Transcript:Drag Racer

This page contains a transcript of "Drag Racer", the first cutscene in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. It immediately plays upon starting a new campaign run.

Transcript
Avril Mead (narrating): Does the color of the sky mean anything special to you? It does to me. A hell of a lot. When I close my eyes, the sky in my dreams... is a deep, dark blue. Pilots've been in my family for four generations. Flying's in my DNA. Even so, my Grandpa didn't want me joining the Air Force. He lost faith in the Osean Air Defense the day my dad died in battle.

Avril's grandfather (narrating): Y'know, Avie... I wish you could see what it's like up there. Cruising above the clouds. The dark blue of the stratosphere. Nothing beats being at the controls and seeing it from the cockpit. Look here...

Avril (narrating): Gramps tossed a magazine over to me with an article. "Unmanned fighters are no longer a dream," it read. "Pilots taking to the skies will soon be a distant memory."

Avril's grandfather (narrating): I don't see anything good comin' from that.

Avril (narrating): Know what? Lying smack-dab in the middle of the desert west of here, there's a bunch of planes from the last war. Some of 'em have been mothballed, but most of 'em are just rusted piles of junk waiting to be scrapped. Gramps was really good friends with the super there, so he got to take whatever he wanted, no questions asked! That's how we got the parts to build our own plane. Now, when I say "we," I mean me, my grandpa and his old war buddies. I cut my teeth working with those geezers. They taught me their skills and some dirty jokes. But with their aging eyeballs and whatnot, I ended up having to do most of the work myself. I was at the airstrip, doing some flight training when I saw it... ...a prototype drone. It wasn't much of a plane. More of a trash can with wings.

Avril's grandfather (narrating): Laugh at it all you want, kid. But technology's always changing. If you don't keep up with it, it'll leave your ass behind.

Avril (narrating): It took six years and eight months to get that engine running. And it took us another year and a half after that, to finally get the balance of the airframe just right. I'd gone from being a little girl to... Well, still a girl, just older. But now... I was all alone. (She sighs.) ...Wherever the souls of my Gramps and his pals are flying, I hope it's peaceful. Then finally... I was ready to break the sound barrier! All this plane could do was take off, accelerate and fly up. So I flew up. Straight up. Through the clouds. Higher into the sky. Dark blue. I could almost touch it. Then I saw Osea's fighters. They were tailing something. A drone. They were going full-out, chasing that thing. Doing thirty Gs, at least. Damn, I've never seen anything move that fast. It had a rose painted on it. The Erusean emblem. But that country's a whole continent away from here!

Avril: Crap. I should've put an IFF system in this piece of junk. Should've built it to turn too!