The pieces of my puzzle.

Twenty five.

(Azara's POV)

It was quite chaotic.

Missiles, flares and bullets were flying everywhere. Everyone was shouting warnings and directions. And the tension was high.

I flew straight into the middle of the chaos and joined my friends in their fight.

"Phoenix! Missile, 3 o'clock. Break left!" I shouted as a missile headed for her.

"Breaking left!" She confirmed and avoided the missile.

A bogey was heading for me and it launched a missile. I intercepted it with my flares and shot at the enemy plane.

A few shots had hit but they had managed to avoid the rest of the flares. The plane came around and shot at me again and I avoided the bullets.

And for a moment it was all a blur of movement, voices and flares.

Suddenly there was a missile that was headed straight for me but I couldn't get out of the way.

I prepared myself for the impact. I closed my eyes and shielded my head. But the blast never came.

"You okay?" Asked a voice that I was very relieved to hear.

I looked up and saw Rooster leveled out next to me. "What the Hell happened? You didn't confirm your takeoff!" I asked.

"My radio was malfunctioning. But I'm ok. Are you?" He said.

"As ok as I can be with internal bleeding. It hurts like hell but I'll live." I replied.

Another bogey came at me. I shot my guns at him and with the help of Rooster we shot down the plane.

I sighed in relief as I looked around and saw that we were free of bogeys for now.
That was until I started to feel nauseous again.

The pain in my stomach area intensified and my vision blacked in and out.

"Guys..I don't feel great." I told them. Struggling to control my jet because of my vision.

"O-k...shhhhujnzk." Was all we heard from Rooster's radio. "I'm ha-njcdfshhh-some....."

"It's ok Rooster. We can't hear you." I said. He did say that his radio was malfunctioning.

I switched my radio to the channel that would broadcast back to base. Were Admiral Simpson and my dad were monitoring us.

"Control, this is Hellfire." I called in.

It took a second before a response came through. "Hellfire this is control, please send your message."

It took me a moment to get my vision clear enough to be able to talk. "Control, the mission is a success so far but Rooster has some issues with his radio and I am in need of medical assistance." I answered through gritted teeth, trying not to let the pain show in my voice.

I had just ignored it until now because I didn't want it to be a distraction. But now the pain came to a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore.

"There is a ship a few minutes away from you that you can land on." They responded.

"Affirmative." I nodded to myself.