Chapter 1
#2 of Mage's Cold War
This is another short iteration of the crossposted story from fanfiction. At this point the story had stopped being viewed very much so I got a bit discouraged.
"By the time this rare footage of the Gryfalcon was shot" The deep voice of the video's narrator said as Chris and Skandranon watched the TV in empty briefing room, sans the tervardi and gryphon "The project had already been abandoned and the air trials were a mere formality" The TV showed video that was clearly shot on poorly preserved film, dust and scratches made the already shaky picture that much worse, but it showed a small, very small gryphon doing various aerial maneuvers.
"Wow... lookit her go..." Skan muttered moving closer to the screen, whipping his head toward Chris in anger when the screen turned blue "STOP" in the upper corner. Chris leaned back in his chair and looked confused "So... so explain this all to me again.... The whole how gryphons work thing"
Skan sighed and slumped into one of the chairs designed to allow a gryphon to lay in it "So we're essentially mage constructs... I mean trust me there's definitely some contributions to reproducing but" The two chuckled at that as Chris rolled his eyes "Urtho made us he's not a military contractor or anything... some clever Interpretation of the law we were made into citizens then drafted into service... which if you're smart you then go down and sign up for what you want and here's where we all are... its-"
Chris nodded interrupting Skan slightly, and backed the video up, then pressed play again "Soooo her" He quickly pushed pause and the screen froze on a close up of this mystery gryfalcon "she's different?"
"Yes she is apparently-"
"How do you know it's a girl anyway?" Chris interrupted
"You know" Skan smirked "It's the colors... she's not even painted... females are typically pretty bland colored" Aside from the required "US AIR FORCE" painting on her body and wings she was pretty plainly colored "But that HP Fairfield they talk about at the beginning, I looked them up they were trying to compete for a contact to 'replace' us" Skan grumbled he hated when it became clear gryphons were viewed even more so as 'assets' than humans were.
Chris nodded and pressed play "- also had to accommodate the heavy Raytheon flight pack as well as a rifle... although the design called for a light avian body the overall concept resulted in a gryphon the air force considered far to smaller for combat operations" The voice said... Skan was intently watching while Chris smirked at his oddly piqued curiosity " By the time this rare footage of the Gryfalcon was shot the project had already been abandoned and the air trials were a mere formality... this despite several successful test missions with the Gryfalcon"
"So she apparently was found at one of the DEW line radars with dead Makkar? They were THAT close?" Chris said taking a sip of his coffee
Skan nodded "Yeah no shit... she's coming here today to be questioned I need to see what's going on myself, somebody might have some explaining to do."
"Politics they'll get ya every time skanny" Chris said standing and folding his newspaper "I gotta go check up on some fledgelings, I'll be by later to see how it went"