Angel sat in wide-eyed wonder at the view of the SDF-1 outside her new shop in New Macross. The sun rose slowly over the fortresses main gun booms, it burned her eyes to tears, but she watched relentlessly. It had only been a year since the catastrophe. That’s what it really was, Angel long ago decided. It was not a victory, a gallant end to a stryfe of humanity as the politicians called it. It was war, it was brutal, it held no prejudice to the child, the innocent, the weak, or the fearful. It was hell.
Angel had a reputation in New Macross lately. It was not for her award winning costumes or her rennowned sewing shop, but something more real, something more heart-breaking. She had led the first movement to honor those soldiers that died by the hundreds to save the thousands of civilians on Macross, and on Earth. The following she attracted was impressive, even out numbering Lynn Minmei’s call for the lack of any such memorial park. In the end the larger party won, and Angel was invited as guest of honor along side Veritech ace Rick Hunter to cut the ribbon on the opening day of "Marcus Bradford Memorial Shelter" and the opening of the "Armistice Celebration Park."
In the name of her fallen lover, she headed a shelter project, privately funded by the many floundering businesses of New Macross. No one predicted Angel giving so much of her time, or her shop’s earnings to the failing shelter. However, her acts inspired others, and despite near closes and financial instability the shelter remains opened. Even Lynn Minmei has been seen near the complex once in a while. However the shelter is in grave danger as the Zentraedi grow more and more restless. Rumors of falled Zentraedi ships still battle-ready circulate through New Macross like a winter’s wind biting into the thick coats of security the people cling to.
Angel, not wanting to let her shelter close has prepared an extravaganza. In co-ordination with RDF HQ and several key New Macross officials the final permits have been cleared to hold a Christmas Eve city-wide celebration, centered at the shelter and the park it rests in. Scheduled to perform, shocking everyone, is Lynn Minmei herself. It is only days away, and Angel is caught in yet another daydream as she watches the sun dip behind the thick clouds just off the horizon.
"Oh Marcus, I hope you are happy with this." Angel says to herself quietly. She is so wrapped up in her day dream, flying through the stars with Marcus in his Veritech that she is oblivious to Stacy’s entrance. Stacy had long ago begun to work with Angel. As sister to Marcus, Angel thought it only fitting that she take the young girl in since she had the room and Stacy had nowhere to go with no surviving family. Angel trusted the shelter, however she could not bring herself to send Stacy there, being a mere 15 years old.
"Miss Angel?" Stacy asks timidly, as is her usual fashion. It took her well over a week to speak after the SDF-1 landed on Earth and she came into Angel’s company.
"Hmm?" Angel turns half aware that she has been addressed. "Oh Stacy, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. How are you this morning?"
"Good, just a trying to stay warm." Stacy smiled. Angel loved to see the girl smile, there was something about it that melted her heart, she often thought that it was the same that Marcus wore so often. "Are you ready?"
"Ready?" Angel asked, still clearing her head from the daydream.
"To go shopping, remember?"
"Oh right. Yes, let me grab my coat and purse." Angel had agreed over a week ago to help Stacy get the gifts that would be given to the shelter’s 450 residents.
The afternoon Angel found to be delightful, quite the oppositte of what she had been expecting and thinking lately. However she was excited to play a sort of Mrs. Santa for the party on Christmas Eve. The preparations went well...
:: Christmas Eve ::
The celebration was well under way. Angel had just finished making her section of the rounds delivering gifts in her Mrs. Santa dress. Drawing scores of compliments and a few phone numbers the evening was going well. Angel was in the peak of her glee when Minmei took the stage.
The first notes rang out and the crowd went wild. Angel long ago stopped liking the remixes of "To Be In Love" but the crowds never did, she couldn’t understand it. The new single, "Heart’s Cry" was a killer song, and it was sure to be a hit, but Minmei’s entire line-up after the opener were Christmas Carols.
The songs went well received, and the crowd went into a frenzy when Minmei asked Angel on stage to help her perform the final song. Angel reluctantly agreed, swayed largely by the crowd’s intense cheering. She had barely begun to sing when alarm claxxons began to go off. Before people could run for cover the explosions were ripping their way through the city. One blast sent Angel and Minmei to oppositte ends of the stage, neither seriously hurt, but Minmei unconscious.
"Angel!" Yelled an officer as he scurried over. "Sing!"
"WHAT?!" Angel replied shocked! "Are you crazy? We’re being attacked!"
"I know! But Minmei is out, she can’t. The pilots, they’ll fight harder if they hear those songs!" Angel didn’t have to ask which songs, she knew them . It was common knowledge of Angel’s gift to Minmei before that final battle so long ago... Now it seemed that her place to sing had come.
Angel stood silent, scared by the blasts all around her. "Life is only what we choose to make it..." She began softly, the band looking counfused ran to get their equipment back out...
"Let’s just take it..."
A flight of Veritechs screamed overhead drowning out the chaos and confusion around Angel. Suddenly another blast hit the stage, destroying a good half of it behind her. Angel jumped forward, defiantly staying on her feet, clutching the microphone. Suddenly there was a surge of energy inside her. Something that bordered upon fear and adrenaline, and Angel let the explosions, the still assembling band’s clumsy notes, and the roar of the mecha around take her away...
She indulged herself in the moment and began to sing...
"Lest with strong hearts that beat as one watch us soar! And with love that conquers all we’ll win this battle, This last battle, WE WILL WIN!" The guitarist hit the chords tight and hard as the sounds of his instrument bellowed across the park, Angel’s voice carrying blocks into the battle-gripped city. Citizens and soldiers alike flooded the streets grabbing anything they could to make weapons to defend the coming micronized Zentreadi...
"As the battle goes on we feel stronger... How much longer, MUST THIS GO ON?!" Angel sung with intensity and power, the crowd erupted into a mob-like frenzy on the advancing soldiers... "Each and everyday we dream of winning... and beginning a new life... STILL we must fight or face defeat, WE MUST STAND TALL and not retreat... With our strenght we’ll find the might... there’s no fight we can’t fight... together..."
Suddenly from nowhere as Angel threw her exhuasted self into the song, well into it’s fifth repeat back up arrived. Looking over her shoulder the instant she heard the song, the recently awakend Minmei joined her...
"ALL TOGETHER... WE CAN WIN! WE WILL WIN!! WE WILL WIN!!!"
The song lasted another 15 minutes... the crowd chanting to the chorus when the battles were done...
The history books show that battle a failure for the RDF, for the citizens of New Macross as the enemy got away with a high amount of the precious remaining Protoculture cells... but no one that was in that crowd, that fought on that ground, in that park, that bled, and that cried there could deny it... they had won... Angel, without even realizing it, had turned the tide of that battle, that small portion of the raid, completely in the city’s favor...
...the images of her on stage singing through the smoke and fires of a rocket’s near lethal explosion circulate the city, and as with all legends, those images, along with the memories and stories will long outlive the young girl who made them...
[End of Effect 06]
