#[ and pulled it through the Garganta to Okayama ]

[midnightactual]

With the skin of her creatively-acquired F-14A finally sanded down—at last free of its incriminating identifying IRIAF markings—and opened up for inspection, Yoruichi was hard at work fixing up and replacing these and those structural airframe parts which had been just as creatively-maintained and replaced over the last few decades.

A remix of Storm Eagle blared on loop through the Marubeni Aerospace hangar she'd rented at Okayama Airport. It was difficult to get a private hangar big enough to accommodate a rather heavy military fighter pretty much anywhere in the world, but particularly so in Japan. She'd had to settle for this fairly obscure facility just over 500 kilometers from home.

She was eventually going to have to pull the original TF30-P-414A engines out and replace them with the F110-GE-129s she'd modified to fit the F110-GE-400 sizing specs, swap the Iranian-made radar for an AN/APG-82(V)1, completely redo the avionics and cockpit, and more besides. It was going to be a lot of work to get it up to modern standards... In due time it would be a Super Tomcat of Theseus—even more than it already was—and might be best called an F-14T, though it wouldn't really be a military aircraft anymore.

But right now, she first wanted it structurally sound and repainted. That would be good motivation for all the rest...