Far across the galaxy, a massive light erupted from the void of space only to vanish just as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind two ships half engulfed by a strange crystal.
On the bridge of the dark red ship, the bridge hands and their captain were just shaking off the effects of whatever had just happened to them.
"What was that just now?" one of them asked, bewildered.
"This doesn't look like the afterlife," the aged captain said from her seat behind them all. "Just where are we?"
The ship started shaking, and the crystal that engulfed both ships began spreading across them, drawing them closer together.
"What the?" the captain grunted. "Is the crystal trying to eat the ship or something?"
On the larger, damaged ship, two pilots lay on the floor of the main platform, slowly coming to. "Jura?" the one with blue hair muttered as she pushed herself up onto her knees.
"I'm alright," the blonde-haired girl replied, raising herself to a sitting position and covering half her face with her hand. "What about Dita?"
"I'm here!" a clumsy, cheery voice called to them. A few yards behind them, a red-haired girl with a few dust scrapes on her face lay on the ground with a foolish smile. "Something went bang! And then boom! And I don't know what happened. Alien power is amazing, huh?"
"Where are we?" the blonde-haired woman asked. "The last thing I remember, we were on the men's ship about to leave. And then a light swallowed us and..."
"We were falling," the blue-haired one finished. "Us and those two men."
"That's pretty spooky," the blonde said. "These crystals covering everything make it hard to recognize, but this is the same ship we were just on, right? It felt like we were falling for a while, but I don't remember hitting the ground or even leaving it for that matter."
Seeing a small ship dock on the platform, the three women walked over to it just as a ramp slid down and the door opened. "My, this place sure could use a good cleaning," the aged captain said as she walked down the ramp.
The blue-haired pilot looked at her captain and lowered her head. "I'm sorry about all this, Captain. You had to come all this way."
The aged captain dismissed her apology. "There's no need to apologize, Meia. I just wanted to see this with my own eyes."
Stopping next to an unconscious boy with raven-colored hair, the blue-haired pilot, Meia, said, "This is the man that Dita was chasing."
"It's been so long since I've last seen a man," the captain said. "Were their faces really this funny-looking?" she asked, noting the strange way the unconscious boy's face was set.
Hearing a loud thud from the other side of the platform, the captain and her escort, as well as the three pilots, watched a broken support beam fall and slide down a pile of debris. At the top of the debris pile stood a man in a torn and ripped flight suit.
"My, he looks a little worse for wear," the captain noted, seeing the state of the man's flight suit.
Meia explained to her captain, "That's the man who helped Barnette while she was pinned down; he also showed us where to find Dita before the missile impacted the ship."
"Oh?" the captain muttered. "He helped you, huh? Maybe he's the same one who attacked Tarak with us."
The man atop the debris pile cautiously took a step down but immediately lost his footing and began rolling down until he slammed into the fallen support beam. Quickly getting back to his feet, the pilot limped around the fallen beam and braced himself against a wall as he walked over to the women ahead of him. He was limping on his right leg, and every time he stepped down with his left, his knee seemed to buckle. He was clearly banged up and injured.
Once the pilot was closer, they could see one of his eyes through the big crack in his flight helmet. Stopping to lean against the wall, the pilot slowly raised his hands to his helmet, twisted it to the side, and then pulled it off, dropping it at his feet.
He had fairly tanned skin and a moderate athletic build. His hair was pitch black, and blue.
The pilot leaned against the wall for a moment before pushing himself off it and looking at the group of women in front of him.
"So," he began with a blank expression, "Satan walks into this bar..." As soon as he finished his line, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell forward, exhausted and unconscious.
Inside a prison cell, the young boy, the unconscious pilot, and another man waited for whatever was going to happen to them.
"My name is Duelo McFile," the one in the shadowed corner said to the other two. "Do you have a name as well?" he asked the boy at the other side of the cell. "Mr. Third Class Citizen?"
"Don't make fun of me!" the boy demanded. "My name is Hibiki Tokai. And I'm not just another third-class citizen."
"You're the one that caused the ruckus at the ceremony, right?" the young man in the corner asked. His long hair split at the right side of his face, covering the entire right side and stopping just below his chin, while the back flowed past his shoulders.
Before the boy could answer, the pilot lying on the floor grunted painfully as he began pushing himself up. "My head," he groaned, placing his hand against his face. "Must've had one helluva party."
Watching the man get off the floor and into a sitting position, Duelo said, "You shouldn't move around too much."
The pilot turned around to look at Duelo. "And you are?"
"My name is Duelo McFile. I'm a doctor, and I think you might have a minor skull fracture as well as a concussion. If you move around too much, you'll only worsen your injury."
The pilot immediately felt a surge of pain in his head and placed his hand against it. The doctor was right; he could feel a small dent in his skull, the bone cracked inward. "I still think that one hangover I had was more painful," he said before setting himself against a wall.
"So who are you?" Duelo asked him. "By the way you're dressed, I'd say you're a pilot of some sort, but your uniform isn't from Tarak."
"A pilot?" the man muttered before another surge of pain rushed through his head. Placing his hand against his face again, the pilot hunched over. "A pilot?" he grunted to himself. "I… I remember…flying, there was a massive structure on an island in the ocean, some kind of super weapon."
Duelo narrowed his visible eye and held up his hand. "Tell me how many fingers you see."
The pilot looked over to him and tried to focus his blurred and shaking vision. "Two, I think. Everything is fuzzy right now."
"Good," Duelo said, lowering his hand. "Blurred vision is normal after suffering a concussion. It doesn't look too bad right now, but I still think you should take it easy. Tell me, do you remember your name?"
The pilot shook his head. "No. All I remember is some kind of massive structure on an island, a superweapon, and then a bright light."
Duelo narrowed his eye again. "An island and a massive structure?" he thought.
"Ah! Women!" Hibiki cried as a small group of women stood in front of the cell.
"Well, looks like you're all awake," the one in front said. She was tall for someone who looked so young, her skin dark and her platinum-colored hair reaching down to her waist. "We have a few questions for you. You'll come with us, won't you?" she asked, as if giving them a choice.
"Sure," the injured pilot groaned, bracing himself against the wall and pushing himself up. "Lead the way."
The woman in front, clearly the leader of the group, deactivated the bars of the cell and tossed each of the three men a pair of cuffs with a strong elastic band in the center.
"Put them on and follow me," she ordered.
"You do this to all your boyfriends, or are we just special?" the young pilot asked in an unconcerned tone as he slid his hands into the cuffs.
After the three men slid their cuffs on, they followed the woman and her group of guards down the hall and to an elevator.
Once the elevator started moving, the injured pilot took a wobbly step forward and grunted silently as he placed his hand against his head.
"Is something wrong?" the platinum-haired woman asked him in a semi-harsh tone.
"Nothing," the pilot grunted, straightening himself.
Once the elevator opened, the woman led the group down another hall.
"Where exactly are you taking us?" Duelo asked.
"Nowhere special," the woman told him blankly. "Like I said, we just have some questions, that's all."
"As long as there's a place to sit down, I don't care where we're going," the injured pilot said before stumbling to the side and bracing himself against the wall.
"Having trouble standing?" the woman asked him.
"He has a concussion and a minor skull fracture," Duelo told her. "It's only natural that he'd be dizzy and disoriented. It would be best for him to rest once we get to wherever you're taking us."
"Some water would be appreciated," the pilot groaned, gently pushing himself off the wall. "Good to go."
The woman continued to lead them down the hall until they came to an open door that led into what looked like a small lounge.
Seeing a couch in the middle of the room, Duelo looked over to the pilot behind him. "It'd be best if you laid down for a while. Staying vertical wouldn't be wise in your current state."
"Right," the pilot muttered clumsily as he awkwardly walked over to the couch and lay on it, while Duelo and Hibiki sat on the floor in front of it just as a blue-haired woman entered through another door with another man restrained next to her.
"What's up?" the platinum-haired woman asked. "You found another?"
The other woman nodded. "Yes. This one was hiding in the platform."
The restrained man had a sheepish smile on his face. "Hey, comrades," he muttered. "What's up?"
Just then, an old woman entered the room from the same door. "My, I heard you captured some prisoners, but they're all just kids."
"Hey!" a small, white, egg-shaped robot shrieked. "It's interrogation time. I'll tell you everything!"
"My, how nostalgic," the old woman said. "It's a NAVI robot."
"A what?" the injured pilot groaned as his eyelids grew heavier before closing.
"I'm not following here," Duelo said.
"Yeah, isn't this supposed to be a men's ship?" Hibiki asked.
"Yes," the old woman answered. "And before that, it was used for colonization. This old ship was part of a large fleet that left a planet called Earth to colonize other worlds. Of course, this happened a very long time ago before your fathers were even born. Unfortunately, your cowardly grandfathers severed the section and ran away into the night."
The small, egg-shaped robot pitched in, "They overhauled the old battleship and added residential quarters."
"And now we find ourselves back on this old battleship," the old lady continued. "This is our business, you see, so we'll gladly take the ship. But the question is, what should we do with the four of you?"
"We should get rid of them," the blue-haired woman said. "Things are already unstable enough."
"There's no need to be hasty, Meia," the old lady told her. "Maybe we should consider how we're going to cook these fellows up."
Meia forced her captive to stand next to the other men while she and the other two women met to decide what they should do with them.
While they were talking, Duelo heard the pilot lying on the couch behind them groaning in pain and turned himself around, placing his hand against the pilot's forehead.
"So that long-haired boy is a doctor?" the old woman asked as she watched Duelo check the injured pilot. "And the one lying down is the pilot who helped us. But what about the other two?"
"The short one is an attacker," Meia answered. "I saw him climbing into an enemy powered suit."
"Hold on!" Hibiki protested. "I'm not—"
The blonde-haired man next to Hibiki elbowed him in the stomach to keep him from saying anything.
"Why you," Hibiki groaned before the entire ship began shaking.
"What's going on?" the platinum-haired woman asked, immediately raising some kind of communicator to her ear.
"There's something attacking us!" a panicked voice replied.
The ship shook again, and the ceiling began cracking.
"What the hell!" the injured pilot yelled after the ship shook. Bolting up into a sitting position, the pilot immediately hunched over and grabbed his forehead, growling in pain.
"You can't move around like that," Duelo told him in a calm, serious voice. "You'll only aggravate your injury."
"Never mind me," the pilot growled. "What the hell just happened?"
"Dreads are going out!" Meia said before she ran out of the room.
A loud crashing sound echoed in the lounge room as a part of the ceiling caved in and fell on one of the guards.
"Oh no!" the other guard cried as she grabbed her friend. "Just hold on, I'll get you out of there."
"No, you mustn't move her!" Duelo said, jumping over the couch.
The guard immediately turned to face him and aimed a glowing ring at him.
Duelo kept a neutral expression. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm a doctor, and I just want to see what I can do for her."
The ship shook again, making the injured pilot roll off the couch. "Dammit!" he growled before pushing himself back to his feet. "I've already had enough of this. Where's the hangar?" he asked the old woman.
The captain looked at the pilot with an intrigued look. "What are you planning on doing?"
"What do you think?" the pilot shot back. "I'm going to fight. I'm not going to just sit here while something is attacking the ship I'm on!"
The old pirate smiled. "Very well. It's just down the hall and two decks down. I'm sure you'll know it when you see it."
The pilot nodded. "Right."
After the pilot ran out of the room, Duelo called to him to stop, but he didn't hear him. "There's nothing I can do here," Duelo said to the pirate captain. "Take me to sick bay."
"Well now, this is an interesting situation we've gotten into, isn't it?" the blonde man asked. "We may be enemies, but right now our first priority should be our survival."
"What do you have in mind?" the pirate captain asked.
"Warning! This one is trying to pull something!" the white robot shrieked.
"Pyoro, you keep quiet," the captain demanded.
"In a crisis like this, it's only natural we call for a ceasefire and deal with the immediate threat," the blonde man continued. "You may also wish to utilize my skills; you see, truth be told, I'm actually a helmsman."
"Oh, you're a helmsman, are you?" the captain asked.
The captain stepped forward. "Alright, then you will come with me to the bridge, young man," she said to the blonde helmsman. "BC, you take the doctor to the infirmary and then take the attacker to the warehouse."
The platinum-haired woman nodded. "Yes, Captain."
Two decks down, the injured pilot finally made it to the hangar and was relieved to see his F-22 sitting there. "Hello my friend," he said as he ran over to it and climbed into the pilot's seat.
"Alright," he said to himself as the canopy closed over him. "Time to take off."
The pilot noticed something tangled around the flight stick of the fighter jet; it looked like a bead necklace with dog tags hanging from it.
Holding the tags in his hand, the pilot looked at the first line on the first tag: "Mobius 1."
After reading that line, the pilot hunched over as another surge of pain rushed through his head. Growling fiercely as he clenched his head, the pilot muttered, "Mobius 1?"
"I…I'm…" the pilot struggled against the pain that was raging through his head. "Who am I?"
The ship shook again, and the pilot closed his eyes, hearing a distant voice in his head, "Heroes really do exist."
Gasping, the pilot shot his head up and glared at the open hangar door. "Let's do this!" he roared, activating his fighter's engines and taking off into the battle that awaited outside.
"What are these things?" Jura yelled over the radio. "I can't shake them!"
"Just hang on, Jura!" Meia yelled, trying to fly cover for Jura, but the enemy was trailing too close behind her to give her the chance.
Hearing the warning alarm in her ship go off, Meia turned to the side just as a missile hit the enemy that followed her, destroying it.
"What?" Meia gasped, seeing the light blue F-22 roar past her and toward Jura's ship.
"Target locked!" the pilot of the F-22 announced after locking on. "Fox Four!"
Pulling the trigger on the front end of the flight stick, the pilot fired his fighter jet's machine guns at the cube-shaped enemies, shooting them down easily before turning to the side to evade one that was pursuing him from behind.
The cube-shaped enemies immediately began ignoring the three female pilots and turned their attention to the F-22.
Keeping a close eye on his radar, the pilot waited until the enemies began firing at him before he decelerated and made a sharp turn to the side to evade their attack. However, with the cuffs keeping his hands restrained together, his maneuvering was sluggish.
"Damn!" he growled after one of the enemy's lasers grazed his left wing.
Quickly taking his hand off the flight stick, the pilot switched on his radio before grabbing the jet's controls again. "Hey, if you can hear me down there, get these damn restraints off. I can't fly with them on."
On the bridge of the merging battleship, the platinum-haired woman, BC, was staring at a screen that showed the pilot of the F-22. "Having trouble dealing with the enemy?" she asked him. "You were pretty confident not that long ago."
Barely evading an enemy's attack, the pilot demanded, "Take these things off, and I'll show you how good I am."
BC smirked and held up a small remote with a single button, pressing it to release the cuffs that restrained the pilot's hands.
The pilot grunted. "That's better. Now watch and learn!" The warning alarm in the cockpit went off, and the pilot immediately rolled his fighter to the side before decelerating. In mid-roll, he began chasing the enemy that passed by him, shooting it down almost immediately before evading another attack.
"Warning: missile," the cockpit's emergency alert said. "Warning: missile."
The pilot watched his radar for the incoming laser fired from the enemy before pulling off a wide barrel roll and looping around behind the three enemies that were following him.
"Locked on!" he said. "Fox Three! Fox Three!"
Moving his thumb over the tip of his flight stick, the pilot pressed down on the button at the top, triggering his missiles to fire. His XMAA missiles targeted the three enemies and, once fired, split between them before making impact and destroying them.
"Splash three targets," the pilot announced before turning to assist Jura, who had an enemy latched onto her ship and was trying to break through it.
Flying head-on toward the red Dread, the pilot contacted Jura. "Listen, on the count of three, I need you to tilt your ship to the right."
"Why?" Jura asked in a scared voice as the enemy continued to cut through her ship's canopy.
"Just trust me!" the pilot demanded as he set himself in a head-on collision course with Jura's Dread.
Flying head-on toward Jura's Dread, the pilot began counting. "One… two… three!"
Once he said three, Jura threw her Dread to the right, flying it on its side just as the F-22 tilted onto its side as well and fired its machine guns at the enemy latched to the Dread, shooting it off.
Jura had closed her eyes after tilting her Dread to the side, but when she opened them, she saw the enemy was no longer on her Dread and sighed in relief that she was still alive. "Thanks," she said to the pilot, who didn't answer.
The red-haired pilot, Dita, began screaming as more and more of the strange enemies appeared and began attacking her. "There are too many. Someone help!"
"I'm coming," the pilot of the F-22 yelled, accelerating to full speed.
"Where are they all coming from?" Jura cried. "Meia, you've got two following you!"
"I'm fine," Meia grunted after turning her Dread to evade the enemy. "Just go help Dita."
Approaching the bulky, blue Dread, the pilot of the F-22 gained a quick lock on the first enemy and fired a single missile before banking away to avoid colliding with the oncoming Dread.
Quickly looping back around, the pilot targeted four of the seven enemies pursuing the Dread and switched to his special weapons.
The missile bay on the underside of the F-22 opened, and a rack holding four XMAA missiles extended as the targeting system locked onto four of the enemies.
"Fox Three!" the pilot yelled as he fired the four missiles and switched back to his regular armaments immediately after. Gaining an immediate lock on the next enemy, he fired another missile. "Fox Two."
One after another, five of the seven enemies were shot down before the sixth fell to the Raptor's machine guns. The seventh enemy stopped pursuing Dita and targeted the Raptor but was immediately shot down after the pilot fired a close-range missile just as he started to bank away.
BC contacted the pilots, "More reinforcements are on the way, just hang in there."
"Reinforcements?" Jura repeated. "Are we even going to need them?" she asked after seeing how quickly the pilot of the F-22 shot down seven enemies back to back.
From the battleship below them, another machine flew out—the Vanguard.
Flying in a cartwheel rotation, the pilot of the Vanguard screamed while he tried to gain control of the mech under enemy fire.
"What is that?" Jura asked.
"It's one of the good aliens!" Dita cheered.
"Is that really our reinforcements?" Meia asked quietly, seeing the embarrassing way the Vanguard was being piloted.
"One of those things again?" the pilot of the F-22 muttered as the Vanguard's pilot clenched its fist and thrust it out, yelling, "Lightning fist!"
Nothing happened. The Vanguard was immediately surrounded by four enemies and shot, making the other pilots unsure of the Vanguard pilot's chances.
"Alright," the pilot inside the Vanguard said after getting the hang of his controls. "Try this!"
Activating the Vanguard's sword, the pilot flew through the remaining enemies, slicing through them with ease.
Following the Vanguard, the pilot of the F-22 shot down each enemy that tried to get in their way until they finally reached the enemy's main system.
Seeing the enemy's main system stop its advance and a giant slit appear across its center, the F-22's pilot immediately pulled out just as several of the cube-shaped enemies latched onto the Vanguard.
"No! Pull back!" the pilot in the F-22 yelled, seeing Dita's Dread flying right toward the Vanguard.
It was too late. The enemy's main system opened up, and several arcing tentacles shot out, impaling both the Vanguard and the Dread, destroying them.
"Idiots," the pilot of the F-22 muttered, closing his eyes.
Back on the bridge of the battleship, both the captain and BC hung their heads.
"I guess our miracle didn't happen," the captain said sadly.
BC looked up. "I guess we should signal for an evacuation."
"What is that?" Meia gasped, drawing everyone's attention back to the enemy and what was in front of it.
Rising out of the flaming debris cloud was a giant mech. Its armor was searing hot from the heat of the explosion around it. Once its armor cooled, everyone saw its real colors.
It was completely dark blue except for its joints, chest, and head, which were a dim tan, shade of green, and the massive cannons on its back were radiating a light green color.
"What kind of sci-fi crap is this?" the pilot of the F-22 yelled, seeing the giant mech ahead of him.
The new mech reached out its arms, grabbed the enemy's main system, and held its mouth open while the cannons on its back lifted up and rested on its shoulders before firing.
The beams from both cannons ripped through the main enemy, destroying it on impact and causing the remaining enemies to shut down.
Turning his fighter around, the pilot of the F-22 returned to the battleship and landed in the hangar alongside the three Dreads and the Vanguard shortly after.
"What do you suppose that was?" Jura asked Meia after they got out of their Dreads.
"I don't know," Meia replied. "But its power..."
"Hmm," Jura hummed before seeing the unknown pilot climbing out of his fighter jet. She walked over to him.
"I've never seen someone fly like that," she said as he stepped off the ladder and turned to face her, but didn't answer.
"So who are you?" Jura asked him.
The pilot looked down at his right hand. He was holding the dog tags he found in his fighter; once again, he read the first line on the first tag. "I may not remember my name," he said, "but I know who I am."
Jura was confused. He knew who he was, but he didn't know his name? "So who are you?" she asked again.
The pilot clenched his fist around the dog tags. "I.S.A.F's top fighter pilot and the only pilot in the 118th Tactical Fighter Wing..."
The pilot smirked as he turned sideways and looked back at his F-22. "I am Mobius 1."
