I don't own Ranma or Macross, Minmei being a main character and her music an integral part of the humans victory should be enough to tell you that, as for Ranma, choosing Akane as the main Tendo girl over Kasumi, nuff said.

I posted some new blurbs for the before Macross section of the story in chapter one just look for the *

Chapter 12 Culture clashes both physical and mental

Breetai stared at the screen in front of him where the destruction of the only scout battleship that he had been able to acquire for this operation played out inexorably. Exedore stood beside him, looking up at him warily, afraid that this would cause Breetai anger to explode.

Instead of the explosion Exedore expected Breetai merely shook his head slowly, almost ponderously. "Very well Exedore" he said, "we have tried the subtle approach, now we will get our information another way."

Exedore nearly stammered as he asked "A-another way sire?"

"Yes. Get me in touch with our admirals all except for Kyron. You will communicate my orders to him."

Within an hour, every admiral had their orders and the fleet began to reconfigure. The beam heavy ships of the line folded to where they were behind and slightly above the space fortress, while two divisions of carrier ships took up position in front and on both sides of the route the space battleship was currently taking. It would take the ships a few days to get into position but once they were the new operation would go into effect.

Not three days after the contest Roy was now getting really spooked. Every time he was off duty he felt someone was watching him, and he sometimes spotted a red or black pigtail around a corner or in a crowd, as if Ranma was stalking him, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Eric hadn't had to wait for his punishment, Ranma had found him leaving the city and knocked him out, then hung him by his underwear from his Valkyrie's vertical stabilizers like a hammock then took pictures and spread them to all the other squadron commanders. When he saw that, Roy briefly thought about bringing up the kid on charges, but didn't really think about that hard. After all he and Eric had really started this with agreeing to the bet and then trying to get him back for putting them through their punishment for losing said bet.

Roy however was getting very tired about constantly looking over his shoulder waiting for the shoe to drop. He had just left Claudia's place after spending a few blissful hours with her, and within ten minutes of walking the feeling was back. This was the final straw and he stopped in the hallway looking around and shouting "Alright kid, enough's enough, whatever you're going to do get it over with!"

Despite the feeling of being followed he later couldn't explain why he was still surprised when a voice from behind him said "Okay" and then there was darkness. Roy later woke up tied to the chair in his office, which was itself bolted to the deck, with the intercom gone, a mountain of paperwork in front of him and no way to call for help. Oh, and his head had been shaved, his hair placed in a neat and rather large baggy on top of the paperwork. The other commanders heard his scream of anguish and wondered among themselves whether it was caused by the loss of his hair, which he had always cared for, or the knowledge that he had to do all the paperwork by himself.

About a week after the Macross contest (which Kasumi had won, splitting the prizes among herself, Minmei and Lisa), Ranma walked into one of the exercise rooms reserved for officers and was surprised to see Lisa there. Taking in her regulation issue exercise shorts and sport shirt he grinned sardonically "so what are the rules of greeting a superior officer when they're only technically in uniform?"

Lisa finished the rep on the upper body exercise machine that she had been using and smiled at him, "that would depend on the officer Lt. How are you doing?"

"I'm doing okay." He answered going over to the pads and beginning a few warm-up exercises. "These attacks the last few days haven't been that bad, but they haven't exactly been good either." They had on the other hand allowed him to get a good feel for his two new flight mates, and up their training appropriately. Rick had of course done well in most aspects of his training because of his ongoing training with Ranma, only really lacking a martial artist's instincts to improvise in close combat and still showing a marked preference for the jet mode. Ben had proven to have pretty decent endurance but had little coordination, but he did have a marksman's eye, and was proving to be a damn good backup now that his situational awareness was at the survivable level. He was getting frustrated due to his lack of skill in comparison to the others, but he was still a decent pilot. Max had responded well to nearly every aspect of the training, only really lacking in anything important to his piloting ability in comparison to Ranma himself.

Lisa nodded thoughtfully as she continued her own exercises. Ever since Ranma had destroyed the scout ship that was spying on them, the Zentraedi had continued attacking them relentlessly, two or three times a day in small hundred pod waves. While no real threat to the battleship, these attacks had worn down and caused casualties among the Valkyrie and Defender forces. The problem was that every attack now had anti-radar help to get in close, making scouting around the battleship hazardous. The anti-radar equipment also greatly decreased the accuracy of Defender fire. The losses were slowly mounting but thankfully the next class of academy graduates would be graduating within a month and a half. Also, repairs to many of the tertiary anti-air weapons of the space fortress were close to being completed. With their help such attacks would no longer be any threat, and the fighter screen could be pulled back under their guns.

Lisa walked over to a leg exercise machine and began to pump her thighs together rhythmically counting under her breath.

Ranma made the mistake of looking up from his own exercises and was nearly stunned by how good Lisa looked. Her short tank top barely covered her D-size breasts and showed off a washboard stomach. Her very short spandex pants emphasized her magnificent legs, the overall ensemble making it very clear that she was in excellent shape and had a body to kill for.

He gulped looking away blushing and Lisa, who had made no sign that she had noticed his gaze, tried to hold back her giggles. It felt good to know that she could affect a man like that when she wanted to, especially one like Ranma. However, this only highlighted a problem she had been having.

Her friendship with Kasumi and Ranma had become one of the staples in her life in the past few months. More it was Ranma's face, both his male and female faces (which had come as one hell of a shock to Lisa when she realized it) that she saw when she looked into her heart. His face was still small, but there should have only been the memory of Karl there, and that was no longer the case. The problem was she didn't want it!

She didn't want to fall in love with a man who had so many social issues, who was so crude and so wild! She especially didn't want to fall in love with him since he was dating one of her best friends! Ranma was not her type, he was immature in many ways, not very worldly despite having traveled so much when he was younger, way too focused on fighting and the martial arts and, and…. He just wasn't like Karl at all!

She shook her head, trying to refocus on her memories of Karl again, but it was getting harder every day now. The feelings were still there, but they were old, distant with memory and the sadness they evoked was being burned from her mind by the newer memories of her fun with Ranma.

Lisa's musings were interrupted as the door opened and Rick walked in. He looked angry and irritable and for a moment, Lisa wondered if she should just leave to avoid a confrontation at all, but decided against it. It would look far too much like she was running away and that would never do.

Rick strode up to Ranma exclaiming angrily "have you seen this!" He held out the new flight schedule "we're back to eight hours on four hours off! What the hell is the captain thinking?!"

Ranma took the piece of paper from and looked it over. "I don't see anything here that's worth yelling about Rick," he said. "After all, we've been taking losses lately, and this just puts the maximum amount of scouts out there at any one time. Just 'cause it takes away from yer free time ain't a reason to blow up."

"It's not that" the other boy answered in a rather unconvincing manner. While he and Minmei still weren't in a relationship they were certainly heading towards that direction. The only problem was that since the contest Minmei had been incredibly busy. She had practically quit her job at the White Dragon to concentrate full-time on her new singing career.

When Kasumi had won the contest she had immediately handed over the singing contract to MinMei in front of the entire audience and accepted in turn the flight plane that was the runner-up prize. She also split the money she earned between herself and Lisa as well. That way all three were paid for their time.

"How the hell are we supposed to do our job if we're too tired to concentrate out there? It's the exact same kind of pattern that led to our being too damn tired to fight effectively in the asteroid belt!"

Lisa finished her rep and decided to cut in. "Capt. Gloval, Cmdr. Fokker and I all agreed that this was the best plan to optimize our force output Ensign. Several of the flights have just been ground down too badly to be effective without backup, and that means doubling the number of squadrons out there at any one time. Hopefully, this problem will be solved when the Academy graduates again, I understand they're going to graduate over 500 trainees this time. That'll give us a surplus of pilots for the first time."

For some reason this analytical response angered Rick further. "Surplus!" he exclaimed "surplus, is that what we are to you! Just parts that you can plug in and throw out there! Maybe if you were out there yourself 'Commander,'" he snorted derisively, "rather than safe inside the space fortress you'd see things a little differently!"

He stomped off, leaving Lisa almost rigid with shock and guilt. She sat there like that for a minute before Ranma worked up a bit of courage and walked over to her placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Hey," he said softly. "Don't listen to Rick okay? It's been your plans and your brain most of the time that've seen us through our battles so far. Rick may not see it but the rest of us do."

Lisa looked up for at him gratefully through watery eyes. "Thank you Lt. but I don't think I'm in the mood to exercise anymore. I'll see you around all right?" She patted his arm gently then walked over, grabbed her towel and duffel bag and quickly left the exercise room.

Ranma put his hand on his forehead irritably "God damn it Rick why can't you just keep your fucking mouth shut?" After a few minutes he shrugged and moved back over to where he had been exercising.

Breetai smiled, it had taken three days but at last the fleets had reconfigured to his specifications. "Are you ready to transmit the message Exedore?"

"Yes my lord, but are you certain that you don't want to retransmit the orders to Kyron yourself? He respects you whereas…" he trailed off. Exedore had been permanently crippled in a training accident right out of the crèche and had never recovered. Many Zentradei looked down on him for his disability and Kyron was one of them.

"Yes I'm certain Exedore. Kyron believes he is unpredictable, but that capricious nature makes him in fact rather easy to predict." Exedore looked at him quizzically but Breetai merely smiled.

Kyron scowled as he remembered his orders, relayed to him by that crippled defect rather than given to him directly by Breetai, a studied insult he was sure. "So the orders to the fleet are to simply fire warning shots all around the space fortress, make it clear that we have been toying with them up to now. Well we can do better than that."

Grell looked at him worriedly. "But my lord the orders are absolute. This plan comes from Breetai but the order not to damage the space fortress comes from Dolza!"

Kyron instinctively thrust down the terror the name Dolza created in all Zentraedi and even Meltraedi, the useless females, before answering. "I know that Grell but they can hardly blame us if one or our ship's has a malfunction in their targeting parameters." He grinned slyly, "Say the kind that makes it unable to aim properly. So instead of missing the space fortress by a few inches, it hits here" he pointed on a spot on the schematic of Zor's battleship "where our data says the sensor room should be. That way we would in fact be helping Breetai's plans, as they would no longer be able to see our ships at all. That would make us even more terrifying than our firepower would by itself."

Grell looked at the screen then nodded agreement; after all it was much safer for him personally that way.

Later that day Lisa was on duty with Claudia and the rest of the main bridge crew, all of whom could tell there was something really bothering her. Claudia tried to bring it up a few times but Lisa brushed her off. The hours went by slowly as nothing happened then suddenly Vanessa at her place in front of the sensor board screamed "Incoming fire from forward, above and both sides aft starboard and port! A lot of it!"

Kim swiftly radioed the barrier control room to bring up the barriers but it was too late. Literally thousands of huge beams of fire shot over, under and around the fortress completely caging it in their fire. A moment later a single shot slammed into the control spire about halfway down its length.

Vanessa cried out again this time in anguish. "That shot took out the entire radar section! We're blind!" She nearly broke down for a moment and the others couldn't blame her. That was her section and those had been her people that had just lost an entire crew, wiped out in an instant.

The attack ended as abruptly as it began, then it was Claudia's turn to scream. She yanked the headset off her head, falling to her knees and grabbing her ears, whimpering in pain. Lisa rushed to help her friend while a metallic, obviously computer generated voice, boomed out from Claudia's headset, intoning "We are the Zentraedi. Surrender the space fortress to us or die. You have five standard hours to comply." And then it repeated.

Lisa's blood ran cold at the implications that all those misses had been intentional but she kept control. Even as she helped Claudia to her feet her hand flashed to the intercom button. "Captain to the bridge!"

Within minutes Gloval had arrived and assessed the situation. "Alright obviously we can't give in to their demands, even if we wanted to it would take days, more probably weeks to evacuate the ship even if we were on Earth, out here in space it is simply impossible. So what we need to do is find a way to strike back. For that we need to get a spy plane out in front of us to figure out where the fire is coming from and then target it with our main cannon. I think with the barriers online we would stand a better than average chance at winning a beam engagement at range."

Lisa realized she could use this as a chance to prove Rick and her own doubts wrong and raised her hand slightly. "Sir I volunteer to command the spy plane."

Gloval looked at her. While the position did call for a command presence Lisa would not have been his first choice given how important she was to planning the defense of the ship. He was a battleship captain, not a carrier captain and had no real understanding of the tactics involved. Still it was obvious once more there was more going on here than he knew, and if whatever it was going to keep her from operating as her normal efficient self, then he had no choice. "Very well commander, you will take command of this mission."

Ranma and his flight had been going over their fighters with the maintenance team when the beam attack hit. The Valkyrie was a maintenance and upkeep intensive machine. On a normal carrier each Valkyrie would have a dedicated team of five maintenance personnel. The upshot in response time and clean transformations was well worth it. Unfortunately this was not a normal situation by any means and the entire squadron shared a single overworked maintenance team full time, with other teams called in to help deal with battle damage.

Each pilot was discussing a single problem with one member of that team. Ranma was trying to figure out the proper way to mount a second rifle in his jet mode, the gun in question being the one he had claimed as a prize during his second fight with Kyron. He was also asking the crew to look into any way to up the response time further, something that on his machine had already been taken to the max.

Rick was playing with his weapon settings, deciding whether to go with more missiles or bigger ones. Dr Lang had devised a new type of missile called the swarm missile with a much faster and better lock time but they were smaller and it was estimated it would take 3 hits to destroy a battlepod. Max was debating adding a color scheme like Rick and Ranma had, while Ben was adding a sniper scope to his rifle and figuring out how to carry more rounds for it without sacrificing any of the speed that was any pilot's best defense.

As the ship rocked under the one beam that hit Ranma dropped everything as he raced over to an intercom. Within ten minutes of Gloval arriving on the bridge he had their orders. "Alright flight, we're on the clock. Let's get suited up and out there in five."

Ranma and the others were out of the ship and waiting for the spy eye and immediately fell in on all sides as soon as it appeared. Behind them the barrier systems all around the ship activated in preparation for the battle to come. "Alright Blue flight 2 let's get the lead out. Ben up top and to the rear, let's see if yer sniper modification works huh? Max to the portside, Rick starboard and me in the front."

Ranma received three affirmatives and pulled ahead of the ship. As he did though his ki sense, revved to the max though not connected to his Veritech's sensors, picked up Lisa's aura in the ship. He paused for a moment then hit the radio. "Commander Hayes, what are you doing this time?"

Lisa looked and saw Ranma had called her over a private channel, not broadcasting to the other Veritechs. "We had to send someone of officer rank along Lt. Sugita, I was the natural choice for the job."

Ranma's lips twitched at the blatant prevarication (though he wouldn't know what the word meant). "Are ya sure there ain't more to it?"

Hearing the honest concern in Ranma's voice, Lisa paused before replying. "I-yes there is more to it. But I'm doing it to prove something to myself, not to anyone else."

Ranma thought for a minute then shrugged. "Alright Lisa, whatever yer reasons yer here now so I guess we just gotta do the job."

"Roger that."

The flight out from the fortress continued, with Lisa checking in every ten minutes with telemetry readings. So far there had been no sign of the ships that had fired on the battleship, and that worried Lisa. It showed that the aliens had been deliberately avoiding attacking the ship directly at long range with their own capital beam weapons and that meant that the ship was valuable to them, not that they were worried about its fire power. That was… disturbing.

It was about to get even more disturbing. One of the radar techs, one of only twelve that had not been on duty in the radar room when it was destroyed, looked over at her worriedly. "Commander, there seems to be some kind of interference right in front of us. It's like the kind we've been seeing lately with the battlepod assaults."

Lisa turned to her radio. "Ranma, there may be something up ahead, possibly a trap, almost certainly battlepods. I want your flight to head forward and see what's there, we'll hold position here."

Ranma thought for a minute then nodded decisively. All his instincts were telling him that it was a bad idea for the flight to leave the spy plane, but Lisa was right too, they couldn't keep going and whatever else you could say about the spy plane, it moved like a pig and was an easy target for practically anything else. Pity it ain't as armed as the alien one I destroyed during that damn competition. "Blue 6, take 7 and 8 and head forward. There might be a group of battlepods hiding under one of those anti-radar battlepods they got."

Rick, who had been about to object to the order of leaving the spy plane, stopped. Ranma was more than capable of protecting it long enough for them to get back to help. "Roger Blue 5, be back in a bit."

Rick, Max and Ben poured fire to their engine and shot ahead. Lisa frowned. "You should have gone with them Lt. We'll be just fine right here."

"No offense Commander, but my instincts are saying otherwise."

"Is the fold space engine ready?"

"Yes my lord."

"Excellent. Fold us in, we have some Micronians to capture."

Within the spy eye they had been able to localize a few gravitonic signatures that could be alien ships far ahead of them, but so far that was it, until the three Veritech's from blue flight reached the nearby radar anomaly. Rick and Max were the first to come close enough to get a visual and almost immediately they wished they hadn't. "Battlepods incoming, 60 plus!" Rick yelled into his com, then began to fire off his missiles wildly, trying to break up their attack. Max followed suit as Ben transformed into soldier mode and began to line up shots with his rifle.

The three of them slowly fell back, keeping the range open for now and dodging incoming fire. Rick was grateful that the enemy didn't include any of the artillery units or that new command pod that Ranma had tangled with, otherwise this would be a lot harder, but at range the Valkyries had a slight advantage over the enemy battlepods. Rick had seen enough of that guy to know he wanted no part of him.

Back at the spy plane Lisa ordered Ranma to join the fight. Ranma thought about it and just as he was about to reply when one of the sensor techs shouted. "Incoming fold space signature, practically right on top of us, Christ it's huge!"

Lisa looked out the viewport and gasped as a huge mountain of green metal suddenly appeared and blotted out the stars. Mother of god that ship must be at least twice as large as the Macross!

Almost as soon as the ship appeared it disgorged dozens of battlepods, all of them immediately firing at Ranma, who ducked dived and returned fire. As he did a huge doorway appeared in the side of the green battleship, and two beams of light leapt out, grabbing the forward part of the spy plane. The pilot groaned. 'Whatever the hell that beam is, it's pulling us in! We don 't have enough reverse thrust to stop it!"

Lisa's mind worked like quicksilver, what was important was the mission and the data on the fleets that had fired at theMacross from long range. The gravitonic signatures would tell them that, but they had to get that data back, which meant breaking the beam somehow. "Yes we do. Take the readings we've got and get back into the escape pod, it should have enough legs to get you within hailing distance of the fortress. I'll stay and jettison you. Lt. Sugita your job is to escort the survival pod out of range."

Ranma's response came back quickly as he dodged several shots from one battlepod, allowing them to hit another behind him. "Negative, eject the pod it'll clear the dogfight but not the big guns on this thing, I need ta stay and keep the ship's attention on me." He switched channels, contacting the rest of his flight. "Blue flight 2 get back here as quick as ya can, the bastards have brought a fucking mountain to the party!"

"You don't have a chance against a ship that big! Get out of here, save yourself!" Lisa began while around her the three techs and the pilot gathered the data disks and ran toward the back of the ship. The last one hit a button on the side of the cockpit and a concealed door closed with a clang. Lisa waited thirty seconds for them to strap themselves in and then hit a large red button on her console. With a jolt the entire back portion of the ship separated, shooting out back the way they had come.

"Not happening!" Ranma killed another battlepod, then another as they tried to turn to follow the escaped pod. At that point the others forgot about going after the retreating pod and turned their attention to him. Outnumbered as he was even Ranma couldn't evade forever and his Valkyrie began to take shots, though due to his using the Iron Body technique on it he hadn't taken much damage just yet. Damnit I'm still not as good at dodging in a Veritech as I am in real life. Fuck!

He glanced to the side to see the front of the spy plane being dragged into the maw of the giant alien ship, but with as badly as he was being pressed he couldn't do anything about it. At that point however the rest of his flight came from underneath the enemy ship, having taken the path of least resistance and simply boosting away form their own attackers. Luckily this ship seemed to be primarily designed as a ship to ship combatant, and the anti-air fire was lower than its size suggested.

Rick and Ben still got clipped by some kind of rail gun, but that was all, and once they were underneath the ship the fire was almost nonexistent. They came up underneath the dogfight around Ranma firing as they came.

Ranma grinned, taking advantage of the distraction to change into his jet mode and zooming after the caught spy plane. "One of you break off and protect the escape pod, the other two give me covering fire I'm getting the commander out of there!" He entered the hanger bay just as the door was about to close and changed back into soldier mode, opening fire with all his weapons in every direction he could. Even without the added power of his souvenir from Kyron he still had five guns and two missiles remaining, which allowed him to make one hell of a mess really quickly. Enemy battlepods and foot soldiers opened fire on him almost as fast as he did them, but he jumped around ducking and weaving and firing back as he could.

Watching this on an interior video link on the bridge of his flagship Breetai snarled. "No! Not again, I will not fail again!" He ran off the bridge, his long legs carrying him quickly to the elevator which would take him down to the hanger bay.

Ranma was cleaning up his enemy's pretty easily, the foot soldiers didn't have the armor to survive his assault and the few battlepods in the area couldn't maneuver as well as he could. He was about to reach down and pick up the spy plane when he was surprised by a giant of an alien barreling into the room and throwing itself at him. Ranma automatically grabbed him and used a judo throw, but the alien came back in quickly with a leg sweep nearly putting Ranma on his back. A haymaker connected to the side of his Valkyrie's head and another crashed in on the center of the soldier form right on his canopy, cracking it.

Ranma engaged his thrusters, moving away from the alien but it kept coming, and he was also forced to dodge incoming fire as more enemy infantry boiled into the hanger. Damn I'm just not maneuverable enough in this form, and he's stronger than my Valkyrie too! And now these other bastards, I need to get some space to maneuver but how?

Lisa's voice over the radio however gave him a plan of action. "Ranma, shoot the hanger doors! That'll depressurize the bay and suck him and all the other infantrymen into space!"

Ranma grinned and dropped his rifle, the act startling the alien in front of him for a moment. He swiftly brought his Valkyrie's hands together and gathered as much power as he could handle in them before shouting. "Moko ha Reiku!" A huge beam of gold light, three times as large as the beam he had produced in his fight with Kyron on Mars, erupted from his robot's hands and slammed into the hanger bay doors blowing them off their hinges. Immediately the atmosphere of the hanger bay became a tornado, pulling and sucking every alien warrior there out into space.

As Ranma and Breetai clashed inside the hanger, Max had fallen back with the escape pod, protecting it from five battlepods that had tried to close with it, blowing them apart in an angry fusillade. Behind him Rick and Ben were fully engaged in the battle keeping the other enemy mechs from following their friend even as they worried about Ranma. That worry however ended abruptly as a large beam of golden light pierced the side of the ship. "Well at least we know he's still alive!" Rick laughed. "Let's get in there after him!"

Ben agreed and the two ducked and weaved through the still firing battlepods to get into the battleships now open side. Almost immediately as they did though emergency doors clanged shut behind them, trapping them inside.

Breetai cursed as he was flung into space but retained enough presence of mind to grab a passing weapon's spine. He grabbed it, and began to make his way slowly to a nearby hatch. Oh no Micronian, we're not done, not by a long shot!

Rick and Ben landed in guardian mode and joined Ranma in routing the battlepods remaining in the hanger bay before transforming into soldier mode. "Well what now fearless leader?" Ranma asked Lisa with a grin in his voice. "Nice job with the 'blow a hole in the hanger' plan by the way. You wanna get out of there now I think we should be going."

Lisa surprised herself by laughing aloud, and if there was an edge of fear driven hysteria none of the others could tell. "We do need to get out of here. Can you blow another hole in the wall for us?"

Ranma closed his eyes, gauging his ki reserve, and then the battery of his Valkyrie. "No, I'm running nearly on empty right now. I don't think I've got enough energy to even get back to the ship. I had to armor myself outside to survive the fight before Rick and the others showed up and that takes a lot of the energy from the battery, and the size of the ki attack I just used took nearly everything else. What about you two, any missiles left?"

Rick shook his head for a moment before remembering that Ranma couldn't see him. "No boss we both used them in the initial battle, we're also almost out of ammo for our rifles, that'll leave us with only our head lasers."

Ben shrugged. "Let's just explore for a bit, they need to have hatches or portholes we can open or blast through."

Lisa exited the spy plane and Ben who was the closest picked her up gently. He didn't however open his cockpit and let her in, not wanting to be distracted if they ran into trouble. This of course was much like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Ranma lead the way deeper into the ship. Thankfully it seemed as if the security in this part of the ship had already been dealt with as they didn't meet any resistance just yet. Lisa looked around interestedly, taking in everything she saw as they entered a huge cavernous area that resembled the pictures of the interior of the space fortress she had seen before humanity had begun to use it. On one side she saw what looked like a collier, but instead of holding missiles it held battlepods, and on the other side there was a long gantry. The rather scary thing was that the room and the collier seemed to go on for as far as she could see, if it extended the entire length of the ship... She mentally calculated how many pods this ship alone could carry and blanched. She paled further when she calculated how little of the total space of the battleship this room made up, even if it did go from one end to the other.

As they were pushing forward more battlepods moved out of the rack in front of them opening fire as soon as they cleared their retaining claws, forcing the three Veritechs to duck into what little cover there was. Rick and Ranma took cover near the walls of the bay and Ben fell back, ripping a nearby pod's leg off and using it as cover.

Ranma was about to order Ben to cover him so he could close when he saw a large shadow on the gantry behind Rick. "Ben watch out!"

Rick tried to turn but the giant alien that Ranma had tangled with earlier jumped down from the gantry slamming a pipe down on top of the Valkyrie's head hard enough to crush it. He then picked up Ben's Veritech and threw it hard enough to crack the canopy against the interior wall.

Ranma snarled and turned to charge but had to contend with the fire from the enemy mechs. Rick was stuck there too and they exchanged fire, killing two of the three pods before the alien behind them could close.

He went after Rick first crashing into his side and slamming him against the hatch behind him, ironically the same that Breetai had used to get back inside before planning his ambush. The arms of Rick's Valkyrie flailed as it impacted against the hatch and accidentally hit the button that opened it. Breetai grinned at this lucky break and kicked Rick out into space.

Lisa, who had been held by Ben, shook her head dazedly from being tossed around only to scream as she was sucked toward the open hatch.

Ranma gunned down the last battlepod with his head lasers and charged. Reaching out with one hand he grabbed her before she could be sucked away, holding her in a gentle hand even as he pushed his Valkyrie to its feet and charged Breetai, who closed the hatch and turned to him. Ranma swiftly put Lisa down and rammed his thrusters' hard heading head first towards Breetai, but that used the last of his Veritech's battery. Ranma immediately began to use his own waning ki to power it but the momentary hesitation this changeover caused was enough for Breetai to grab his outstretched hand and fling him across the room.

The alien reached down and picked up Lisa before she could get away, shaking her hard enough she fainted.

Ranma gritted his teeth and poured more power into his Veritech even as he felt his ki drop below what he could sustain. His Veritech's arm stretched out reaching for the enemy, but Ranma's body couldn't sustain it. "Damn it!" he cursed as he lost his connection with his Valkyrie.

Breetai slammed his fist into the enemy mech, knocking it do the ground with a clang. When it didn't respond he reached down and gripped the cockpit, shattering the glass and reaching inside. The Micronian inside tried to fight him but Breetai simply grabbed the mech with both hands and slammed the mech down again. The Micronian jumped out but before he could do anything Breetai swiftly kicked him down the hallway. After all one or two prisoners will be enough.

He followed up however to make certain the Micronian that had given him so much trouble was dead, and was surprised to find that he was still alive, unconscious from the impact against the wall which had been strong enough to actually make a dent there, but alive. He shook his head at the strange resiliency of this particular Micronian before reaching down and gathering him up.

He moved back where he had left the other, picked that one up and then moved to the first enemy mech he had destroyed. He picked out the pilot of that mech none too gently and then made his way over to the nearest intercom. "Bridge this is Breetai, prepare rooms for three Micronian prisoners, route me there when done. Go to fold as soon as the engines charge, destination, the great mothership."

Outside Rick ensconced his Veritech in a handy indention, grabbing two strange spines imbedded in the ship's hull as the ship began to move. Suddenly it went into fold space; Rick recognized the effect from when he had attempted to get Minmei home back on Earth and he groaned. There's nothing I can do now. Might as well power down, conserve my energy. Rick did just that then closed his eyes and settled down to wait until they re-entered normal space.

Given his constitution it would come as no surprise to anyone that Ranma woke up first. He looked around and saw Ben curled up in a corner and Lisa next to where Ranma lay. Ranma sighed as he felt his ki coming back slowly, but judging from how much had already returned he had probably been asleep for about half a day. He noticed absentmindedly that Lisa was shivering where she lay still comatose and he reached over and pulled her closer to him. She stopped shivering and he looked around at their surroundings. They seemed to be in an unused utility room of some kind with hastily made bars on the doorway small enough to keep them in.

Frowning he closed his eyes reaching out with his ki sense to get a feel of the area. Two guards down the corridor, not a lot of life energy in these guys, almost missed them. Weird. Nothing else in the area but this feeling… it's almost like that fold thingy that enemy ship did to appear right over us back during my first flight. But that'd mean… shit! We're stuck here. Even if I could break us out I couldn't get us back home!

He kept his eyes closed and fell into a meditation, realizing there was nothing he could do right now but build up his ki for later use. After a moment he nearly came out of it as Lisa snuggled into his side, smiling and mumbling something about being comfy.

Lisa woke up about seven hours later. She yawned shaking her head dazedly, and then realized she was snuggling into someone. She looked up with dawning horror that quickly turned into a blush as she saw it was Ranma. Seeing he was in some kind of meditation she slowly stood up, taking in their surroundings. She walked around for a bit in their obviously makeshift cage then checked on ensign Dixon, who seemed to have a broken arm and what looked like a nasty bruise on his skull. She set about doing some rudimentary first aid, marveling that the aliens hadn't bothered to search them or else they would have found the emergency kit that was part of every SDF spacesuit. That done she went to look out the bars at their surroundings, trying to figure out a way out for the three of them.

"So you're awake huh," she turned to see Ranma out of his trance, deep blue eyes staring at her. "You ain't gonna do the whole 'oh it's my fault we're in this mess!' guilt trip or the even worse 'it's your fault we're in trouble Ranma!' thing are ya, I've had both done ta me way too often ta want ta hear them again."

Lisa chuckled darkly. "No, I'm not going to do either of those, though the first is closer to how I feel. After all if you hadn't disobeyed my orders to save me, again I might add, you and ensign Dixon wouldn't be here."

Ranma grunted. "Yeah well I wouldn't have thought of sending back the data and using the escape pod, or that trick with blowing open the hanger deck. That big ass alien, the one with the metal plate on his face had me dead to rights."

'Still, my desire to come on this trip hasn't exactly helped." She paused. "Ranma" she asked hesitantly "Can I ask you a question?"

Ranma stood up moving to lean against the wall next to her. "This ain't gonna be one of those trap questions right, like 'why do you think of me as a friend', or the classic 'does this uniform make me look fat' right?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Lisa laughed a little but shook her head. "No, I never ask questions like that last one you mentioned. And as for the first" her smile warmed noticeably and she said gently "just like you said about yourself back on Mars, I have far too few friends to play those kinds of games. No, what I wanted to ask you was why do you respect me professionally so much? Most of the academy graduates think more like Rick does than you, that Roy should be the one calling the shots for the Veritech fighters."

Ranma chuckled. "Then they're idiots. I started ta respect ya when, well you know how I've talked about my dream ta go into space right?" She nodded. "Well part of what I did to prepare for that was looking at the jobs, numbers, statistics and stuff about the SDF, something I've been doing for years. Like I said when we first met I knew ya were in charge of the entire rescue operation after the fold disaster, and that was damned impressive. I mean regular SDF forces have one or two accidents per every shift of vacuum operation time. During that whole six days, days which you, were the one in charge and I know ya never left the bridge, had zero. In a hell of a lot harder conditions and dealing with rescuin' civilians and army personnel who had no zero-g trainin' you had zero accidents. That's just damn impressive. And how many have you had since then with you in charge? Four; less accidents in a hell of a lot longer time than the rest of the SDF put together."

She blushed as he poked her gently in the stomach. "And as fer wantin' Roy ta plan out the battles accordin' ta him that ain't what a CAG does, he's there to lead from the front, not plan out the whole battle, and he sure wouldn't be good at it if it was his job. He barely plans our flight schedule and don't get me started on how he does the paperwork." He grinned and then tried to talk in Roy's voice failing miserably. "'It's called delegation people, everyone has to do a little then we'll all get done everything that much sooner.'"

Lisa laughed but sobered quickly. "Thank you for that Lt. But it doesn't really help matters right now. We need to figure out some way to escape."

"And how ta get back ta the ship. I think we've been in fold space since I came to, about six or seven hours before you did, and I think I was out for at least half a day."

Lisa paled. "Did you say we've been in fold the entire time you've been awake?" Ranma nodded looking at her with his head cocked n one side. "Our fold from Earth out to Pluto only took fifteen minutes! We could be well outside our solar system by now!"

Ranma gulped as the enormity of the problem they faced hit him. "Well, fuck."

Ben woke up six hours later to find himself in a lot of pain and Ranma and Lisa laughing about something by the door. "And then Kuno starts spouting bad poetry while his sister's alligator is trying ta eat him and here I am fighting Kodachi, the takeout girl, and Akane all at once while balancing on the bleeding alligator's head! And all the time that dickhead keeps yellling about how he'll save his fair maidens and win us both back from the 'vile sorcerer Saotome'!"

Lisa laughed, holding a hand up to her mouth, emerald eyes flashing with humor and Ben decided he'd been ignored enough. He let out a loud groan, instantly attracting both of the other's attention. Ranma hurried over with Lisa not a step behind him. "You okay man, sorry, we got some pain killers ya can take but no water. They didn't search us but the emergency kit don't have any water in it."

Ben groaned again, motioning them to give him the painkillers and he gulped down three of them quickly. As he recovered the other two filled him in on the situation. When they finished he groaned again this time in irritation. "Y-you mean we're stuck here?"

"Yeah pretty much, until we figure out how ta get back ta the solar system anyway. Maybe stow away on board a ship headin' that way?" Ranma said shrugging his shoulders.

"You're forgetting our need to get out of here first Lt." Lisa said dryly formal once more now that the two weren't alone any longer.

"Heh, that ain't a problem I can get us out of here easy." At Lisa's skeptical look he shrugged. "Ya ain't seen even half of my moves in person Commander, though if ya watched the battle on earth I used a lot of them then."

Lisa's skepticism dimmed slightly as she tried to remember all she had seen Ranma do in that fight. "So we could get out of here, and possibly even hide, but getting back is the problem." Ranma nodded and Ben looked at the two as if he was wondering if they were both sane.

"So what are we going to do for now?"

Ranma shrugged. "We could play cards if ya got 'em otherwise sleep or trade stories."

Ben smiled weakly, "Or gossip. Is it true you turn into a girl, and is that the girl who was in the Ms. Macrosscontest under the name Ranma Sugita?"

"Yeah that's me. Ya'd probably have seen me change by now if the water magnet portion of the curse didn't seem ta have gone away since we left Earth."

Oh." Ben thought for a minute then asked "so since you change do you uh…"

"No," Ranma said very firmly. "I don't like guys, no my mind doesn't change at all, and no I will not show you my boobies." He turned to Lisa with an exasperated expression. "Can you believe people have actually asked me ta do that? I mean, I might not have much modesty but there are limits y'know." He didn't mention the fact the Amazons had basically had to hammer that concept into his head for him.

'Men," Lisa smirked, "what can you do?" Ranma stuck his tongue out at her and she chuckled.

Ben snorted too, then raised his good arm to his face in pain, a stab of nausea going through him. After a moment he recovered enough to continue the discussion. "Yeah well you've got a little problem then. Max has met you in that form a few times and he says he fell in love with you during the contest."

Ranma blinked. "I basically said I was a lesbian right, I mean I said I was in a relationship and that it wasn't with a guy right? And he still thinks he's got a chance with me?"

Ben nodded, grinning now at his superior officer. "Yeah he said that only meant you hadn't met the right man yet, though he used way more flowery language to say it. Sorry boss, but I gotta tell you he's pretty darn stubborn about getting what he wants. He isn't like a spoiled rich kid, but he's used to winning at anything he sets his mind to."

Ranma groaned. "Holy fuck he's like a competent Kuno!" He moved over to the side of their cell and began to bang his head against the metal wall. Lisa and Ben shared a chuckle until he began to actually leave a dent in the wall.

The trio settled down again, with Ben falling back sleep and Lisa pulling out her data-pad to see how much power it had. If she could take some pictures or something they could at least have some more Intel on their enemy if/when they got back. Regardless she began to write down some notes of the experience for late review.

Ranma sat down next to her, within a comfort inducing range and began to meditate again. "Wake me up if ya want ta talk more or something, otherwise I'm gonna meditate." He knew they would need his ki techniques to get out of here, and he needed to build up his reserves again. The armor strengthening technique really took it out of him way too much. He had been at about a fifth of his full strength before that big ass alien had charged him, and after that, well… I need ta talk ta Dr. Lang about putting an extra battery on my Valkyrie. Even if it costs me some missiles, or one of the extra ammo packs for my rifle it'll be worth it.

Lisa simply nodded, then went back to work on her data-pad, righting out a report on what had happened, and some of the things she had noted about the ship they were in. Later, after taking a nap she woke him up to talk for a bit, and their conversation for some reason touched on politics, though how that happened neither would remember. They spent two hours debating the merits of a monarchy versus a democracy, and how either would work in space, a topic Ranma had researched after a conversation with Elder Cologne and how her tribe was ruled by a council of elders and how that differed from other types of government. Despite how she liked to beat knowledge into his head with her staff, she was easily the best teacher for stuff like that he'd ever had. In the end Lisa was swayed by Ranma's argument that any democracy would need faster than light communication to be truly representative in space, while she convinced Ranma that a democracy that did have that would be better than even a tolerant monarchy. Both agreed that a military dictatorship could not survive for long, not if they didn't completely control practically everything.

After that Lisa went to sleep again, but this time she slept for a long time, and once again wound up cuddled against Ranma's side. Ranma, deep in his meditation didn't even notice, for which she was very grateful when she woke up later to give Ben some more painkillers.

By her estimate another two days passed with them stuck in their cell, days in which Ranma only came out of his meditation to talk with her and Ben when prompted a few times. It came as a shock to the other two when Ranma came out of his meditation without any prompting and looked around with hard eyes. "We've come out of fold."

Lisa looked at him quizzically. "How in the world can you tell? I mean, I can't feel anything, it's not like the ship was shaking or anything."

Ranma shrugged. "I can push out my ki sense past the hull, a little bit anyway, this ship is fucking huge! Anyway it's like, in fold there wouldn't be anything out there ta feel, just nothingness. Not like in space, space may seem empty but it ain't. In fold there is literally nothin' beyond the hull of the ship yer in, at least that's the way this ship works, I wasn't usin' my ki sense when the Macross folded."

And, he thought to himself even if I had I wouldn't have been able ta push out that far anyway. My ki sense is another thing that's been effected by my radar accident all those months ago. If I wanna be honest about myself it's been the area most changed by a wide margin. My ki reservoir being larger and recovering faster I can put down ta my continued training, but not this. "But when we're back I can sense something out there. Not a lot, but I can at least sense that something is there ya know."

Lisa nodded thoughtfully, her own thoughts paralleling Ranma's for a moment as she wondered how much that ability had been changed and enhanced by Ranma's brush with what some would call divinity. She looked at Ranma and somehow knew that he would never know himself, and would not welcome any questions about it. So instead she asked "How long do you think it'll be before we find out why they captured us rather than killed us? And why they went to such lengths to do it?"

At the quizzical look the two men were giving her, she shrugged. "It's pretty obvious that the entire attack on the Macross was a diversion, intended to make us send out a force to scout so that they could safely capture us. I imagine they didn't think of us getting the data out, but everything points to it being a plan from the beginning, especially that fold-in that this battleship did to get so close to us."

Ranma shook his head in amusement, "Okay hadn't thought of that. That's why you get paid the big bucks I guess."

"Trust me lieutenant," Lisa said dryly, "I don't get paid nearly as much as you think."

A few minutes later Lisa and the others looked up as the noise of approaching footsteps, larger than any human footstep could be, coming towards their cell form the corridor beyond. The door opened and two aliens were outside. They were large but nowhere near as huge as the alien that had pretty much captured them all single handed. Both of them were holding weapons however that were larger than any of them were tall. One of them gestured and a synthesized voice came from its helmet. "Out."

Ranma and Lisa shared a glance then moved to help Ben stand. The bruise on his head looked a little better but that was it, his arm was still broken and his mind still seemed a little fuzzy, either from a concussion or the number of pain killers he had been downing the last few days. Still he was able to walk with the others on either side of him and they followed the aliens along. At an intersection they came to an alien sized rectangular box with seats inside it set into a rail in the floor and the two aliens gestured again.

Ranma grabbed Ben around the middle and jumped up onto on one of the seats and put him down. Ben forcibly held down his stomach during this maneuver. Ranma then jumped back down and did the same for Lisa. She took a moment to revel in the accidental hug, taking strength from his presence, but Ranma gave no sign other than a slight tightening of his arms around her before he set her down.

The aliens clambered in after them, both now keeping their guns trained on Ranma, as if they realized he was the most dangerous threat (which he was). The box began moving and Lisa started her data-pad recording everything they passed.

About fifteen minutes travel they came to a slightly wider open area with a viewport on one side and Lisa immediately began to record what was out of the window. It looked as if they were in orbit around something, but she could make out literally uncountable ships outside. And is that a wall on the far side? Are we in some kind of monstrously titanic space station?

Ranma on the other hand was wondering where they were going. After a moment the box moved forward again, and they moved onto a square in the floor that suddenly began to rise carrying them upward. Another thirty minutes passed before they got to a huge door which opened in front of them. The aliens gestured again and they got out. Lisa whispered to the other two, "Remember let me do the talking. This might give us the first real Intel we've got on these guys okay?" Ben nodded and Ranma shrugged. He was fine with letting her do the talking but if things got physical or they were threatened, he'd act.

The aliens pushed them through the door and the three humans found themselves on a lighted and a raised dais in a large dark room. The three looked around for a few minutes before three more aliens made their presence known. One of them was short for an alien, thin, pallid and almost sickly looking, but the other two were anything but. One of them Ranma instantly recognized as the one who had captured them and his eyes narrowed. The other was even larger, but was fat and bald, with a commanding, almost dominating presence. Ranma closed his eyes for a moment, reaching out with his ki sense and was not surprised that the warrior with the metal plate on his face had far more ki than the other two, almost as much as a normal martial artist from Nerima, but what the other two had was… strange.

He opened his eyes as the little one began to speak, his words translated by a box on the ground in front of the three humans. "Micronians you stand in the presence of the supreme commander and Lord of all Zentraedi Dolza and lord admiral Breetai of the 2nd fleet. You have been brought to answer questions we have, if you do not answer you will die."

Lisa was about to reply when Ranma raised a hand and preempted her, pointing a finger at the one called Breetai. "there was something I wanted to do when I saw you, what was it now, oh yes I remember," he snapped his fingers and then brought both hands down and forward in one smooth motion. "Moko Takabashi!" A cerulean sphere of energy appeared and sped forward, slamming into the warrior alien's stomach, sending him crashing backward with a whoosh of exhaled air. Ranma moved to the edge of the dais and shouted "that's for destroying my Valkyrie ya bastard! I demand a rematch!" Say what you would about Ranma, he was still martial arts crazy and the idea he had been beaten by this alien was not something he was willing to let slide. But for now he threw his hands up even as Dolza and the other one moved away almost fearfully. "That's all I wanted, thanks, we can talk now."

Lisa groaned, sorely tempted to smack him upside the head even as the aliens stopped moving, looking at him in confusion. "Ranma has anyone told you you're about as diplomatic as a boot to the head?"

Ranma shrugged unrepentantly. "I ain't a diplomat so it don't matter. I just wanted ta get that out of the way that's all."

Breetai first gasped in surprise and then pain as the blue sphere hit him in the stomach, sending him crashing to the floor. By the gods that hurt, more than being hit by an Invid storm trooper's fist, but it had been a physical force rather than a beam of destructive power like the one the Micronian used to open up the hanger bay to space. How did the Micronian do that though, he has no weapons, could this be some kind of side effect to the use of Proto-culture? As the Micronians words registered however he began to laugh.

Here was a warrior after his own mold and one who refused to be awed. He could respect that at least. He waved Exedore's helping hand away and stood up, still laughing as he rubbed his sore stomach. "You have courage for one so small and alone. Still you are our prisoners and you will answer our questions." Breetai began the interrogation. "First I want to know how you just did that? What was that force you hit me with?"

"It's called a ki attack and it takes a long time to learn how to do them, nearly 10 of our years" Ranma said shrugging, "but I doubt that's why you wanted to capture us, so why don't you get on with the questions."

Dolza growled aloud, trying to regain his self possession. "You are in no position to make any demands of us Micronian! You are here on our orders, and anything we ask of you, you will answer!"

Ranma shrugged "sure, sure, whatever. Just remember that you don't hold all the cards here. I couldn't get us out of here, but I could take all three of you out. Just remember that, and ask Breetai if you don't believe me. Still, ask away, just remember to keep it civil. Okay?"

Exedore switched off the translator and turned to the other two but Breetai spoke before he could however. "My Lord, I think we need to agree to his request. When I fought that Micronian in his mechanical starfighter he nearly bested me and that was while his machine was running out of power. He seems to understand however that he cannot escape us here. Simply keep them under guard and let us be about the questioning. The sooner we question them the sooner we will be able to figure out how to take the space fortress away from them without contaminating ourselves further."

Breetai scowled. Negotiating at all was unfamiliar to him, and negotiating from a place of equality was even worse. Still, the objective came first. "Very well Exedore begin the questioning."

Exedore nodded and turned on the translator. "Let us start with something easy humans, we noted this one" he pointed to Lisa "has a different form than the other two. What does that signify?"

Ben who was still dealing with a bit of a concussion, said "don't you know what girls are?" At their blank looks he continued "Women or females?" That last word got a reaction and it was one of disgust from all three of the aliens.

"Your males and females live alongside one another? What would the point of that be?"

Ranma was about to answer with a rather flippant response when Lisa trod hard on his toe. "We find it works better that way." She said smoothly. "It helps our morale."

"Which of you is in charge?" Dolza demanded.

Lisa said. "I am, Lieut. Commander Lisa Hayes."

"A female is in charge of males!" exclaimed Dolza "how can that be!"

Breetai rejoined the discussion here. "Especially seeing as this one" he pointed at Ranma "is obviously an elite soldier!"

"I'm a strategic officer" she said slowly. "I think in longer terms, while Lt. Sugita thinks in terms of tactics and the here and now. Of course tactics is always subsumed by strategy and long-term planning." Inside she was filing every nuance of this hearing in her mind. She was getting more information in this interview than she had gotten from anything they had picked up in battle or during their reconstruction of the space fortress. The fact that the aliens didn't have any female officers or at least thought that the idea of females serving with males was anathema told them a lot about their culture.

"We are wasting time here," Dolza said, "tell us what you know of proto-culture."

Lisa turned to the other two. "Proto-culture, I've never heard of it, have either of you?"

Before they could respond Dolza shouted "You lie human tell us what you know of the proto-culture generator!"

"You know" Ranma drawled, "Has it ever occurred to any of you that we might call it something different? Maybe if you described it that might help us here?"

Dolza and the others blinked and looked at one another in consternation. Dolza then began hesitantly "the proto-culture is a generator, a thing of great power based around taking energy from a type of plant."

Lisa and the others looked at one another. "We don't know what you're talking about, the only generator I know about is the reflux generator that powers the ship. As far as I know there's not anything like what you're describing aboard."

But then how do you describe how you become human?" Exedore said triumphantly.

"What do you mean?" Ben asked. "We're just born that way."

"What do you mean born?" questioned Exedore.

Ben blushed and looked at the other two. "I am, well it's, when a man and a woman get together, they…"

Ranma blushed heavily and looked away, whistling, forcing Lisa to take up the conversation. "I-if a boy and a girl love each other enough they m-make love and sometimes, e-eventually there'll b-be a baby" she said, stuttering. God's this was so embarrassing, talking about having sex and children with aliens who obviously weren't getting anything they were talking about. And isn't that an interesting little bit of data she thought to herself. If they don't reproduce through natural birth, how do they do it? Together with their not having any females among them, that gives me a very odd glimpse into their culture.

"What is this love?" Asked Dolza. "Explain it or show this love thing to us."

"You have got to be joking."Ranma deadpanned.

"show us what this love is or else the female will die!" Dolza snarled, reaching forward with a huge hand.

Ranma froze for a millisecond and then growled low in his throat, moving forward to interpose his body between the bald alien and Lisa. "The blast I hit Breetai with was a medium shot you big bastard, you want to try for a full-size one?" He held up his hands which again began to glow with blue/gold fire.

Breetai immediately backed up getting more room to respond to any threat he made. The other two simply froze. But Dolza gamely replied. "You can only attack us once human before you in turn are attacked by all our forces. You are still within our power. Now show us what this love thing is."

Ben, his concussion really bothering him said "well I suppose we could show them a kiss. That's not too bad is it?"

Lisa growled. "Unless you want to be the woman ensign, I would suggest shutting up!" She looked up at the aliens and saw resolute and curious expressions on all three. She sighed. It really looked as if she wasn't going to get out of this one. She turned to Ranma and said "all right, Lieut. I want you kiss me."

Ranma immediately began to stutter and blush. "But, but I am going out with Kasumi I mean, wouldn't that be bad. I mean…"

Lisa grabbed his shoulders and shook them a little. "It's just to show the aliens what a kiss is" she said, ignoring her own beating heart.

"Er," he said "well if if you really think this is important, all right." He put his own arms on her shoulders but then stopped. Lisa" he said softly "you're trembling."

She stammered "shut, shut up, it-it's just nerves. That's all it is." She lied easily.

"Well," he said slowly. "If you're sure…" one of his hands went to the back of her head and her own arms went around him, one arm around his waist and the other reaching to grasp his pigtail. They leaned forward for a moment and stopped a centimeter away from one another. Blue eyes met emerald for second and then they closed and two pairs of lips closed the distance between them meeting in a very, very sweet kiss.

Almost immediately for both of them there was a spark. For Ranma, he likened this kiss to all the kisses he had shared with Kasumi. It was hot, sweet, and tasty as all get out. Where Kasumi always tasted like honey and vanilla, Lisa tasted like cinnamon and tea. A taste that he hadn't thought he would like, but on her lips, he liked it very much. His arms tightened around her involuntarily, and he thrust his tongue out, demanding entry into her mouth.

For her part Lisa was in ecstasy. This kiss was far, far better than any kiss she had ever shared with Karl, even though a part of her still thought that even thinking that was a betrayal of her memory of him. On the other side of her mind there was the attraction that she had been trying to fight for months toward Ranma, and this kiss made her lose all the ground she had gained in her battle with it. When his arms tightened around her, she tightened her own arms around him raising one leg and swinging it around him, pulling him closer. She pressed against him hard with her body, a body that the uniform she always wore hid very well, but which the spacesuit that she was now wearing hid not at all. She moaned loudly as his tongue invaded her mouth and she ground herself against him.

They were brought out of the moment by the alien's exclamations of horror and disgust. Ben's wolf whistle didn't exactly help either.

Ranma was the first recover and he put his arms around her gently this time, but moving his head away so as to look up at the aliens. Before either of them could think of what to do next, Dolza exclaimed "get them out of my sight! This is why our laws always tell us to never come in contact with Micronians. They are infectious!"

Three guards came in and ordered the prisoners away. None of the three spoke until they were back in their cell. Ben was the first to speak and with his concussion taking away his sense of self-preservation said "that was one of the hottest things I've ever seen you two! Wow! If you put on that kind of a show for aliens then..."

Ranma growled at him and he shut up. He turned to Lisa and said in a soft voice that only she could hear "that wasn't just a kiss was it?"

She looked up at him then back away towards the cell door that she had been steadfastly looking at to avoid looking into his eyes. After a moment she shook her head and Ranma groaned. "When we get back" he said "both of us are going to talk to his Kasumi okay? I ain't gonna lie to you and tell you I didn't feel anything when I kissed you, or that I haven't, you know, been attracted to you before. I may even like you a lot, but I'm going out with Kasumi you know?"

Lisa nodded miserably "I know. I've been fighting my attraction to you for a while because of that and because of my memories of Karl. It's just that kiss was probably a bad idea."

Ranma shook his head hard. "It wasn't a bad idea judging by the how the aliens reacted, nor is it ever a bad idea ta get something like that out in the open. Like I said we'll handle this one way or another. And besides last time I checked, it takes two to tango or in this case kiss!" Lisa surprised herself by giggling a little. Then she went back to her data pad which had been recording the entire conversation with the aliens, and she replayed parts of it committing them to memory.

Back at the headquarters area Dolza snarled. "This is why the humans are so dangerous, they are too alien to understand!" He calmed down after a moment, looking at Breetai. "You did well to bring them here in the first place Breetai, and their questioning will continue, but I have need of you elsewhere."

"Yes my Lord" Breetai said "I will return to the Micronian star system and devise a new plan to reclaim the space fortress."

"No Breetai, I have need of you in another task. You and your fleet are to be reassigned entirely to the front with the Invid. They've taken the loss of their factory ship that the 11th skirmish fleet destroyed very badly and are pressing an assault all along the eastern quadrant. I want you and your fleet to flank them, cut off their attacking forces and wipe them out."

"Of course my lord, but what of the space fortress?"

"I will assign that task to the females. They are a more subtle force than ours and their strange way of thinking may allow them to fight the contamination of the humans far better than we can."

"If I might make a suggestion, my Lord" Breetai said hesitantly "I would suggest that the 11th skirmish fleet stays with the females as a brute force. With the 11th there to take the pressure of the human's attention off the females, they will be able to design better plans and longer-term scenarios while still making certain the space fortress cannot make it back to their homeworld. And to be blunt, I do not want the 11th skirmish fleet with my forces."

Dolza nodded affirmatively. "Yes, I think that will be a good idea. The 11th is the force that caused the Invid attack in the first place, let them keep being bled dry. Depart as soon as you are able." Breetai bowed and he and Exedore left the chamber.

Dolza turns to the screen and commanded to of his technicians to open the screen in the human's cell. "Human elite soldier!" he shouted, "you consider yourself powerful, strong, strong enough to threaten Dolza. Now watch real power!" He nodded to another technician who changed the view that the humans were seeing a scene occurring outside Dolza's mighty gargantuan fortress.

On the view screen in the human's jail cell there was now shown a planet surrounded entirely by alien ships. At another nod from Dolza an order went out and suddenly, the entire front of that vast armada opened fire on the planet below. Within seconds the whole planet was a lifeless husk. "That is power human and next time I call you to my chamber you will answer all my questions or that will occur on your world." He was bluffing of course, with the Invid forces pressing along their front, he would not be able to reinforce the female's fleet or the 11th's enough to accomplish a swift sterilization bombardment like this, not for a few months anyway. Of course the humans didn't know that. He watched as the three prisoners kept staring in horror at the screen for a moment before cutting the com, filled with satisfaction as his message hit home.

That satisfaction faded as he felt a tug on his consciousness. Making no outward sign of his sudden unease he signaled his communications officer. "I am going to retire now, dealing with these Micronians has irritated me. Relay the orders for the Meltraedi to move to the system where Breetai found Zor's fortress. Make certain they understand their orders."

His decision to delegate passing the order to the Meltraedi would have far reaching consequences. After all, only Dolza and a few of the older admirals knew the real dangers of Micronian contamination….

However Dolza had no way of knowing the trouble not giving orders to the Meltraedi personally would later cause him and he turned and entered his personal chamber. He waited until the extra heavy door closed behind him before going to one knee. "Masters."

An instant later as if appearing out of nowhere three figures appeared, wearing long flowing robes. They were not Zentraedi nor did they appear human, though like those two races they were humanoid. They were tall, with thin almost emaciated bodies, long thin arms, and thin but long necks tapering to a head that was far larger in the back than the front, indicating a large brain pan. Their ancient seeming faces were heavily creased and looked much the same from one to the next. It was only in eye color and hair style where they differed, though it mattered not at all.

"Dolza, we have had disturbing sensor reports, one coming from the distant star system you told us you found the traitor's ship in, and once just now in your own fortress. Once is an aberration, twice is a pattern. Tell us what has been happening."

Hearing the actual anger in the Master's linked voice shook Dolza, the three of them were always so dispassionate and controlled, thinking emotions things only less-evolved creatures had. Whatever their sensors had told them must have rattled them badly. "I-I do not know what your sensors might have told you about anything occurring in the Sol system, but Breetai had captured three Micronians and brought them here for questioning on the proto-culture generator. They did not seem to understand our questions, but one of them displayed an odd kind of power, that may be what you speak of my masters."

"Describe it." Dolza did so and the three hovering forms stayed silent for a time, communicating between each other telepathically. Finally they spoke to him again. "What you describe could not have been picked up by our sensors as far away from us as Sol, but it is a starting point. It is more imperative than ever that you capture the traitor's fortress. Zor delved deeper into proto-culture and its effects on organisms than any other, something on the ship must have caused this human to have the power you describe. Whatever he says or even truly thinks no lesser race could have developed that sort of power over its own energy without such intervention. Do you understand Dolza, the ship must be taken intact for both our people's sakes." And with that the trio of beings known as the Robotech Masters disappeared from their thrall's room, leaving the so-called lord of all Zentraedi quivering in fear and relief that they had been satisfied by his answer.

Max stretched his arms up over his head, sighing tiredly as he looked around the park. Being the only one to survive from the alien's ambush had given him some notoriety but he had been unable to find the one woman who he wanted most to impress, the flame-haired flower of Amazonian beauty that was Ranma Sugita. He had even made it a point to bump into her mother and been told point blank she wasn't seeing anyone right now, presumably grieving for her brother. Still he was willing to wait a bit, he could still be a shoulder for her to cry on later. Until then however he was on the lookout for someone who he could spend some time with until Ranma came out of hiding.

He spotted one such and smiled inwardly. Kasumi Tendo, the angel of Macross(though no one called her that to her face) was sitting at a nearby bench drawing something. And while he knew that she had a relationship with Ranma before he died, that only made it all the sweeter.

Anyone who knew Max as the affable, laid back pilot would have been astounded at the amount of personal irritation that he felt toward Ranma. Max was used to being the best at anything he did, not without putting in the work for it of course, but sooner or later he was the best at whatever he set his mind to. That Ranma was consistently better, and not just better but overwhelmingly so than we was at combat, without even realizing there was a competition, was something he couldn't stand. That Ranma was even better at martial arts was worse in a way. Max had tried to swallow his pride and ask for personal training outside of that given to the entire flight but Ranma had refused, sighting the work load of being a lt. and it stung. On duty he was able to shove that to the side and remain the shy self-effacing person that everyone knew him as, but on his own it sometimes ate at him, and if he saw a way to one up the other man he would take it. Max stood up and walked over quietly until he stood next to Kasumi. "Um, Ms. Tendo right, Kasumi Tendo? We met at the White Dragon during Ms. Minmei's birthday party."

Kasumi looked up, her face blank for a moment then she smiled as she placed the face. "Yes, Max Sterling I believe? How are you?" She reached down and opened up the briefcase by her feet, placing the drawing paper she had been working on and the clipboard it was connected to into the briefcase to join the many pencils she had already put away. Her design for a true tree house was well enough along now that she would have to transfer it to computer later.

Max inwardly cursed his luck as he realized she was getting ready to leave. "Um I just came over to give my condolences and tell you that if you ever need a shoulder to cry on I'm here."

Kazsumi cocked her head quizzically. "Condolences, whatever for?"

Max blinked in surprise that certainly wasn't what he had expected her to say. "Um, my condolences on Lt. Sugita's passing. He's been missing for over a week now and I know you two were close."

Kasumi smiled then giggled a little. "I see. Well thank you Max but I don't think any condolences are necessary. You see even you refer to him as missing, not dead. I know he is alive somewhere. Ranma has made a habit of doing the impossible. He'll be back, I don't know how but he will be. Ranma always comes back." She bowed respectfully too him leaving Max to gape after her in consternation.

While Blue squadron was stood down, the rest of the SDF forces were not so lucky. The beam attacks had stopped but the battlepod assaults had stepped up even further, coming now every day at irregular intervals in numbers exceeding 300 each time. What was worse was that the alien called Kyron that Ranma had fought twice before had returned and with him leading them the attackers were much more coordinated. Losses among the Valkyrie squadrons were slowly rising even with the fights occurring inside the tertiary weapons envelope of the battleship. Losses among the Defender destroid companies hadn't climbed yet but that was because the barrier system had remained on at all times to cover them in clumps stationed around the ship. Other sections of the hull had been lightly damaged in these attacks, though not enough yet to truly harm the mighty ship.

A fun time was not being had either by the destroid or Veritech forces or on the bridge during battles where Lisa's presence was sorely missed. Claudia was able to handle the administrative and logistical duties of the executive officer position but the replacement for Lisa at tactical was not up to the challenge. Vanessa Laird, the next in line for the tactical officer's job was literally overwhelmed by the amount of data she had to juggle at her position. Many times in battle she had accidentally sent one squadron of Valkyries after another to double up on one areas defense while leaving another completely defenseless. While she erred on the side of caution when ordering damaged Veritechs to retreat, which kept the losses less than they would have been this also put more pressure on their fellows, and led to frayed feelings within the squadrons and poor coordination.

Mannstein could handle his portion of the battle well enough but he didn't have the background in thinking in terms of 360 degree battlefields to take over the Valkyrie defense of the ship.

The morale of the ship had also suffered a major blow after the ambush, both among the SDF and the regular civilians. Ranma and Lisa were both important figures for different reasons to both groups. Lisa was popular before her participation in the Ms. Macross contest and had become even more popular since, becoming with Kim Young the face of the SDF after action news reports, giving the military a much more human aspect. And Ranma was considered by both civilian and military to be their toughest fighter and practically un-killable.

The aliens had also hit on a strategy that forced the Macross to retreat from a straight run to Earth. They simply made the attacks from that trajectory continuous, sending in attack waves every hour that the ship stayed on its course to catch Earth when it came around the sun again. That had caused half the losses the navy had taken since the loss of Lisa and her group before Gloval rather desperately changed the ships course and found the attacks immediately returning to their normal level.

Thus Gloval had made the decision to make course for Jupiter. It would take them almost three weeks but if they could escape into the atmosphere and pick up more resources they could make good their losses and then some before trying for earth once more, with the help of something Dr. Lang had recently discovered. He only hoped they were somehow able to survive to get there in the first place. Dying the death of a thousand stings was far less pleasant than it sounded, and it didn't sound that pleasant.

Rick tried to sleep through the fold-space phenomena as much as possible but when the huge alien ship materialized near an even larger alien structure, and when he said larger he meant larger, as in the large ship he had been hiding on entered the monstrous fortress through a very, very tiny hole in the side of it, he woke up quickly.

On the inside the fortress was almost completely hollow, but that brought no comfort as what it was filled with were alien fleets, thousands strong by his estimation all over the place. Fearing he would be seen Rick swiftly made his way over to the nearest hatch he could find, using his head lasers to cut a way in. Even as alarms were going off about the breach in the armor, he was running away from his entrance before hiding in the nearest empty room he could find. After a little while the alarms stopped but Rick stayed put for several more minutes, waiting to see if there was any response to his breaking in. It soon became apparent that there hadn't been despite the continued noise of the alarm.

When he sneaked a quick glance outside the room he was in he was astonished to see dozens of the giant aliens going about their business without even pausing in their work as the alarm went on. It was this blasé attitude that gave Rick an idea. He waited until alarms died and then when one alien was in the corridor outside his room he jumped out and attacked the alien knocking it unconscious and dragging it back into the room.

It was but the work of a moment for him to strip the alien of all its clothing, and then dump it still unconscious on its head a few times to make sure it stayed out. "I think I've been hanging around Ranma too long," he mused to himself, "that was far too easy."

Putting the clothing on his mechanical fighter, however, proved a little more difficult. The Valkyrie was really not intended to wear clothing. However, once he was done he looked enough like an alien to pass as one of them, well outside of his robot's head. The curved up turtleneck of the alien's uniform hid his 'face' and then he put on the cap that the alien had been wearing. That done he ventured out of his room and began to explore this space ship hoping to find his friends.

After several hours of searching however he hadn't come up with any leads, though he was making several observations about the ship and the aliens in general. For one thing, they didn't seem to believe in maintenance. He soon lost count of the areas he walked through that were in poor repair, either suffering from electrical damage, damage caused by burst water pipes or simple rust. Rick also come across what was obviously a junk heap of battlepods, all of whom looked as if they could've been pretty easily repaired by a dedicated crew, but had been simply left here as unusable. What that said about the alien's infrastructure, that they could so easily ignore the work and money/resources necessary to pay for these pods construction was a very bad thing, yet the fact they wouldn't or couldn't repair them was beyond bizarre.

About an hour after finding the battle pod graveyard he got lucky. He spotted two aliens on some kind of box conveyance going away from him. But what attracted his attention wasn't the aliens or the box, but the fact that the two aliens had Ranma's Valkyrie in the conveyance with them.

It had obviously taken a beating, but it was still remarkably in one piece. The cockpit area looked as if it was completely trashed, and two of the lasers on the head were bent out of shape as was the right arm, but other than that it looks good to go.

He decided to follow this tram to its destination and see if they were storing the Valkyrie near his friends. When he passed through a docking clamp and left the ship behind him he began to get worried, until he saw that the ship was pulling out of the dock then he became terrified for a moment before getting hold of himself again.

"Well", Rick muttered philosophically to himself "they're either here or not, nothing I can do about it now." He knew that actually flying after the departing battleship would've meant almost instant and certain death.

He was in luck however. After the two aliens dumped the Valkyrie into a compartment area he noticed two more guards down the hallway. Waiting until the two aliens he had followed left. He snuck into the room with the Valkyrie in it. No aliens were in the room, but what looked likes several sensors apparatus were set up, obviously in an attempt to analyze the Valkyrie.

After hiding there for another hour he made his way over to where he had spotted the two guards. Looking like he had every right to be there he got close before they started to talk to them.

Realizing they didn't understand him and wouldn't care if they had he opened fire before they could even raise the alarm or their own guns. Two huge bodies hit the floor making a thump that could be heard in several compartments all around him. Rick swiftly reached forward and opened the door and was relieved to see his his three friends. "Hey, you guys" he said, "ready to go home? And you will never guess what I found Ranma."

Inside the cell Lisa and Ranma looked at one another. "Have you thought of a way to get us back to the spaceship?"

Lisa shrugged. "They need to be sending some reinforcements every so often, even if only battlepods. If we can figure out a way to tell where the ship is going we can hop onto a ship going in the right direction. If we can keep hidden anyway."

Ranma shrugged "keeping hidden is pretty easy, figuring out which ship to get on now, that is tough."

"Still, let's get out of here. That way we have more options." That said Lisa led the way out of the room and up into the waiting hands of the Veritech. Rick then put Ben on one shoulder and Lisa on the other, and carried Ranma in one of the uniform's pockets. He figured, correctly, that Ranma would be the first to get up and fight if they were discovered, and as such should probably be in the place closest to the ground and thus the ability to move on his own two feet. Within seconds however Rick transferred both Ranma and Lisa into Ranma's Veritech.

"Are you sure you can run this thing?" Lisa asked worriedly "it's battery seems to have been completely removed"

Ranma shrugged again. "Don't ask me to fight or fly in it, but yeah I can move it around easy. It's just the thrusters and using the Iron Body technique that takes a lot out of me. I'm pretty much recovered so I should be good for may be six or seven hours of non-combat movement. After that though, I won't be good for much of anythin'."

Lisa thought about it for a minute weighing the pros and cons of having another Valkyrie with them to help and Ranma getting so tired that he would not be worth much after six or seven hours walking around. After a few minutes deliberation she nodded and Ranma began to power up his robot.

Ranma and Rick continued on their way, both of them now dressed in the uniforms taken from the guards outside human cell. This, of course, included rifles, which made both of them feel much better about their present situation. Using old passageways and unused areas they were able to traverse the ship relatively easily, but did not have much luck finding anything that could help them or that was even interesting until they came out of the gantry and into a huge truly huge open area.

Below them were three large glass capsules, things that sort of reminded Ranma, a closet Star Wars fan, of a bacta tank. Scattered below them were workers, workers who were female Ranma and the others were quick to realize, and who were working on or around the glass capsules. Inside the glass capsules were three other female aliens stark naked. When he spotted that, Ranma looked away blushing. Lisa smiled as he did so then frowned at the other two until they looked away as well very reluctantly. After all, who can resist the allure of three huge giant women stark naked.

Lisa leaned over to whisper into Ranma's ear. "This is what they were talking about when they asked us how we became normal sized; there must be some jobs that they need human sized workers for. That's why they're shrinking those three."

Ranma shrugged, looking around. "It's obvious one of those jobs ain't maintenance. This place looks like it's falling apart. At least, you know, in comparison to the Macross."

Lisa nodded thoughtfully. In any warship regardless of the nature of the ship there was a lots of maintenance needed on an almost constant basis to keep it running at peak efficiency. Over two thirds of the battleship's assigned crew were maintenance personnel, whose job it was to both repair the ship and keep the ship running smoothly, a job she knew put a lot of strain on the barely half crew they had now.

It looked as if the aliens scrimped on that aspect, simply using things until they discarded them. This was either wasteful or showed an extreme amount of arrogance in their own infrastructure. "I wonder why Dolza didn't think that women and men served together, I mean, look around there are women all over the place here."

Ranma shook his head "but no men," he pointed out and sure enough nowhere was there a single man in the entire room. He paused as he began to feel a pulse in the walls all around them. "I think we actually got on another ship somehow. This place is just so big we didn't notice it. I think we just entered fold."

"But we don't know if this ship is going back to our solar system!" Lisa exclaimed.

Ranma merely shrugged fatalistically, "Any port in a storm is better than here. Let's see if we can find someplace to hide out until we figure out what else to do."

Lisa and the others agreed and they made their way out of the room with the capsules and into the hallway. About an hour later, they were able to find a room with several battle pods in it, though the paint job looked more like that which would be used for a target rather than the normal type. One such battle pod was at the end of the line and looked a little damaged and Ranma suggested that they get inside it, as the aliens didn't seem to use anything that was damaged like that.

As the battle pod was designed for a full-sized alien, the two Valkyries were a tight fit but were still able to fit inside. Ranma, exhausted from having to move around the Valkyrie using his own energy nearly immediately collapsed backwards into sleep. He had concentrated on meditation during their time in the cell, so this was the first time he had been able to actually get some real shut eye.

Lisa looked at him in amusement as he did so then got out of the Valkyrie and went to sit on its head, the better to talk with Ben and Rick. Ben, still suffering from a concussion and his broken arm, which was actually worse than it had been, was ready to go to sleep himself so Rick and Lisa had first watch. They spent the time filling one another in of what they had been doing since Rick had been kicked out of the airlock.

Rick was impressed that Lisa had thought of using her data pad to collect pictures and make notes, and felt that once they put that together with what he had seen it would have a much better idea of the alien's capabilities and strategic strengths. Unfortunately at the moment all their data was negative. The reality of the millions strong fleet that they had seen inside and outside Dolza's fortress was daunting in the extreme.

About six hours later Ranma woke up and took the next watch, allowing Lisa and Rick to sleep. Rick slept in his cockpit, while Lisa curled up in the hand of Ranma's Valkyrie. Ranma took up watch on top of his Valkyries head, staring out the slightly open cockpit of the battle pod.

The trip went on, and the longer it went on, the better it was for the humans. None of them could figure out how long they had been in fold space to get to Dolza's fortress in the first place, but they figured the further away they got from that fortress, the better.

Aboard the bridge of her flagship, a fast attack Queadol-Magdomilla that matched skirmish fleet ships in size but with five times the firepower (though that was because of the size of the weapons rather than numbers), and armor stood Azonia, supreme commander of all Meltraedi. She was a stern and intelligent looking woman with close cropped curly blue hair and a personally designed uniform that was the envy of many of her captains.

Before her stood one of the finest combat pilots in either the male or female force, her legend was known to all as a peerless warrior, who had never met her match in combat. Not that she allowed herself to sit on her laurels. Every day she was training, training to get better, faster, stronger, in her Queadluun Rau powered armor.

Her name was Miriya and she was not happy with her current orders. "Dropping off a few spies is hardly a true test of my talents. And as for your order to use a Reguld..."

Azonia smiled, they had served together for a long time, and she knew precisely what buttons to push to get Miriya to follow her orders. "Oh, does that mean you aren't qualified on them any longer?"

Miriya gritted her teeth. If there was one thing that could always get a response out of her it was calling her flight abilities into question. "Of course I'm still qualified on them. That's not the point. I thought the point of this entire enterprise was to destroy the space fortress. That should be more than simple enough without this beating around the vetak." A vetak was a small carnivorous plant that was dangerous to small rodents and mammals that grew in large clumps on several worlds in the Spiral arm. New trainees on training exercises would often walk around them, when anyone with experience knew they were no threat and would walk straight through them.

"No," Azonia said calmly "our objective is to capture it. And to do that we need to know more about these humans that infest it." She paused, looking at Miriya calmly, "There is another aspect to this particular job, which is why I want you to use a Reguld. When we do strike I want the capabilities and abilities of our Queadluun Rau to be complete unknowns. I don't want these humans to even get a glimpse of them before then."

"I can understand the logic in that at least" Miriya said after a moment's thought, "but why me?"

Miriya shrugged. "Who else would I trust to do anything this subtle?"

Miriya snorted. "I'm not exactly a subtle person normally."

Miriya chuckled "I know you're not, but when you are ordered to be you can be."

Miriya realized that the time for talking was over and simply nodded her head "as you command, lady."

The ship came out of fold and immediately alarms flared all over the ship calling battle pods users to their machines. Ranma and the others were up and ready as soon as the alarm first shouted. With Ranma operating the legs and thrusters via his Valkyrie and Rick taking over the controls of the weapons via his, they were able to maneuver the battle pod out among its fellows and then out into space. Somehow they fell into formation behind the others, and rocketed away from the mothership. Lisa, manning the radar station, was rather irritated. "The sensors on these things are crap. Obviously the commanders don't want their followers to know where the hell they are, rather disgusting of them frankly."

Ranma however shrugged. "Doesn't matter to us one way or the other, I just hope that we're in the right damn place or we're going to be finding ourselves in the fight against someone else."

Lisa's blood froze at that and she smacked her forehead in anger, "of course!" she exclaimed "these aliens must have other enemies out there somewhere and if we are actually about to fight them no matter the circumstances that's not going to look good."

Ranma however shrugged. "I don't know what you're concerned about, most of the friends I made back in Nerima I fought first. It's normal."

"Your definition of normal is about as far from the Webster's version as it's possible to get!" Lisa said, irritated.

Ranma shrugged and went back to concentrating on his piloting, that and not standing out the latter of which was actually much harder than the former. Ranma was used to leading the way into battle, but this sneaking and skulking about at the back was about as far away from that as it was possible to get. Though as Lisa said, his definition of normal was skewed.

About two hours after they had exited the ship Lisa smiled and shouted triumphantly. "We have incoming and they are Valkyries!" she exclaimed happily.

Ranma grinned and began to angle downwards from the original line of attack cutting the Regulds engines to half at the same time. "How long are we going to wait until we tell them who we are?"

Lisa looked at the tactical situation then shrugged. "We can do it right now, either they'll believe us or they'd still think we were enemies and shoot us down. Anyway we need to wait until the dogfight settles down a bit more."

Ranma shrugged, but Rick was a little irritated. "So what's going to stop our friends from shooting us down anyway?"

Lisa smirked at them "are you pilots or aren't you?"

Ranma and Rick looked at her irritably. "That," Ranma said "was a blatant low blow but whatever, we'll do it. I'll keep us heading downwards, Rick you keep searching above us for enemies that are coming after us but also shout out if you see any Valkyries incoming on the radar Lisa." Lisa nodded. They didn't have any problems staying at the outskirts at the dogfight for the next thirty or so minute, though the fight kept moving forward towards the space battleship. Just as they were within visual range of the space battleship more Valkyries poured out and join the dogfight. There their luck ended as two Valkyries peeled away from a squadron on an attack vector on their pod.

"Hail them already!" Ranma exclaimed, "or we're liable to get shut down by our own side!"

"Don't rush me." She muttered trying to find the right frequency. Finding it she yelled into the communicator, "incoming Valkyries incoming Valkyries be aware this battle pod has been hijacked! Be aware that the battle pod you are about to attack has space forces personnel onboard. The following personnel are onboard, Ensign Hunter, Ensign Dixon, Lieutenant Sugita, and Commander Hayes! Do not fire!"

A female voice answered her. "Did I choose to enter the Ms. Macross contest of my own free will or was I coerced and if so by what?"

Lisa looked around. "I know that's Lt. Aoyama but I have no idea what she's talking about."

Ranma grinned, leaning over the huge speaker like communicator, then said into it, "you were coerced by my mom to enter 'cause she refused to give you any sword fighting classes if ya didn't."

"Holy shit it really is you guys, we'd given up hope on all of you! Well, except for Kasumi, she kept on saying that Ranma would find some way to get back, can't say we believed her though. We'll escort you back to the battleship right now."

The four blue flight Valkyries settled in around the pod, looking very conspicuous, but only one of the other pods noticed this. That one pod however, had her own job to do but made a note to look that pod up later on her way out.

Miriya was followed for a time by one very irritating pilot who tried to get her in his sights, but she was far too swift and agile to be caught. The fighter did clip her a few times and for that she would make a point to seek him out later, but in the end he had to pull away as other battle pods came up behind him firing their cannons. He turned around negligently and killed all three of them, but by the time he turned around Miriya was long gone. "Another time, Micronian."

She spotted a small section of the underside of the battleship that wasn't covered by the defensive fire, and swiftly getting close she reached up and placed the small container containing the three spies against the side of the ship. Once the clamps were in place she moved away with a final message to those inside. "Good luck you three I get a feeling you're going to need it."

Mission accomplished she pushed power into her thrusters powering away from the battleship down and around the main dogfight, though she took the time to take some potshots at the Valkyries that were colored similarly to the one that and try to chase her down. She didn't find the one that had attempted to take her out, but she was able to take out two others. One at least was permanent, while the other had only lost a wing.

Not bad for a normal battle pod she thought and left the dogfight to her lessers. She had done her job and the next time she faced these humans she would be in power armor. Then they would learn what a true ace could do.

The arrival of the survivors of the ambush was greeted with exclamations of surprise shock and, of course happiness. Lisa was barely out of the battlepod before she was buried under the bodies of the three lieutenants, Kasumi and Claudia. Ranma who came next was almost knocked out by Kasumi's throwing herself at him so hard that his head smacked into the back of his Valkyrie nearly leaving a bruise. Kasumi, nor his mother who joined her a moment later, seemed at all bothered by the fact they were in a military zone, and really should not have been there.

Amidst the jubilation Rick was greeted warmly as well by Nodoka and Kasumi, as well as Sammy, who clung to his side, but Minmei was conspicuously absent. Both Rick and Ranma made mental notes to look her up at the earliest opportunity. Roy however, had to play the part of the devil and ordered the party to break up. "Sorry girls, but these returning heroes have to go and give their reports before anything else. They've probably got a lot of stuff they can tell us."

As Ben was carted off to the hospital the other three looked at one another and laughed. "You have no idea" said Lisa "really you have no idea."

As the most senior officer among the escapees Lisa automatically spoke for them all before the other officers. First she laid out what occurred during the battle, including several references to how brave and dependable the Valkyrie pilots had been before being overcome, as well as how the one alien that seemed to be the largest on the ship had fought them far harder than any of the others. Then she told the board how long she estimated they had been in full space for. Dr. Lang cut in at this point saying that a fold of that length would possibly take the ship doing it almost completely out of the this spiral arm.

Lisa next called on Rick, who explained how huge the exterior the fortress had been in comparison to the battleship, a ship moreover, that was already at least two times the size of the SDF-1. There was some mutterings at that, Connor and Griftel (who had not shaped up to Gloval's satisfaction in terms of his intelligence duties) in particular didn't seem to want to believe that the aliens had access to something of that size and apparent power. What would be the point of capturing the SDF after all if you already had bigger and better ships?

At that point with Rick and Ranma corroborating her she began to describe the interior of the fortress, emphasizing how run down it was, how many things seemed to be broken and not fixed, and yet how formidable and simply huge it was. None of the SDF commanders seemed to like that idea, that a ship could be so effective and so monstrously strong and yet not looked after properly. It offended their professional sensibilities.

Lisa then produced the coup de grace of their presentation, the data pad that she had used to record their interview/interrogation by the alien commanders. Everyone sat and listened to it for a moment and Ranma was both relieved and a bit amused that Lisa had removed the kissing part, leaving it to sound as if Dolza had just gotten fed up with Ranma's own attitude. Not he thought to himself that that was probably far from the truth.

After Lisa finished Capt. Gloval asked "Do any of you have anything further to add?"

Ranma raised his hand almost immediately. "I got something which is kind of strange. Frankly, these aliens, they don't have much in the way of ki. I mean, a normal one, one of their fighters doesn't have more than like a ten-year-old human kid, that's weird ta me. But what's stranger is the old Admiral, the one called Breetai had more than any of the normal soldiers, almost as much as most of the people I met back in Nerima. But the other one, Dolza had zero, it was like he was some kinda robot or something. I don't know if that's important or not. I just thought it was weird at the time."

"And I don't think we can really stress strong enough that these guys are fighting us with kid gloves. This proto-culture thing that they're all mad about, that's what they really want. I think the sooner we find out what it is, the better we're all going to be." Lisa nodded emphatically agreement next to him.

The flag officers debated for a moment before coming out of the debate and nodding at the survivors. "Well, I think that's enough of this for now. You four have done very well in both surviving and getting this information back to us, rest, recuperate and we will call you if we require any more information."

Rick looked at Lisa and Ranma as they walked out the door. "Why do I get the impression they didn't believe us?"

Ranma shrugged but Lisa nodded. "Dr. Lang seemed to agree with us and maybe Capt. Gloval did too but honestly the numbers these aliens have are just unbelievable. I can't say I blame them for not wanting to believe in them. Though the fact that Dolza destroyed a whole planet just because he wanted to make a point, that terrifies me."

Ranma growled low in his throat. He hadn't been using his ki sense at the time and he probably wouldn't have been able to feel anything at that distance anyway, but deep down inside him he knew that the universe just did not want something like that to go unanswered. And I'm just the man to do it, if I ever see that big bastard again I'm gonna ram my Valkyrie's fist through his fucking brain plate!

Rick nodded farewell to the other two and walked off, intent on finding Minmei. Lisa was about to do the same when Ranma grabbed her by the shoulder. "Nice try." He said sardonically, "but no cigar. We have a date with Kasumi" he said softly, barely whispering the words as he gently guided her along "or were ya thinking of just trying to escape and forgetting what happened?"

Lisa looked at him and sighed. "I would rather have liked to forget yes, but you're right, we need to own up to what we did. She's my friend; I won't lie to her about something like this."

It took them forty minutes to get from where the debriefing had occurred to Ranma and his mother's apartment. The moment they opened the door Kasumi hit them both with a hug to dwarf those she gave them in the hanger bay. Lisa could literally hear her ribs creaking in protest under her friend's arms.

"I know you would return!" she exclaimed, "I just knew it!" And she kissed Ranma very thoroughly on the lips. Lisa looked on torn between happiness for her friend, jealousy, and strangely enough a little bit of arousal which kind of scared her. She shouldn't be getting aroused by watching her best friend and her, okay she had to admit it, unrequited love interest kissing. That admonition didn't stop her body's reaction to the scene however.

Ranma however, did not return Kasumi's kiss as he did so enthusiastically most of the time. As they gently parted he said softly "Kasumi, we've got something to tell you and you might not like it."

Kasumi looked at him with her head cocked to one side and then led the two further into the apartment. After she sat down Lisa stood up and began to give a brief description of what had occurred during the interrogation by the aliens leading up to the kiss. Once she got to the kiss she described it, and then apologized. "I'm sorry. I know it's wrong but I-I've been attracted to Ranma for some time and this was, when we kissed it brought those feelings to the fore. I'll understand if you don't want to be friends with me any longer over this, hell I couldn't blame you at all."

Ranma however cut her pity party short. "Don't take all the blame for yerself Lisa I enjoyed the kiss just as much as you did. And I gotta say I've been fighting my own attraction to you too, at least since Mars. Let's just say that flying back to the space fortress with your rear on my lap sorta brought it to my attention."

Lisa was about to say something to him, she was never quite certain later what she was going to say, but something. Whatever she was going to say died on her throat when Kasumi began to giggle. The two looked at her and Kasumi pulled them both into a hug kissing them both on the lips causing Lisa to splutter with shock. When Kasumi pulled back she said, "I've known forever that you've been attracted to Ranma, almost since the day we met on top of the rice paddy."

Lisa looked at her askance. "I haven't been attracted to him that long."

Kasumi smiled gently. "So you say. But I have a very good grasp of human body language, and I know that even then you were a little attracted to Ranma at least on a physical level. Once you pushed past the memory of your ex-boyfriend I felt this was inevitable. And frankly," she said, smiling happily "I'm ecstatic about it."

They looked at her in shock and she sighed. "Ranma" she said gently. "I told you when we first started going out that I knew you couldn't marry me because of your oath. This way eventually if you two realize that your feelings are that deep for one another you can marry Lisa." Lisa gasped at the very idea. I mean we haven't even gone out yet or anything! Oh God Now I'm thinking of going out with him, she thought to herself.

Kasumi's giggled again. "In fact, I'm not the only one who thought that you would hook up with someone else Ranma. Your heart is just too big for one person" she grinned slyly "as is your stamina!" Ranma blushed a little and Lisa blushed a lot as she got the implications of that statement. "I love you Ranma" Kasumi said gently "and that will never change. But it would be the height of selfishness to keep you to myself when you can make other girls just as happy as you can make me. I'm not saying I want to force you into a relationship together, but I like you both. I get along with Lisa very well so to my mind this is a perfect relationship, or perhaps a perfect outcome to this relationship." She giggled again. "In fact your mother and I had a bet going. She bet on Motoko, whereas I bet on Lisa. I'm glad I was correct."

Lisa looked at her for a moment a lot of thoughts running through her head, mostly concerning whether or not she really wanted to go through with this and try to have a relationship with Ranma, as well as Kasumi, since it seemed as if it would be a package deal. After a moment's thought she decided to hell with it! She leaned forward and planted a kiss on Kasumi's lips. It was a small one, much more of a friendly peck, but it was meaningful. "Thank you Kasumi. I don't know if the relationship between Ranma and me haa any chance of working long term like you're suggesting, but I'm willing to try it if you are okay with it and he is willing." They both turned to look to Ranma who had his eyes opened wide and his hair sticking out in all places.

This was like Emergency Level Omicron to Ranma; it meant something was fundamentally wrong with the universe. Girls were supposed to get jealous when he was around other women, not be okay with it. But here was Kasumi basically saying, hell basically giving her go ahead with a relationship between him and Lisa. He looked between the two of them for a moment then said "I'm certain I can't give ya both the attention you deserve, but if you both are okay with this, so am I. We'll just see where it goes." He turned to Lisa and blushed a little shyly. "W-would you like ta go on a date tomorrow seeing as we do have the day off? We could go see a movie or whatever ya want."

Lisa smiled back happily. "I'd like that. Maybe we can stop in at the Wild Dragon to see how Minmei is doing" she said thoughtfully. "It's strange that she wasn't there to welcome you and Rick back. I know the three of you are close."

Ranma nodded "that's good idea for tomorrow, but right now all I want is some good food a nice chair to sit in and a nice long sleep on a bed that isn't metal. Lisa laughed and agreed but when she made to leave Kasumi stopped her. "Oh no you don't" she said "we're going to stay together tonight and have another sleepover. Only this time Ranma gets to stay a boy."

Ranma gulped. "I don't think that's a good idea Kasumi. I'm way too liable ta lose control a bit with you both here at the same time." He blushed heavily under their stares, elaborating under their dual raised eyebrows. "That's been kind of a fantasy of mine on those nights when Kasumi and I weren't able ta, ta take the edge off, so to speak." He blushed further as Kasumi broke out into giggles and Lisa looked torn between joining her and blushing so hard she would die of blood loss.

Ranma went to go and turn into a girl while Kasumi went to get some food ready and Lisa got out some movies. This she thought to herself was just what the doctor ordered. Not only did she now have a new boyfriend but her best friend was still her best friend and they were sharing him. What was more, Ranma wasn't the type that would want her to quit her career, or try to change her into someone she wasn't. And with Kasumi and Ranma both able to cook and clean (she was learning to do the first but the second was beyond her) it wasn't as if they would all ever lack homemaker element.

She laughed giddily at how easy this all had gone, and wondered if that made her normal or abnormal, then she realized she didn't care, as long as they were happy.

That night after they all fell asleep on the carpet in the main living area, Ranma's mother came in and saw all three curled up together. Ranma was on the bottom, the short redhead had her arms around the waists of both Lisa and Kasumi who had their arms around her in turn and each other. She smiled happily at the scene. It looks as if I've lost that bet but oh well. Regardless it can only eventually mean one thing, more grandbabies for me!

end chapter - And so the changes keep piling on, and we see a glimpse into the Zentraedi. And we also see that Ranma does not make a good prisoner.