While hovering, Riku's thumb idly hovered over the weapons trigger not out of bravado, but because habit had taught him to be ready for the thinest thread of threat. The Ka-50 sat in the sky like a black shark carved against the moon. Below, the resort's lights crawled away, a skein of steel and shadow.
Then the HUD chirped a small, clinical tone that cut through the roar of the turbines like a needle. A diamond icon winked red in the corner of his vision. TEXT: TARGET LOCKED SOURCE: GROUND.
Riku's skin went cold. He checked the readouts: azimuth, bearing, range. The green numbers blinked and then froze range tightening, lock confirmed. The targeting computer overlaid a thin, wavering box on the live camera feed, then spiked into a steady red reticle.
Not knowing where the shot would come from was worse than knowing. He flicked the night-vision toggle.
The city inverted beneath him blacks became ghostly greens, darker shapes punched out from the lighter pavement. On the roof of the resort, five bodies knelt like a crude firing line. Tripods, tubes the silhouette of a launcher. Moonlight glinted across a bare shoulder; a face turned up toward him and, for one suspended heartbeat, Riku met human eyes. Then those eyes narrowed with the hard, animal focus of people who had found their place amid collapse: they were aiming.
"LMAT," he breathed. The HUD confirmed the class: Type 01 LMAT man-portable anti-tank/air launcher. The launcher crew was stabilizing the tube, an assistant feeding the sighting data into a battered fire-control box. The green crosshair in Riku's helmet winked as their rangefinder locked onto his position.
The Ka-50 shuddered as the targeting solution tightened. On the control panel, a new warning blared a harsh pulse of red and an earth-shaking electronic shriek. Riku's hands moved of their own accord, reflex and the System's lessons knitting together. "Evasive," he said to himself.
He didn't dive straight away; the Black Shark didn't need to. Instead he executed a textbook counter: hard, immediate lateral acceleration to break the line-of-sight and spoil the launch geometry. The twin-rotor howled as he banked, coaxial blades biting, the fuselage listing into a violent corkscrew. Downwash tore at the rooftop below, sending loose tar paper and a cluster of terrified onlookers scattering.
On the rooftop, someone pulled a firing lanyard. The launcher coughed a dull mechanical tone. For a second the world slowed: the silhouette of a missile arcing from the tube, flame licking its tail as it slipped free into night. The seeker dome on the missile's nose caught a reflection the last thing it would see before its sensors swiveled toward the Ka-50.
Riku slammed the flare-release with the heel of his hand. Two panels in the fuselage popped open. A pair of orange suns detonated into the air behind him, bright as miniature supernovas. The flares bloomed, screaming from the dispenser in a trail of incandescent confetti. Heat signatures spiked on the HUD and then fractured; the missile's seeker flicked briefly indecisive then slaved onto the flares' hotter, nearer plumes.
He fed the control stick a furious string of inputs: dive, yaw, half-roll, an angry counter-turn that threw his heat signature off the missile's best path. The Black Shark shuddered, every vibration amplified by his already raw nerves. He felt, more than saw, the missile track on the flank of the flare cluster, a small dot licking across his display as it abandoned the aircraft and dove toward the distraction.
A thunderclap detonated, distant but real the missile blew itself against the rooftop two blocks back, throwing up a column of flame and a rain of glass. The shockwave slapped the Ka-50.
"The fuck they fired on me?!" Riku cursed, spitting the words into the roar of the rotors. His hands were already moving, dragging the reticle of the Ka-50's targeting system across the rooftop where the LMAT crew had dared to challenge him.
The Shipunov 30mm cannon whirred to life beneath the fuselage, its motor a low growl that vibrated through the cockpit floor. Riku squeezed the trigger. The cannon barked, a violent stream of fire that chewed the rooftop apart. Concrete burst into plumes of dust, tar peeled back in jagged scars, and the LMAT launcher itself shattered under the storm.
The men who had moments earlier knelt in confidence were flung like ragdolls. One disappeared in a burst of red mist, another tumbled screaming over the edge before being silenced by the pavement below. The others crumpled, broken, their weapons torn from their hands.
"Think you can take me down with a toy?!" Riku shouted, voice raw with fury. He wasn't just shooting to kill he was making a point. The Black Shark wasn't prey. It was a predator.
He switched to the rocket pods, thumb pressing the release. A pair of S-8 rockets streaked out, tails blazing bright against the night sky. They slammed into the far corner of the roof, ripping apart a group of men scrambling for cover. The blast tore a hole in the structure, smoke and fire belching upward as debris rained into the streets below.
The survivors screamed, their cries lost in the thunder of the Ka-50's rotors. Riku caught glimpses of them through the green tint of night vision silhouettes crawling, dragging themselves across the ruins of what had once been their stronghold. He felt no pity. They had dared to fire on him. They had dared to touch Hana, Suzune, Ichika, and Miko. For that, there was no mercy.
He thumbed the cannon back online and finished the job. Short bursts, precise, controlled. Each round tore through flesh and concrete until nothing moved on the rooftop but smoke and flame.
Riku exhaled hard, chest heaving. The resort below was in chaos, men shouting, alarms blaring, and yet the Ka-50 hung above it all, unmoved, untouchable. His HUD still tracked movement deeper in the building, heat signatures clustered like rats.
His grip on the cyclic tightened. "You picked the wrong people to mess with," he muttered, eyes narrowing.