some time to observe their surroundings. It is surprisingly a nice and tranquil day out, which is a stark contrast to the commotion on deck, but at least being able to look at the clear blue sky allows both of them to relax for a bit. It’s a calm before the inevitable storm.

“Hey, Crystal. You ready back there?” Gold asks, his question breaking the tranquil silence inside the cockpit. It’s the first thing he’s said that isn’t related to his excitement, like a switch in his head has flicked; he’s actually serious for once.

“Mhm. I’m ready,” Crystal replies after a long pause. Silence, once again, befalls the cockpit… up until the cat goes off, launching the not-much-newer *F-14 Bravo “Tomcat” in front of Gold and Crystal’s plane into the skies. Once the blast deflector lowers into the deck, Crystal’s mind subconsciously goes into autopilot and starts checking points off the checklist.

“Alright, Gold. Bring us up. You know how far up the throttle we need to be for takeoff, and the bar needs to be on the cat before we’re ready,” she tells him.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Crys,” he sighs.

“Make sure you have one hand on the throttle at all times. Therefore, there may not be a chance to salute the grounds crew.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Something catches the two’s attention, and they pause the checklist to investigate. It turns out that, on the deck, there is a Torchic - aptly named Torchic? - directing the cat launches.

“Wait a sec… why’s there a Torchic on the deck?” Gold asks. As he is so much more easily distracted, he wants to spend a lot more time questioning the fact that there’s a small fire chick directing launches. Crystal, however, knows that that’s the least of their problems.

“Oi, Gold! Get us up to the cat!” she says, her voice clearly rising. “Is your hand even on the stick?!”

“I got it, I got it! Relax,” he protests in reply.

“You better pull up once we leave the deck.”

“I will, Crys. Jeez, take it easy on me, man.”

A sound is heard from underneath them, signalling that the front landing gear is snug on the cat. Despite this, the two continue to go back and forth, until Crystal notices that the grounds crew are waiting on them.

“Hey! Gold! Spool them up!” she shouts.

“Spool what up?!” he shouts back.

“The engines!”

“They already are!”

“Apparently not! They want more power!”

“More?!”

“Yes!”

After Gold sets the engines on *afterburner, the grounds crew are finally satisfied enough, and let Torchic do the rest. Of course, Gold and Crystal are still jawing away at each other, and therefore do not notice that Torchic has given the go-ahead for the cat crew to fire the cat and launch them off the ship. They don’t find out about this until they’re almost off the deck, and by the time they hear the sound of the cat launch, it’s too late.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!!” Crystal screams. “Gold?! Pull us up! Now!!”

“Woah! What the-!” Gold initially exclaims, but once the two feel the plane dip closer to the water after leaving the New Mauville, he starts feeling the adrenaline. “Holy…” As a panicked reaction, he yanks the stick towards him, which allows the plane to lift off. “Haa, hahaha! That was awesome!” he shouts after levelling out the plane at 800 feet.

“No, that wasn’t! You weren’t even paying attention!”

“Yeah, says you. Where are we supposed to go?”

sigh “Turn towards heading zero-seven-zero, sixty miles. Get us a tad more altitude, while at it.”

“Got it. How high?”

“Get us to 5000 feet.”

Gold doesn’t respond. Now that the two are in the air, Gold prioritises himself to flying the plane and making sure that nothing goes wrong, which allows Crystal to handle the rest. The only two things that they hear are the roar of the engines and - more subtly - the sound of the wings sweeping backward due to the plane picking up speed. This time, however, it is Crystal who breaks the tranquil scene by speaking into the radio.

“Citadel, Soul 1-1, single-ship F-14 Alpha, checking in. I am two, ten, for forty four,” she says into the radio.

“Citadel, roger,” a voice replies.

“That’s it?” she asks after hanging up. “Nothing else? Wow, thanks.” As she surveys the screens in front of her, the plane suddenly does a sharp bank right. “Gold?!”

“That didn’t look friendly to me,” he says. Right after he says that, a grey streak flies by. How did he see that before she did? “Says there’s a bandit at eleven o’clock, 25 miles? There’s no need to get a comm-link with Citadel anymore.”

“Huh?!” Crystal checks all her screens again, so as to make sure that she and Gold are looking at the same thing. They both know that it would be extremely awkward if a pilot and their *RIO are not seeing the same thing.

“Might wanna check your sector, Crystal, now that we’re up here. Confirm bandit at 20 miles, twelve o’clock and closing?” Gold asks her, his voice getting a tad bit tense.

“Confirmed,” she replies. “I think I can get us a lock from here.”

“Do it.”

After a second of getting the radar set, a long tone is heard, which confirms that the plane’s radar has a lock on the incoming plane.

“18 miles, 9000 feet, *fox 3,” Crystal says as she presses the red button on her stick. In an instant, the two see a grey trail of smoke emanate from underneath their plane and heading straight towards their target. The two are silent, as they are focused on whether the missile that they have just fired is going to hit or miss. After a few seconds, there is no response, to which they conclude that their missile did not splash their target. Unfortunate, but they don’t bother worrying as they still have a lot more opportunities with the loadout that they have.

“Well, time for him to make his- woah!” Gold starts, before he is abruptly interrupted by a plane diving down right next to them, causing their plane’s left side to dip down quite a significant bit as well as making the entire craft shudder from the pass. “Hey! That’s messed up, bro!” With this, he banks the plane left and turns to chase the bandit, who also is now trying to chase them. “Alright, let’s do this. Crystal, hold on to your helmet… and everything else is all yours.”

Gold shoves the throttle forward to get some airspeed before pulling a pitchback in an attempt to get behind his target, while it—a MiG-29 “Fulcrum”—follows with some scissor manoeuvres. Surprisingly, there aren't a lot of munitions exchanges, as whatever good opportunity for a 5splash there is is gone in mere seconds. Dogfights are extremely jittery, shifty, and very much a game of cat-and-mouse, but whichever takes which role is extremely volatile and can easily switch around. At some point, Gold manages to get his plane behind his target long enough for Crystal to hear a long tone in her headset, which signals a radar lock.

“Fox 1, fox 1!” she shouts, quite excitedly, and pushes the button to launch a missile. To their surprise, the AIM-7 “Sparrow” missile explodes just behind their target, which emerges with a small smoke trail emanating from its left engine. Gold smiles at this.

“Nice. I’ll take the rest,” he says. Crystal doesn’t have time to say anything before she hears the mic cut, meaning that he will be unable to hear anything that she says. All she can do is sit there, stare at the three screens right in front of her, and only hope that Gold can finish off the kill. Of course, the “Fulcrum” pilot, knowing that they are at a disadvantage, can only do their best to make things as hard for Gold as possible to confirm the kill, and decides to pull out a manoeuvre that everyone has read about in school but never seen. Knowing Gold, this sets him off just a bit.

“Damnit, he pulled a Cobra?! I’m going to overshoot him,” he growls, and can only make a sharp bank right to try and pull an Immelmann/pitchback hybrid manoeuvre to respond. What he doesn’t know is that the bandit messes up his manoeuvre and completely stalls out, and since he had cut his mic earlier, he is unable to hear Crystal frantically trying to tell him that he has a free kill. When he does realise that he had a free kill, the bandit has already recovered, which forces out a sigh. “Gaaaah… Why do you have to make this so difficult?” Crystal knows that he’s talking to both the “Fulcrum” pilot and himself, and goes back to survey the radar screens, which is much harder than one thinks, considering the *9, nearly 10G turns that Gold is pulling in order to catch this bandit. Of course, she can’t help but be worried for him; at some point, she sees him slump forward as if he’s lost consciousness. She wants to scream to him, knowing full well that he can’t hear her, but after he sits back up again, she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness,” she says. “Go get him, Gold. You can do it.”

A good amount of shifting - as well as an extremely dangerous loaded roll manoeuvre - later, Gold finally manages to get behind his target. Finally, he thinks.

“Guns away,” he says to no one in particular and taps the trigger four quick times. More smoke emanates from the bandits engines, before one of them explodes, causing the plane to break apart and sending its pieces falling down towards the hills. After breathing a sigh of relief, he turns on his mic again. “Splash one bandit.”

“That was scary… are you alright?” Crystal immediately asks, out of concern for his health, to which he chuckles.

“I’ll… I’ll be alright. Where are we going now? We’ve definitely strayed off course.”

Yeah, you can say that again, she thinks to herself. “Turn, heading two-nine-zero, 25 miles. Get us a little higher up.”

“Rog.”

As they cruise towards their intended target, the two get a little surprise in the comms.

“Soul 1-1, this is Citadel. Report in?”

“Splash one ‘Fulcrum.’ En route to target, 40 *klicks out,” Gold replies as he picks up the radio.

“Copy. Remember, your objective is the airfield. Nowhere else. Make it quick.”

“*Wilco.” With that, the two think that they are able to get a short break before the true operation. If only…

“Um, Gold?” Crystal says. “We’ve, uh… there’s a problem.”

“That’s new,” Gold sighs. “What is it?”

“We’ve got two bandits at three o’clock high and another at ten o’clock low, and they’re headed right for us.” The next thing she hears is laughter, followed by a sigh.

“Alright. Let’s make it quick,” he concludes.

“Mhm!”

As they soar into the airspace over their target, Gold gets one last sarcastic remark in, just because he needs to.

“This’ll be a lot of fun.”

 

[DRX.maliant]

II. Unarmed
​

“What’s your plan now?!”

Gold and Crystal are in, let’s say, a slight predicament. Their plane has taken a beating, and since they are in the middle of enemy territory without any help, there’s only one option left: forward. As Gold manoeuvres the plane through all the gunfire and *SAMs, Crystal is keeping an eye out for the airfield, but it’s hard when there are so many things trying their damndest to blow them out of the sky. Adding insult to injury, there are still three bandits trying to chase them, which has prompted Gold to fly the plane at pretty much sea level. It’s not something he likes, but it’s the best option he has, as any air-to-air missile is many times deadlier than any other munition, though an argument can be made about a surface-to-air missile being more dangerous. Speaking of surface-to-air missiles, Gold forces a sharp bank left and a couple taps of chaff out of the plane to evade one that ends up flying right past their starboard side.

“Gold?!” Crystal shouts into the mic after the plane levels out.

“Shush. All I need to do is lose them,” Gold responds. Even he knows that this is an absolute lie; there’s no way he can lose even one of them.

“You know we don’t have that much fuel left! How’re we getting back?!”

“We’ll worry about that when it happens! Just chill out!”

Gold can only focus on trying to get out of his predicament. He may not have the throttle on afterburner, but since he still needs fuel for the two of them to get back onto the New Mauville, having afterburner on becomes a death sentence. He decides to pull up and execute a defensive spiral to attempt to lower the *AOAs of his pursuers. One of them takes the bait, but the other two are still dead on his tail.

“Now’s our chance, Crys,” he says as he pulls a high yo-yo manoeuvre to get behind the now-vulnerable bandit.

“Got it. Fox 2,” she replies. A few seconds later, the plane in front of them explodes. “Splashed one.”

“Nice. That should be enough for now.” Gold then pushes the throttle further forward, but not far enough to engage afterburner, and they make their way further into enemy airspace. Despite Gold’s attempt at optimism here, the reality is that one splashed bandit isn’t enough, and even worse is that the other bandits left aren’t even the biggest problem. That belongs to all the surface-to-air batteries underneath that are launching everything under the sun at them. As an even bigger kick in the nuts, their plane only has three medium-range air-to-air missiles, one thermal-guided missile, and one radar-guided missile, along with five hundred rounds left in the guns, a pair of conventional bombs, and two pulses of chaff and flares each, but even then, their current loadout is the least of their worries.

“C’mon, plane,” Gold mutters to himself. He takes a short glance at the fuel gauge, which is a little over a ⅓ full, before focusing back on what is in front of him. Their “Tomcat” is also shuddering from both the amount of stress that Gold’s flying has put on the airframe and the explosions outside, meaning that there isn’t much to do for it to fall apart. Crystal looks at the bottom-right screen, sees even more red markings that indicate hostiles, and widens her eyes in absolute terror, as if the number of marks that they had passed by isn’t already enough.

“Um, Gold?! That’s a lot of installations we’re going to be flying over!” she protests as she directs a dot on Gold’s screen to indicate what she is seeing. “Are you sure?!”

“It’s the only way we can go, Crys,” Gold replies. “Hold on. It’s going to be painful in here.” With that, he eases on the throttle a little bit, before punching it. Not even a second passes by before long and loud tones signalling missile locks ring through their ears. Explosions loud enough to make the average person go deaf roar next to them, and the whizzing of bullets flying up from below make it that much harder for Gold to evade through the madness. Missiles scream as they fly past their plane and explode behind them, and the more things explode, the quicker it feels like their plane will fall apart. Unfortunately for the two, it feels like the worst has yet to come. The tone transitions from long to repeating, signalling missile launches, which stresses the two out even more.

“C’mon, you dumb pile of scrap metal,” he mutters to himself. “Stay with me here.” Crystal, in the madness, gets an opportunity at a bandit, and even through the stress and the hectic, panicked tones, she manages to find her perfect kill angle.

“Fox 2,” she says before launching a missile. A couple seconds later, “*Tally, splash two.”

Weirdly enough, the true beauty of being in a two-seat plane in a situation like this is that the two occupants can focus on their different roles. Besides Crystal being semi-reliant on Gold to get good kill angles for more than two seconds, she is able to splash however many bandits she can and want with relative ease, while Gold can focus on manoeuvring through the tight spaces that comes with active missiles and bullet hell. He wonders how he can lighten the load of the plane, as despite the heavy manoeuvring that he has gotten out of the plane over the entire op, it is still too heavy for his liking. As he is thinking, he gets an idea.

“Crys! Drop the *bags!” he shouts, but there’s really no point in trying to communicate. Even if they could, the explosions and gunfire surrounding them are so loud that they drown out any possibility. To make matters worse for him, she is tunnel-visioned on trying to splash another bandit. Thus, he decides to do it himself, which proves to be a near-fatal mistake, as after he presses the button and feels the lighter load, a surface-to-air missile collides with the falling tanks and explodes, rocking the plane and forcing the two to lurch forward. Crystal hits her head on the panels with enough force that she loses consciousness.

Silence falls across the cockpit of the plane. Gold, feeling a tad uneasy, turns around to try and assess the situation, only to get a glimpse of smoke trailing from his left engine. Uh oh, he thinks. That doesn’t look very good. He also feels some shuddering that he didn’t feel before, which is also a worrying sign. What’s scariest is that he isn’t hearing anything from the back seat. Wait a sec, he thinks. Shouldn’t Crys be chewing me out for that? I haven’t heard her say anything…

“Crys?” he asks. No response. “You there?” Again, no response. He sighs at this. “Great. I feel lonely already.” As the plane - his plane, now - soars over the seemingly-endless surface-to-air batteries, he can only think of his next option. What is he going to do, besides continue to fly towards death? As he surveys the mess that is the battlefield below, he does think of one thing, and decides to pick up the radio.

“Citadel, this is Soul 1-1. RIO’s gone silent. I’ve sustained left engine damage and am at about ⅓ fuel with lots of bogeys and SAMs in the area,” Gold says into the mic, a bit panicked, which is unlike him. He pauses for a bit, as he is unsure of what else to do. “Any friendly assets in the AO? I could use some help,” he decides to add, knowing that asking such a thing is a terrible idea.

“This is Citadel. Copy,” the voice responds. “Looks like you’re on the right heading, *klicks out. Do whatever you need to do, but we need you two back alive, son, no matter what the cost. You hear me?”

“Understood, Citadel.” Gold waits for the click in the radio to signal that Citadel has hung up, before slamming his fist onto one of the panels in front of him. “Damnit, they’re not going to help? No wonder why Crys hates those people.” He decides that the only thing he can do is press forward… and silently hope that his RIO - and friend - is alright.

a few moments before, in the back seat

“... …”

“... with lots of bogeys and SAMs in the area…”

“... …”

That’s odd, she thinks. What’s going on? Why do those words sound so… soft? It’s like if the concept of blur has a sound, is how those words sound. What doesn’t help is that her ears are registering a ringing sound with which its frequency is constantly undulating between high-band and low-band. She can’t move, and wants to open her eyes, but can’t. It’s like she is seeing stars, and it oddly feels comfortable. However, her mind is the first to snap out of whatever daze or fever dream she is in, and attempts to force every other fibre of her being to as well. After a lot of resistance, she manages to move her head back enough to try and put a hand up to it, but only feels glass instead. Confused, she is finally able to open her eyes, and soon realises that she is still sitting on the back seat of a fighter plane, running an op that has been going on for a good few hours. Something doesn’t seem right, she thinks again. What the heck is going on? I’m hearing stuff that I shouldn’t be. What am I seeing?

“Uuuuuuugh,” she groans as she tries to get herself together, which takes a lot longer than one might expect. Look, it’s hard to get oneself together when they’re in a fighter jet going at 141.3 Mach and constantly experiencing 8G turns. Give Crystal a break, even though she’s just had one. What truly snaps her back to the present is a familiar voice.

“Hey. Crys? You awake back there?” Gold asks. This takes her aback for a good moment; Gold has been awake this entire time?!

“Wha…? Gold?!” she replies. “H-How…?! You’ve been going this entire time?!”

“Not like I have a choice. Phew, thank goodness you’re alright. Things would’ve been dicey if I’d lost you.” Crystal can’t keep her heart from racing at that remark. Huh? Is he alright? Knowing that asking those out loud would lead her into a bigger mental - and emotionally damaging - predicament than she is already in, she decides to turn to something else.

“How… how are things looking so far?” she asks as she looks around her. Granted, as she’s only just woken up from whatever daze she was in, she has yet to see the severity of their little, uh… situation.

“Eh, well, things could be a lot worse,” Gold replies and shrugs at the same time. “Definitely don’t look behind you.” Of course, this prompts her to look behind her, and that alone is enough to tell her what is truly happening.

“GOLD!! What did you do?!” she exclaims. “Why the heck is there smoke coming out of our left engine?!” A sigh is heard from the pilot’s seat.

“Yeah, well… my bad,” is all he replies with.

“Okay, well you better explain that once we- AAAAAAAH!!” Crystal is interrupted by the plane dipping into a near-high G turn, followed by - as she tends to expect - some laughter from Gold.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do that later. Aaaaanyway,” he remarks as he levels the plane out. “Had a good nap back there?” Crystal can’t help but roll her eyes at this. Sure, he’s being sarcastic, but to her, now isn’t really the time for sarcasm.

“What are things looking like so far?”

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“I’ll… take the bad first.”

“Well, an engine’s busted, the plane feels like it’s going to fall apart, and more bandits have taken off from the target. Things can’t look much better.”

“And the good news?”

“I’ve done enough burning to get us very close to the airfield. Once you shake the dust off, we can get to blowing the joint and getting the heck out of here.”

“Wait, what? We’re here already?!”

“You were asleep that long?”

“Hey!!”

A moment of awkward silence befalls the two as they continue cruising towards the airfield that they are tasked with decimating. Crystal takes this time to go through everything left on the plane that is deployable, and after doing so, recalls the conversation that Gold had earlier.

“So, how was your chat with Citadel?” she asks. “What’d they say?”

Gold initially sighs. “You managed to hear what I said, didn’t you? Guess I figured out then why you hate talking to them so much,” he replies. “Now I know to leave talking with them to you.”

“Oh, c’mon. That’s mean.” She looks at the topmost screen on the panel in front of her, and decides to take a peek outside the cockpit for confirmation. “Let’s focus. We’re here.”

Gold takes a glance as well, and notes that the airfield is very much in visual range. “Oh goodie. This is where the fun begins,” he remarks, his voice hinting a bit of glee. This confuses Crystal quite a bit.

“Wait a sec. Wasn’t the fun back there?” she asks him.

“That’s just the prep. You know how some of the jocks take that pre-workout stuff before pumping all that iron in the weight room? Same thing.”

“Guys are weird.”

“Thanks. How do you want to blow this thing into oblivion? You’ve got the buttons.”

Crystal does a double-take for a moment. Wait a minute, she thinks. I have the buttons? Then she realises that she has control of all the offensive capabilities of the plane, and knocks the side of her helmet a couple times. Dang it, she thinks. How can I forget?

“That nap did a number on you, didn’t it?”

“Gold, shut up.” She moves her hand towards the stick on the right side of her end of the cockpit and focuses on her heads-up display, which details everything that she is capable of using. “Look, you’re making the rounds. I’ll just go with whatever your route is.”

“Sounds good to me. I’m just going to circle around, see what we’re tackling. Let me know once you’re all set, then I’ll start the runs,” he says. For some reason, his voice is choppier and more quiet than normal to her. Could it be due to the time that she spent unconscious? No matter, there’s an airfield to demolish. She runs through everything she has again, and after taking a couple deep breaths, she feels ready for the up-and-coming carnage.

“Gold?” she asks after tapping her mic.

“You set?” he asks in reply. He already knows what she is going to say next.

“Hit it.”

Gold cannot help but smile. “Alright. Let’s do it.” With that, he punches the throttle and pushes the stick forward, forcing the plane into a fast and very steep dive. Crystal immediately notices some trucks with giant tanks on the back, and trains the guns towards those first before letting out a couple bursts from the giant M61 Vulcan gun. The sounds of explosions from the fuel inside the tanks combusting only manage to barely make it to the cockpit, but the sight itself is enough to confirm a good amount of damage. Gold decides to level the plane out dangerously close to the runway, which makes Crystal concerned, but what does it matter, as she manages to get a thermal lock on an aircraft inside a hangar.

“Fox 2,” she states as she presses the button to fire her last thermal-guided missile. “Gold, now would be a very good time to pull up.” Gold doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to, as he can use the missile as an indicator of when to pull up. Right as the missile is about to hit the hangar, he yanks the stick towards him and shoves it as far left as he can go, and the ensuing fireball only barely grazes the underside of their plane. “Splashed,” she remarks a little bit after things settle down with the now-destroyed hangar. “Gold, that was too close.”

“But it’s fun,” he casually remarks. “Just keep blowing up stuff, we gotta dump the payload before heading back.”

“Yup, yup.” Crystal then turns to her screens, and after Gold turns the plane around, she notices the point defence installations starting up. Hoping that her radar can paint ground installations, she tries locking onto an SA-10 site. Surprisingly, it manages to lock, which elicits a chuckle.

“Fox 1.” A missile darts out from the left side of the plane and instantly dives down towards the installation. Of course, an AIM-7 “Sparrow” isn’t an air-to-ground missile, it’s an air-to-air missile, but it blindly follows wherever its parent radar pings, so it does the job just as well as a dedicated air-to-ground missile does. The missile collides with the installation, causing a chain reaction of explosions, as the “Sparrow” explosion causes the SA-10 missile to detonate, thereby destroying the truck holding the launcher. “Splash one SA-10.” Long tones start ringing through both their headsets, signalling lots of missile locks. Unlike some of their other prior engagements, especially the ones they had to deal with on the way here, the two are much more excited to hear the tones this time. Gold, apparently in a very dive-heavy mood at the moment, goes into another steep dive near the airstrip, and Crystal uses this opportunity to line up where she wants the bombs to drop.

“Bombs away,” she says as she *leans back and pushes another button on her stick. The plane “falls” with the bombs as well, because that’s how gravity works, but things quickly return to normal as Gold yanks on the stick again to force the plane out of the dive. Farther down the complex, more planes are starting their engines, to which Crystal notices through the amount of radar locks she can get. A mix of different-pitched rapid tones are now ringing, which means lots of missile launches. “Fox 3.” Three quick taps of the button yield three missile launches, headed for three different targets. “Let’s get outta here, Gold!”

“Got it,” Gold replies as he taps another button to pump 16chaff out of the side of their plane and banks the plane hard left. A faint sound of a series of explosions confirms that the three targets that Crystal had locked just a few seconds earlier are destroyed.

“Oh, I got them? Awesome,” she quickly remarks as she grabs onto one of the handlebars next to her heads-up display. She sees something on the premises that is a little out of place, and though her curiosity wants to check it out, she knows that it’s best to keep it for the report. Once they are far enough away and cross the coastline into the open ocean, the two start laughing for… some reason. After they finish, Gold picks up the radio.
“Citadel, this is Soul 1-1. We are *bingo on fuel and *RTB,” he says. After a little bit of radio silence, he gets a reply.

“Citadel, copy. Good work. *ISR reports significant-enough damage to the airfield that requires at best a few months to repair. Good work, you two.” With that, the radio cuts, allowing the two to let out a sigh of relief.

“Yo, that was perfect!” Gold exclaims. “Haaa, hahaha!”

“Well, I wouldn’t say perfect,” Crystal replies with a chuckle. “Though it’s good that what we did put a number on them.”

“Would’ve been perfect if you were awake the entire time.”

“Hey. That’s mean.”

Even as the two poke fun at each other, one thing is undeniable between them: the op is done, and they can finally get out of there.

 

[System Error]

Well, all right.

1
- Using sigh in the narration is a bit odd.
- Were they like shut-ins on a boat? Did they like not even come up on deck ever?
- Well this already is a silly kind of fic with the fourth wall breaks and cameos. I suppose I'm not one to talk on the latter.
- These two argue a lot and it is...probably going to grate after a while but we'll see.
- I do appreciate not forcibly Pokemonifying the aerial terms.
- Bandits in the first chapter? Is this Fire Emblem now?

2
- Only has that much!?!?!! Well this is a humorous fic, I guess.
- Like any dorky anime protagonist, Gold goes from a seeming moron to hyper competent when the chips are down.
- What's with some of the words being preceeded by an asterisk here?
- I was a bit thrown off by the description of Crystal going unconscious. There probably could've been more paragraph breaks around.
- Probably could've made the scene break in the "before" part a bit more clear rather than using italicized text.
- Hm, what a curious bit of descriptiveness as she awakens. Awakening to powers, perhaps?
- Might be a better way than strikethrough for that part. It's kind of awkward to see that used in writing.
- I shudder to think if gravity suddenly stopped working that way. And I mean some Pokemon can mess with it too.
- Mission...somewhat complete?

Well, this is an interesting thing all right, even if I'm not fully sure what to make of it, heh. It seems more like an air war fic feat a couple of Pokemon characters with none of the creatures in sight. But I've certainly read sillier concepts. Speaking of silly, that certainly describes its style. Certainly not something for everyone, but also does have its fanbase. Speaking of the cameo stuff, just be careful with that. Trick is to implement it well enough so that it doesn't stick out to people who don't get it. Know like nothing about Top Gun, so can't comment on that side, but I assume all the names of weapons and terminology comes from that side. Neat little fic all the same, although one that could use a bit of work on the technical end, silly style or no. Too lazy and tired for a full combover like I used to, though. Still, doesn't destroy readability.

 

[Welkamo]

I don’t know anything about Top Gun or airplanes despite the fact that I probably should, but this was nonetheless a fun read. Gold and Crystal’s banter was a highlight for me. Oh, and getting to see the nods to other users (Hi, Torchic) was a lot of fun.

“That’s… not how it works, but okay. If you say so.” At this point, it isn’t that every time Gold speaks, Crystal gets emotional damage. It isn’t even that every time he does something, she gets emotional damage. Even Gold just physically being there is enough to give her emotional damage, but she knows that since she’s fallen so far down the rabbit hole, there is nothing she can do about it, and thus, she follows Gold up the steps and onto the deck.
The first thing the two hear is the roar of a jet as its engines are cranked to full afterburner in preparation for takeoff. Because it’s so loud, Crystal puts on her helmet and also brings the visor down over her eyes, so as to shade them from the sun. Gold stops to admire the plane—an E/A-18 Golf “Growler”—as it sits on the cat, before putting his own helmet on and walking towards the plane that the two will be flying: the F-14 Alpha “Tomcat”.

As far as typos and grammar, the only thing I noticed was a missing space between these two paragraphs, but other than that, everything read smoothly.

Good stuff, friend. I’ll be sure to come back for more.