Trigger Quest: Fly Like a Maniac and Splash Bandits (Ace Combat 7 Peggy Sue)

You shiver slightly, tossing and turning in your bunk, suppressing another shudder as you try to look for warmth under your blanket. As usual, the air-conditioning had been turned to a too-low temperature, and your blanket was too thin. Ugh. You were gonna wake up with a snotty nose, you were certain, and get laughed at by Count.

You roll your eyes under their eyelids. Count could be a real bastard, but was dependable when you needed him. You turn over again and try to go back to sleep, but something at the back of your brain nagged at you.

Wait. Air-conditioning? Blankets? This wasn't your tent!

You suddenly still, before sitting up, ram-rod straight, and then you slam your head into your upper bunk.

The pain is sudden and unforgiving; you feel like you've been pushed through a tube at terminal velocity. Your bunkmate rolls over and manages a slurred "Go to sleep, Trigger," before continuing to snore.

As you lie back down and nurse your bruised head, you think to yourself, since when did my sleeping bag become a bunk? You must have been abducted; you conclude with some growing panic.

You peer into the darkness of the room, illuminated by the dim glow of an alarm clock. Three a.m. Early morning, huh. Still early. Enough time to plot an escape, then, unless the clock was whack. You shut your eyes and think. Something in the room was vaguely familiar, as if you'd been here before. But what?

You sit up again, careful not to injure yourself a second time. Stealthily, you tiptoe out of your bed on the lower bunk. Now that you were standing up, you could see the room more clearly. Not much light, save for the green emergency exit lights and the handy alarm clock. Speaking of…

You pick up the clock, feeling the brush of cool plastic on your fingertips. It was a generic clock, save for what you think was a tag on the bottom. You flip the clock around to get a clearer view, and yep, it was a tag alright. You squint to make out the letters, trying to ignore the growing unease in your gut. The dark room didn't help, and your own half-awake, bleary eyes were screwing you over as well.

You make out the words, spelling them out under your breath. "O – A – D – F," you murmur. So this was an OADF facility, or related to some extent. This did not help the growing fear that seemed ready to burst from your skin at any moment. Now that your eyes have gotten used to the dark, you think you can read the letters better. "Property of OADF," read the tag under the clock, "Do not…remove from –"

You strain your eyes to squeeze out the last few words. "–Fort…Grays Air..Base." Huh. So you were on an OADF base – wait. Fort Grays?!

The fear in your gut is suddenly overwhelmed with a tide of confusion and general "what the fuck?" Thoughts in your head run counter to each other, each starting and stopping unpredictably. Your body tenses up as you scan the last few words on the tag. "Fort…Grays…Air Base." No doubt about it, this was an alarm clock from Fort Grays Air Base. But what was it doing here, in (you were beginning to suspect that it wasn't) your tent in Selatapura?

You swivel your head to scan the rest of the room. Footlockers, cupboards, a bunk bed, a table and a chair plus a beanbag chair that you were certain you owned – where the hell were you?! Suddenly, the trains of thought in your mind all halt simultaneously, save for one.

Were you…in Fort Grays?! But how? You were absolutely sure you went to sleep in Selatapura in a tent, awaiting further OADF orders, but here you are!

Your brain finally recognises this room. The smell, the hum of too-cold AC, the snoring Clown, your green beanbag chair…this is your bunk in Fort Grays! Immediately, you shoot the notion down. Impossible, you cry internally. But something else in you shakes its head. You could almost hear Jaeger solemnly nodding as he says, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

You collapse into your bed, which creaks as you roll under the sheets. Fumbling for your smartphone, your breath hitches in your throat when you read the date – May 15, 2019.

The date of your first combat sortie – what was it, Operation Dave Hill? Danger Heart? Something like that. Your memory of that first sortie was blurry, the only thing you remember clearly being your immense panic as Clown ordered you to fly because of a dearth of available pilots.

Heh. Good ol' Clown, you think fondly. He'd stuck with you all the way, though he wasn't able to get you out of the 444th​. You remember him well; that look of utter regret as you two parted ways was unforgettable, you think as a tang of sorrow spiked in your mind. Where was he, at the end of the Lighthouse War? You don't remember him being part of the coalition that brought down Arsenal Bird…Justice? Was that its name? The thrill of blowing it up was still fresh in your mind.

Your sudden good mood is suddenly drowned in cold water. An image of a person fills your mind's eye, garbed in a pilot's flight suit.

A sudden heat rises to your eye and liquid wells up in your vision. A tight pain pulls in your chest, and a sob rises from you, which you disguise with a hasty cough. Clown rolls over in his bunk and grunts, still asleep. It would have been difficult to explain to your former flight lead why on Earth you were crying to yourself at three in the morning.

You press your palms to your eyes and feel tears leak from the corners of your eyes. Th – that person…! Your think sluggishly. That person, you smile through your tears, was still alive.

Who is this person?

They were still alive. You could still save them. You could…prevent them from dying! You feel steely resolve rise in your breast and clench a fist. You weren't going to let this second chance slip from your fingers. You adjust your limbs and close your eyes…tomorrow, you'd be sortieing…and you would need all the sleep you can get.

As the edges of your consciousness dispersed, you dreamt of soaring through blue skies, sitting in the cockpit of…

What plane did Trigger fly when he was in Mage Squadron? (Warning! You'll still be flying the F-16C during Operation Deer Horn…but you might be able to convince Clown to let you fly something else. Exotic weapons like railguns and lasers aren't available. Remember: you're still a nugget in the eye of the OADF.)

Your current plane: F-16C Fighting Falcon
Endurance: Kind of terrible. Your light airframe does you no benefit in taking hits. Don't try and soak up AA fire; you're not a Warthog.
Manoeuvrability: Decent. At least your light airframe doesn't slow you down.
Speed: Alright, I suppose. Not good and not bad, your F-16 isn't a MiG-31, but at least it isn't an A-10.
SPW Load: 4AAM / GPB / SASM
PSM: No

In-game description: "A low-weight fighter developed to, among other things, support large lead air superiority planes. A combination of the high-cost, hardly-seen F-15 and the low-cost, widely-used F-16, the F-16C was designed to be a compromise between the two, incorporating the latest technology of the time such as fly-by-wire, making it both stable and agile. Those who attested to the effectiveness of low-weight fighters had high hopes for the F-16C. Its vast improvements gave it increased mobility and greater effectiveness in air-to-surface combat, making it an effective attack—and thus multirole—plane. Its nickname is 'Fighting Falcon.'"

A/N: Really? No discussions? Also, I thought that there would've been greater support for Tabloid and Wiseman…it seems SV's waifuism is still all-consuming. Well, too bad. Brownie isn't your waifu, not because I say so, but rather because I write romance as well as a dead fish in a sock writes romance. That is to say, very poorly. For this reason, Brownie is more of a sister of sorts in relation to Trigger.




You wake up to Clown slapping you with a pillow, and the alarm screeching electronically in the background. It brought back good memories of boot camp. Say, whatever happened to Sergeant Wilson, anyway? That old firebrand was certainly funny, at least when he wasn't smoking out you or your section.

"Wake up, rookie," Clown says, yanking your sheets off your bed unceremoniously. The sudden gust of freezing Arctic wind takes you up by surprise, and you curl into a ball to try and conserve your precious body heat, suppressing the reflexive shudder that crawled up-and-down your spine.

"Five more minutes, mum," you mutter, rolling over to try to find the warmth in your bed. Clown responds by shining a torchlight in your eyes.

"Argh!" you shout, scrambling to shield your burning retinas. Fucking damn it, that smarts! You tussle in your bunk as you try to avoid the laser beams boiling your eyeballs. "Fuck! That hurts!"

"Then get up if you want it to, rookie," Clown says, adding a kick to your side. With a groan, you summon up a meagre ounce of energy from your near-empty reserves and aim a kick back at Clown, nailing him in the leg. But since you'd just woken up, it was less of a karate dropkick and more closely resembled you slapping him in the shin with a floppy piece of boneless chicken.

Clown yells in mock-pain, more for dramatics than in actual hurt. "Goddammit, rookie, I'm just tryna get you outta bed in time and what do I get? A kick!" You giggle at his theatrics, which comes out more as a gurgling cough than anything resembling laughter. You wince as you pinch your neck, feeling sharp pain shoot up your throat with every gurgle. Damn, you REALLY needed water.

"Yessir, I'm getting up," you say half-heartedly, raising an open palm. Clown grabs it and pulls you to your feet, and claps you on the back. "Welcome to Fort Grays, rookie," he says with a smile. "Wasn't here to greet ya last night, so I hope this late introduction will be enough."

You smile. "No worries sir. You can pay your debt by telling me where the canteen is." You shoot a glare at the still-screaming alarm, which refuses to bend under your immense powers. "Fuck. I'm still not psychic," you grumble as you slouch your way to the clock and slam it with your arm – only to miss entirely and slam the metal table at terminal velocity instead.

In an instant, you are awake, adrenaline making the edges of your vision sharp and clear. That would be great if it were not for the liquid molten agony that your arm now seemed to be filled with instead of the usual blood. You scream (in a very masculine), "OWW!" and trip over a pair of slippers, falling on your ass to the ground.

Clown is laughing now. He has his arms akimbo as he guffaws. "Oh, rookie," he says, faux-wiping tears from his eyes, "I know already that this is the start of a very beautiful friendship."

---

Where do you sit?
[] With Clown
[] With Brownie
[] Write-in…
[This morning, you're being guided to the canteen. You're sitting with Clown and whoever else he wants to sit with today.]

You sit heavily onto the cheap plastic bench, wincing as you feel your bruised rear cry out in response. Clown, sitting opposite you, grins. "Rear still sore, rookie?" he says, a knowing glint in his eye. You roll your own eyes and reply grumpily, "Yes sir, my arse still smarts." Just as he readies a retort, eyes glinting with mischief, a man your height sits down next to you, with his own plate of food and a mug of strong-smelling tea. You wrinkle your nose in disgust (at both the tea and the person), and before looking at the guy, you already know who it is.

Fucking Knocker. Needless to say, you really wanted to knock off his fucking skull, the bastard.

Where do you even start with this guy? He'd been alright in the first place, a little harsh, but in war, a little bit of cruelty now to ensure the rookie survives later was completely acceptable in your eyes.

But for some fucking reason, he'd become an unmitigated grade-A asshole after Harling got splashed by another plane. Granted, it was spoofing the IFF, but a pilot first learns to use their Mark One Eyeballs before they learn to use the radar.

The bastard had to go and scream, "MaGe TwO fIrEd ThAt!!!!" when poor Harling had been blown to pieces at the Lighthouse. Fucking asshole, getting you into a court-martial!

Well, a tiny voice answers, if he didn't do that you wouldn't have met the LRSSG or the colourful bunch at the 444th​.

A dull heat starts growing in your chest, and not the kind of warmth you get when looking at puppies on Gründergram, or the kind you get when watching Count and Huxian awkwardly try to make full sentences at each other face-to-face without turning cherry-red.

No, this was, pure, blinding HATE. That smouldering ember from earlier was now a jet of white-hot plasma, incinerating everything in range. You look up, fist curled, ready to break the bastard's nose for the least of his crimes–

"So Clown," Asshole says, "Who's the new guy?"

Clown's grin doesn't falter. "The 'new guy', as you call him, is now Mage 2. His name's Trigger." He turns to look at you, thumbs-up. "Trigger, this guy is Knocker, otherwise known as Golem 1."

"Hello," Knocker says. You grunt non-committedly. Knocker raises an eyebrow. "What's this guy's deal?"

"Maybe he's still mad I kicked him to get him outta bed," Clown jokes, slapping you on the shoulder. "Well are you, Trigger?"

You choke an angry retort back (just like how you wanted to choke Knocker), and force your anger away. Your problems were with the-Knocker-that-will-be (or was it the Knocker-that-might-be?), not with the Knocker-that-currently-is, so as to speak. You force a completely disingenuous smile onto your face (which you suspected more closely resembled a dessicated skull) and sweetly replied, "No sir. It's not your problem." You turn to look at Knocker, who was bemused. "It's not even you, Knocker. It's…how do I say this…ah!"

You raise an index finger. "It's a personal problem. No biggie."

Both Knocker and Clown look at each other in incomprehension, but both brush it off. You shovel scrambled eggs into your mouth.

"Come on, Knocker," comes a voice at your side, "Couldn't even let the rookie have his breakfast before hazing him?" Your brain takes a while to process the sound. You turn around, and there Brownie is. Alive. Whole and hale. The eggs now rest in your mouth, unchewed. Brownie was your first close friend here in Fort Grays, and seeing her alive was…disconcerting.

The two of you had been close – well, as close as two people who'd known each other for only a short time could become. But still, she was a trusted person – a trusted person you failed. You silently resolve to not let another friend die under your watch, be it Clown or Brownie.

You let a sigh of relief escape from your nose and wave. Brownie chuckles, and sits opposite you, pushing an annoyed Clown out of the way. "Who's this?" she asks. Clown looks at you, as a cue for you to speak. You don't. What do you even say to her? What if you start speaking, and then spill your spaghetti? [1] Or worse, you might even spill the beans on your time-travel/delusion? That would be really awkward, to arrive at Fort Grays and then get hauled off to a sanatorium on your first day. It would be a record.

Awkward silence kills the conversation. Nobody says a thing. Brownie clears her throat. It doesn't help.

What do you do to break the silence?
[] Wow, these eggs are nice. Chew.
[] Elbow Knocker.
[] Stare at Clown.
[] Go get coffee.


Glossary of terms
[1] Spill your spaghetti – slang for losing your calm, or becoming nervous and panicked, usually used when interacting with people of the other gender.