Disclaimer: I don't own either of the two intellectual properties that have been melded into one here today, those being Macross Frontier and the Fate Stay/Night franchises, and certainly don't have the intent to make money of this piece of work, only the intent to make some people smile.


As I fell under the body weight of whoever jumped me, I twisted. My mind was already prepared for the Tracing and it took barely a moments effort to push the odo from my circuits into the form of Kanshou and Bakuya, the twin falchions that would form the basis of my counterattack. Somewhat fortunately for all parties involved, I managed to get a glance at my attacker just before the Tracing was ready to materialise, and I let it drop. Squad Commander Ozma and myself then finished the arc we were tracing to the floor and landed with a heavy thump.

I saw a flash of relief slide over Ozma's face, which was quickly replaced as the Squad Commander looked away to his left guiltily. Over the man's shoulder I could see the green haired girl's eyes widen in shock. "Brother!" she exclaimer, pitching her voice an octave higher from when she was speaking to me earlier. "What are you doing?"

As Ozma disentangled himself from the human knot we had become on the floor, he mouthed two words to me - Shut up. Now that he was here as a witness I had no intention to begin an interrogation of this girl who claimed to be his sister, so I decided to play it out according to Ozma's scenario.

"Oh hey Ranka, you're here early," Ozma said cheerily. For some reason I couldn't fathom, the man was sweating. Whatever was going on, Ozma was definitely acting like a kid caught with his hand in the figurative biscuit tin.

"Yeah, Nanase said she had to do some family stuff after work, so we couldn't go the mall. Who's this guy?"

And with that, the accusing index finger was flung in my direction again. Ozma glanced to me then back to his sister. The Squad Commander's actions and words had all but confirmed it for me: the girl was actually his sister.

"This is Shirou Emiya, the new pilot in Michel and Luca's squadron," he explained. Odd that he wouldn't label it just as his squadron. "I've got to quickly chat to him about his, uh, taxes. Isn't that right Shirou?" he continued on. There was something very odd going on here I deduced. For starters, Human Resources had already dealt with my payroll and taxes (My pay was being shuffled into a new account that I had set up especially for my job. Money was of no particular importance to me anyway). Secondly, he was tip-toeing around his sister and clearly trying to get us away before I could open my mouth and I guess somehow put my foot in it.

I nodded.

"Right," continued the greying man, clearly forcing his tone into some semblance of cheeriness. "So when I finally saw Shirou, I ran to catch up to him and tripped!"

Okay, this was clearly getting out to the very far end of believable, and it looked as though the green haired girl wasn't having a bar of it, judging by the roll of her eyes the minute Ozma looked away. I decided to end the farce.

"Alright, let's get this done quickly Squa-" I began and was quickly cut off as Ozma shot me a death glare, forcibly grabbed my arm and turned us very quickly down a corridor. "Just wait there for a few minutes Ranka," he called over his shoulder, "this won't take long!"

Just personally, I didn't think Ozma's scenario was planned out very well.

We left the not very amused Ranka in the common area. Ozma had dropped my arm and as soon as we were out of earshot he began checking out the rooms we were walking past. At the first empty one, he keyed the door and we let ourselves in to a bit of unused office space. I immediately turned around and eyed Ozma. "What was that about?" I asked with a decent slathering of curiosity.

To his credit, the man managed to look a little bit sheepish. "It's a bit of a complicated story that I don't really have time to get into now, seeing as I'm apparently going to have to spin some damage control pretty soon," he replied, scratching the back of his head. "But the important thing to remember is that Ranka thinks I'm here working the personnel department. She'll react very badly if she finds out I'm still in the cockpit."

"How badly?" I asked, my curiosity well and truly piqued. Most kids with family in the military understood what was going on to some degree, so I found it odd that Ozma had to go to these lengths to keep his true occupation hidden from her. Ozma stomped down on further lines of enquiry however.

"Badly enough for me to order you to act as though I'm not a flyboy when she's around, until further notice."

I straightened up and snapped a salute. "Yes sir!" I shot back. Must be pretty serious then.

Ozma checked his watch and sighed. "I promise I'll explain it at a better time, but for now I've gotta leave you. I'll have to catch up with you for a debriefing later, but you'd better not keep Luca waiting too long," he told me. I nodded in reply and he walked out the door. "See you later," he said as he waved over his shoulder. I was coming to think that Ozma never actually said goodbye with his face to a person, what with the amount of times I'd seen him turn around before waving in the past ten days. I wandered out the door after him and headed out to find Luca.


Over the next few days I was grounded again as my ground crew worked on both tuning up the Messiah and working on switching the cockpit modules, from the standard single seater to the dual seater. The second seat in the dual seater module took up the space required for the computers for the slave control system, basically making the dual seater less useful in combat thanks to the loss of the slave system. The trade off was fairly straightforward though; the dual seater allowed for more advanced training than the simulators could provide, and also letting us run V.I.P. escorts in the Messiah.

It took them a day to practice the switch, and less than a day to put the single seat cockpit back in. By the time the Friday evening rolled around, I found myself chatting with Robbs at the end of our shifts, thoroughly sick of simulators. Apparently the dual seat cockpit was currently sitting in my unit, the last change occurring to demonstrate the process to the other maintenance crews, and they left it in there because it was an hour from knock off time.

"So that's how she stands at the moment," Robbs confirmed, and I nodded. My Messiah was apparently in good shape and would be moved to active deployment on Monday, as soon as the the single seat cockpit had been refitted.

"Thanks for the update," I replied cordially, "be seeing you around." I finished, with the intent to turn around and head back to the barracks. It seemed like there was nothing else to do, so I figured I might try get a little more research done on my terminal. I'd almost cleared the majority of the S.M.S. as being in the state I like to call 'not-going-to-spontaneously-stab-me-in-the-back', so I figured I could knock over a few more profiles in the evening. Robbs had obviously pre-empted my actions, because he already launched into his next sentence before I'd rotated more than five degrees.

"Hey Shirou, we're heading out for a few drinks after this, want to come?"

I stopped. Maybe I could afford to start scouting out Frontier for information and informants – start building an information gathering network, so to speak. As cliché as it is, bars and pubs tended to be the right place to begin – my ability to find out anything that was happening in Eden within half an hour began with simply meeting the right person in the Exchange bar in Capital City. There was also the chance for me to feel out some of the staff in person, rather than as information on a holo.

"Who's 'we'?" I asked cautiously. No point in wasting time if there were three or four people making a showing.

"Pretty much all the ace squadron maintenance crew rocks up for an hour or so, then the guys with families tend to filter out slowly after that," he informed me. I nodded, tallying up the numbers in my head. Seven to eight people per unit, times three Queadluuns and four VFs...

"Do you guys just hire out a bar or something?" I asked, pitching my tone up to inflect a small amount of disbelief. That seems like an awfully large amount of people to inflict on any establishment early in the evening. Robbs shrugged as though to imply it wasn't that big of a deal.

"We have the back bar at O'Malley's for happy hour every Friday – we get a bit of privacy to enjoy ourselves and they make a better than expected profit for early Friday evenings, it's win-win."

I nodded. O'Malley's was an Irish pub about two blocks away – the closest bar to headquarters. "Let me change," I told him, "and I'll be right there."

And so it was that twenty minutes later I found myself in civvies, pushing through several holo's touting the schedule for Sheryl Nome's tour, which apparently started tomorrow afternoon at the event stadium on the border of Griffith Park and the Shibuya district. Eventually the holo's got the picture and buggered off so I passed through towards the back bar, where I was greeted by a chorus of cheers.

Huh. Looks like they beat me here.

I was quickly outfitted with a jug of beer and a glass, which I filled with fifty years of practised ease. I easily integrated myself into the group next my maintenance crew. Although the bar seemed to be split into a number of groups, there seemed to be no unifying factor that put individual people in whatever group – a sign of a well integrated crew. I had slid myself in next to Robbs, seeing as he was the one who invited me, and was making small talk when a distinctly female voice boomed in from the entrance.

"Couldn't wait for me, could you guys?"

The voice would definitely not win any singing awards – although it was definitely feminine, it was also definitely full of gravel. I was facing away from the door, so in the spirit of friendly inquisition I turned my head and raised an eyebrow at Robbs. He shot me amused grin and went back to his beer, so I turned my head the rest of the way around to take size of the newcomer. Or newcomers, as it turned out.

Framing the doorway was a medium sized woman, wearing an S.M.S. jacket over jeans and a light shirt. Two distinct features labelled her as at least part Meltran – her bright red hair (Meltran's tended to come with distinctly non-human hair colours, and that hair was red all the way to the roots) and the pointy ears. She dominated the scene, hands on hips, looking around the bar with a smile on her face. Even though we hadn't met each other, thanks to my constant digging through S.M.S. files I recognised her as a micronized Ramaria Rerenia, one third of the Pixie squadron, our elite Queadluun squad.

Behind her, looking a lot less comfortable, was a taller Meltran. Again, her species was given away by the pointy ears and bright hair colour (pink, in this instance). Her stance was hunched and one hand appeared to be grasping the other behind her back. It was hard to gauge what the source of her discomfort was, but by the way she was trying to hide behind the shorter pilot, I quickly guessed that she had been dragged along by Ramaria. Going from the files I'd already checked through, this one appeared to be Nene Rora, which would bring the Pixie squadron representation at this bar to two thirds of the total.

Ramaria, apparently satisfied she had all the attention she was likely to get, continued. "Look at who I finally convinced to come along," she boasted, and stepped aside to more better reveal Nene. That declaration got the S.M.S. members who had yet to shower their attention on the new arrivals to turn around, and I observed a slightly incredulous widening of the eyes from Robbs as he swung around and saw Nene standing there.

The poor girl was apparently not used to being the centre of attention and wilted under the pressure, a rosy red creeping in around her face, before ducking back behind Ramaria without saying a word. There was a pause for a few seconds, then abruptly the bar broke into a rambunctuous cheer. Ramaria, grinning like a cat, picked a random table and dragged her pink haired victim up to it. I left the machinations of the Pixie squadron pair to raise an eyebrow at Robbs.

"What's all that about?" I asked, bringing my glass up to my mouth.

"A few guys in the Pixie crews were trying to get Nene to come join us a while back. When Ramaria caught wind of the idea she made a bet that she could get her to come before her crew could. Looks like she's get the cash to be buying a few drinks tonight," the maintenance chief replied sagely.

"Do the other pilots come here a lot?" I questioned him, mostly out of curiosity. Whether they did or not really didn't overlap with tonight's goals in the explicit sense, but it was a way to keep the conversation flowing.

"Not really," Robbs said, raising a closed fist and rolling his eyes skywards in thought. "Mikhail and Luca are under-age," he stated as he raised two fingers, "Klan usually takes classes on Friday nights," he continued, raising another finger roofwards, "and the Squad Commander always goes home to take care of his sister," the middle aged man concluded, raising one final finger. Klan was the leader of the Pixie squadron, their missing member tonight. A part time university student, she struck me as a bit of an idealist when Ozma introduced us earlier in the week, which I thought an odd trait for her position. I'd already checked her profile out and there was nothing else worth noting there, so maybe she was just naturally skilled.

The conversation and drinking continued for several hours, by which time the S.M.S. group had spilled out into the other areas of the bar. I had tried striking up a conversation with a shady character nursing a beer in the corner, but that turned out to be a dead end – I dropped enough subtle hints regarding my desire for information but this guy didn't pick up on any of them, instead complaining over and over about his wife.

There were considerably less people with us than when we started, and the groups slowly started to shrink and amalgamate until the red headed Meltran barged in next to me, interrupting a quiet conversation (well, more like a gentle interrogation) I was having with one of Luca's crew. I turned around to see two crew heading out the door and the remainder of their group coming to join ours, making it the only S.M.S. group left in the bar, which had now become comfortably full of civilians.

"So," she began without preamble, "you're the new Skull squadron pilot, yes? Shirou Emiya?"

Her voice had somehow managed to go downhill during the evening, turning from gravel to boulders. She was holding the remains of a jug of beer, and where her glass was was anyone's guess. Nene pulled up beside her, widening the circle of people somewhat and looking considerably more relaxed, presumably due to the alcohol.

I took a sip from my glass and nodded. "Yes, that's right. I believe-" was as far as I got before I got cut off by the red headed Meltran.

"I'm Ramaria Rerenia!" she exclaimed, the smile on her face threatening to split it in two. I flashed a grin back at her. She was so very very sloshed and obviously enjoying it. If I were to guess, if she didn't rein it in soon she'd either end up on the floor or becoming the entertainment for the night. I could go either way on my caring for it – fifty years of experience had taught me that dealing with drunks very much depended on the person drinking. "I'm a pilot in Pixie squadron. And I'm drunk!" she continued, throwing her arms in the arm to emphasise her last statement, and nearly falling off her bar stool in the process.

"I can see that," I noted carefully, taking another sip of beer. I'd been keeping a steady pace most of the night and felt mostly in control of my faculties. At least Ramaria seemed to be a happy drunk. "How'd you manage to get to that state?"

"Dunno!" she told me cheerfully. At least, her expression implied cheer. Her voice didn't bear thinking about. "The guys kept buying me beer, so I kept drinking it. Dunno why they'd buy me beer though!" This was punctuated by her throwing back the remains of her jug and slamming it on the table. From behind her, the pink haired Meltran sidekick looked on with no hint of worry on her face. She looked considerably more in control than her squadmate, so I assumed she was far more moderate with her drinking. Nene reinforced her image as she gave me an apologetic look, presumably for her squadmate. I put a reassuring smile on my face, which caused Nene to break eye contact with me and take a sip out of her glass.

"You know why? It's because they're trying to get into your pants," I replied candidly. A couple of guilty looks appeared on the faces of some of the guys in the group.

"My pants?" she asked quizzically. "Nothing interesting in there." Judging by the reaction of some of the guys earlier, she was clearly unaware of the apparent treasure she was hiding down there. "See," she informed me, as her hand slid down to her belt buckle, "nothing down here at all!" and with that gravelly declaration, she flipped the first button of her fly. In hindsight, I should have seen something like that happening, and fortunately Nene had the presence of mind to grab the very drunken pilot from behind and restrain her from popping any more buttons, accompanied by a squeak of "Ramaria-nee! No!"

Unfortunately for us, this unbalanced Ramaria, who then proceeded to topple over. I considered moving out of the way, but threw away the idea as potentially raising a few questions I'd like to not have answer regarding my enhanced reflexes. Instead I sighed inwardly, made a quick show about panicking and tried to cushion the fall of the two micronized Meltrans to the best of my ability as I was bodily deposited on the floor for the second time this week.

As I was extricating myself from the tangle of bodies on the ground, a bouncer came along and asked the three of us politely to leave. The booming laughter of the remaining maintenance crew followed me and Nene out of the bar as we balanced a snoring (like a buzzsaw) Ramaria between us. While my night was prematurely cut short, I wasn't too worried. I'd managed to clear several more people off my list of potential interferences, which was a win in and of itself.

Even though the walk back to headquarters wasn't long, and despite the fact it was closing in on 2300 hours, we somehow found ourselves surrounded by advertising holos, probably ready to prey on drunk people. Every single one of them had an image of the Galactic Fairy on them, letting me unnecessarily know about just how few tickets were left for her tour. It wasn't that I didn't care about the singing – nearly every event that humanity had stumbled into over the past half century that had the ability to end us as a species seemed to be ended or caused by singing – but the cloyingly insistent nature of the ads was beginning to annoying me.

We'd just turned the last corner which should have given a clear view down the street towards headquarters, but instead ran almost headfirst into a freshly imaged holo.

"Damn it!" I swore. "Just go away already, I don't want to see your concert," I grumbled irritably, and waved away the holo.

"Do you not like like Sheryl Nome?" Asked Nene from the other side of Ramaria. I scratched my head with my hand, annoyed that I let mere holos overwhelm my patience. In my defence, I swear I hadn't seen any holos advertising anything else for the two weeks I'd been on Frontier.

"It's not that," I replied, "just getting a bit sick of seeing nothing but the same advertisements everywhere." Sensing perhaps the pink haired Pixie was looking to say something, I continued to speak. "Are you going to the concert tomorrow?"

After giggling her way through my annoyance at the holos, she replied. "Ah, no. I have tickets to a later concert; I'm going to Island-3 to visit my family tomorrow."

"That's nice," I replied non-committally as we dragged Ramaria through the doors of our headquarters and down towards the barracks.

Apparently the silence was getting to her, as she opened her mouth again. "Onee-sama said Mikhail and Luca are flying stunts for the opening concert. It's a school thing," she offered. I found myself curious on two counts – this was the first I'd heard about Mikhail and Luca flying stunts, and who was 'Onee-sama'?

"By Onee-sama do you mean..." I trailed off, directing a significant look at the snoring Meltran between us. Nene giggled and shook her head.

"No, Klan-onee-sama."

Another point of curiosity – why did Klan merit such a title as opposed to say 'sempai', a more traditional title for a working relationship? I voiced this question out loud and received another giggled response.

"Because Onee-sama is Onee-sama!"

I shook my head at the absurdness of the answer. Maybe she had a few more drinks than I originally thought. No time to probe further though, as we'd pulled up in front of a door that Nene quickly keyed open. I noted both of their names on the door as we walked through, and Nene helped me set Ramaria down on the bottom bunk. We waved our goodbyes and I headed out in the direction of my room, pausing at a vending machine to get a sports drinks to finish before I went to sleep.


With nothing to do the next day, I had wandered down to the barracks common area in order to watch the broadcast of Sheryl's concert. The common area was a medium sized split floor room. A large holo screen dominated one wall, and a bar was dominating another. Placed so to allow people to comfortably watch the holo screen was a large rectangular on the upper floor, and scattered around the lower floor were circular tables. Over the course of the day people had been filtering in, and by the time the concert was due to start there was a healthy dozen or so people in the room, including Ozma and Canaria (who by now I had discovered also doubled as the pilot for the our sole VB-6 Koenig Monster).

Suddenly the holo darkened and the chatter in the room dropped off in anticipation. Sure enough (having seen a few of her shows on holo in the past year), Sheryl managed to open the show with her usual attention grabbing flair, highlighting herself to the accompaniment of a whip crack . "Listen to my song!" she demanded, a mere fraction of a second before Mikhail and his stunt fliers roared down the aisle. The music built up as the EX-gear powered personal fliers reached the stage and burst upwards in a flash of light that illuminated Sheryl on the stage. It wasn't until the Mikhail and Luca's group had corkscrewed to the ceiling that that Sheryl burst into song, beginning with her first number 'Sagittarius - nine pm - don't be late'.

My attention was split between the singing (despite my general lack of knowledge on the topic of music, as far as I could tell, she was quite good) and the acrobatics. Although I couldn't pick Luca or Mikhail out of the group of fliers (Reinforcement of the eyes can only take you so far when limited by the resolution of broadcast. If I were at the live concert it would be a different matter), it wasn't often I knew of someone performing in such a high profile event. I thought it looked a little tame – I definitely knew Mikhail could have been a bit more daring, and Luca too. Just as that thought crossed my mind, I spotted a breakaway flier from the group cut towards the centre of the arena and work into a curved dive. As he did, another of support fliers lost his nerve a little and tried to wobble away, but only succeeded in edging himself into the other guy. My eyes narrowed a bit in concern as control surfaces collided, and sent the poor guy on the dive in a somewhat abortive spiral towards the pink haired songstress.

The camera angle caught the look on Sheryl's face beautifully – it was utter shock. The sound system conveyed a collective gasp from the audience that was echoed around the common room I was in. She stumbled backwards and off the edge of the stage, and the flier who had apparently gotten himself back under control rocketed down after her. I took a quick look around the room and saw nine sets of white knuckles and anxious faces – Ozma was too busy making a cup of coffee to care, and Canaria was looking on with her usual aplomb. Seconds later Sheryl was riding a pilot out from the back of the stage, singing at full volume as though nothing had happened. The speakers in the room emitted a large cheer from the live audience, which evidently caught Ozma by surprise – he swore a bit and turned to look at the holo, a wet jacket sleeve betraying the fact he'd managed to spill coffee over it.

The rest of the song passed without incident, and once Sheryl was safely deposited on stage she launched into her next song with a wink, a sultry grin and a holo suit change. The fliers apparently weren't part of the main entertainment for this number and were just breezing around, providing multiple camera angles for the broadcasters. At least I assumed that was what was occurring, considering whoever had the remote around here was flicking through multiple angles like no-one's business. As the holo flipped onto it's fifth angle, a picture of Ranka Lee appeared on screen before shuffling off again.

"Go back," I instructed to the room in general, and with a muffled click from somewhere behind me the holo switched back to the view of Ranka, causing Ozma to spit-take in his second coffee related incident within five minutes.

"Ranka?" he exclaimed incredulously. He told me he'd gotten tickets for Ranka to go to the show, so I guess he was just surprised to see her being singled out in the crowd. I wasn't as surprised – no doubt the producers were telling any and all cameramen to record any cute young girls enjoying themselves so as to boost their ratings. Canaria turned to Ozma with a sly look on her face but before she could deliver a jibe the light in the room came on and the holo cut broadcast. I leaned back in the chair, not caring one way or the other for the sudden cut in broadcast, but the everyone else in the room began to look around, confusion evident on some faces, curiosity on others.

Within seconds, Bobby (in what I've come to recognise as his serious tone) began to speak, and judging by the echoes coming from the hallway he was was on the shipwide P.A. system. "Request for the deployment of S.M.S. from the President's office. All fighter squadrons scramble. Mission code is Victor-3. Repeat, code Victor-3 has been issued."

That was met with a clattering of chairs as everyone stood up, confusion and curiosity wiped from every face, replaced with a sense of purpose. Code Victor-3 meant one thing, and one thing only. The Vajra had come to Frontier.


Ozma beat me to the hangar, having sent me on a quick errand to get in touch with Mikhail and Luca and get them back here asap. By the time I got there, the Squad Commander's VF-25S was kitted out with an Armoured FAST Pack, and my crew was finishing loading up my bird with a Tornado Pack. Robbs rushed across to the cockpit as I used my EX-gear to boost straight in and begin my abbreviated pre-flight. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mikhail and Luca's units being prepped.

"The Squad Commander told us to kit you up with the Tornado pack," Robbs outlined as he reached earshot of the cockpit. I nodded, distracted by my pre-flight. The Tornado FAST Pack increased the armament of my ride, by means of a rotatable beam cannon mount located behind the cockpit and additional micro-missile launchers on the wings. It was a good choice for heading into a firefight where we were expecting support, in this case by the entire defensive home fleet. My only other choice was the Super FAST Pack, which effectively dropped the beam cannon for additional engine ports, increasing vacuum manoeuvrability. "Also, we obviously don't have time to switch you back to the single seat cockpit, so you're stuck without slave mode on today's deployment," Robbs finished. I'd pretty much finished the abridged pre-flight, so I took the time to reply to that one.

"Thanks," I replied deadpan. "I couldn't tell with the empty seat behind me."

Robbs shot me an amused grin and backed away as the last of the modular pack slipped over the wings. The diagnostic lights came up all green on my HUD and the ground crew waved me an all clear. A small holo of the Squad Commander popped up in the bottom corner of my H.U.D. "Skull Four, are you clear to go?"

"Roger that Skull Leader," I replied as we taxied to the catapult lifts. The wheel clamps locked in and my view changed over the course of twenty seconds from the inside of the hangar to a marvellous view of the galaxy across the bow of the ARMD-L carrier. For a full second I enjoyed the view (the sight of white pinpricks on black from the vantage of vacuum is something that never fails to impress upon me the resilience of the human race, having lived through Space War I and never thinking we'd get here) and then with a slight shudder through the airframe, Ozma and myself left the carrier behind on plumes of nuclear fire. I matched course with the Squad Commander, counting down the distance before we would reach the tagged combat zone we'd received orders to reinforce.

"Trace on," I murmured, allowing odo to fill into four of my circuits. I diverted some out of one into my eyes, Reinforcing in order to improve my vision. Reinforcing like this in space used to mess with my head considerably – due to the vast distances between objects in space, I had to force my eyes to increase their imaging power, rather than focus on sharpness and contrast like I did when I was fighting on foot. It's like looking through a telescope with a one hundred and eighty degree field of view – extremely confusing. By now though, I'd been using the technique for so long that I had no problems filtering out unnecessary information, and at the limits of my sight I could make out a VF-171 Nightmare dogfighting with a smaller Vajra creature between the frontline and our fleet. Ten seconds later the optical cameras on my unit picked up what I was looking at, and tagged both the fighter and the Vajra on my HUD. The Squad Commander veered to intercept, and within ten seconds we'd obviously reached the range of his long range missiles. "Engaging," he reported in a short bark, and the two missiles on his wing hardpoints blazed a bright red trail across my heat sensors towards the dogfighting pair.

The N.U.N.S. pilot in the Nightmare didn't seem to be exceptionally bad or good, but his reluctance to transform eventually allowed the Vajra to force the Nightmare into a position where it could close in from behind. I watched impassionately as it did so, pulling in close and extending it's flagellum for a killing blow. It was at that point that Ozma's missiles caught up with the target, detonating it in a gaudy orange flower-burst of an explosion. The Nightmare rocketed ahead of the explosion and pulled into a level flight. The Squad Commander and I pulled alongside, transforming into GERWALK mode.

"S.M.S. Skull Squadron Commander Ozma Lee to N.U.N.S. military units. We'll take over this space," Ozma broadcast into the clear. A high pitched, shaken voice responded, presumably from the Nightmare he'd just saved. "U-Understood!" And with that, it pulled away. I looked forwards to the frontline, where it the N.U.N.S. forces showed no signs of disengaging. Outnumbered, if not out-gunned, I had no illusions that they may have missed Ozma's broadcast – they were fighting hard just to stay alive, let alone pull back. A surge of fury shot through my system, igniting my desire to protect and save people, an instinct that had it's seed planted by my adopted father and grew into what it was today through five decades of watching humanity almost being annihilated by both internal and external threats.

"Skull Four to Skull Leader: we've got some N.U.N.S. pilots to save," I told Ozma, fighting my anger back down. It would do my cover story no favours if he realised how concerned I was for the N.U.N.S. units, and I didn't want to lose the small amount of trust I had gained with him by shooting off in combat without orders.

"We do indeed," came the reply. "Skull Four: Break and engage at will."

"Roger that," I nodded with satisfaction and transforming back into fighter mode. Ozma and I rocketed towards the frontline, and through Reinforcement of the engine lines I ended up leading the charge. As I came into micro missile range, I tagged the three small Vajra that were the most threat to the two Nightmares still in the fight, set six missiles per target and opened fire from the Tornado Pack launchers, while simultaneously sending my targeting data to Ozma's bird so he wouldn't waste missiles on my target. Unfortunately, one of those drones managed to get a bead on one of the Nightmares, spewing what appeared to be cannon shells or some equivalent through the airframe of the unlucky pilot even as he attempted to pull away. One must have hit the magazine or a micro missile, as the entire Nightmare vaporised itself.

Mere seconds after that, my missiles struck, erasing the three of the creatures from the face of the galaxy.

Seconds after that, Ozma's first barrage struck, replacing two Vajra with bursts of chemical fire.

Almost as one, the remaining members of the swarm swung around, leaving the sole remaining Nightmare a chance to disengage. The pilot took it with extreme alacrity and brought himself around in a tight curve, shooting away at ninety degrees from the swarm that was heading towards us. With the element of surprise gone, so was our chance to for some easy take-downs. Ozma vectored off towards a lone straggler out wide, and the four other Vajra curved in after him in a perfect wingman play.

Their attempt to close in on him was easily foiled as I used my manoeuvring thrusters to line up the lead drone. I engaged the trigger on my gunpod, and a repetitive thudding sound transferred through the airframe, indicating the weapon was spitting out shells as it was supposed to. Well that, and the line of small bursts stitching across the midsection of the lead Vajra. It spasmed twice, then unmoving and silent continued on it's current course – it would continue floating like that forever. The three remaining chasers, sensing that I was a bigger threat to their safety, broke off their attack run on Ozma. One curved away from from me and I vectored in on a chase course, while the other two broke off, no doubt preparing to strike in on me once their friend made me go where they wanted me to be.

"I'm chasing their leader," Ozma broke in, a holo of him appearing quickly then disappearing from HUD in short order. "Roger," I acknowledged in reply, noting that his vector was taking him into an asteroid field. I found it amusing that between systems Frontier had somehow managed to find an asteroid field, but in hindsight they were good locations for resource gathering so they may have been actively sought after. I turned my attention back to the chase, where the Vajra I was following was shedding some kind of material. I rolled quickly away from the course of one of the dropped objects, which was apparently a damn good thing as it appeared to implode, then throw out a field effect of some sort which warped my vision. As I rocketed past the field effect, already correcting my course to dodge another two 'charges', I felt a slight resonance across my magic circuits, and then it was gone. As I slid between the next two charges I noticed the same resonance. Curious, but irrelevant at this point in time. Something to examine in depth when I wasn't in combat.

I fired my manoeuvring thrusters in such a way to throw my VF-25 into a spin and push me away from a line of charges the creature I was following had dropped. This was apparently the opportunity his friends were waiting for, as I was approached from my right by a drone, which opened fire with a burst from it's imitation cannon. I immediately transformed into battloid mode, reducing the profile of my unit visible to the creature. The Vajra fired burst passed by the chest of my bird, missing it by centimetres. I brought the legs of my unit up, threw them forwards and triggered a large burst from the thrusters, arresting some of my forward motion. The frame started to shudder in response to my violent and unorthodox manoeuvre, so I compensated by Reinforcing the hip joints of the battloid and the shuddering halted. The Vajra swinging in on me tried to correct it's aim, but by that time I had my gunpod up and firing, and I don't miss. The creature disappeared into a mist of fluid and flesh, blue fluid flash freezing now that it was out of the confines of whatever heating system the Vajra had.

I switched into GERWALK mode and used the Tornado Pack's rotating beam cannon mounted behind my head to put two large holes through the Vajra that thought it could sneak up on me. The Vajra I was initially chasing had swung around, no doubt expecting it's friends to have finished me off. Instead, the wide loop it was tracing allowed me to mark it up easily and with a dull thunk, eight missiles detached from their pods and split the space between my unit and the incoming Vajra. It tried to evade, but didn't have the momentum to do so, and this quick conflict ended with considerable overkill.

A red streak belted out of the asteroid belt at considerable speed, diving headfirst into the anti-fighter barrage the home fleet was pouring out. Seconds later, a unit tagged as Skull Leader emerged from the same asteroid field on a pillar of blue flame, chasing the target.

"Shirou!" Ozma roared in frustration across the voice comm. "Get after it, I can't catch it!"

In response, I brought the Messiah around in a tight arc using the GERWALK's main thrusters and switched back into fighter mode, trying to pull into an intercepting vector with the target. Ozma was clearly lagging behind, not for want of trying – he must have been caught out of mode when the target had made a break for it. As much as I was in a better position to chase my HUD was putting the point of interception about forty kilometres behind Island-One.

The red Vajra rolled from side to side, evading the anti fighter barrage the fleet was throwing at it with seemingly contemptuous ease. Several of the smaller yellow drones began to pull into escort for the larger creature as it plunged into the heart of the fleet. Several weren't as skilled (or lucky) as their leader – in their attempt to link up I counted at least two of the smaller insectoids disappear in a blizzard of cannon fire. As I reached the killzone, targeting data from the battleships fed into the HUD of the Messiah, allowing me to pick a path through the murderous barrage.

I watched on with fascination as the large rod on the larger creature's back swivelled over it's shoulder on some kind of ball and joint mount. Yellow electricity began to form around the shaft, building in intensity until it was almost too much to look at. With a seemingly careless flick of it's wings, the large creature described a lazy barrel roll to the left and discharged the energy collected in the rod. A golden ball split the vacuum for a scant second, following a path right through the engine of a frigate that my HUD had tagged as the Delphinious for a second before it disappeared in a violent triple explosion.

Mere seconds later I noticed another ship in the defensive line go up in flames. Through narrowed eyes I traced the source of the second explosion to another red Vajra, moving in to link up with the one I was chasing. I grimaced as both the large Vajra and their escorts sped through the debris field of the two frigates. We were having enough trouble dealing with one of the large-types as it is – two was definitely going to be pushing it with the two of us. At that point in time however, some good news broke our way.

"Skull Leader, this is Skull Two. Skull Three and myself are ready for deployment," Mikhail's voice came through on the comms, curiously devoid of his usual lilt that suggested he was always finding the conversation personally hilarious. I rocketed through the expanding debris in chase, keeping the target distance marker on the HUD in the corner of my concentration – I was reaching extreme weapons range, and didn't want to give the Vajra a chance to get inside Island-One.

"Skull Three; deploy behind the Frontier defensive line immediately. Skull Two; hold position for thirty seconds pending enemy movement," came Ozma's instant reply. I nodded to myself. Luca would provide the most information out in space, and until we determined whether or not the Vajra would penetrate Island-One, there wasn't a lot of point in deploying Mikhail. "Skull Four; we're going to protect the city," Ozma finished up with, and I gave my acknowledgement to him with a curt "roger."

The pair of large-type Vajra and their escorts rounded the raised protective shell of Island-One, and I rolled my eyes despite myself. By failing to have lowered that shell already, the N.U.N.S. had denied the citizens a considerable amount of extra protection and, as had been proven just now, given our enemies a mask to cover their movements. Although I was out of sight for barely more than five seconds, one of the red Vajra had disappeared by the time I had rounded the curvature of the shell.

The other was charging it's anti-ship weapon and making a beeline straight towards the pressurised bubble that composed Island-One's inner shell.

It's weapon was still charging as I came into weapons range, and as the fire indicators came up on my HUD I opened up with a small burst from my gunpod. At the extreme range it seemed unlikely to make a hit, but I felt justified in taking the shots as anything that threw off it's concentration for a second would buy me more time to maybe keep it out of Island-One and save dozens, if not hundreds, of lives. The only Vajra response to my gunfire involved one of the smaller escort insectoids rolling into my line of fire and taking the hits for the larger creature before continuing on it's vector as a mass of pulped flesh and fluid.

In the time that had transpired, the larger Vajra had loosed it's anti-ship weaponry on the inner shell, vaporising an area the size of a baseball field in the bubble and spreading spiderweb cracks through a much larger area. The Vajra cut straight for the gap, and with my velocity already stupendously high, I decided against pushing the engines harder – I'd need every advantage I could get to slow down to atmospheric combat speeds without ploughing into the artificial ground once I was inside.

Sure enough, the self-repair gel that compromised Island-One's vacuum breach rapid response protocols began spreading along the damage, sealing the spiderwebbing almost instantaneously. The gel was having trouble covering the larger hole however, and without an apparent second thought the large Vajra and it's four remaining escorts dived through the gap.

Ozma, apparently watching the whole thing from somewhere behind me, swore loudly. "Michel, deploy in Island-One. Shirou, follow them in. I'm going to have to redeploy." I tilted my head slightly to look at the tracking display, noting Ozma breaking off and heading for the dock where the Quarter was. I turned my head back towards Island-One in time to see the self-repair gel consolidate it's hold on the outer edge of the breach and begin to really increase the rate of closure of the hole. "Damn it," I muttered to no-one in particular. I fed odo from an open circuit into my eyes, increasing my ability to judge the gel's rate of repair and comparing it to what I knew of my Messiah's frame dimensions. It confirmed my initial take on the now rapidly closing gap – that I currently wasn't going to make it. Still speeding towards the gap, I thumbed my FAST Pack release button, ejecting the spent Tornado Pack micro missile racks and beam cannon. This in turn allowed me to sweep the variable wings back, minimising my profile as I burst through the gap with what I judged to be a comfortable three centimetres to spare on either side.

The abrupt change from vacuum to dense atmosphere buffeted the VF around like a yacht caught in a storm. I was vaguely reminded of being thrown about in a similar fashion by Archer when he intervened in our first fight with Berserker, except this time there wasn't the roaring heat and sound I had associated with that event. Apparently caught in an area of atmosphere where the forwards rushing wind towards the now closed breach was clashing with the rebound off the intact shell, seemingly random pressure changes were throwing the craft around and simply making the atmospheric avionics completely useless. In response I fired the manoeuvring thrusters in an attempt to pull level, but my ability to do so was mostly dependent upon clearing the turbulence. As I began to level out and gain control of the Messiah, I threw the airbrakes on hard, extended the flaps to maximum and swept the wings out again. The frame shuddered and groaned in protest, and I pushed odo through my circuits into the craft, performing a Structural Grasp limited to examining the servos and joints along the avionics. Satisfied that everything would hold, I made a sweeping bank to bleed off more speed. A sensor chirped a warning regarding the heat permeating the airframe, but that quickly died as I completed the turn.

Below me I could see the large Vajra had already gotten down to business, a large smoking crater describing the remains of what I could only assume to see some sort of N.U.N.S. defensive forces. The smaller escorts had broken away for whatever reason, spreading out over the city. I decided to concentrate on the larger Vajra in the hopes of blunting it's apparent greater combat potential. Currently it was upright on two feet, extending an arm in the air and expelling imitation cannon fire through something grafted on it's arm. Again, I Reinforced my eyes to increase sharpness and contrast, quickly following the creature's line of fire to determine what it was firing at.

It was firing at a civilian pulling acrobatics in an EX-gear!

How on earth it had determined that a civilian flier in an EX-gear was any sort of threat was beyond me, but whoever was in the EX-gear was doing a fairly good job of staying out the line of fire. As I reached missile range, I expended my remaining two hardpoint mounted missiles on the tagged creature and followed them in. The Vajra creature, facing the other way, barely reacted. Instead it elected to continue firing at the flier and was rewarded by scoring a hit which broke off one of the control surfaces, causing the flier to spiral downwards. My missiles shrouded the giant creature in fire and smoke and as I passed overhead I took advantage of the cover to transform into GERWALK mode, dropping down to the street. I used the thrusters on the GERWALK's feet to twist as I dropped, my forwards momentum carrying me away from the creature as I turned to face it, gunpod in the right manipulator hand.

I pushed the thrusters and braced myself as the Messiah bled speed, in the process damaging store fronts and housing along the side of the street I was currently sliding along. The smoke from the missile strike began to clear and the red creature burst forth with a fury reminiscent of Berserker - a single bound allowing it to throw itself through the air towards me. It's arm was outstretched, telegraphing a huge swipe.

As it started the leap, my HUD's tagging system identified two civilian contacts behind me and threw them up on holo. In the single image was the civilian flier attempting to help up a cowering, green haired girl in a very familiar yellow sun dress.

My personal sense of justice aside, the Squad Commander would murder me (or at least attempt to) if I let his sister perish in my thruster wake.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to prepare a defence that would definitely allow me to hide my abilities as a magus. As a result I quickly came up with the only plan I could think of in the fraction of a second I was allowed that offered any chance of us surviving. The only unknown factor in it being the amount of strength the Vajra could bring to bear on it's initial attack. I began flooding my odo into the left manipulator arm, Reinforcing it, strengthening it, hardening it for what was to come. At the same time I opened three more of my magic circuits, giving myself the extra reserve of odo I would need in a few seconds. Managing my odo on this level while trying to manage a craft as complex as a variable fighter was definitely taxing on my concentration – one slip and I could pour too much odo into the arm I was preparing as my defence, shattering it. Likewise, one slip on the piloting side and I could end up being blown right over Ranka and the flier, ending their lives prematurely. A bead of sweat trickled down my temple, and rolled past my ear.

With a shuddering sound of reverberating metal the creature was upon me, it's swiping claws meeting the defensively raised left forearm of the Messiah. The metal in the arm held firmly under the force imparted to it. The same could not be said for the hydraulic servos holding the arm in place, and it bent from the elbow join straight towards the cockpit. I fought the controls to slow the impact as much as possible, and gave a large burst on the thrusters to slow our combined momentum towards Ranka Lee and the flier.

Even as I did that, I opened a part of my soul that was usually closed to the world and reached deep inside. From that desolate wasteland of fire and swords that I call my soul I reverently took a rainbow shelled barrier of light. Taking that image with me I retracted from my soul, feeling the odo drain from my recently circuits as I began to bring that image into reality, Tracing it over whatever the World of Frontier had in place, displacing the pure matter of the world to impose my will upon it.

By now I was within fifty metres of Ranka and her EX-gear clad guardian, who by now seemed resigned to their fates and was using his remaining control surface in a futile attempt to shield the both of them. Concentrating on the formation of their salvation as I was, I only absently felt the forearm of the Messiah get forced back onto the fuselage between the nose-cone and the cockpit. The metal of the fuselage crumpled somewhat, folding the left hand side of the cockpit over my left leg and completely cutting off all movement of the limb. I felt a distant pain along that leg, indicating that at least somewhere the metal had folded onto my leg enough to at least break skin. A millisecond later, the folding metal bent along the edge of the cockpit, closing along the arm of my EX-gear. With no concentration to spare I could do nothing for it, and a dull pain echoed along my arm along to match a muted snapping sound echoing through the cockpit.

The pain was muted because my concentration was elsewhere. With thirty metres until we washed over Ranka and the civilian flier and our combined velocity dropping quickly enough that I now knew we'd stop a few metres before the civilian pair, I knew it was now was the time.

"Rho Aias!" I roared, completing the Tracing and bringing a perfect copy of the legendary shield of the Greek hero Ajax into the world.

One of the most useful tricks I'd learnt in the cockpit was how to complete a Tracing and project the object away from my body, with varying velocities. Mostly, this served to provide extra offence where the situation demanded it. This time however, it was used to project Rho Aias behind the thruster ports I was using to slow us down. Rho Aias was a multi layered defensive Phantasm designed to ward all projectile attacks. By increasing the odo slightly into the Tracing, I was able to widen it enough to comfortably encompass the two people behind me, and as I powered to a stop just in front of the pair, the Phantasm easily deflected the thruster wash away from them.

Sure, they'd still be a little singed from the wash rushing around them, but it was a damn sight better than being dead.

Now deprived of control of the left hand side of my body, I used my right arm to bring the gunpod around and brought it straight up into the face of the Vajra. The creature, perhaps sensing an obvious threat when it saw one, disengaged by leaping backwards. I wasted no time in cutting the power to the thrusters and halting the flow of odo to Rho Aias – the quicker the Trace left this world, the easier it would be to convince those two that they were saved by some damn good luck rather than a second rate magus.

"Hey kid," I roared over the external speakers, "Grab the girl and get up here!" I disengaged the cockpit locks and threw the hatch open with my good hand. Concentration waning, I engaged the automatic point barrier system rather than waste my waning odo on reinforcing the entire airframe. Out of the corner of my eye I watched on my HUD as the pilot behind me gathered Ranka quickly into his arms, engaged the flight unit on his EX-gear and flew around the left side of the unit. It was imperative I got a second pilot in the VF-25 as soon as possible – my cockpit was ruined and only retained working movement controls for the right arm. Hopefully the training seat behind me was relatively undamaged.

The rest of my concentration was on the Vajra in front of me, which by now had landed (kicking up a large amount of dust in the process) and raised it's underarm cannon in our direction. The aiming was hasty however, and all but one on the shells whistled past harmlessly. The remaining shell detonated on the point barrier, but that was enough to disturb the flier. I watched, disgruntled, as he dropped Ranka. She managed to make a stumbling landing, and the pilot had the good grace to look torn as to whether he should continue up to the cockpit or turn back for Ranka. I made that choice for him.

"You can fly right? Get in here!" I roared over the speakers again. "We can pick up Ranka when we drive it off!"

The flier continued his flight up through the hail of shells. The Vajra was correcting it's aim, and I knew unless we could get another pilot in my second seat to take control, I would have to do something I would regret in order to save their lives. Something that would definitely mark me to all people who may be watching as not just a normal human.

Before a critical mass of shells landed on the VF-25 and tore through the pinpoint barrier, a clunk followed by a whirring sound indicated the flier had landed behind me and interfaced his EX-gear with the cockpit behind me.

"Kid," I began, now using the inter cockpit comm link and wasting no time. "You reckon you can fly this bird? My cockpit is ruined."

An agonising second passed as the kid scanned the controls and settled himself in. "I can do this," the young pilot behind me stated, a thread of steel holding his wavering voice together. I nodded, and used my good hand to transfer all flight control to the rear cockpit.

"You have control," I stated. "Suppress it with the gunpod," I commanded, hoping the Vajra would hunker down if we threw enough firepower it's way. Hunker down long enough to grab Ranka, at least.

"I have control," he acknowledged, and without even waiting for targeting data, pulled the trigger with a mighty roar.

There is a world of difference between firing a Howard GU-17A 58mm Gatling gunpod in the vacuum of space and firing one in an atmosphere with the cockpit frame open. For a fraction of a second there was a whirling sound as the gunpod spun up. Then, what would usually be a dull repetitive thumping transmitted via the airframe becomes much louder. Finally, the major point of difference is the rip-roar of shells as they break the local speed of sound about a metre and a half from your head. Repeat for about thirty-five rounds per second and it's a hell of a noise.

The effect downrange was hard to deny though. Although a large number of rounds were spread off target, enough were getting close to force the creature to throw it's hands up defensively and stop shooting at us, even force it to take a step back. There was just one tiny problem.

"Hey kid," I threw over my shoulder nonchalantly, although I doubted he could hear over the sound of the gunpod screaming beside us, even if I was yelling down his ear. "You're about to run out of-"

*Click*

"Ammo," I finished after a second, breaking the deafening quiet.


Author's notes:

Well, sorry about the delay, but I spent two of the last three weekends away from my house, and seeing as that's when I get the majority of the writing done there wasn't much that could be done there.

For people wondering when I'll expand on Shirou's character and motivation to be on Frontier anyway, relax. Seeing as everything is from Shirou's point of view, and there are a fair few episodes in Macross Frontier that concentrate on what Alto gets up to in-between fighting off Vajra, that gives me a lot of spare time that Shirou must be doing something else :)

On the topic of Alto, can't wait to write him in – he's definitely one of the deeper and evolving characters in recent anime, so here's hoping I don't struggle too hard to do him justice. I'm kind of worried I won't be able to, but there's only one way to see if that'll turn out.

The last thing I want to touch upon is how hard it is to incorporate thaumaturgical combat in with fighter-based combat. My grounding is in physics, so I think I tend to lean towards relying on the capabilities and limits of the fighter rather than stretching them with Shirou's abilities. Thoughts?

Anyway, take it easy, and hopefully I'll have something new up soonish!