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Perfect Vision
🕑 Added 2017-07-01 12:53:12 +0000 UTC Major Vanessa Hajek was sixteen when the Nazis rolled into her small village near the Stone Mountains; when relatives from nearby towns later found her people lying in a common grave and the village a smouldering ruin, she was feared dead. So the first surprise was when she came strolling down from the mountains a good three years later, taciturn and covered with scratches, but otherwise unharmed.The second surprise was the dragon who descended the mountain with her-- Noir, a Mountain Gyrwyrm. A hardy and proud species, they scrupulously avoid humans, owing to centuries of villagers trying to exterminate them for making off with their sheep. Gyrwyrms, when not gliding high above on mountain thermals, are incredibly difficult to spot on the ground, owing to their limited, but still impressive, camouflage ability allowing them to blend incredibly well with their cliff side and rocky habitats. Face-to-face contact with one was a rarity, as they are likely, by both inclination and capability, to avoid humans altogether.
Nevertheless, the pair descended the mountain together-- the girl and her dragon companion, a serpentine shadow hissing at passers-by. No one ever found out whether the pair knew each other and somehow forged a bond before she escaped to the mountain, while she was guarding her family's flocks, or whether the dragon somehow took pity on the skinny orphan girl alone on the mountain and decided to adopt her. Noir tended to snarl at those brave enough to approach, and the girl wasn't much more welcoming of questions about her time in the wilderness.
Eventually the pair made it to France, and then across the Channel to Britain, where they immediately volunteered for the British Commandos. Assigned to the 11th Special Air Service (SAS) Battalion, they were attached to Agamemnon's Wing as assassins and saboteurs.
The duo were fierce, unyielding and frighteningly effective in their roles. While he was too small to actually carry her behind enemy lines, Noir was small enough to piggyback on a bomber dragon's back. And while not a powerful flyer, with long wings well-suited to gliding on updrafts rather than powerful beating, he did make an excellent modified parachute when she jumped at altitude while harnessed to him.
On the ground, Noir became a living sniper's nest and spotter combo, camouflaging her with his wing draped over her and using his incredible vision to call out targets and threats. For her part, Vanessa's childhood in the forests and fields of rural Czechoslovakia prepared her to be a peerless marksman, and her trauma instilled in her a seemingly unquenchable drive to kill Nazis. A shot echoing out from the direction of foothills or mountains, followed by the discovery of a dead Nazi officer, soon became known to announce the arrival of "The Wraith," as the duo became known, and signaled the start of days of terror for German officers, officials, and scientists.
So driven by bloodlust and so confident in their ability to avoid detection were the pair, that they usually lingered in the area after their primary target was eliminated, signaling for extraction only after the Major ran out of ammo.
