The Super Flankers kept perfect formation as they blasted towards the Rising Dawn at supersonic speeds.
"Lead! Missile, dead ahead!" one pilot called out, seeing a flaming speck shooting towards them.
"Strigons, ignore missile and deploy a single flare each!" The Colonel commanded.
Each fighter did so, dropping a single flare in a pretty and effective display. The missile was unperturbed though, and kept on flying straight at them. A soft glint of steel could be seen just underneath the missile.
"It had no effect! All fighters, break now!" the command went out.
9 Super Flankers all broke off and pulled hard evasive manovoures, each pilot unsure if he was the one locked on. The missile choose a Flanker that had pulled vertical to evade, shooting up behind the big Russian fighter jet. The pilot looked over his shoulder and saw something he had never expected to see.
A Kitsune flying just above his wing!
The Kitsune grinned and waved before raising her sword and swinging down hard, the flame covered edge slicing through the steel of the left wing. Only a shallow cut, it was still more than enough to cause the wing to sheer right off because of the wind and G forces. Tumbling out of control and unable to recover, the pilot remembered his training and ejected.
Akane was already flying onwards towards another fighter, this one trying to line up on Red's tail for a gun pass. Akane dropped in on his tail and fired off a rapid few fireballs. They had little effect other than to blister the paint of the big jet. The enemy fighter, oblivious to her pursuit of him, fired a burst at the big red dragon. Red tucked her wings in and lost altitude instantly, and the burst went high in a miss. He tried to match Red's dive, the Flanker surprisingly agile for such a big fighter but the dragon was a master of the skies and easily outflew the Russian.
Absorbed in his fight with the dragon, the enemy pilot never noticed Akane catch him and fly up between his twin rudders. Drawing both her Tanto and Katana, she sliced into his rudders, slicing clean through the much thinner metal.
The Pilot instantly felt the loss of his yaw control and looked back to see both his rudders sawn clean off! He grabbed his eject handles and pulled, his fighter already beginning to wobble out of control. The rocket propelled seat blew him clean out of the cockpit, explosive bolts already having launched the canopy off.
Akane wooped, two aerial kills to her name. She formed up alongside Red and Caim, waving to them as she came close.
"I got that one on your tail, Red! Now that you owe me, let's go get the rest of these guys!"
