Peng Streamer Plane

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

 **Key Features** | »» Large supply of *"窗花" (Chung Hua)* paper strips»» Many *"红包" (Hong Bao)* anti-matter packs»» *"Surviving the Wasteland"* information pamphlets»» Survival kit deployment system»» Paper cutting kit

## Tactical Analysis

* **The Art of Folding Paper**: Despite its innocent appearance, the Peng is a deadly aircraft capable of both ground attack and area denial. It's shape of a harmless-looking crane, looking like its made out of paper, making it surprisingly stealthy, since most anti-air gunners wouldn't bat an eye at what is either a passing bird or a giant kite.

* **Deadly Origami**: The Peng drops packets of anti-matter on its enemies below. These packets are attached to paper streamers that slow their fall, acting like slowly falling aerial mines. Assuming they don’t hit anything on the way down, the packets will rest on the ground acting as short-lived land mines. The Peng pilots hold enough of these packets to last an entire battle, without the need to fly back to a starbase to reload.

* **Paper is Recyclable**: If the skies become too hot, The Peng can engage its teleport beacon to bring it back to the closest Celestial Beacon for repairs.

* **Paper Airplane**: The Peng has no direct way to engage other aircraft, and will go down in flames if enough flak or SAMs are directed at it, fortunately, its planar shielding gives them some time to escape.

## Background

After the nuclear war that devastated China, which turned the skies black with smoke and the ground green with Jade, any survivors were few and far between; as major cities were the main targets, the handful of survivors left behind were often those who had lived in remote villages, had fled their township when they saw the bombs coming their way or had simply gotten lost, wandering through the hellish landscape in the hope of finding anyone else. Any pockets of survivors were cut off from the rest of the world; travel by land would take weeks over broken and hostile terrain, by which time the fallout would have finally reached them, and destroyed anyone living there.

Travel by river was not a plausible solution, due to radioactive water killing anyone foolish enough to travel along it, several rivers having literally dried up from the heat of the atomic war, or villages simply not being near a major river. Finally, teleportation can only work if a point has been designated; randomly teleporting troops across an entire country without a good idea of the location needed would hardly be a good proposition, as half of the groups would land in a useless and deadly area, and the other half would land in several pieces over a three-kilometer radius.

Clearly, searching for survivors by air was the only plausible solution. The only problem was that no existing design was acceptable for the role. Using any traditional military aircraft would cause the survivors to flee, fearing that their area would become the next smoking atomic crater, and villagers had learned to hide when helicopters flew past to avoid becoming collateral damage in the previous battles. What was required was an airborne vehicle that was not a helicopter and, at first glance at least, was obviously not a military vehicle. To this end, many designs were undertaken, and after several models, one was chosen as the best to fit the criteria required. The resultant ornithopter was designed to be non-threatening and aesthetically pleasing; it did not resemble an airplane so much as a sculpture or a paper cutting of an origami crane, made entirely out of the same givers that make the Bird Of Preys wings around an aluminium frame. It could fly for long durations without having to land, helping in the search for survivors.

It had a large cargo hold for storage, and an efficient deployment system to drop leaflets detailing survival information, signaling devices, maps to safe locations, and Ge Gai counters to those it came across in its patrols. Finally, to send a message to those who saw it that this was not coming to kill them, the new aircraft had two characters in large, friendly writing written on it, which gave it its name: 朋 友. Friend.

Of course, the Atomic Kingdom also noted another useful niche for the Peng in their army. They had recently developed small 'packages' of antimatter, small enough to be dropped en masse on an area, but currently had no way to do so. The Peng's delivery system for its survival equipment was perfect for the job. In fact, Peng fitted this secondary role so well that the only change made to the idea was adding colourful paper 'streamers' to the antimatter packages and colouring said packages bright red to make them easier to see after a squad of clones didn't notice the packages and were unexpectedly dissolved. Naming the strips 窗花 after the paper cutting the Peng resembled, and the antimatter packages 红包 after a New Year's red envelope, the Peng was cleared for military duty as well.

The Peng has served both roles with incredible effectiveness, saving large amounts of refugees one moment and causing large enemy casualties the next. In fact, it is not uncommon nowadays for a Peng to finish patrol, teleport back home, do a quick engine check, and immediately fly back into battle with only a minute's delay to mark its dual nature.