The Remnant Theater (RWBY x Azur Lane)

Paths

The doubles rounds had ended in the Vytal Festival Tournament. Eight individuals moved on to the Finals. The contenders included Yang, Sun, Pyrrha, Penny, Coco and three others. The first match up tonight would be Yang facing off against their senior class men.

While this was normally cause for excitement for Ruby, she was currently finding a different form of excitement. She was learning about the joys of being in flight, specifically flying with herself at the controls. Ruby was sitting in the cockpit of an SBD-3 Dauntless dive bomber. The great thing about Azur Lane was that the women could produce airships like this at will. They called them aircraft, airplanes or just planes actually.

Ruby had the fortune of Enterprise being the one to launch her and control the aircraft in the skies over the sea off the Vale coastline, only relinquishing it to Ruby when  she was at a sufficient altitude. The roar of the plane's engine was deafening, especially if the cockpit canopy was open. Closing it helped. She did not have a gunner. Neither Weiss nor Blake found that part appealing for their own reasons. Yang on the other hand wanted to be fully prepared for her fight.

Now on the seas outside Vale, Ruby gently pushed the stick left, banking the plane. She could look out the window and see the carriers of Eagle Union and their friends below. Too bad she did not have a legit bomb or practice target. Dive bombing for real would have been a thrill. It took her a while to get used to how it operated. Not unlike Crescent Rose, Ruby needed to use her full body to control the plane effectively. Hands and arms operated the stick and throttle. Her feet controlled the yaw. She had to swivel her head to look around.

Doing that last one drew her attention to two different objects. They were planes, but painted white with red markings. Each was flying rather erratically. The closer one had fixed landing gear and seating for two as well. Nora was the one flying that D3A Val after much pleading and poor Ren had to be flying backseat.

The other plane had retracted gear and a single man cockpit and it wobbled for a different reason. Jaune was the one in the seat of the A6M2 Zero from Akagi. His nervous flying was not helping him play down the Vomit Boy moniker. Ruby had seen his plane bank or roll inverted and his stomach contents went flying out of the opened canopy.

"Is everything okay up there Commander?" Enterprise asked through the radio.

"Yeah." Ruby answered.

"Not that it's a problem, but are ya gonna just keep flying straight?" Hornet asked. "Why not do a practice dive?"

"Ummmmm."

"Just roll over, dive with your dive brakes out, pull out when the altimeter says 1500 feet." Hornet urged.

Ruby was spurred on to do so. She pushed the stick left and let the Dauntless invert, pulled back and then rolled the plane back, putting it into a dive. The wind howled outside while she pulled the lever to deploy the the dive brakes. The plane slowed and Ruby temporarily lurched forward. She looked through the sight and saw the water below, then she looked at what Enterprise called an altimeter. She put it best by saying zero was the level of the water. So Ruby watched carefully as the altimeter spun backwards. Five thousand. Four thousand. Three thousand. Two thousand. Fifteen hundred!

Ruby pulled the joystick into her stomach. She felt an enormous weight press down on her. The outer perimeter of her vision began to become black. This was what was called G forces. She had experienced it to a smaller degree in combat with Crescent Rose. This was something else. Only when the sea was even with the horizon did she release pressure on the stick.

"Dive brakes Commander." Enterprise reminded her. Ruby promptly retracted them back, breathing heavily from her dive. She was not too far off the water. She pulled back to regain altitude, and gained a newfound respect for the pilots of dive bombers. She was very nervously eyeing the instruments and every instinct was telling her to pull out through the dive.