Somewhere close to Earth…
"Is this true?"
"It is true, Commander. A fleet of Shi'ar vessels — numbering about a hundred ships, including their top-of-the-line space battleships — has penetrated the Galactic Barrier and are now inbound to the homeworld of the Infinite One. We are monitoring transmissions. It appears the Emperor D'Ken wishes to challenge the Infinite One."
The purple-haired tomboy appearing to be in her mid-twenties — in truth, Azonia was many centuries old, being one of the first female Zentraedi (known back in the dark old days of slavery as Meltraedi) born — in the formal crimson uniform with the flowing campaign cape that marked her as one of the senior commanders of the Fantomian Star Navy hummed as she took in that information before she crossed her arms. "I see," Azonia Laplamaz trilled. "Why, pray tell, would the avian micronians wish to confront the Lady Infinity? Especially their leader? Has the Lady Infinity done something the Shi'ar might consider a crime? She saved the hearth world of the D'Bari, I believe."
A nod from the rough-looking Zentraedi male on the forward view screen on the bridge of the great battleship the leader of the Meltran Division of the Star Navy used as her personal flagship. "She did, Commander," Bron Walera stated as an admiring smile crossed his face. "She also dealt with Galactus as well, alongside the Lady Weaver and other Yizibajohei warriors fighting alongside their Terran allies. To deter Galactus from consuming the life energies of Earth, the Lady Infinity and the Lady Weaver took a portal crystal which opened into the Nexus of All Realities that was on a barren world in Shi'ar space. Within it was a neutron galaxy the Lady Infinity released into a pocket dimension the Lady Weaver created, thus giving Galactus an unending supply of worlds for him to feast on; none of the worlds in that galaxy produced life."
Azonia hummed. "So why would that race of micronians object? They loathe Galactus like all the other space-faring races that have heard of him. The actions of the Lady Infinity and the Lady Weaver saved billions of countless lives."
"The object — it was called the M'Kraan Crystal — was supposedly of some great religious significance to the Shi'ar," Bron replied. "As you may know, the Emperor D'Ken is said to be quite mad. Like Khyron in a way." As both of them shared a laugh on his mentioning the name of the infamous Backstabber, the observation post commander working at a domed base on the minor planet the Terrans called "Ceres" added, "We've already alerted the Men In Black about this issue. I'm sure the Terran metahumans — especially those ones who fought on the Lady Infinity's side against Galactus — would rally to her defence in case the Shi'ar Emperor tried to hurt her."
A laugh. "I wish the fool luck! Kasuga Ayumu is a truly peaceful woman at heart…which means that ANGERING her would unleash a storm that would make the Celestials flee in terror!" Azonia sighed before she tapped a control at her bridge station. "Miriya, did you overhear what Bron reported?" she asked her senior brigade commander.
"Yes, Commander," the calm, crisp voice of Miriya Parina answered from the bridge of her own ship. "Bron, how soon will the Shi'ar fleet be in striking range of Earth?"
"At least a Terran solar day, Commander," Bron answered.
"Excellent! We can fold our ships and be there well ahead of them," Miriya declared, which made Azonia smile in delight. "By your leave, old friend?"
"You have it, Miriya. Do your duty," Azonia bade. "May you win every fight!"
"Always, Azonia! Always!"
Both Azonia and Bron smiled at the self-assured cockiness of the greatest battlepod ace of the former Imperial Zentraedi Forces. With other services, such bluster would be put down immediately as being disruptive to the conduct of proper military operations.
Miriya Parina had EARNED her right to brag!
"You all heard the Commander," the green-haired beauty with the eyes of fresh grass declared as she stood on the bridge of her own flagship.
As she was a newly-promoted brigade commander, Miriya had yet to earn a campaign cloak. But such would come soon, after all. Even if the Star Navy of the current residents of the giant world Fantoma — they still used the name "Zentraedi" to describe their race as a whole even if females of the species still thought of themselves as "Meltraedi;" attempts by elders like Exedore Formo, the first of their kind, to use the term "Fantomian" or something similar (like the official name of the Space Navy) just didn't stick with the warriors — were operating at a much lower tempo then they did the dark days of enslavement to the so-called "Robotech Masters," they were still warriors at heart and prepared to lay their lives on the line for a good fight.
No different than how Yizibajohei once lived their lives before Destructo came, Miriya mused as she took a deep breath. "Earth is being threatened by the Shi'ar because of the Lady Infinity's actions that saved that world from Galactus. We all owe an honour-debt to the Lady Infinity for what she did that led to the Lady K'ekhech's execution of Zor and ultimately ensured we would be finally free of the Masters to chart our own destiny…and by extension, ensure all the other species of the galaxy can chart their own. Are we going to FAIL In that duty to the Terrans?!"
"NO!" the battalion commanders under her — their images were being displayed on the bridge of Miriya's flagship — chanted as they bowed their heads to her.
"Then let us go to Earth and have this business be done!" Miriya said. "Kazianna!"
The First Quadrono Battalion's commander, Kazianna Hesh, perked. "Commander?!"
"You have the head of the march!"
A deep bow of the head. "I will lead us to victory!"
"May you win every fight!" the brigade commander bade in the traditional way, and then she added, "We will follow you in battalion order. My command group will be will Kiyora's battalion." Kiyora Tekiva was the commander of the Fourth Quadrono Battalion.
Kiyora, a pretty red-haired woman with green eyes, bowed her head. "We are honoured to have you with us, Commander. None will harm you."
The other battalion commanders — atop Kazianna, there was the short (for a Meltraedi) Klan Klang of the Second Quadrono Battalion, Raramiya Rerenia of the Third Quadrono Battalion and Nene Rora of the Quadrono Heavy Weapons Battalion; Miriya controlled the Brigade's support forces and headquarters group — all bowed to her. "We will have victory or die!" they chanted as one to their leader…
…before the tomboyish Raramiya blushed. "I hope we'll meet up again with the Lady Infinity's male friend!"
Miriya jerked. "Raramiya!"
"Oh, stop it, Miriya!" Raramiya scolded. "You liked him, too!"
"We all did, Rara," Kiyora stated. "Especially when the Lady Dragonspeaker found those mystics from Yehisril who were quite willing to teach us all to self-micronise our bodies to be of equal stature to the Yizibajohei or the Terrans when we want to."
Klan moaned. "If only the males of OUR kind would do the same thing!"
"Too much testosterone in them," Nene warned. "Just like male Yizibajohei once were. Remember what Ayumu told us about why the Chaos Lord emerged from the Crystal?"
"A pity, too," Kazianna breathed out.
"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!" Nene cooed. "Kazi still has a crush on Breetai!"
"HEY!"
Laughter filled the spaceways; Kazianna's personal desire to bed the second-in-command of the Space Navy, Breetai Kridanik, was well-known throughout the ranks of the Meltran Division. "Alright, sisters! That's enough," Miriya then scolded. "We have a duty to perform. If the chance comes once we've made the Shi'ar go away and leave our galaxy be, we'll head over to Yiziba and see if he is there!"
The girls all cheered like gushing schoolgirls as the links were switched off. Gazing at the normal view of space ahead of her vessel's bows, Miriya watched as Kazianna's battalion of fifteen ships vanished in flashes of fold energy towards Earth. As the bridge crew carried out their duties — with more discipline and a greater attention to detail now that they could truly UNDERSTAND the incredible technology that made the Zentraedi such a feared race in the galaxy! — the greatest battlepod ace of the old Quadrono Battalion sighed as her mind turned back nearly eight years. And a chance encounter on a planet not so far away from Fantoma that had been visited by two very strange "micronians"…
The planet Haydon IV…
"I don't think you'll be able to find pretty girls here, Ataru-chan."
A blinking Moroboshi Ataru took a moment to look around the strange grass field he and Kasuga Ayumu — wearing a child's version of the Infinity uniform — just teleported to from Yiziba. A glance up into the sky revealed two suns, not the single golden sun of Earth or the slightly bluish-white star Yiziba orbited. "Yeah, you're right, Ayumu-chan! I guess this thing's busted," the unpowered Terran-turned-Yizibajohei stated as he gazed on the small device — it resembled the Mother Box that was used by the New Gods — that had been given to him by the elderly Academician when he began going out to find pretty girls to become Yizibajohei. "Where do you think…?"
Suddenly, the ground shook slightly as something quite heavy slammed into the earth nearby. Ataru blinked as his ki senses quickly sensed very powerful nexi of energy that indicated living sentient beings, and then he turned to look…
…and then he looked up.
…and up.
…and UP!
"Wow!" Ayumu gasped. "They sure are BIG!"
Ataru nodded as he gazed on the women — who were at least ten metres tall by Earth measurements — that were now approaching him. All were dressed in what appeared to be a military uniform of some sort, all shaded a deep red with very long jackets and black stripes…and a rectangular-shaped insignia over their hearts which looked like a very stylised "U." All of them had rifle weapons in their hand scaled to their size and they were now staring at the two Terrans with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Field troops, a voice in his head — which sounded a lot like his new big sister Negako — then warned as he felt himself tense as one of the giant women came towards them.
Stopping about two metres away from the two Terrans, the woman — a very beautiful one appearing to be in her late teens by Terran standards, with long flowing green hair that reminded Ataru a lot of the hair on Lum's head, her eyes matching her hair shade — then went to one knee as she gazed closely at them. "You are not natives to this world," she said in a voice that seemed to echo in the air thanks to the rather large size of her mouth. "Who are you and why are you here?"
Ataru smiled. "Well, our teleporter device broke and brought us here, Onē-chan," he said as he held up the device in his hand. "We were trying to go to Earth."
The giant blinked. "What is a 'big sister?'"
Ataru and Ayumu blinked in return, though both were relieved that the older women had a universal translator with them. "Don'tcha know?" the latter asked.
A shake of the head. "No. Is it a weapon of some sort?"
Much to Miriya Parina's confusion, the two kids then fell flat on their faces!
Oh, those two…! Miriya mused to herself as she felt her own ship leap into fold space for the quick journey to Earth. Thank the Matrix that they were children and willing to take the time to teach us all what the concept of 'family' is!
"Reminiscing?"
Miriya blinked before she gazed on her former second-in-command in the old Quadrono Battalion — and now her flagship's commander — Seloy Deperra. "Do you blame me?" she asked as she leaned her hands on the front guardrail of her command station.
Seloy shook her head. "No. I remember when Ayumu macronised herself and used her power to macronise Ataru to be of equal stature to us…even if they only came up to our waists because they were so young for their kind!" A warm shudder ran through her as she remembered the then-incredibly alien feelings — feelings she now realised were quite natural to female humanoids when encountering a child who looked upon the viewer with total trust, a concept that was alien to the Meltraedi at the time — that have overcome one of the deadliest of all her kind when the young Earth boy who had accompanied the Goddess Who Walked Amongst Men to Haydon IV that day simply HUGGED her and called her "big sister." "To believe the Masters denied us THAT!"
"We were expendable tools to them," Miriya stated. "Cloned slaves that could do all their dirty work for them. First as miners on Fantoma…and then as soldiers to help create their empire. Zor's discovery on Optera — even if it allowed us to be created as our own race centuries ago — ultimately intoxicated them too much."
Seloy made a face…
A year after the initial encounter by the Quadrono Battalion with the Yizibajohei — all Zentraedi laughed at the fact that most of the "micronian" races in the Milky Way Galaxy were too afraid to even speak that NAME in public! — on Haydon IV, the nearly-immortal Tirolian scientist Zor took a fleet to the homeworld of the Invid to fully cleanse it of the Flower of Life that had made the curious techno-organic compound known as "protoculture" possible, thus giving the so-called "robotech masters" the power to lay waste to all those standing in their way. Unfortunately, when said fleet arrived at the Invid homeworld, it was being visited by a wandering warrior from the planet Noukiios who had come to see the "pretty flowers" in their natural habitat.
When Zor's machines began the sterilisation process, the Tirolians learned right away that it was VERY stupid to anger the one known as "She Who Speaks to Dragons."
Put simply, it had been a total rout. Zor — his body made nearly immortal thanks to the work with the Flower of Life that had created protoculture and the Zentraedi — had been easily beheaded by the woman known officially in the Imperial Dominion of Noukiios as Seu-P'ye Yesu-Re Hechnich'-K'ekhech. The other Tirolians in his group had been savagely beaten nearly to death by the Dragonspeaker, then let go to return to their homeworld to pass on the warning to the Robotech Masters: Optera and the Invid were now under Noukiios' protection. And then, when the small group of male Zentraedi warriors who had accompanied the Master of Protoculture to Optera had tried to overwhelm the "micronian" warrior that had killed the man who had made their very LIVES possible, said warrior allowed her body to grow to the size of the leader of that group — none other than the infamous Backstabber himself — and then lifted him off his feet to strangle him with one hand right in front of his subordinates! Once the dead Khyron Kravshera had been dropped to the ground, the crimson-haired warrior with the spinal ridges on her forehead turned to glare at them with burning eyes…and then they faded as she seemed to peer right past their faces into their very young souls.
"Go home," the Dragonspeaker then bade. "Your race will be free."
That promise took six months Earth-time to fulfil. It had taken the great Noukiite metahuman warrior half that time to locate the Devourer of Worlds and direct him to the fourth moon of Fantoma so he could have his next meal. By then, mystics — mostly from the northern tribes of the planet Yehisril — had begun appearing amongst the always-separated Zentraedi and Meltraedi military forces to expose the rather naive race of clone warriors to things they could never have imagined before. Atop that, many young Yizibajohei — all recruited by Moroboshi Ataru from all over his homeworld of Earth and gifted by the sentience of the Forge of the First Race — also made their way to the Zentraedi and Meltraedi to help repair and enhance their ships to a degree that would allow them to fully wean themselves from dependence on protoculture. Such was slow — especially when male Zentraedi always seemed to freak out every time the small Meltraedi-like beings did odd things like hugging and kissing to their "uncles" — but by the time Galactus had destroyed Tirol and the Robotech Masters were but a bad memory, the Zentraedi were on a new path to a strange future…and they could not turn back.
It still was a very incomplete process. The cloning chambers that all Zentraedi could look on as their birthplace had been on Tirol when Galactus came…and despite all the knowledge people such as the Academician and Prodigy could bring to help them, there was really no way to recreate the technology. Of course — thanks to both the Lady K'ekhech and Moroboshi Negako, the great warrior that was Ataru's adopted older sister — a more NATURAL way towards creating a new generation of Zentraedi was possible; after all, despite all the precautions the Robotech Masters had used to keep the males and females of their slave race apart, they NEVER did anything to render them genetically sterile. And while the former Meltraedi were more than willing to serve as the birth-mothers of their freed race, getting the male Zentraedi to do the deed…!
"Kazi will never get Breetai," Seloy then stated as a smirk crossed her face, which made Miriya gaze knowingly at her. "But one must admire her determination."
"Indeed. And he is quite well-constructed," the commander of the Quadrono Brigade stated. "A pity that most Zentrans can't make themselves see that about us!"
A sigh. "Well, hopefully, Bron and his crew might be more amicable to initiating pillow-scenes," Seloy stated. "Much that I do love making love to you, Miriya…"
"I too enjoy our relationship, Seloy," Miriya stated. "But sadly, the basic structure of our bodies forbids us from bearing offspring unless a male implants his seed within our wombs. We are sisters in love as much as we are sisters in battle." Once they had come to fully understand the concept of "sister," the Quadrono veterans — right up to Azonia herself! — had begun to address themselves and their emotional bond to each other that way. "But we can't be mothers without males to father our children."
A sigh. "Pity…"
Minutes later, a massive shower of energy allowed the eighty-five ships of the Quadrono Brigade to emerge into normal space close to Jupiter. As the crews of all the ships gazed on a planet that was even more beautiful than their own Fantoma, Miriya ordered the communications officer to open a link with the Ceres outpost. A second later, the image cleared up to reveal — much to the brigade commander's total shock — a FEMALE in a black uniform with three golden hooked stripes and a curious sigil in the crook of the upper stripe on her shoulder slip-ons. "Hello…oh!" she gasped as she gazed right into Miriya's wide green eyes. "Brigade Commander Parina!" She then raised her hand in the curious fingertip-to-eyebrow salute used by most Terran military forces.
Miriya nodded as she responded in the Meltraedi way: open hand crossing the chest to place on her left breast with her palm over her heart. "You are?"
"Petty Officer 2nd Class Kim Young. Specialised Warfare Space Observation Unit," the raven-haired tomboyish girl with the dark grey eyes replied crisply before she lowered her hand and assumed an at-ease position after Miriya relaxed. "We came out here to look in on Sergeant Walera and his friends. Your base is on our side of the dividing line the Men In Black negotiated with the Neptunians as the border between Terran and Neptunian space. Since we're the only unit on Earth that can reach this far…"
A nod. "Ah, yes! You're part of the group that use the technology of the abandoned Karollan base on that island in Earth's northern latitudes," Miriya stated, nodding.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You are aware of the Shi'ar approaching your world, Petty Officer?"
A firm nod. "Yes, ma'am. They're coming here to try to start a fight-scene with Infinity over her using the M'Kraan Crystal to make Galactus go away finally."
A smirk. "Well, given the debt we owe the Lady Infinity for her contacting the Lady K'ekhech of Noukiios to being the process that freed our people, my brigade will assume close orbit over Earth to make the avian micronians see some reason."
Kim blinked. "I see."
"A problem?"
"Well, we've got local visitors as well. Not the kind that are aware of your people, Brigade Commander," the young petty officer from Edmonton — like many who wore Navy black in the Specialised Warfare Regiment, Kim was a powerful psychic; her specific abilities centred on empathy and clairvoyance — then advised. "The Urusians."
"A race of 'sames' as the Yizibajohei would think of them as. Why?"
"Because they wanted to conquer us last year…but Moroboshi Ataru defeated their champion in a game of tag." As the bridge crew — and the crews of all the ships in the brigade — perked on hearing his name, the young petty officer added, "It turns out that some people on Earth wanted to make us more vulnerable to the Urusians so they wouldn't invade us. They captured Ataru and brainwashed him into forgetting his sister, all his friends — including all your people — and his fighting skills. It was a miracle in the end that he won in the end; Lum could fly." A sigh. "Fortunately, when he found out what happened, Professor Wyszynski came back to Earth and got his memories restored. It restored everyone else, too. And right now, we're trying NOT to provoke a possible Mother of All Fight Scenes with the Urusians now that they know that Lum's would-have-been husband was one of the 'You Know Whos.'"
The Meltraedi laughed as we now…
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(Posted Mon, 19 Mar 2012 03:11)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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