"Bam!" said the lady! [Closed]

[Jiang Winters]

The TIE reappeared, angling for an attack on Romeo's firehawk. It was out of effective range once again - no surprise there - but she cut thrusters and turned her fighter to face it regardless, allowing the craft to strafe sideways at low speed through the relatively open alley in the asteroid belt she'd been flying through. Despite being well out of effective range, it opened fire with all six of its guns. The feline rolled her eyes and gently tapped the vertical thrusters; the Firehawk slid neatly beneath the barrage.

She locked onto the TIE with her missiles but didn't fire yet - instead, she dodged his second burst of laser fire as he closed the distance, then opened up with her own cannon. The 35MM gauss gatling cannon spat a column of fiery doom at the TIE. She walked the fire back and forth just a tad; barely enough to scatter the 100-round burst in front of the TIE, making it more difficult to dodge.

However, it's purpose wasn't to kill, but rather, to distract. As she fired, she loosed off two missiles - one from the left pod, one from the right. The high-velocity, high-maneuverability missiles streaked out of their launch pods and went hurtling towards the TIE. If she was right and he was busy dodging cannon shells, then he might be a bit too distracted to notice the incoming missiles until they were right on top of him.

As the missiles whipped on ahead, she nudged the thrusters forward to half and began advancing on the TIE. If he was forced to double back, she wanted to get right on his tail.

[Only two missiles left. Where's a gundam-style micro-missile pod when I need it? >_>]

 

[Lavi]

((Funnels OP!!!))

The Firehawk performed a tight u-turn and opened up with its cannon. He could clearly see the muzzle flashing, but he wasn't hit... yet, at least. Instead of chancing the bullets, He slammed the throttle to max and sped forward. He heard pinging noises of metal on metal, figuring that some of the rounds were hitting his panels. Instead of bringing the Firehawk within his crosshairs, the pilot kept pushing forward, aiming to shoot past the Firehawk to relative safety. His warning system was whining like crazy, though he couldn't tell that the other fired two missiles rather than one.

The first one, he easily dodged, due to his speed and the angle of attack working against the missile, though it didn't occur to him that his warning system was still sounding that another missile was tracking him. The second one didn't hit him because of the angle of attack, like the first one, though it exploded near his fighter, rocking the interceptor. There was some notable structural damage, namely his right panel's side cannons were disabled, though it was possible to return to base.

The pilot grimaced at the damage report: he had not been damaged this severely for a long time; his recent experiences with a partially disabled TIE Interceptor was limited exclusively to combat simulators.

"Not bad," he murmured. Strafing on virtually no thrust was suicide in a typical dogfight with multiple ships, but in the rare one-on-one fight: he didn't expect it at all.

The TIE Interceptor shot past the Firehawk without further damage and the pilot immediately cut back on the thrust. He applied brakes in order to circle around the Firehawk and throw off its attempt to give chase, maintaining moderate speed to keep the other fighter from getting an easy shot off with the cannon.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Romeo wasn't finished with that TIE - not by a longshot. She'd played it by the books so far, but now it was time for her Firehawk to spread its wings and show that TIE what it was truly made of.

She slightly rolled the craft so that the cockpit was facing the direction the TIE had passed her in, then kicked the thrust-vectoring main drives to max output for a split-second and tilted them to their fullest extent; the craft flipped around in a heartbeat, now facing the TIE as it peeled away in a brake-turn, apparently intended to throw her off.

The Kushari pilot put the engine output to fifty percent and pulled back on the stick, using her maneuvering thrusters to match the TIE's course. Though bigger and more heavily armed, the Firehawk's unique thrust vectoring system and extensive network of thrusters gave it incredible agility, though it paid dearly for it as it lacked a hyperdrive or shield generator, sacrificing both for increased power generating capacity. This too was a design defect, as attacked from the top-down it had presented a wide, easy-to-hit target compared to a TIE or X-Wing, though front-on and rear-on it presented a thin profile.

The point of the matter was simple; taking full advantage of her craft's maneuverability and power generation, along with its previously stationary position which would allow her to dance about in place with ease, she was able to turn and move into pursuit of the TIE.

While she wasn't able to get a gun lock quite yet, she managed to acquire a lock with her missiles. She did not, however, fire; this was a battle of maneuvers. She was guaranteed to miss, not hit, if she fired now. She needed to tail him long enough to get on his six again and light him up. She couldn't do that now, not mere seconds after pulling in behind him.

 

[Lavi]

He could hear himself breathing heavily. This pilot got him real good with that missile, and now the fighter was tight on his six. He could clearly see the Firehawk's thin silhouette in his scopes and he was running out of maneuvers to get the jump on the Firehawk pilot.

Maintaining moderate speed, the TIE pilot performed a roll, pulling back on the yoke until his fighter was upright again. In doing so, the Interceptor dropped down to a lower planar level than the Firehawk. He turned sharply, seeking refuge at one of the nearby asteroids so that the reflecting light from the system's star could throw off the Firehawk's missile guidance system. He pushed the throttle forward, reducing the time he would be vulnerable in gun range and from missile lock, which he knew was on him with that nagging alarm.