"Anyway!" Elmo's normal enthusiasm broke us all out of the tense situation; "Would you both like to hear my latest idea now?"

I chuckled. He was positively itching to get this idea out. But my assumption had been that he had told Ranka-chan already, but as he watched anxiously for both of our reactions I realized maybe he hadn't. "Do you know about this, Ranka-chan?" I leaned so that I could face her, letting my hair fall forward and graze across Alto's shoulder as I did so – just to make him squirm a bit.

"Nn," she shook her head; "Elmo has been keeping quiet about it until we were both together. What is it, Elmo?"

"Joint Concert!" our manager's eyes reflected his excitement at the proposal.

"Joint Concert?" Ranka-chan repeated, her brow furrowing at the consideration. She looked surprised and quite frankly, so was I. Not that I had any opposition to singing onstage with Ranka-chan or anything. Yes, there was a time when I would have refused to share the spotlight with anyone, but my nature had changed quite a bit over the course of the battle with the Vajra and my experiences on Frontier. Of course, I wouldn't share the stage with just anybody, but Ranka-chan was a worthy partner.

"Yes! Can you imagine? Sheryl and Ranka! Ranka and Sheryl! Joint Concert! Idols! Music! Song! Inspiring the masses as we work on colonizing our new planet!"

"I wouldn't get too far ahead of yourself, Elmo," a new voice spoke, and I looked up along with the rest of the room to see that four newcomers had arrived in the doorway. Luca was scheduled to arrive, and Brera I had actually expected to be here already, and now that I thought about it I wondered why he was late. The other two individuals were not so expected: Skull Leader Ozma Lee and Lieutenant Catherine Glass. Granted, Ozma came to many of Ranka's concerts but he was usually busy these days with SMS business. More so than Alto and Luca were, certainly. He was the one who had spoken.

"Onii-chan and Onii-chan!" Ranka-chan leapt from her spot on the other arm of Alto's chair, waving at her two brothers, one adopted and one related by blood.

"Ranka!" Ozma gave his younger sister a broad grin and a wave while Brera simply offered a mild smile. "How was the concert?"

"Wonderful! They loved my new songs! And Sheryl-san's flight exam went well, too!" I smiled. Leave it to Ranka-chan to always remember to compliment others.

"Congratulations," Cathy smiled and gave me a nod. "Ozma is worried he might have some stiff competition if you choose to go through with this all the way," she smiled at her significant other, whose arm was currently resting around her waist. He simply chuckled and shook his head at her.

"Well, we'll see," I offered a vague response, smiling.

"Onii-chan," Ranka-chan addressed Brera; "You're sort of late. What happened? Were you meeting with Onii-chan again about what happened with the Vajra?"

This whole 'two brothers' thing could get confusing, I thought, removing myself from the chair arm and settling instead on Alto's lap, mimicking Ozma as I slipped my arms around his waist. Ever easily-flustered, my darling cleared his throat and offered me a slightly annoyed look. But I just smiled and he gave up. He really needed to develop his assertiveness more, but I wasn't complaining.

Ranka-chan's gaze shifted uneasily toward us as she listened to Brera's explanation.

"Captain Ozma and Lieutenant Glass found me after the concert as I was on my way back here. It seems the Captain and Bilrer just had a rather... interesting meeting."

"An assignment for SMS?" Klan asked, snapping to attention.

Luca shook his head gravely, apparently having been informed of this already; "No. At least not yet. More like something we might have to worry about in the future. Bilrer doesn't want to stay here."

"Yes, but we knew that already," Alto spoke up. "The overwhelming public opinion is for colonizing the planet, though. After everything that happened over the past few months, don't the citizens deserve some normalcy?"

"I agree with you, Alto, but SMS is not tied down to the desires of the masses," Ozma frowned. "I tried to encourage him to at least keep our base here, even if he wishes for us to continue to explore space."

"What exactly does he want us to do, Ozma?" Klan demanded more clarification, and I really couldn't blame her. This was sounding very strange, and with Alto tied to SMS anything that affected him also affected me.

"Essentially, he hasn't given up on his mission," Ozma explained, still frowning; "Yes, after the final battle with the Vajra he suffered a temporary loss of willpower but it didn't take long for his normal ambitions to come back. He thinks we can somehow learn how to use the Vajra network without tapping into it directly as Grace O'Connor and Galaxy attempted. He's convinced we need to do more research on fold quartz. That's why it was important to tell you right away, Ranka, Sheryl. With the V-Type virus still inside both of you, he might try to find some way to involve you in this. Someone might want to research you – and probably research Ai-kun as well. He's the only actual Vajra we have left."

Ranka's worried expression increased about ten-fold when he mentioned her beloved pet, but I was more concerned about how it would affect us two. I was tired of viruses and Vajra and fighting and space travel. I wanted to stay here, under Alto's beloved sky, and live a normal life. Yes, the idea of becoming a pilot was intriguing, but I hadn't even thought about what would happen if we got involved in another major mission.

"What can studying them possibly do?" Alto demanded, jumping to mine and Ranka's defense.

Luca shook his head; "You know Bilrer has a one-track mind. He's searching for any connection now. He just doesn't want to stop. His intentions are innocent enough, though. He just wants to find her."

"Lynn Minmay," I murmured acknowledgment. The legendary singer. Of course, I admired everything about the long-missing woman. She was an inspiration to everyone who took up the trade these days, the first person to show our society the amazing strength and power music truly had. Meeting her would be unbelievable, but...

"Ah, I know how Mr. Bilrer feels," Elmo sighed dramatically and nodded. As an aging Zentran who had lived through Space War I he, like Bilrer, felt that love towards Minmay that was especially dramatic in their species. "It would be wonderful to see her again and we all, of course, desperately want to know what happened to the Megaroad One, but..." here he frowned, and I wondered if his thoughts mirrored mine; "Well, we do have to move forward, don't we? We have a nice planet, and we have Sheryl and Ranka," he gestured to us in turn to make his point. "Their songs are just as strong as Minmay's were. I don't think SMS should have to continue Bilrer's search."

It seemed that Elmo was a lot wiser than his Zentraedi counterpart.

"Well, we won't have much choice if he goes through with it," Ozma admitted. "I just wanted to warn the group, that's all. At the very least he wants us to continue minor expeditions towards the galactic center using the fold quartz – hopefully enhancing its use through research, but the details of that are not worked out yet."

"Are they going to hurt the Vajra? Or try to find them again?" Ranka-chan asked, worried. "They left peacefully. We should leave them alone."

"I think he's more interested in trying to use the fold quartz to 'make' artificial Vajra," Luca admitted. "He thinks it would be feasible, and really it probably is. The Protoculture sort of did it. The bird human from your movie," he gave Ranka-chan a nod. "He's looking at some of the notes Dr. Mao made on it when she wasn't studying the V-Type virus. He's had me looking over them for a couple of weeks now, too," the young boy admitted, a sheepish expression on his face. "But it would be even better if we could find the notes from The Protoculture themselves. Dr. Mao was only able to discover so much."

"Obaa-san," I nodded. I had only met my grandmother twice. My parents had lived separately from her, remaining on Galaxy while Obaa-san did research on Galia 4 with Grace and Ranka-chan's mother. And then the planet had been attacked and my grandmother killed, after which Galaxy had come under harsh rule, and my parents were murdered for refusing to receive implants, and I was forced to live in the slums until Grace supposedly 'rescued' me. If only I had known then what she wanted me for! And yet, without her encouragement, I would never have become a singer, and so my feelings were quite mixed on the subject.

"Yes, Mao-obaa-san," Ranka-chan nodded. She actually knew my grandmother better than I did, now that her memories from those days had been returned to her. "She always loved the Vajra, didn't she, Onii-chan? She and Okaa-san used to sing 'Aimo' to us all the time."

"Mm," Brera smiled at the memory.

"And so, right now what are we supposed to do?" Alto asked, bringing us all back to the subject matter at hand.

"Wait," Ozma admitted. "Wait and see where Bilrer's whims take us."

"That doesn't sound enjoyable," I frowned, tightening my grip on Alto.

He sighed and nodded, not resisting our contact; "But in the meantime at least you have the joint concert to attend to, since we are still staying on this planet for the time being," he offered me an encouraging smile, and then turned and gave Ranka-chan one as an afterthought.

I resisted the urge to smack him upside the head for his indecisiveness, turning instead to smile at Elmo; "Then we'll do the concert. But we'll need a certain number of joint songs for it too, won't we?"

"We already have 'Lion'," Ranka-chan pointed out; "And the medley we sang during the battle with the Vajra, and I sang 'Infinity' with you before. But maybe we can both compose a new one for the concert! That makes at least five, and we can always do 'What 'bout my star?', too."

"Yes, yes, perfect, and you should both compose at least one new solo song as well!" Elmo encouraged.

"I just gave you two, isn't that enough?" I teased, but we both knew that I absolutely loved composing songs and was looking forward to this opportunity. Hopefully we'd stay on the planet long enough to do it.

A/N: Sorry again for the late update. This is a longer chapter, though, and my ideas for the plot are finally starting to solidify! I think I got most of the technological and background info correct, but I'm not positive. Especially for the part about Sheryl's past (most of that is revealed in a backstory manga which I have not read, just seen a summary of) – I'm assuming she met Mao at least once based only on some pictures in her (adorable) fish phone from the first movie, but since the movies are technically not in the same universe as the TV series I'm not positive if that's right either.

That said, I've heard great things about the just-released second movie! I wish I could go see it! :)

A new Mao chapter is coming soon too; I've just got to watch Macross Zero once more.