AN: Hey guys, I'm back. Thanks for the review, DarkManta, I try my best. If anyone liked the portion with Yuuko and Kasumi last chapter, you may be a little disappointed. Currently I'm having a hard time deciding on a single staying 'protagonist' due to the themes I'm trying to work with, so let's just roll with it for now. But they'll be back next chapter, I promise you. I also would like to clarify that my update schedule may be fairly irregular, because I'm an A-Level student and the season is approaching, so if you're enjoying this so far you may have to wait longer than a day in the future. Sorry about that, but I'll try my best to keep it weekly and I'll tell you guys when I can't.

In the meantime, please enjoy the second chapter of this story, as A-01 arrives in Russia!

Chapter 2: Im Russland

A-01 Dormitory, Yokohama Base, UN 11th Pacific Force HQ, Alternative IV (Completed)

6th January 2002

Awake.

Akane opened her eyes, and took a look at the clock on the wall. 0430. Approximately 2 hours before they were due to report at the HSST landing pad.

Not that she had much she needed to do though. The room itself was already stripped bare apart from her toiletries, down to its original drab coloration. Soldiers didn't own much. What she owned, Yokohama Base seemed to own as well.

Akane recounted to herself the happenings of the last few days as she cleaned her teeth and washed her face. Asakura had been released from hospital yesterday to no great fanfare. Munakata had spent most of the day getting her up to speed and making her see that she had done them no great disservice by being absent from duty, but yet also wasn't non-essential. They'd spent the rest of the days learning basic Russian greetings and customs, and sewing their new unit patches onto their uniforms. Drying herself off with a towel, she folded up that last remaining shirt with the 11th Force insignia on it, and donned a fortified suit with the 6th's emblem. Thankfully, they'd been allowed to keep their Valkyries patches. Akane had never felt real attachment to the 11th Force, being under Dr. Kouzuki's personal command, but it did feel weird wearing the Soviet patch. It wasn't official, but apparently Soviet guards were fond of stopping outsiders for the sake of it if they happened to be wearing the 'wrong' patch, though Akane wasn't sure it would actually help since she still looked Japanese.

Akane gathered up her bags and stood on the threshold of her room for the past four years of her life. 'Thank you,' she said, bowing deeply to the room. 'You've been good to me.' She switched off the lights and went outside. On Haruka's door hung her dog tags, somehow retrieved from her body after the altercation in the control room. Akane picked them up and wore them around her neck, then made haste to reach the HSST pad.

It was a comical sight to say the least. Professor Kouzuki and Yashiro were there first, as usual, both dressed quite smartly. The Doctor wore a HSSTs' pilot suit, with no insignia, as per her position. Beside her Yashiro wore a black fortified suit of foreign make, and regarded the air coolly as usual. Her UN 6th Force Patch was present, but her Alternative IV patch was gone. Instead on her left arm was a rather brightly colored patch with some unintelligible characters on it. Akane squinted a little to make out the English words below the much larger alien language: 1st Division 'Sestina'- Special Purpose Forces, USSR.

They were compelled to remain silent lest they bite their tongues until the HSST cleared the Earth's atmosphere, and began cruising at the altitude demarcated by the SDI* spacebuoys. Now and then there were flashes of light as the SDI platforms fired missiles at little projectiles that rose from the Earth's surface, mostly from the landmass that Akane expected composed the former nations of Europe. She gasped as she looked at the Earth. Where were the lush green forests of Eurasia, the small wisps of cloud and the glow of lights in the darkness of space? This wasn't Earth, if someone had held up a placard naming this as the surface of the moon Akane wouldn't have disagreed. Beside her, Munakata and Kazama wore similarly horrified expressions, while Asakura simply grimaced.

'What the fuck happened to Earth?' Munakata gasped.

'Honestly, nothing.'

They, with the exception of Asakura, turned towards Dr. Kouzuki, who had been returning to the front of the cabin, Yashiro in tow.

'The Earth has been that color ever since the BETA passed through the land area.'

She walked back to where she came from.

'It's true.' Now they looked at Asakura.

'I heard about it in the military hospital. The Earth has been this color since about 1990, when they got Europe and the BETA started coming this way. Can you see where it's black and green there?'

They looked.

'That's where we're going, Kamchatka. The Russians have been fighting hard there since the 1990s. China's just beginning to turn grey too, but there's some green parts in the southern regions.

'Those things they're shooting out of space are from the other hives in the European regions. We don't know what they are, but we're not taking the chance that they're being used to call for help.'

Munakata intervened then, slapping an arm over Asakura's mouth and smiling predatorily as the other girl struggled comically.

'Now, now, let's close that sweet little mouth of yours, shall we?' the newly christened Captain said, putting her face close to Asakura as she closed the potholes that allowed them to look at Earth. 'Whatever are we doing now, getting all ahead of the CO?' Kazama giggled as Asakura reddened in mock shame and Munakata tsk-tsked playfully.

Then she looked at Akane. 'Won't you be shy when we touch down in the Russian port later, Akane-chan?' She raked her eyes over Akane's front suggestively.

Now it was her turn to redden and cover herself. 'What are you looking at, Munakata?!' she yelled, shrinking away in mock disgust. 'Pervert! Peeper! Lecher!'

'Oh I would love to ravish you, Akane-chan, but there's nothing to look at.'

'Ah-,' Akane froze with a half-smile on her face, legitimately heating up now, as Kazama burst into laughter and Asakura buried her face in her hands.

'I heard from Mitsuki that Russian girls are all nice and round, with huge boobs and juicy asses.' Munakata licked her lips, leering at Akane, who was beginning to tire of this banter.

'Poor Akane-chan.' Munakata mused, touching her puckered lips with her finger and shaking her head. 'Will you remain small forever?'

'FUCK YOU!'

Akane pounced on Munakata, pinning her down with a glare, and then tickling her as hard as she could, jabbing her fingers into the surprisingly soft bits of flesh above her hips, cackling as Munakata herself screamed with laughter. The tide turned as Kazama herself came around on Munakata's side, and herself tackled Akane, with Asakura joining in against the now vacant Munakata.

Soon all four girls were in a heap, laughing and crying at the same time as they clutched their aching sides. Akane looked around at the faces of her friends, smiling radiantly herself as she watched them holding on to each other for support, gasping for air and yet exhaling with contentment. She giggled a little, then felt more tears come out of her eyes than before. I'm so happy, I don't want this to end. I don't want to leave the shuttle and go back down onto that fucked up world down there where they're sending us to go die in battles and my friends never come back and I have to sleep on a hard bed while my sister is dead and my parents don't care or maybe they're dead too and-

'Akane?'

She started as someone called her name. Who was it? She couldn't see. Why was her vision so blurred? 'I'm sorry,' she tried to say, but could only choke. 'It's nothing I just…'

She couldn't talk anymore after that, simply collapsed into tears as she pounced on Munakata and held her tightly, sobbing into her shoulder and pressing her face into her neck.

'Why?' she said, in between breaths. 'Why did they all have to die, why, why, why!'

Munakata said nothing, just gave a heave of her own and stroked her back calmingly.

'Everyone I wanted to learn from, why do they keep fucking dying, why?!'

Silence. Akane felt Munakata's chin press against her head, and a few droplets of water trickle onto her neck. But still, she said nothing, only continuing to rock the girl. She continued doing that even when Kazama and Asakura joined them as well, although the latter a little awkwardly.

'I don't know why,' said Munakata at last. 'There's no reason why. All I know is, Haruka wouldn't have wanted to see you like this, would she, Akane-chan?'

Akane shook her head. Yes it was true. Her sister would have whacked her out of it the moment she saw her even beginning to crack. This was wrong, this was disgusting. She shouldn't be crying, no this was wrong.

'Don't force yourself back to some fake façade,' Munakata bid fiercely, drawing back now so she could face Akane with all of her stark brown irises. 'There's nothing wrong with feeling a bit of sadness.'

'But Haruka-nee always said-,'

'Do you remember one of our old teammates?'

'Huh?'

'I forget his name, but it was right after Isumi died.' Akane and the others nodded.

'He was beside himself for days after that. He couldn't talk, he couldn't look any of us in the eye, he couldn't do anything basically. He kept apologizing, the way he did after Sergeant Jinguuji died too. Do you remember?'

Mm, yes she did. Akane nodded. A little wooden rabbit flashed before her eyes.

'Yeah, well I have to confess, I kind of thought he was a basket case then.' They all laughed.

'But he managed to pull himself together anyway. Every single time he went into a battle he came out crying because someone who didn't have to die died. But in every next fight we had I could hear him screaming at the BETA in his mic, every single swear word he knew, telling the BETA to go fuck themselves even if they didn't have the organs for it, telling them to give back all the people they'd taken from him. Telling them to fuck off from the solar system back to whatever shithole planet they'd come from.

'I used to think this made him weak, this made him unreliable, made him reckless.' Munakata shook her head with a little smile. 'But now, not really.'

'It made him someone I could talk to, at the end of the day. Someone with emotions and real feelings. Mitsurugi was too… straight. Kei-chan was really weird, Miki-chan cracked too easily. But not him. He came back bouncing hard each time, fighting harder than ever. He learned from his mistakes, and he didn't let himself become too hard. He remembered what all of them died for. He didn't let himself become an Eberbach.*'

Now Munakata drew Akane in for a hug, and all of a sudden Akane found her lip quivering again. 'You get stronger each time you withstand something like this, Akane-chan. There's nothing wrong with remembering our fallen comrades. But after that you must get up and keep going, so that they can live through you. Understand? I, we know it's hard. But we also know you're stronger than this.'

Akane nodded, drying away her tears with her sleeve, trying her best to smile back at her captain. Of course, she couldn't let her captain down now after all. She was better. She had to be. For Haruka, and everyone else.

'Hmm, odd,' Munakata said, looking up at the ceiling. 'I can't remember that guy's name at all…'

'Please pardon the intrusion.'

The four of them jumped and looked towards the door, where Yashiro stood, with an unusual expression on her face. Rather, the fact that she had an expression at all was unusual in itself. A flicker of heartache flashed through Akane as she looked at Yashiro, which eventually faded away to that unnerving sense of calm that always took over her whenever Yashiro made eye contact with her.

'We will be landing at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Base within the next ten minutes. Please make yourselves comfortable and presentable.'

With that, the Russian girl turned around and walked off, closing the door behind her.

'Brr…' Asakura mock-shivered. 'Never could really get used to her.'

'Nah, you should have seen her competing with Kagami-san a few weeks ago… Oh, Akane-chan, maybe you should go wash up, yes?'

Akane nodded, still high on Yashiro's 'calm'.

HSST Landing Bay, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Base, UN 6th Force HQ, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

The first thing that Akane realized when they landed was that even if she was going to be put to shame, she honestly wouldn't know herself. Their HSST was inspected by a stern-looking Soviet soldier, clad in grey winter furs with a grey ushanka cap. The only spots of color on her uniform were the gold buttons, crimson collar pins, and the red star badge on her cap. She exchanged a few words with Yashiro, her breath quickening each moment longer they spoke, before she turned and got off the flight more hastily than she'd gotten on. Yashiro put on a dark grey greatcoat that seemed of the same make as her countryman's, and came round the back to give a few to A-01.

Akane stepped off the ship, and took a deep breath, immediately regretting it as the icy air stabbed her lungs. Shielding her eyes from the surprisingly bright sun, she looked around at the base she'd arrived at. Everything was caked in a fine layer of snow, pristine white as though it were a dusting of icing sugar. Even the Soviet soldiers in their austere grey coats looked more welcoming with a few smudges of white powder here and there on their person. From a flagpole on the north corner of the roof fluttered a red flag with a hammer and sickle and star in the top left hand corner. A few male guardsmen looked at the Japanese visitors and began chattering amongst themselves, raising eyebrows and making catcalls, before their female comrades silenced them with a few hard whacks. Thank God Dr. Kouzuki was wearing one of those coats too. She thought she felt Yashiro's gaze on her again, but when she turned around to look, the little Russian girl was calmly looking at the guards waiting to receive them.

A man wearing a dark blue coat as opposed to the grey of the other soldiers walked up to them, and Akane could see from his rather ornamental visor cap that he was no ordinary foot soldier. No, it was the custom in Western militaries for officers to often be obliged to suffer more than their own men in harsh weather for the sake of style. So here was someone important.

'Zdravstvuyte vse, i dobroye utro, Tovarishch Sestina,' the man tipped his cap to Yashiro, which she returned with a crisp salute of her own, before he turned to Dr. Kouzuki. 'Doctor Kouzooki, I am General Yudenich, commander in chief of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Base. We are honored to have you here. The Security Council is on Level B-35, if you'll follow me. You can bring Trista with you if you need translation.'

'Dobroye utro, comrade General, thank you for your hospitality.' To her credit, Dr. Kouzuki replied back in flawless English following a decent attempt at a Russian greeting. 'My personal squad?'

'My men will show them to their dorms. Separate of course. Hahaha, let us go!'

As the general walked off with Dr. Kouzuki and Yashiro, one of the General's guards stayed behind. A young boy, not more than eighteen at most. When faced with the squad of A-01, three quarters of which were older than he, he blushed and beckoned with his hand, stuttering a few words in Russian. The four of them went with him, their own faces burning as the other guardsmen on the roof cheered and clapped for their younger comrade.

It was a most drab place after all. Unlike Yokohama Base which had been built from scratch as a UN base, the UN 6th Force Base had begun as a Soviet base, and a Far East one at that; its state reflected this. Maksim, as his nametag seemed to suggest his name was, showed full awareness of this as he awkwardly pointed out the few amenities the base seemed to have, almost blending in with the monotony of the grey walls which were only broken by the occasional poster. 'Kaffayteeriya, ili kantin,' he garbled, in his terribly accented English, pointing into a shady looking, artificially lit place with soldiers sitting around playing cards or drinking. Akane resisted the urge to throw up as she saw the cafeteria server dropping a dollop of some kind of disgusting nutrient gloop onto a sad-looking Eishi's plate. Her spirits plummeted further. It seemed that unlike back at home, the Russians didn't bother pretending their food was anything other than that synthesized slop.

Surprisingly though, the base did contain some things that Yokohama Base did not possess. 'Game-room', said Maksim, and a room that for some reason possessed a pool table and some simple board games presented itself. 'Biblioteka… laiberry?' Maksim hesitated, smiling as he pointed out a room filled with books, standing a little straighter as Akane smiled in gratitude. Haruka had loved to read, even if it had only been picture books, and Akane had learned absorbed this love. Maybe she'd find some good volumes in that room.

After another ten minutes of walking they finally stopped in front of four doors that faced each other. 'Here, you room,' said Maksim, fishing a few keys out of his pocket and pressing them into their hands. 'You, you, you i you. Hope you haff good time on base, da?'

The four of them nodded gratefully, and Maksim gave Munakata a little map. 'Outside base, goroda Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Malen'kyy gorod, small. Noh, khoroshye magazini, universitet, orkestr. You have good time!' He laughed as they looked at him in amazement. 'Have good time before BETA come!'

'Thank you so much,' Munakata said, shaking his hand profusely, as Kazama and Asakura began looking over the map, no doubt trying to find the orchestra he'd spoken of. 'Which part Russia you from?'

The soldier's face darkened a little, and Akane was slightly frightened, before he seemed to remember who he was talking to and waved off the question. 'Ah! Me ne russki, not Russia. No, no.' He made a crossing motion with his hands. 'Ya zhivul v Ukraini, ya Ukrainian.' He pointed at some female soldiers walking past them towards the canteen. 'Ona Georgian, other ona Kazaki.' He waggled a finger at them as he walked off, slinging his rifle over his shoulder.

'Nobody here russki. Only General, russki suka!'

He walked off, leaving the rest of A-01 to stare at him in silence.

1) Strategic Defense Initiative: In real life, the US came up with the idea of a satellite network to thwart missile attacks from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was repurposed for surveillance and combat in Muv-Luv, since no one used missiles anymore.

2) Theodor Eberbach, protagonist of Schwarzesmarken. At the start of the show at least, he was known for being cold and intentionally distancing himself from his teammates to prevent himself from being hurt. Not an implausible outcome for Shirogane, and certainly not an illogical choice if one ignores the ramifications beyond the self.

Also, I have absolutely nothing against Russian people and history. MLA Total Eclipse just happened to touch on this issue and present the Soviet faction that way. Peace to all nations, and see you all soon for more Yuuko and Kasumi. Feel free to ask questions or raise key characters you may want to see in reviews. Do svidaniya, uvidimsya!