Chapter 3, On the Sidelines.
Ranma walked onto the bridge and looked around. Spotting Gloval, she walked up and saluted. "Lt. Saotome reporting as ordered sir. She said, dropping her arm to her side.
Gloval blinked. "As ordered? I never.."
"Sir, Commander Lang assigned me to light duty on the bridge until my injuries heal. I believe he said something about not letting me back into a Veritech for a month or more." A tone of resignation crept into her voice.
"Oh, well then Mr...Miss Saotome, please report to Commander Hayes for assignment to a station."
After walking over to Hayes and receaving her assignment, Ranma was assigned to a spare Radar station. She sat down and noticed that the display was rather similar to the one in her Veritech, only she didn't have the Reflex energy augmented Chi sense that she was so used to while looking into one of these.
Sammy porter kept throwing nervous glances at the Redhead manning Radar II. She didn't know if she was angry at her for telling half the ship of her curse by accident...on second thought, she was pretty sure that the Redhead was angry with her. She hadn't done or said anything to suggest it, but how could she NOT be angry at something like...that.
Vanessa Leeds looked over to see Sammy still throwing nervous looks at the Redhead that had reported in earlier. She was curious as to why a strange woman wearing an RDF Pilot's off duty dress had walked onto the bridge and sat at a Radar station but she didn't understand Sammy's nervousness. "I wonder if she offended her somehow or something?" She mused as she went back to her task of running internal comm.
Ranma just sat, working out new Martial arts Katas in her head and wondering how this could possibly get any more boring.
HR.
Ranma's shift had finally ended, and she was hungry enough to eat Ucchan's out of all of it's stock if it had been around. She decided instead to hit the crew mess on level two. The white dragon was just too far away. Placing her order at the counter, at which the counter man had blinked several times before giving it to her, she walked over to an empty table and set it down. She noticed three women walking in out of the corner of her eye but paid them no mind as she was too busy eating to care.
Vanessa and another Co-worker named Kim Young had finally cornered Sammy and dragged her off to the crew mess to get the details of exactly why she was so nervous of they're new bridge mate. They dragged her to a table, ordered three standard MRE rations and plunked down.
"Sammy," Vanessa started. "What's going on? You've been looking at that girl over there," She pointed at the woman who was currently packing away food at an insane speed, "Like she is going to kill you or something. What did you do?"
Sammy started to stutter before coming out with, "Not really much...I kinda...toldhalftheshipsomethingaboutherthatIshouldn'thave." The last part came out really fast and the other two women at the table were just barely able to catch it.
"And," Questioned Kim, "What exactly did you tell half the ship? We never heard anything bad about her."
Sammy blinked. "Well it isn't bad exactly just weird...and you didn't know because you two were on the bridge when I said it in the mess hall."
"So what DID you say?" Kim continued, not letting up. "Well...you'll eventually hear it any way I suppose. Remember that pilot that shot that big laser beam in the battle two days ago?"
Vanessa got a slightly odd look on her face as she said, "Yeah, he was cute. I saw him a couple times before that."
Kim whacked Vanessa on the back of the head. "He's engaged remember?"
"I can still dream can't I?" Vanessa responded, with an annoyed expression.
Kim continued, "What about him?"
Sammy took on an odd look "You'll never believe me if I just tell you. You'll have to ask her about it." She said, pointing at the girl who was still eating like a black hole.
"Oh, this I have to hear." Vanessa said, excitedly as she got up and walked over to the girl, quickly followed by Kim and Sammy.
Ranma looked up to see three rather attractive women standing there. "Hi, I'm Vanessa, this is Kim and this is Sammy. I was wondering if we could sit here."
Ranma shrugged. "Sure, knock yourselves out. I'm Ranma by the way." Then a thought struck her. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to be Sammy porter would you?" Sammy nodded her head shakily. "So THAT'S why you've been lookin at me like that. Don't worry, I'm not real mad at ya. It would've come out anyway." Sammy's sigh of relief was so obvious that Ranma started to chuckle. "What'd ya think I was gunna do? Beat you up or something?"
Vanessa interjected here. "Um...miss," She said, playing dumb, "What are you talking about."
"You mean she hasn't told you?" Ranma asked, raizing an eyebrow. "She did a good job of spreading it round the lower decks. I'm a Veritech pilot in skull squadron, Skull 3 actually. I've got a curse that turns me into a girl," She made a sweeping gesture of her body, "when I'm hit with cold water and she found out. I dunno how she did it but she managed to tell half of the crew on level 3 at once and they all met me outside the medical area to congratulate me on my good flight performance."
Kim and Vanessa face faulted...HARD... "You...you're that guy?.NAH couldn't be" Vanessa said in disbelief.
Ranma reached into the pocket of her uniform and withdrew two pictures, one of him and Akane after his last fight with Ryoga and another of her and Akane at the beach taken a month before she had left for Macross Island. "Here, check that out. That's me in both shots standing next to the girl with the blue hair."
Kim picked herself off the ground first and looked at the pictures. "Nice swimsuit, the word "BOY" on the front looks kinda odd though."
Ranma scratched the back of her head. "Yeah, kinda figured wearing swim trunks near a big source of cold water would be a BAD idea."
"So...why are you a girl right now if you're supposed to be a guy?" Vanessa asked, questioningly.
"Ah, that Lang guy says it's too dangerous for me to change back with all the stitches and stuff in me." Ranma responded, "So I'm stuck like this for a month...wait a second...a...month...EMIL LANG PREPARE TO DIE!"
In the med bay, Lang sneezed violently.
Ranma had stayed a girl for more than a month once before and she now remembered something that happened near the end that was...unpleasant... Vanessa, Kim and Sammy looked at each other in confusion over the outburst until Sammy finally made the connection and started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Ranma said sullenly.
Sammy pointed at Ranma, "There we have it, guys really DO have it easier than girls." The other two began to laugh as well, as Ranma returned to her rice.
HR.
Things had continued on in that vein for the last week. Ranma working on the bridge and getting bored stiff, talking to her bridge mates after her shift ended, and generally just living until she could get back into a Veritech. Fortunately, she didn't have as long to wait to fly as she did to change back, as only a few of her injuries were bad enough to prevent that. She spent most of her free time wandering the city, bumping into people she vaguely recognized, and helping doc Tofu at his clinic. Even with the advanced medical facilities in Macross City, a few people still liked the doctor's old style holistic medicine and came to him on a regular basis. Ranma's aura reading ability was invaluable to the doctor in treating illnesses and he would miss her when she went back to flight duty.
Saying goodbye to doctor Tofu on the 10th day of her sick leave, Ranma ran into Rick hunter listlessly throwing rocks into a pond. "Hey," She said, seeing him so depressed and wondering what was wrong, "What's the matter. You look like a friend of mine whose depression could literally blow things up."
Rick raised his eyes and blinked to see that redheaded girl who kept changing into a guy right in front of his eyes and driving him nuts. "Um...Hi. It's nothing big. I just feel so useless. All I can do is fly and the city doesn't need anyone to do that."
Ranma laughed. "Um...sure it does. The U.N. Spacy is looking for volunteers all the time."
Rick growled. "I don't want to be a killer. You have to kill in the military...that's the only problem I have with Roy, He just joined up with no qualms and started shooting things down."
Ranma scowled. "Look, Roy once told me why he joined up. He said he saw what happened in the Global civil war and that he didn't want it to happen to any more people. He joined to PROTECT people, same reason I did...A long time ago, I learned that killing is sometimes necessary...to save the people you love." A slight quavering note crept into her voice at this.
Rick blinked at her. "How do you know." "Because I did it. Not from the comforting safety and detachment of a Veritech either. I did it with my own hands, my own power, in order to save the person I loved. And do you know what? I'd do it again in a heart beat if it meant saving her again."
Rick nodded. "I guess you're right about that...but what do you mean you did it without a Veritech, You killed an alien by yourself?"
Ranma laughed slightly bitterly. "Not an alien. He called himself a Demigod. He had the power to back it up too. He could throw fireballs about twice the size of a Veritech."
Rick blinked and started laughing. "You can't be..." He trailed off as he saw Ranma holding a glowing ball of yellow light. "You are serious..."
He got up. "I'll think about what you said. Maybe you'll see me joining later. Just to keep in touch, who are you?"
Ranma smiled slightly and said, "I'm Lt. Ranma Saotome, I'm in skull squadron once I get off sick leave. See you soon I hope."
HR.
Ranma walked onto the bridge, it was her Last day of not being able to fly and she was rather happy. 15 days on the ground after a couple weeks of solid flying kind of got to you after a while. She had heard rumors that Hunter had joined up and been slotted in as a fourth member of skull flight 1. It would be interesting to see how he flew.
Ranma plopped down in her chair at her station and noticed that today was NOT going to be boring. They were flying through the ring system of Saturn in order to get a slingshot in towards the inner planets and all the space debris and dust surrounding the planet made even HER job interesting.
HR.
He was lost AGAIN! All he could see around him was a massive black void with a steel floor. His Chi, flaring around him in a green cloud, only illuminated supply crates and metal plating. Everything was so insanely big to. He had come across an odd looking door earlier but it was about 50 feet tall. "RANMA! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"
HR.
As the SDF-1 traveled through the debris belt around Saturn, Ranma closely monitored her radar display. For one more day, this was as close as she was going to get to a Veritech. Suddenly a signal that looked a bit like a ghost spiked near the edge of her display. "Sir, I got a signal, Very weak at vector 312."
"Can you identify the source Miss Saotome?" Gloval asked.
"Negative sir, it's so weak that it could be a ghost but I got a bad feeling about this."
Gloval chuckled. "Alright Miss Saotome, we'll send a flight to investigate. Sammy, send the orders." Sammy porter sent the radio message to Skull flight 1. That was all that saved the ship.
HR.
Roy received the orders from the SDF-1 and opened his tactical frequency. "Skull flight 1, form up. We got a signal to check out." The flight pulled into arrow head formation and went, full thrust, towards the source of the odd, weak signal.
There was nothing weak about what was sending the signal, as skull flight found out when Roy came into Radar range. There were hundreds of fighters and a massive battleship. Only Roy's good piloting managed to get him back to the Macross in one piece. He had told the other two pilots of skull to stay back before he got in range. As he formed up with his flight, the enemy fighters moved...and the battle was on.
HR.
Roy spun his Fighter mode Veritech in an effort to shake the enemy off his tale. Just as he was about to give up, shift to Battleoid and just shoot it off, Hiroshi in skull 2 Vaporized it. "Nice kill 2, You're getting better at this."
"Thank you sir" Hiroshi said, with pride in his voice. Since Ranma had left the flight on sick leave, Hiroshi had been forced to improve. He was almost at Ranma's level now...well...without the chi enhancements of course.
Roy finished congratulating Hiroshi on his kill performance and went back to whacking fighters. The main ship was occupied with the Macross, which had managed to get all of it's gun emplacements manned this time and was making a good fight of it.
Unfortunately, this force was meant to outnumber it's enemy rather than out power it, and even with Skull, Blue, Vermilion and Wolf squadrons out in full force, they were still outnumbered about 20 to 1.
HR.
Ranma looked at her radar screen nervously and then said in a grim tone, "Wolf 4 down, Skull 2 taken light damage and half of blue is gone."
Captain Gloval growled, "Is the Reflex cannon ready to fire yet?"
"Yes sir, Ready to fire...we will have to use the modular transformation sequence though." Lang responded.
"That is a last resort, I just wanted to make sure it's ready." Gloval replied, narrowing his eyes as he watched the battle through the bridge's main view panel.
As Ranma watched, she saw another Friendly blip go off the radar. "Wolf 2 down sir."
The ship shook Violently and Kim Young spoke up. "Sir, minor hull breach in level 14. It's in a cargo hold. We just lost a few supplies."
Gloval just sat there, his hand twitching towards his pipe.
HR.
Hiroshi floated, blazing away at a closely packed group of enemies while in Battleoid mode. The problem was, he had been hit by an enemy laser blast earlier and it had disabled his plane's Veritech abilities, sticking him in Battleoid mode. He had been having a hard time out maneuvering missiles since a mecha was far less capable of that than an aircraft.
Rick hunter flew, frantically trying to avoid fire. He had only scored 1 or 2 kills so far, as he hadn't stopped moving. He was used to flying like this from his time in a civilian flying circus, which was probably the only reason why he was still alive. He heard the casualty reports from allied flights and gritted his teeth.
HR.
Sinor was a good Zentraedi soldier, He took orders and fought until he couldn't any more. He was not however intelligent. This did not quite matter at the moment, as the puny Micronian ship in his sights seemed to be unable to transform into its more maneuverable mode. Sinor's battle pod was what was called a Bombardier class, It had massive missile launchers that only fired one or two times and this was a perfect target...
HR.
Hiroshi watched in horror as one of the enemy battle pods just sat and lined up a shot. He couldn't get his gun pod around in time. The enemy unleashed about 30 missiles, and all but two of them hit...
HR.
Ranma watched, stunned, as a volley of missiles slammed into Hiroshi's plane on the main viewer. In a halting voice she said, "Skull 2...Destroyed." She began to shake slightly and all near her on the bridge could hear a slight grinding noise and see a blueish aura around her body. Ranma calmly got up and began walking towards the door.
"Where are you going Miss Saotome?" Captain Gloval asked.
Ranma spat her response. "I'm going to make them pay."
Gloval blinked, forgetting that she had just violated chain of command and pretty well snarled at him. "Make them pay?"
Ranma almost yelled, "those...bastards just killed my best friend. I'm gunna go blow up every last one of 'em." A slight note of desperation crept into her voice and her blueish aura grew larger.
Commander Lang stopped her with his hand. "Lt. Saotome, You are currently on medical leave, and under emotional stress. I can't allow you to get into a Veritech."
Ranma ALMOST smashed Lang into a wall and kept going, but just restrained herself. She bit out "Yes...sir...sorry sir." and walked back to her console. The bridge crew looked at her, in sympathy. They didn't know what it was like to lose a friend on the front line but they could hear it in her voice.
HR.
Roy exploded in rage. He had asked this kid to join the RDF! He had been the one who got him into a Veritech. He had been the one who'd gotten him killed. Unknown to Roy, he subconsciously imbued his angry aura into his Veritech, giving it a strange reddish cast and enhancing all of it's performance aspects. He charged into battle, determined to get vengeance. When Roy came to, he was sitting in the hanger, trembling.
Rick hunter looked on in astonishment, Roy's Machine looked almost like it was glowing, He was moving about 10 times as fast as a Veritech ought to, and even his anti-missile lasers looked like standard rifles. He was taking out enemies like he was a lawn mower and they were the lawn.
HR.
Ranma just sat, gritting her teeth and struggling not to just run off of the bridge, go to the hanger and take her Veritech. She watched as Roy did what she wanted to.
Captain Gloval murmured. "What in the world..." as Commander Lang studied his instruments. "Reflexometer from Captain Fokker's jet shows Full Synchronization...this is impossible."
Ranma spoke up. "No, it isn't but I hope he doesn't keep it up for too long, He doesn't have the control he needs and this could kill him." Captain Gloval blinked. "What?"
Ranma nodded. "He's poring his Chi into his machine to make it stronger. I do this too but if you do too much of it...you lose all of your chi and..." She trailed off, knowing that everyone already knew what came after that.
HR.
As Roy's Veritech finally gave out and he was taken into the hanger by Rick, Blue and Vermilion squadrons mopped up what was left of the enemies. The battle hadn't lasted long after Roy had gone into his rage. The already weakened enemy ranks were devastated by the newly empowered Veritech and eventually had to retreat.
Roy was greeted when he opened his cockpit by Ranma, Captain Gloval and Emil Lang. "Damn!" Ranma swore. "His Chi is almost gone. Roy you IDIOT! You almost got yourself killed as well as Hiro..." She trailed off as her voice quavered.
"S...sorry Kid, I'll never do it again." Roy said, with a dry chuckle.
HR.
Roy was finally released from the medical bay after 3 hours of being checked out by Lang. He saw Ranma, tossing...balls of light...into a pool next to the med section door.
"Um...hi kid." Roy said, uncertainly.
"Hi Roy" Ranma said, depressed.
"What's the matter kid?"
"Damnit Roy, I couldn't save him. I couldn't protect one of my friends. All my martial arts skill and...I..." She broke down and came closer to tears than she had since Jusendo.
Roy blinked. "Kid, you couldn't do anything. You weren't even OUT there. It isn't your fault."
"Look, Roy. I've been through hell my whole life just to become strong enough to protect the weak. I protected Akane, I protected my parents, I even managed to save people who wanted to kill me once or twice. Why couldn't I help Hiro... Just because of these damned injuries.?"
Roy shrugged. "Kid, You couldn't help him even if you were out there. I was and you know I'm still a better pilot than you. It couldn't be helped. Now stop sitting here and just give the bastards hell next time you see them as payback."
Ranma looked up, some of the depression gone. "You're right Roy, thanks. I needed that. I gotta go do something important. See you later."
Roy's slight smile at getting the kid to stop moping around quickly faded back into the slightly angry glare that he had warn since he had gotten out of his Veritech. One way or the other, the alien bastards would pay for shooting down a Pilot that HE had gotten to join the RDF.
HR.
Ranma walked onto the bridge and over to Captain Gloval's Ready room. Knocking on the door, she was admitted. "Hello, Lt. What can I do for you." Captain Gloval asked.
"Sir, I was wondering if..." Ranma's voice faded from the hearing of the bridge crew as the Ready Room door slid shut.
HR.
Ryoga wandered, still lost, and cursing Ranma at every step. He stopped as he heard his voice...her voice... coming over an intercom nearby. He walked through a door, right into the middle of a city full of people who were listening intently to Ranma's voice over an intercom.
"...Name is Lt. Ranma Saotome of the RDF. As you know, there was an enemy attack today. What you do not know, is that one of my best friends, Hiroshi Neomoto was shot down in this attack. Hiroshi was a great guy and one of the best pilots I ever flew with. Now, you're probably wondering, why am I telling you this. Well, Ya see, when Me n' Hiroshi joined up, we made a little bet. Hiroshi bet me that he could get to a higher rank before the end of his career. For valor in the line of duty, Captain Gloval promoted him posthumously to the rank of Captain in the RDF so he beat me. As a sign of respect and to honor a great pilot, I'm carrying out the terms of the bet..."
The people on the street blinked rapidly at this before a quiet melody began to play over the speakers and Ranma's voice rang out again, singing. Ryoga's mouth dropped open in surprise as he recognized the song. Ranma was singing one of the themes from Gundam wing? What the HELL was going on.
Roy Fokker heard the announcement, and began to chuckle softly as he heard Ranma start the song. "Damn kid, You got an odd sense of honor, you know that?" He muttered to himself.
Sammy Porter, Vanessa Leeds, Kim Young and the rest of the bridge crew gawked in surprise as they heard their bridge mate who insisted that she was a guy and had the credentials to prove it, sing a beautiful rendition of a song that no guy on the face of the earth would ever be caught dead singing.
As the music came to an end, the entire population of Macross city exploded in cheers, just barely hearing Ranma's final words. "Thank you for putting up with this interruption." Before she turned off the intercom.
HR.
The next day, Ranma had mostly gotten over the visible signs of her sadness over her friend's death with the promise of shooting down many enemy battle pods in her future, she had cheered up. She was finally going to be allowed back into a Veritech and in another two weeks she could go back to her natural form.
She walked into the launch bay and goggled. Her Veritech looked completely different. It had some sort of massive tank like projections poking out of the back of its canopy section and its laser cannon looked more bulky.
Emil Lang stood next to it waiting for her. "What the hell did you do to my fighter?" Ranma questioned, uneasily.
"Well, after your disaster with overloading your entire system with that beam cannon stunt, we installed serge protectors and larger energy conduits. We also put a Large Reflex energy storage unit on the back."
Ranma looked confused. "Try and repeat that in normal Japanese?"
"We made it able to handle the energy you put out." Lang said, trying again.
Ranma nodded and thanked Lang before hopping into her New Veritech, codenamed VF-1R and shutting the canopy, powering it up.
For the next week, Ranma was the most effective fighting force in the RDF. Her immense desire to get revenge on the enemy for the death of her friend fueled her chi and made her fighter capable of pulling off stunts that even SHE wouldn't have ever tried before. Fortunately for the Zentraedi, she had worked off her frustration after that week and went back to her normal performance...which wasn't much better for them as she was now only slightly less skilled than Roy.
TO BE CONTINUED.
That's all I've formatted for now. The rest is coming soon, maybe a week for the next load of chapters.