<strong>~~100 Miles North West of Denver, Free Colorado~~</strong><br/><br/>The skies were clear, for now, though a distant thundercloud loomed on the horizon to the Northwest. At the moment, however, four planes were locked into the opening stages of a battle; sniping at one another not with their weapons, but with their radios.<br/><br/>"I'm telling you, I have no idea what in hell you're talking about, girly, and if I were you, I'd turn right back home and leave well enough alone." The speaker, piloting a Black and grey Raven, waggled his wings at the J2 Fury that was practically sitting on his left wingtip, while his wingman, in a black and blue Devastator, tried to weasel his way towards a clear line of fire, even with a Bell Valiant dogging his every movement.<br/><br/>"Now, Either you believe me, and we go our merry ways, Or you don't and we try to kill one another. Your choice."<br/><br/>The Pilot of the J2 shook her head and smiled, before toggling her radio. "We'll see if you don't know what this 'girly' is talking about soon enough. Ask yourself if you trust the Nightmare to not open on you after you've hit the silk!" Turning off the radio, and breaking formation to take a preemptive run at the Devastator, disregarding her wingman's dangerous proximity to the larger, older interceptor, she broke for the plane and took the first opening she could find.<br/><br/>"Grab the Raven!" she shouted to her wingman over the radio. "I'll nail him after I'm done with this one."<br/><br/>Scarlet's wingman broke away from the Devastator, the Valiant's Sextet of light guns scouring armor plate from the Devastator's Right wings as the pilot accelerated hard, pulling across the Fury's line of attack, even as the larger devastator flipped end over end, the pilot skilled enough to pull what looked like an Immelmann, only compressed into a single plane's length of travel. The strain on the Devastator's airframe was apparent, large cracks opening up in the left wingas armour twisted against the frame itself, but the plane began to open fire on Scarlet's J2, the quartet of guns pounding gouges and divots out of the J2's armour plate.<br/><br/>Even as Scarlet fired back, her lighter guns caused comparable damage to the Devastator, chipping into the Devastator's blunt nose, until the Seventy calibre Goliath spoke, sending Five rounds deep into the nose of the Devastator, causing the plane to lurch heavily from the impact, much like a boxer would.<br/><br/>Her wingman, having latched onto the Raven as best he could, used his plane's agility to the best he could afford, practically clinging to the Raven's rear-mounted propeller, his sextet of Thirty calibre guns chewing up armour plate on the trailing edge of both wings, even as the raven Jinked, avoiding the worst of the damage. "Boss, this guy's pretty shifty. Are you sure about taking him on?"<br/><br/>Scarlet stayed focused on the Devastator as their planes passed one another; the Devastator having taken the worst of their exchange of firepower, thin tendrils of smoke oozing from the gaping hole torn into the plane's nose, though the heavy interceptor looped around, taking the opportunity to slam another burst of forty calibre bullets into the Fury's right wing, again shredding armour, even as Scarlet forced her plane into a tight turn, her raking volley stitching a line of holes up the side of the Devastator's nose before the Goliath again pounded five more shells into the root of the Lower right wing, punching into the Devastator's internals, and spiderwebbing the canopy from the shock of the impact.<br/><br/>The Devastator dropped low, apparently wrecked, up until Scarlet turned away, the Fury's focus returning to the Raven she had harassed over the radio. Throttling up, the quartet of machineguns opened up again, this time carving into the Bell Valiant's lightly-armoured underbelly, chopping into landing gear and control cables.<br/><br/>The Raven turned sharply at the same moment, a small hatch just under its engine popping open to deploy an aerial mine, the parachute used by the time-delay explosive popping open just as the Valiant dipped slightly under the Raven, the thick grey-white silk covering the Valiant's cockpit. Blinded, the pilot of the Valiant did possibly the worst thing he could do, pulling up sharply and decellerating, forcing Scarlet to throttle her own plane back to avoid hitting the stricken Valiant.<br/><br/>A moment later, the mine armed itself and Exploded, the blast cutting the Valiant in half, shrapnel fragments and jagged metal slicing into her plane's wings and fuselage, right before something hard, solid, and red hit the Fury's Propeller, exploding all over the front of her plane. Within moments, the plane's engine coughed, sputtering hard from the impact, as the same thick red coating slapped over the plane's canopy, almost-completely obscuring her vision.<br/><br/>The radio crackled, followed by a muffled expletive. "Holy Christ almighty, girl! This may be fun and games for you, but your plane's a wreck. Go set her down, we'll settle things later."<br/><br/>Scarlet stopped for a moment, almost losing control of her Fury when she realized what had slammed into her canopy. She gasped, and the craft, in its already damaged state, almost stalled, the engine running roughly and sputtering as the Fury's airspeed warning in the cokpit lit up. She snapped back into focus, grabbed the controls and maneuvered her battered plane to the ground, an old roadway turning into a suitable landing strip.<br/><br/>She knew she had no chance of following the Raven, and by the time she'd landed she couldn't make out where it had retreated to. After a rough landing, she climbed out of her cockpit to survey the damage and found bits and pieces of her wingman's corpse strewn about the plane as blood dripped off the edge of the canopy and onto her seat. Her propeller was bent up pretty badly, one of the blades had broken off entirely, though it was not unusable. The damaged wings and fuselage meant she was going to have to get serious maintenance before trying something like that again.<br/><br/>She tried to clean off the canopy and did a general maintenance and inventory check, trying to make sure that her plane's damage was all visible, before climbing back into the cockpit, taking a deep breath, closing her eyes and taking off for the nearest city. "...was that my fault..?" she muttered to herself. She shook her head and focused, knowing that if anyone engaged her on the way back her plane would be chewed up like paper against a chainsaw.