Chapter 1 was actually part of a larger revision. From now on, its the original fic, only split into double sized chapters.
Chapter 2. Combat Zone.
The SDF-1 burst out of its space fold with a rather large mass floating below it. The bridge was silent as people checked consoles before one Radar tech noticed the aforementioned large mass and commented on it. "Captain, I have something big on Radar, Floating directly below the ship."
"What is it?", questioned Gloval. "Is it an enemy ship?"
"No sir, it looks like..." The radar operator's voice trailed off as he got more data on the object below the ship. "It looks like we took Macross City with us when we folded sir."
Gloval's pipe, which he had just been holding and never EVER intended to light, (Now shut up miss Porter.) fell from his hand and clattered to the ground. "What?"
HR.
Skull flight 1 was flying through the City of Macross, looking for occupied shelters. When they found them, they were to call in Rescue crews from the SDF-1. Ranma was searching with more intensity than most, as his wingman, Hiroshi Neomoto, hadn't managed to return to the ship in time and had put down at one of the airbases, about 3 minutes before the fold.
Roy was also looking for someone, namely his almost brother, Rick Hunter. He had TOLD him to go to the shelters before the start of the attack, but sometimes hunter had a habit of disregarding instructions.
HR.
Hiroshi sighed. He had been waiting in this shelter for about 6 hours now, and it looked like there was something seriously wrong outside.
The emergency power generators and oxygen systems had cut on almost immediately after he got into the shelter and the external cameras showed nothing but space.
He was also getting worried about the state of the people inside the shelter. Most of them were civilians and they were starting to panic.
Then he got an idea...
"Hi. I'm 2nd Lt. Neomoto of the RDF. I know all of you are getting kind of bored, so I decided to try and alleviate the boredom." Hiroshi began.
"Well son, all the power to you. This place is driving me nuts." Responded an older looking man that Hiroshi recognized as the guy who had been at the desk when he enlisted in the RDF.
"Well, I got some stories for you. Some of these seem unbelievable but c'mon. We just got attacked by ALIENS for Kami's sake. Well, first off...
HR.
Ranma stood, with Roy, ready to check the last shelter. They had found Rick, with the young Chinese waitress from the White Dragon and her family, in a shelter two hours back, and now they were looking for Hiroshi.
As the shelter door opened, Ranma was puzzled to hear laughter. "And then...and then he sits there...and he says, 'So...you don't want the bread then?'" The room exploded into more laughter, although some of it sounded a bit nervous.
Ranma walked in and saw Hiroshi, standing on one of the desks, gesticulating wildly. "Um, Hiro. Are we interruptin something?"
Hiroshi spun around and started stammering, "er...eh no Ranma, I'm just...entertaining the troops."
"Hey, this is that Ranma guy?" someone yelled from the back of the room. "Did you really participate in "Martial arts Shogi?""
Ranma blinked. "You've been telling people about Nerima, to keep them entertained?"
"Well..." Hiroshi started. "Some of the civilians were getting panicky and...and..."
Ranma clapped him on the shoulder. "Couldn't you have at least changed my name? Now all these people are going to give me odd looks. Anyways, c'mon. We have some food for everyone in the rescue craft."
Hiroshi sighed in relief, grinned nervously at the crowd of civilians who had been begging him to "Tell them more" for the past 3 hours, and walked out, followed by everyone else.
HR.
Roy, Hiroshi and Ranma once again sat in the dining room of the White Dragon. After the rescue of what turned out to be about three quarters of the population of Macross City, Captain Gloval decided to try and move the portions of the city that could be salvaged into the SDF-1. The Battle fortress had been dubbed the SDF-1, Macross, by request of city mayor Tommy Lewan.
The White Dragon had come off rather well in the attack, only a hole knocked in the back wall by a wolf squadron Veritech which had been blown there by an explosion.
"So, what're we doing for the next few days? I didn't see us up on the flight schedule." Commented Ranma.
"Ah, you're going to LOVE this." Roy said, sarcastically. "We're on City construction detail, in Tomahawk Destroids."
"But sir," Hiroshi objected, "We haven't been trained in destroids."
"It doesn't really matter. All a destroid is, is a Veritech without the Veritech part. Its basic controls are like a soldier mode. You'll do fine."
HR.
"We'll do fine, he says." Ranma groused, as Hiroshi pointed and laughed Hysterically. "It ain't all that funny y'know." Ranma had, as is inevitable with Ranma, managed to find the only Weak floor panel in a half a mile, stepped on it in his destroid, and ended up in a large lake in a lower section of the city. It also just so happened that his cockpit wasn't sealed quite tightly enough.
Roy watched from the foreman's position and attempted to keep his chuckles down to a bare minimum. It wouldn't do to see an RDF captain explode in laughter on the job but damn this kid was a laugh riot.
Ranma dragged her Destroid out of the water, thank Kami all the OTHER seals were working properly, and went back to work. Skull flight 1's assigned job was to carry the newly defrosted structures from the cargo bay to the main section of the city. It was a good thing that Ranma was on his way back to the bass to pick up another unit, or some poor unfortunate's home would be under water right then.
HR.
Roy, Hiroshi and a still female Ranma, staggered into the White Dragon. "I am never piloting one of those damned things again." Ranma muttered, as she plopped down at a table.
Forgetting that she was not in Nerima, where such things could be expected by the populace and too tired to care even if she did remember, Ranma ordered a glass of hot water and dumped it over her head the second it arrived.
"Yeah, I'll be glad when they let us get back into veritechs where we belong." Roy agreed. The three men went at eating the extra large bowls of noodles that had just arrived at they're tables, and Rick hunter, who had just seen Ranma's little transformation from the door, backed out sputtering and wondering if he was going insane.
HR.
Doctor Emil Lang, the Macross' chief scientist and engineer, stood in Captain Gloval's office with a diagram of the SDF-1 in his hand.
"Sir, we ran into problems with the Re-Construction. It turns out that one of the main components needed for the firing of the Reflex cannon was blown out during the fold operation."
Captain Gloval frowned. "Does that mean that we can't fire it anymore?"
"No sir, But the process we devised to make it capable of firing will damage the city. We would need to Re-configure the ship so that the missing component is no longer in the circuit. Unfortunately, several of the pieces that we would need to move are now parts of the city. If we did it, we would end up destroying several blocks."
Captain Gloval's frown deepened. "That is not good enough Lang. We need that cannon, ready to fire, in order to combat our enemies and we don't have it."
Lang shook his head. "Sir, that's the only way we can find to bypass the problem."
"Well, work harder. Dismissed."
As Lang walked out, Henry Gloval sighed and put a hand to his forehead. He knew that he was pushing his crew too hard but it was the only way to prepare the ship for enemy attacks.
HR.
It had been a few days since the misfold that had landed the Macross, apparently, somewhere around the orbit of Pluto and the crew were getting settled in to life in space. The rebuilding of macross city was now completed, With the leftovers from the business district being used as rooms for the infantry and pilots of the RDF and all of the civilians set up in their former houses, The city looked almost like one back on earth. If you disregarded the huge ceiling hovering about 70 feet above, that is.
The enemy forces had been quiet, sending no attacks against the SDF-1 Macross, but patrols were constantly out, looking for anything which might threaten the ship.
"This is skull lead to Macross, we got a whole lot of nothing out here." Roy Fokker said into his radio.
"Confirmed, sector 130 clear. Proceed on to sector 131."
This had been going on for hours, his group checking out a sector, it turning up clear and then repeating the process for another sector. Suddenly, Roy heard a voice over the Radio. "What the hell?"
"What is it kid?" he asked, having developed a healthy respect for the kid's early warning abilities during the first battle on earth.
"I don't know...it doesn't feel like a target but there's this really small signal...holy..."
As Ranma's voice cut off, a radio signal came in from the ship."This is the SDF-1. Massive enemy group, spacefolded into sector 215. Skull Flight 1. You are to engage the enemy and hold them until backup arrives."
Roy cranked up his throttle, turned in the direction of sector 215 and signaled his wingmen to follow.
As skull flight 1 approached the reported enemy activity, Ranma fidgeted. If his chi/Veritech Radar was right, and he hoped to Kami it wasn't, that force was more than 3 times the size of the one that had attacked earth. He saw the enemy battle pods and his hopes were dashed, as row upon row of them floated in front of...something REALLY big and rather intimidating looking. "What the hell is that?" He heard Hiroshi say over the radio in awe.
"I don't know." Roy responded bluntly, "but whatever it is, it ain't friendly."
As the three planes dove towards the enemy, Ranma couldn't help thinking "Thank you Captain obvious." Fortunately for his career, Roy didn't hear him.
HR.
Ranma was getting tired of shooting down battle pods. There had to be more than 35 kills on his record from this group, and he was rapidly running out of ammo. He had been pretty good at out flying the enemy fighters so far, only getting pegged once in a non-vital section of the wing, but they seemed to be learning his evasive patterns and adapting almost as fast as he could change them.
He fired the last few shots in his GUI-11 and decided to try something...different. He switched to Soldier mode, threw his thrusters full force forward and extended his machine's fist. It smashed into the enemy battle pod, creating a massive dent. He then grabbed the pod by one of it's wings and threw it at one of it's allies. As the two pods collided and burst into flame, Ranma thought "Yep, martial arts work in veritechs."
Roy Fokker stared in dumb shock. The kid was...beating the shit out of the enemy? As unbelievable as it sounded, Ranma was taking his veritech's Bare hands and feet to the alien fighters and doing surprisingly well. Well, Roy's own ammo was getting low. Might as well try it.
Hiroshi stared as Ranma made yet ANOTHER thing into a martial art. "Martial Arts Veritech Piloting?" He thought, with a shrug. "Well, I've seen odder."
And that's how the crew of the SDF-1 saw the first ever exhibition of martial skill, both trained and street brawler level, that had ever Been performed in a vacuum.
Somewhere, a supreme commander of the Zentraedi fleet got a REALLY big headache.
---Section Break---
Skull flight one was on yet another patrol of the space surrounding the SDF-1. Ever since she had gotten underway, about 4 days ago, they and the rest of skull had been flying heel to toe patrols with vermillion. Needless to say, the pilots were currently cursing the ground that Captain Gloval walked on.
As Ranma continued to fly his Veritech, he began to notice something odd. His control over the Veritech's energy, which had started with just his improved Chi sense, had increased. Now he could cause his engines to run at about doubled efficiency for a few minutes, although it drained his Chi reserves severely and he could divert power from one area to supplement another. With this tactic, he had managed to turn the old Missile intercept laser turret that was mounted on the fighter's nose into an actual weapon, although his speed would drop drastically when he did.
Ever since he had started seriously experimenting with Chi in Veritechs, he had noticed that he was getting some odd looks from chief engineer and scientist Emil Lang. He attributed this to the reason why everyone ELSE was giving him odd looks, Namely his decision that a Veritech was perfectly good for martial arts and his now habitual practice of performing kata in his machine. The command staff generally ignored these eccentricities exhibited by one of their Veritech pilots, simply because he was so good.
Ranma couldn't yet compare to Roy Fokker in greatness but he was rapidly catching up.
This particular patrol was boring as dirt. Not an attack, not a strange thing to go check out, not a...uh oh. He shouldn't have thought that. "Skull 3 to Skull lead. I have a spacefold signal, a big one."
"This is lead, understood. Flight, pull in to tight formation. 3, where is this fold signal." Roy Responded, quickly.
"About 50 K off the ship's starboard dorsal section sir." Ranma said, after focussing for a few moments. It wasn't easy to translate his Chi sense into actual, usable data for the flight, so some delay was needed.
"Understood."
Captain Gloval listened to the exchange over the bridge speakers. He didn't know how, but when that kid said he could feel a fold coming, he was usually right, which meant... "All hands prepare for combat. Man anti-fighter turrents."
The enemy came out of fold, already releasing fighter pods. It was a battleship, easily rivaling and beating out the SDF-1 in size. Its reflex energy cannons constantly firing on skull flight and the ship, which was taking some minor damage.
The fighter swarm wasted no time in engaging Skull flight 1 and the main ship focused their fire on the Macross' launch bays to prevent reinforcements. Fokker's three man wing was apparently all that stood between the SDF-1 and oblivion and they were, quite obviously, not going to be enough.
Roy jerked his Veritech through a complex series of maneuvers, causing one enemy pod's missiles to slam into another, and spun around, switching to battleoid mode in the process. He aimed his GUI-11 and took down the pod that had fired the missiles.
Ranma spun his machine through a back kick, taking off the entire left side of an enemy battle pod, and swung his gun pod around to kill another target. He was in the thick of the swarm and had to switch to close quarters combat techniques as he couldn't get the distance to really tear into the enemy with his guns. Routing power from his thrusters, which weren't really being used at the moment anyway, and into the laser cannon mounted to his machine's head. It poured massive quantities of energy out into space and destroyed one battle pod. He smirked. "got that down now." He thought, as he flew out of the crowd.
Hiroshi flew, in fighter mode, peppering the enemy that Ranma and Roy were fighting with supporting fire. His piloting skills were still not as good as Ranma's but he was improving. As his GUI-11 spooled on empty, he made a decision to try the hand to hand method himself and charged into the fray as his machine transformed.
HR.
On the bridge of the SDF-1, Captain Gloval had put his pipe in his mouth. Sammy Porter was too distracted by the fierce battle between three Veritechs and an entire enemy battle ship full of fighters to notice. "Can we get reinforcements out there?" asked Gloval, urgently.
"Negative sir, those cannon shots fused the bay doors shut. We can't open them until Commander Lang's engineering teams cut them open for us." responded a tech from a manned console.
"What about that Main Reflex cannon?" Gloval asked.
Lang walked in, talking. "Unfortunately, We haven't regained enough energy from the spacefold to fire the cannon yet sir."
Captain Gloval cursed and edged his hand towards the pouch of tobacco on his belt.
HR.
Roy had just gotten a status report from the Macross. It didn't look good. They couldn't launch any reinforcements and the main cannon couldn't be fired. He relayed this to the two other men in his flight, whose responses were very colorful.
Ranma cursed as he received the status report from Roy. With no reinforcements and that big ship resupplying the enemy..."That's it!" Ranma said, as he began concentrating and shifted to Battleoid mode again.
He tried to force the Veritech's Reflex energy out into its hands and make a large Chi blast, but it seemed that he couldn't. For some reason, the energy didn't want to leave the system. Then inspiration struck him, and he began stockpiling energy...
Roy gawked as Ranma's Veritech stopped dead and shifted to battleoid mode. "Is that kid insane?" he thought, cursing as he punched up his thrusters to try and cover his currently immoble wingman.
HR.
On the bridge of the SDF-1, an alarm went off. Emil Lang rushed to a station and his jaw dropped. "Sir, Reading massive Reflex energy buildup, coming from one of our Veritechs. It's building up almost as much energy as the..."
That's when Ranma released his charge through the Anti-Missile laser turret. A massive beam of coruscating yellow and blue energy thundered out of a weapon that was only SUPPOSED to fire small blasts. The results were one obliterated enemy battleship and one badly damaged Veritech. Ranma's internal cockpit alarms blared constantly and some of the panels had actually blown out under the strain of all of that power being released all at once. A coolant line had blown above the cockpit, predictably drenching him. Ranma opened a comm line to the SDF-1, uncaring that they probably wouldn't recognize her voice. "This...is skull 3...enemy mother ship eliminated...My unit is severely damaged and I request immediate pickup." She then passed out from the strain of channeling that much power.
HR.
Roy Fokker gawked at the complete destruction of the enemy battleship. Ranma had also taken out a good quarter of the remaining fighters with that shot. Fortunately, without the battleship bombarding it, Reports were coming in that the Macross was repairing the bay doors and that Lang's crews would have them open for reinforcements in a few minutes. The only bad thing about all of this was that Roy couldn't raise Skull 3 on the radio. Every time he called, no response came back.
His radio crackled to life. "This is Macross to skull lead. Skull unit 3 has stated that his drive systems are damaged and requests a pickup. Please bring him to the landing bay."
Roy let off a deep sigh of relief. "Understood Macross. I'm on my way."
HR.
As Roy Fokker dragged his allied Veritech into the hanger bay, he saw a small group waiting for him. Captain Gloval, Commander Hayes, Commander Lang and for some reason, Sammy porter. He put his guardian mode Veritech down and released his hold on Skull 3, which promptly fell over. He jumped out of his plane and was greeted.
"Hello captain Fokker. We came down to see if that Rookie Pilot of yours is alright." Captain Gloval said, with a small smile.
"I'm sure he's fine sir. Saotome is one tough kid." Roy said in reply. He wondered why Emil Lang had that strange grin on his face.
Lang's thoughts ran along the lines of "I've got to get that pilot into the Med lab..."
Roy cracked the cockpit of skull 3 and stumbled back at the billowing cloud of smoke that pored out. After coughing a few times, he stuck his head back in and a quiet curse could be heard. "Damn kid, you really did a number on yourself, Didn't you?" Unmindful of the people in the room that didn't know about the curse, He lifted Ranma's battered, burnt and unconscious body out of the wreckage of what once was a cockpit. The immense stresses of building up all of that energy had torn it almost to pieces and most of the shrapnel had found Ranma's body in one form or another.
All there gasped, as they saw the petite Redheaded girl being carried out of the Veritech by Roy. "Holy..." was all Gloval could say as he saw the wounds scattered across the body. Yes, he'd seen worse before, but that was usually on people who were arleay dead, and he could see the girl's chest rizing and falling with shallow breaths. Lisa's mouth opened and closed, unable to make a sound. Porter's eyes widened. She had come down to thank the pilot that had saved the Macross...but this...
Lang was the first one to find his voice. "Mr. Fokker, I thought you said that Skull 3's pilot was a male?"
Roy laughed nervously. "Um...yeah..." He looked down and finally realized that he was carrying a rather female body. His eyes widened as he remembered the coolant that had been dripping from a broken pipe in the back of the cockpit. "Well that's hard to explain. We need to get her some medical attention right now though." He said, both because that was true and to change the subject.
He walked out of the hanger, still carrying Ranma's still form, and headed to the Medical bay.
HR.
Roy had eventually been forced to explain about Ranma by Lang, and since Sammy was there, no one had noticed her, the story had been spread all through the ship by the time Ranma came to, about 30 hours later.
As she dressed herself, being careful not to touch any of the bandaged wounds on her body, Ranma muttered about stupid doctors. Lang had run, if possible, more tests than those guys in basic medical and hadn't even let her leave the room to go the bathroom. Well, the tests were over now and she could leave. Go to the white dragon and get something to eat, maybe. As he stomach growled, she grinned. Yeah, that was definitely the first thing she was going to do.
She tied the strings that she had had specially added to her uniform and pulled them to fit her female form. She then got up and walked out the door...into a crowd of about 40 people. She stopped and blinked rapidly. "Um...hello?" She almost asked, uncertainly.
One person near the back yelled, "Hi, We're looking for Ranma Saotome, to thank him for that save yesterday.."
She blinked again, still feeling a little woozey from the pain meds that the doctor had given her. "Thank me?" she asked in puzzlement. "Why?"
Someone in the front spoke up. "Then what Sammy said is true? You ARE Ranma Saotome?"
Ranma's rather confused thought prompted her to answer without thinking.. "Um...yeah..."
The crowd started clapping and cheering. Then Ranma realized what she'd just said. In a low tone she cursed whoever had told these people about her curse, as well as her own stupidity in admitting it.
Shrugging, she realized that they would probably have found out anyway and in a much more embarrassing way.
She walked through the crowd and in the general direction of the white dragon.
HR.
Ranma walked into the White dragon and called "Hi Minmei! Can I get the usual." Lin
Minmei glanced over and raised an eyebrow in enquiry. "Um...miss?"
Ranma slapped her head. "Sheesh, I forgot. Look, this is kinda weird but I'm Ranma."
"Uhuh…" Minmei said, slowly, giving the redhead a skeptical glance.
"I have a curse that turns me into a girl and since I got banged up in my last mission and they don't want the stitches or bandages moved I have ta stay like this." "Ranma explained, quickly.
Minmei shrugged. This girl's story was strange, but she was wearing an RDF uniform, and did look a little like Ranma. Also, her speaking habits and other small factors were a lot like the pigtailed pilot's.
Ranma, although understandably skittish about the idea of having anything to do with any females after the fiancée mess in Nerima, had still managed to become good friends with Lin Minmei in the short time that he was here. He was the only younger guy on base who hadn't tried to hit on her and she liked him for that. Although she knew that he was engaged to someone named "Akane" and that she didn't have a chance with him, he was a nice guy and a good enough friend...when he didn't stick his foot in his mouth that is.
HR.
Ranma was finishing off her fourth bowl of rice, when one of the intercoms that had been installed all over the ship clicked and an announcement was made. "Will LT. Ranma Saotome please report to Captain Gloval's Office? That's LT. Ranma Saotome." She reluctantly put down her chopsticks and waved at Minmei. "I gotta go. I'll pay you back for the rice later."
Minmei let her go, as he...she? had done this two times before and paid her back both times.
HR.
Ranma got off of the lift on the bridge and walked over to captain Gloval's Ready Room door. Knocking, she was let in.
Captain Gloval, Commander Lang, Captain Fokker and Commander Hayes were sitting there. She stepped in and the door slid closed it behind her.
"Sit down Mr., Sa...er...Ranma." Captain Gloval ordered in a calm level voice. Ranma complied, sitting in a chair just to the left of Captain Fokker.
Lang spoke up next. "Mr. Sao...er Ranma. I would like to know how you fired that beam from your Veritech."
"I used my chi and that power source in the fighter. I just built it up and routed it through the cannon." Ranma explained, wondering why lang was so interrested. It had, after all, blown her fighter to hell when she'd used it, which definitely constituted a failed technique in her books. even if it had managed to save the ship, She'd definitely try to avoide using it in future unless she absolutely had to.
Lang's face took on an exasperated expression. "And how did you control the Veritech's power source?"
Ranma shrugged. "I dunno. It's just somethin I picked up. I use my personal Chi to fight, and the stuff the fighter uses for power is a lot like Chi. I just used some of mine to push it around to different parts."
Captain Gloval interjected here. "Could you teach others to do this?"
Ranma shook her head. "There aren't any Martial Artists onboard who are good enough for me to train in Chi use. Not to mention that I never taught a class before and don't have my school's master's permission to teach and the fact that at the moment I wouldn't fight in this condition unless lives or honor depended on it."
Gloval nodded. "Well that's not the only reason I called you here. Mr. S..." He looked ready to smash something at the thought of doing that thing with the name again.
"Just call me Mr. Saotome if ya want. After all, I'm still a guy in here." Ranma said.
Captain Gloval nodded in thanks and continued. "due to your acts of heroism during the last battle, you are hereby promoted to first Lt."
"Promoted? Why?" Ranma asked. "All I did was fly."
Roy started to laugh at this. "Kid, you just saved all of our lives back there. If that ship had kept firing at the Macross, it would be so much space junk by now, and if we hadn't gotten reinforcements when we did, WE'D be so much space junk."
Ranma shrugged and said proudly, "Well I AM the best martial artist in the world, after all." Everyone started to snicker at this, confusing Ranma.
TO BE CONTINUED.