Dogfight Squadron

"Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for."

                                         - Unknown

      Of course, any exotic species Twilight never heard of immediately piqued her interest. Dragging every one of her friends, they loaded onto two hot air balloons and set out for the Academy.

      It was a good thing we had gotten a heads up; I would have ordered a scramble and shot down the balloons. Standard procedure of a forward operating base on Earth was to keep civvys away, no exceptions. As we found out, this was not the case in Equestria.

      "Okay. What the buck is THAT?"

       Yeah. Rainbow Dash is pretty annoying, as we had a first hand experience.

      "I'm a human, deal with it." My hand reached for my gun.

      "Wait, are those what I think they are?"

       "Fuck..."

       Jeff quickly restrained her, stopping her from destroying the defenseless aircraft.

        "Look, I just want to learn about your species." Looks like little miss purple unicorn is trying to defuse the situation.

         "I'm not a goddam pet!"

         Good job. Here's a Nobel Peace Prize.

         "Look, I just want to do this for science-"

         "I'm a Warrior, not a good example of my species. Sorry."

         "But can you at least describe your species then?"

          There is a fine line of curiosity and insane curiosity. She went and did cuckoo curiosity. So, I pointed my pistol at her. The unicorn, thinking it was a club, quickly tried to magically grab it out of my hands. But when she fired up her magic, it dissipated. Getting frustrated, she tried over and over to no avail.

          "Looks like your fancy magics don't work on me."

          "Shuddap."

          "Maybe we have natural defenses against...Magic?" Jeff suggested. He never liked saying that word.

           "I'm not complaining if we do."

           Rainbow broke free. "Why are you guys always so arrogant?"

           "Seriously?" The three of us all deadpanned.

           "Ya know what? Someone needs to put you guys in your place. I challenge you to a race!"

           I did a Picard style facepalm. "Rainbow, I can assure you, that my Spiteful is more than capable of reaching three times the speed of sound."

          "Ha, nothing can go faster than sound than me! Stop lying!"

          A couple groans from us six. "Fine. We do this Reno Breitling style."

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          Spitfire, hearing that there was a chance that we humans could be beaten, immediately had the academy students organize the sky for a race. Taking a long weaving path, there was no room for error.

          With the start of the race with a blank shot from Jon's pistol, Rainbow was immediately 300 meters ahead of the jet, who was having issues taking off. Of course, the jet quickly overtook the Pegasus by the first turn, and was long ahead of an astonished Rainbow, who was having trouble keeping up.

           The usual bunch of Cuban Eights, loops, barrel rolls, and sharp turns was quickly eaten up by the little jet, so I decided to let Rainbow catch up to taunt her. In the final straight stretch, we both cut through Mach one easily, but the cyan Pegasus couldn't get any faster than 1.4 times the speed of sound.

          As the old saying goes, those who boast will almost always meet their match.

         I can formally tell you, this is true.

         The Pegasus spent half a day bawling her eyes out, and another half cussing about "frickin' dirty apes" stealing her thunder.

         While rainbooms are pretty, it won't do in combat when you have a big ass neon sign saying "I'm over here, Muthafuqua!" So while not as pretty, the normal boom does do you a favor to not get your ass detected.

         When Twilight asked about the technology the jets possessed, of course, we all got cold feet.

         She apparently wanted to learn about it to replicate them, allowing an edge over the Diamond Dogs. She didn't seem to understand what was so dangerous about the "metal clubs" until I fired a shot, which easily penetrated though both sides of the golden armor the guards wear.

         That didn't help. That made her even more curious. I had to make a lot of arguments to convince her that the weapons were too dangerous for a country still in the Bronze Age.

         It took considerably less time to calm her down, but it was still annoying.

         Spitfire made us get ready for the first welcoming show in Canterlot, which would take place at night. Spotlights would illuminate us, but our shapes would still be mysterious to the populace.

         Of course, two days later, we would also have to perform at Cloudsdale, but the routine would be the same to minimize mistakes. For anyone who has played a sport, you know the stress of even the teeniest screwup. Now, multiply the amount of eyeballs by several thousand, and they belong to an alien species.

        Poor Jeff lost his shit when he heard what we were going to do.

        I trained the Citation crew for formation flying to fly form by using bikes, and every morning, I did a mini sim walking on the runway, going through the routine. Fly form, then dive down through the entire arena. Pull up, full barrel roll, cross paths. Cuban eight pairs, with switching partners. Citation and Skyraider fly away, Spiteful and Bee Dee break the sound barrier. It was short, but I effective.

        Opening night was quite amazing. Turns out Canterlot is a city sticking off the side of a mountain. Not structurally sound, but I'm not one to comment on cartoon logic.

         There were literally millions of unicorns. Millions.

         Word got out that an exotic species were performing like circus animals, and all the nobility came to see us. Never the less, we managed to pull off the show, and we all went to bed cheerful.

         In Cloudsdale, we were preceded by Spitfire and the Wonderbolts first squadron. It came to a surprise to us that we were welcomed by the population, but I'm not in a position to complain. We should be happy that they didn't do anything hostile after what we showed them our dangerous ability.

        But, we were finally revealed to Equestria, and were met with pretty good results.