I refer to everyone, once they get ready to fly/are in their planes, by their call signs. Just so it makes sense when the names start to switch over.

The following week

“Alright guys, we need to get in some training with the whole squad. There’s some talk among the Brass, something going down off the Iraqi/Iran coast. Something about one of our Navy’s babies getting herself into some trouble with Iraq’s navy. It also sounds like this might turn into something big. I’ve heard whispers of battle formation.” Taeyang had the ‘Wings in the squad room with half a dozen diagrams of new flying formations on the projector/chalkboard.

The group copied, memorized, reformulated and complained about the new formations. Taeyang played damage control, “No, Seungri’s flying off my left wing. Yes I realize that’s Dara’s position but be realistic, if Seungri gets into trouble he can’t run into anyone but me. And you guys know what I can do.” Taeyang’s special talent was dogfighting. In, out, around and above enemy planes. He’d only ever been taken ‘down’ in flights by the combined tag team of Dara, Bom and Daesung, who had already taken out TOP and Jiyong, much to the former’s dismay.

“Why do I have to be next to TOP? You know he and Bom fight better together and so do Jiyong and I.” Dara voiced her opinion.

“Because Key wants us to get used to everyone’s fighting style. So if it comes to it, we can all fight next to whoevers backing us at time.” He waved Daesung’s polite hand raise away. “Yes I realize that we already know everyone’s fighting style but it always plays to e careful.”

“What does Key know? He’s just Top Brass, not a pilot or anything.” The rest of the squad turned to the voicer of the comment, Seungri.

Dara blew out through her nose. “Just Top Brass! Did you look at the list of the best pilots to ever graduate pilot school? Did you see the name ‘Kim Kibum, call sign ‘Key’’ on any of them? He’s only one of the best pilots to ever graduate the school. He flew Super Fortress bombers way back! Scored every time, with every bomb. He was personally thanked by the Secretary of the Air Force (SECAF).”

“Oh, ok, wow. That’s big, real big. THAT KIM KIBUM? The one with the highest score for bombing runs, take offs and like everything else? We have a living legend running our flight deck.” Seungri stood with his mouth open for several seconds, until the door opened to reveal the legend himself, Key. He sauntered into the room with a stack of folders the size of Texas.

“I thought it’d be better if I told you in person.” He rifled through the stack for several minutes and passed a thick folder to Taeyang. “We are moving to battle formation in 144 hours. That’s 0600 on Wednesday for those of you still struggling with the math.” Key shot a sneaky look at Seungri, who stopped counting on his fingers and hid them behind his back. “I have other squadrons to visit so I’ll be on my way.” Key spoke as he opened the door, “But.” He sighed, “Be careful, all of you. I don’t want to have to write up the paperwork if any of you don’t come back.”

That’s the closest to ‘good luck’ that they would get from Key, but it was enough. The squadron knew some Top Brass didn’t give a damn, and Key was the exception to that rule. He cared, even though he wouldn’t show it.

Taeyang finished the planning session and sent everyone to the gear room to get changed into their flight gear. He looked at the board, filled with formations, fuel ratios and weapon plans. He spoke quietly to himself, “Please don’t let us lose someone, not now, not ever. We all care too much to let someone fall and keep flying. We lose any and we lose all. Strong squadron, strong pilots.” He exited the room and heading upstairs to the gear room.

The rest of the squad was half changed by the time Taeyang entered the room, Bom and Dara grabbing their flight suits from lockers, Jiyong had the bottom half of his flight suit on, showing his tattoos to an interested Seungri. The younger nodded and using the chance to remove his own shirt to reveal tattooed claw marks running from the bottom of his left collarbone to the middle of his ribs. Another adornment was the silver ring piercing his right .

“Nice choice, Tiger.” Jiyong laughed and Seungri beamed. He had been gifted with a call sign from his new squadron. He felt like a member of a team for the first time. At fighter school he always felt like a member of the class, but never it never really felt ‘right’.

“Bet that hurt like hell.” TOP had his flight suit half zipped up, wandering over to congratulate Seungri on his call sign. He pointed at the ring.

“Naw, I was kinda drunk and the piercing girl was really hot, so it was pretty fun all up. Got the kicked out of me by my buddy Dex though.” Seungri lapsed into a sad silence, punctuated by the jangle of steel as he reached up to fiddle with the extra dog tag on his neck chain. “Dex got caught in some prop wash off another plane on one of our final training flights. He tried to correct, it didn’t work, then slammed into the ground before he could eject. That hit our entire squad hard. Half of us almost quit, hell, all of us almost quit. Dex was the best pilot in our training group and that happened to him, we reasoned, what the hell could we have done.”

“It happens.” Daesung spoke calmly and quietly. “It happened to me, and I barely got out. This,” Daesung turned to show Seungri a scar across his right shoulder. “Is what I have from that. It reminds me every day to keep my mind on the job and treat every minute like it could be my last. That’s why I stuck in the game, because this,” Daesung gestured at the team around him and above his head to where, several stories above them, planes rested. “Is worth every sleepless night, every morning on deck and every bit of pain we go through. We protect others at the cost of ourselves, even if we die for things we don’t understand.”

The squad stood in silence for several moments as they all absorbed Daesung’s words. Then Bom, always the umma figure broke the silence. “Well then guys, we better get out there and do our jobs.” Everyone nodded or made some sound of agreement, and as everyone headed upstairs to the flight deck, Bom gave Seungri a hug. “Everyone has bad days, but we’re your squadron now so feel free to come to any of us for a shoulder to cry on or a chat, to keep it all real.”

“Thanks…. ah, umma.”

Seungri grabbed his helmet and headed upstairs, swapping stories of fighter school with Daesung, the second youngest.

They came up to the level of the flight deck and, dodging catapulting planes and the ever busy deck crew, headed to where their planes had been brought up from the ‘garage’ below.

The seven strapped on their helmet and climbed up the sides of their waiting planes. G-Dragon nodded to the red shirted and red helmeted man loading on the final air to air missile (blanks).

Angel clipped closed her canopy and started to check her plane over, “fuel-full, and ordnance on. I’m gonna take you down GD.” She knew he was listening in over comms.

Wildcat removed her sunglasses, aviators- obviously and flipped down the visor on her helmet. She then adjusted the photo of the squadron clipped to the dash. They had all just graduated and were smiling like maniacs.

Night Hawk limbered up his wrists and flipped down his visor, gesturing to the blue coloured tractor operator to get him in position for the catapult.

Free-fall pulled the gold coin that dangled on a leather strip out from his flight suit and kissed it. “Keep me safe, keep me flying strong.”

The newly named rookie, Tiger was breathing deeply. “You can do this, you’ve done it a million times in training. Do what Dex would do.” He pulled the extra dog tag out from where it sat around his neck and looked at it. “I can do this.”

I'd just like to pre-warn, I have exams coming so my updates will probably be a little late, I will try and keep regularly updating on weekends but a midweek might sneak in cause I won't really have a heap of time.

Thanks for reading.

:) Comments are LOVE!

Lioness, Over and Out