Macross Fan Fiction ❯ Legend of Megaroad -- Book One ❯ Chapter 2: Dinner and Movies ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter 2: Dinner and a movie

--January 10, 2016--
--21:15--

After a day and a half of crawling through space, the derelict battle fortress eventually made it's way to the rendezvous point with the Megaroad and came up along side it. As requested, at least three construction companies had sent teams into the ship to set up facilities for a micronian crew, while the Zentradi battleship sent over several soldiers in space suits to assist with repairs. Spirits were higher than they'd ever been. People in the city were boasting that they could build this new ship even bigger and better than the original Macross. Already, that seemed entirely possible. SDF-102, as it was now being called, had only been docked with the Megaroad for 7 hours and they had already restored most of it's primary systems. Most of the full sized Zentradi working aboard the ship were grateful for the micronian engineers who could slip behind tight corners and make precise adjustments to delicate equipment quickly and efficiently. A team of micronians with a pair of Zentradi could accomplish in minutes what would take both parties several hours to do on their own. After only 7 hours of work, the ship's primary systems were fully operational once again, and most of the breaches in her hull had been patched. Now, work had begun to overhaul the ship for use by a micronian crew.

Lynn Minmei couldn't care less. There was a time in her life where she would have gone mad, where she might have toured the ship with Hikaru or Misa with an entourage of reporters hanging on their every word, or perhaps she might even have arranged a concert and written a song to dedicate the christening of the new ship, but now was not one of those times, her recent failures were still too fresh in her mind. She was still reeling from her performance in Perigee, a badly written, low budget, lousy excuse for a movie that seemed to have something to do with skydiving, but with the apparently still underdeveloped skills of the writers it was anyone's guess what was really going on. Her first attempt at a comeback was with a sequel to her debut film, the martial arts classic Shao Pai Lon, this time with a potentially large budget and a considerable fan base to start the movie off. Barely a few weeks into planning, Minmei dropped the whole thing and cancelled the project, already able to tell that this new film would end up stashed in a cinematic latrine for the rest of her career. First, there was the fact that she somehow ended up with the same writers from Perigee, and the fact that of the 212 dedicated martial arts practitioners on the colony ship, only 8 of them had any real acting experience, 7 of which were Zentradi and the one human among them looked about as Chinese as Minmei looked African. There was also the incident a few days into production when the artificial gravity in the city section shorted out during auditions, and Minmei found herself floating above the stage with more than a dozen people staring strait up her skirt and making no effort NOT to look... for her, that was the last straw, and she walked out of the building that day with plans to disappear from public view until her luck started to change.

Luck never had favored this woman, but optimism is a hard thing to loose. Mickey's Bar and Grill was where she passed most of her spare time now, pondering what to do next with a waning acting/singing career. Normally she would eat something here, but tonight her mind was too preoccupied to really eat anything. She still had a chance to make a comeback, she grossed higher than just about every performing artist on the ship, even that Zentradi punk band that had apparently sprung out of thin air and was now climbing the charts. She knew she needed something... she'd been idle for almost an entire year now, and her last concert was longer ago than that. She needed a fresh start, maybe just for herself, something out of the ordinary to break the pattern of her everyday life...

For nearly an hour, she sat on her stool, passively twirling her finger around the lip of a martini, when someone sat down next to her. She didn't seem to notice, and she didn't care either, not even when the man leaned closer, obvious intent on talking to her. Normally, she would have automatically reached for her autograph pen, but tonight she just sat there and tried to ignore him. "Hi there." He said.

Minmei grunted a response.

"I've seen you in here alot. You were here last night, and the night before that, and every night last week. Come to think of it, you've been sitting here on this very stool every night since I started coming here."

Minmei grunted again. At least he didn't seem to want an autograph...

"Funny thing is, I've never seen you WITH anyone."

"That's because I always come alone." She said, talking more to the counter than the man next to her.

"Why do you keep coming here?" He asked, leaning closer to her.

That seemed like a rhetorical question. As if anyone ever had a REASON to hang out in bars every night for 2 and a half years... "I've got nothing else to do."

"Lonely?" He asked.

"No." She sighed heavily, "Just bored... empty."

"You should cheer up. Being sad is no fun. Whatever's bothering you can't be all that bad."

"It's not. I'm just bored, that's all."

He looked at his watch. "Well hey, the night is still young. If you're still feeling empty, why don't you let me put some food in you, huh? We can stop by Guacalas if you like."

She was only half paying attention to him, but after a moment it finally dawned on her just what this mysterious fellow was up to. "Are you asking me out?" She looked slightly in his direction, not wanting to encourage him but hoping not to come off as rude.

"You could say that."

Minmei looked at her watch, suddenly feeling trapped. It was too late at night for her to have made other plans, but it was still too early for her to go home. She looked up at this strange man in her gloomy boredom and found him to be an almost totally blank slate; he looked unlike any man she had ever seen, but he looked like NOTHING. He was perhaps one of the most unremarkable looking people she had ever laid eyes on, and she couldn't help but find the irony in this. Boring day, boring man... "Sure, why not? Where is Guacalas anyway?"

"Never been there? It's that Mexican restaurant down the street. I think you'll like it."

"Great." Minmei finished her martini and tried to picture herself in a Mexican takeout place with a man like him... she hoped she could just stay awake until it was time for her to go home. "What did you say your name was?" Minmei said, uprooting herself from the bar stool.

"Richard. Richard Powel. You?"

The question almost didn't register. When it did, she thought she was hearing things. "What did you just say?"

"What's your name?" He said impatiently.

Minmei stared at him. "You don't know who I am do you?"

Richard stared back. "Huh?"

"Have you ever heard the song 'My Boyfriend's a Pilot?'" It was a silly question. The song was now almost as big a cliche as Madonna's "Like a Virgin."

"Sounds familiar, but I don't think so."

Her mood was already brightening. "How about... An Angel's Paint? You ever heard that one?"

"So then... your name's Angel or something?" He said, confused.

She smiled broadly. "It's Minmei." She said, sliding her hand into his. "Lynn Minmei."

"That name sounds kinda familiar…" He said thinking.

"Really? Well, alot of people know me, you probably heard it on the streets."

Richard shrugged. "Yeah, probably. Well, let's go! My treat!"

"Alright!" Minmei was beaming. Impossible but true, she had found a man who had honestly never heard of her before. Out of more than 80,000 people who had all, at once point or another walked passed a billboard with her picture on it or attended one of her concerts, somehow she had managed to find a perfect stranger, someone who might not already be acquainted with every detail of her personal life from reading all the celebrity magazines (published without her consent at that.) The feeling was amazing, she wasn't out to dinner with yet another fan of hers, she was out on a DATE with a man she didn't know. She never imagined something so basic would make her feel so good...

And then there was always the possibility that he knew good and damn well who she was and was only playing along to get close to her. In which case, her pepper-spray was tucked into her pocket right next to her autograph pen...


--21:25-

Misa was spaced out again. She was lost in thought about just about anything and everything in her life right now. Only when the waiter arrived with their food did she snap out of it, but she had looked across the table to see Hikaru was likewise drifting. "Hikaru, would you PLEASE try and keep your mind here with me? How am I supposed to stay focused myself if you keep drifting off like that?"

Hikaru chuckled. "Yes ma'am. But may I ask where your mind wandered off to while I was sitting here daydreaming?"

"I was thinking about Miko, and some other things of no particular importance... well not that Miko's not important but... well you know what I mean. What were YOU daydreaming about?"

Hikaru started poking at his food. "I was thinking about that ship we picked up yesterday. I was wondering what we should do with it.

"We'll probably do like everyone here expects us to do: convert the whole thing just like the Macross. We might even set up a new city in there."

Hikaru scooped a heap of brown rice into his mouth and then went on. "Who's gonna command the new ship when we get it operational?

Misa rolled her eyes. "Only YOU would think that far ahead, but as usual you've missed the events of the present entirely. It took an entire planet 10 years to convert the Macross. We'll have set up a colony by then."

"You sure about that?" He said coyly. "In the old days, we had to not only rebuild what was left of the Macross, but we also had to reverse engineer an alien technology we knew nothing about and then repair it. And then, after all that, we had to figure out how to mass produce the parts for it so we could fix all the things that kept breaking down. Granted, the Zentradi probably know less about it than we do, but having them around to help sure will speed up the process once we pool our data. And besides, the only work WE need to do is INSIDE the ship. The hull is mostly intact except for a few scars here and there, and most of her weapons are functioning..."

"Yeah, I see your point. Come to think of it, that IS a really good question. Who would you suggest as her captain?"

"Well, Corina's not bad. Why don't you give her a shot?"

"No way! She just got promoted 3 months ago. There's no way she could get used to something like that."

"You think we should assign one of the Zentradi officers?"

Misa sighed. "I already talked to them about it, but none of them want anything to do with it. I guess it's some kind of Zentradi superstition. They're afraid of demons or something." And then she remembered. "That reminds me. Varcus, the archivist on the Bacta-Qeudrali, tells me that that SDF was a frontline warship for the Supervision Army as early as 5 years ago."

Hikaru nodded slowly. "That's bad news. Think they still have a presence in this system?"

"He doesn't think so. If they'd had any presence in this system in the last 5 years, any passing Zentradi fleets would have swept away any trace of them. Actually, he thinks this ship was part of the same fleet that the Macross belonged to. He said that that fleet had engaged the Bodolza fleet in a huge battle a few months before the Macross arrived on Earth, and that some of their surviving ships tried to escape by de- folding..."

"Is... that the battle we saw from Britai's ship during the war?'"

Misa nodded. "Can you imagine? Just that one engagement went on for more than 10 years. Even Varcus isn't sure why the enemy fought so hard, they usually retreat after the first few weeks of the battle but in that case they just kept at it until they couldn't take it anymore. Some of them made a run for it and were tracked down right away, but a few dozen of them got away intact. This must have been one of the ones that escaped."

"Temporarily." Hikaru said. "Broli's worried though. He says that more than half it's crew is missing. He wants to send a flight to check out the other planets before we send the survey teams."

"Why not simply conduct the survey under fighter escort?"

"He didn't say. But he did seem very concerned with trying to limit contact with any possible survivors." Hikaru remembered something he'd heard from Millia. "You know why they're called the Supervision Army?"

"Yeah. Varcus told me that it's a name from thousands of years ago. He said that the Supervision Army was a renegade group of proto-culture who started a series of civil wars in the Old Republic. They got their name from their habit of fighting on the front lines right behind their Zentradi warriors. In an old Zentradi language, they were called the ones who supervised their army, or Supervision Army. In a way, it sounds corny, but the truth is always stranger than fiction."

Hikaru nodded agreeably. "That's what Exodor said, but he didn't exactly put it that way. The way he explained it, it sounded like they were doing more than 'Supervising' the Zentradi. She made it seem like they were enslaving them, exploiting them in some way. That's kinda confusing thought, I mean weren't the Zentradi CREATED to be slaves? What would they care who their masters were after all that?"

Misa shrugged. "Why aren't they STILL slaves? Even Zentradi don't fight without a reason. I think it's because the Proto-culture based them so closely on their own genes, so like us they must have some deep seeded distaste for manipulation and eventually decided to go off on their own. But since you bring it up, do you think they resent us for making them fight with us?"

Hikaru shook his head. "We're fighting along side the Zentradi, but from what I've heard we treat them a lot better than the Supervision Army or the protoculture ever did. When you got down to it, we don't supervise the Zentradi any more than they supervise us."

"Right." Misa smiled, and Hikaru leaned across the table and kissed her. "No more business. Let's just enjoy dinner for once."


--21:25--

Across town, in the Mexican restaurant called Gaucalas (which translates roughly into "disgusting things") Corina was beaming at Lieutenant Broli as he tore through yet another chicken burrito. Broli was himself lost in elation at the experience. "In all the years I've traveled these stars, I never imagined that something this tasty even existed!" He said, taking another huge chomp.

"I'm glad you like it." She said. "What did you used to eat on Britai's flagship?"

"Basically, we had edible sand, protein-rich toothpaste, washed down with huge amounts of kyshien... that's kinda like red wine only its orange and it comes from fruits the size of cars. Occasionally, we'd stop on some planet and kill something, but none of us knew how to cook so we just ate it raw." Broli finished his fifth burrito and patted his stomach. "I NEVER tire of micronian cooking! I don't know how I lasted so long under dear old Britai!"

Corina was overjoyed. She found Broli's almost youthful exuberance very refreshing. Whenever she was around him, everything she usually took for granted seemed like a godsend, even if he too was used to it. "Are you done eating? Don't tell me you're giving up! You left me in the dust with that third tamale!"

"Do not underestimate the power of Zentradi indigestion, kitten." He said, patting her hand. "Unless you're ready to part with me for the night, it would be prudent for me to restrain myself while there's still time."

Corina laughed. She liked it when he called her 'kitten', but more than that she was ceaselessly amused by the way he expressed himself. He always seemed so serious, even when she knew he was joking. "Don't worry about it! Tacos make me gassy too. We'll just have a duet."

Broli snickered. "I'm not much of a singer. Which reminds me, what movie are we going to see?"

Corina looked at a printout from the Savoy theatre she had picked up earlier. "This week they're showing Fokker's Fate, Harriet's demise, and Broadway Girl."

"That's it?" He said, surprised. "So soon after the holidays they usually have 5 or 6 films playing at once!"

"Well, they cheated and saved money by re-releasing Shining Star and Small White Dragon, plus some teen movie called 'Return to Dawson's Creek.'"

Broli shrugged. "Well I've seen the other two, and I'm not a huge can of teen movies."

"And Harriet's Demise is a Megaroad Studios remake of a movie I saw a long time ago and I hated it then. It was trashy and degrading."

"Then what'll it be?"

"You're a pilot, so you might enjoy Fokker's Fate, but I'm in the mood for something a bit more romantic."

Broli looked confused. "What's romantic? I'm afraid I don't know that word.."

"It means... ummm..." she couldn't seem to think of a good way to explain it. She thought hard for a few seconds, trying to find a reference that a Zentradi could relate to. "Basically it's... I guess you could say romantic is another word for love. Like when a man loves a woman."

"OH! Like in a Minmei song... I get it, thanks." He said.

Corina started to wonder about something. If he didn't know what romance was, what else was he unaware of? "Broli, what do you know about... reproduction?" Corina said, her face glowing bright red.

"That word I know. It's a protoculture thing, isn't it?"

Corina nodded shyly. "You could say that. It's something micronians do when... well I guess you could say it's our way of cloning."

"Oh yeah..." Broli said, finally remembering. "I've heard people mention it around the city, but anytime I asked about it they got really shy and kinda shrunk away. I've noticed it's a subject that most micronians don't feel all that comfortable discussing."

"Didn't you have an archivist on Bacta-quedrali? They should've been able to explain it to you." She said.

"Well yeah, but I never bothered to ask about micronian biology. Besides, the only reason I transferred from the Bacta-quedrali last year with the pilot exchange program was to try and get to know more about your culture. I don't think any of our archives contain that kind of information. Come to think of it, I don't even know your anatomy."

"It's the same as yours." She said, blushing slightly.

"I meant female anatomy. There aren't many female Zentradi around anymore, and that kind of data could only be found on one of their ships. But since you brought up the subject, why don't you tell me about it?"

"All of it?" she said, blushing again.

"Tell me every last detail."

Corina found herself at a loss for words. There was no way she would be able to explain it to him. And then, she had an idea. "Well in that case, I think we SHOULD see Harriet's Demise."

"I thought you didn't like that movie."

"I don't. But I didn't like it for all the reasons we're going to see it. Afterwards, I'll explain everything." Corina took him by the hand and led him out of the restaurant to the subway station around the corner.

As they left, Minmei arrived with Richard and they sat down at a booth in the corner of the room. Minmei noticed Corina and Broli leaving, and couldn't help but laugh. Broli was such a funny character, Corina was such a free spirit with so much energy... it seemed like a match made in heaven to have the ship's liveliest officer with the ship's quirkiest combat pilot. On the other hand, she had more pressing concerns in her own life to worry about. "What's good here?" She said, picking up a menu.

"They have really good quesadillas. And their fried chicken is second to none, even if it is REALLY expensive."

"Fried chicken? I thought this was a Mexican restaurant!"

"It is. But a few months ago they started adding things to their menu to attract more customers. You'd be surprised how business they loose to King Lao's."

Minmei chuckled. "Actually, I work at King Lao's. On an average night, they get three times as many customers as there are in here now. But that's mainly because we're so close to the army barracks. Captain Hayase eats there all the time with some of the other soldiers."

"You mean Captain Ichijo?" Richard corrected.

"Oh yeah, right. Captain Ichijo." She quickly reminded herself to stop calling her that. She'd been there at their wedding, their first anniversary, even helped out when their daughter was born a year after the launch, but all this time she had still called Misa "Captain Hayase" despite constant reminders from her friend. It had been on her new years resolution three years running... "Yeah, Captain Ichijo eats there all the time. Sometimes I baby-sit for her daughter."

"Oh, you know the Captain?" Richard said.

"Yeah. We first met on Earth, right before the war. I used to date her husband a long time ago... and uhhh..." Minmei decided to quickly change the subject. "So where do you work? Are you in the military or the entertainment business? Or do you cram into one of those offices with the little cubicles?"

"No, actually I'm an artist. I paint portraits and decorations for weddings and such, but mostly I do alot of industrial work like ads and stuff."

Minmei was intrigued. This certainly helped explain why he'd never heard of her before, he probably spent all of his time painting or sketching. "Done anything I might have seen?"

"Certainly. I did the cover art for that new movie Fokker's Fate. And once I did a portrait of the Megaroad for a billboard in Macross city."

"That's fantastic!" That was creepy. Minmei had done a cameo in Fokker's Fate; she kinda had to, since the famous ace pilot Roy Fokker had been one of hers and Hikaru's best friends during the war. Richard had either done the art for the movie without actually seeing it, or he didn't get to see close to the end of it where her cameo parts were placed. Either way, the result was satisfactory. "Where did you live before you came here?"

"Well, I used to be a medical student with the defense forces on the Lunar Base. When the Zentradi attacked, naturally I came down to Earth to try and help the survivors. Of course, it never crossed my mind that there wouldn't be any."

Minmei could totally understand his situation. This also helped explained why he had never heard of her before, since alot of her biggest fans were with the 40,000 refugees transported in the hull of the battleship Macross or former residence of Macross city after the ship landed in the Alaskan wasteland after the war. "Where did you live after the bombing?"

"First I got married, and I built a house on Lake Ontario and I lived there with my wife for two years. She died of anemia about two months before the Megaroad started boarding, and since I didn't have anything left for me on Earth I packed up and signed on." Like her, Richard was leaving out all of the more sordid details of his past. It didn't really matter anymore, he had come to this colony ship to put his past behind him and start fresh on a new world of new possibilities. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen Minmei somewhere before, but he decided she just had one of those faces that always looked familiar. "So, where're you from? China, right?"

Minmei chuckled. "Aren't you perceptive?"

Richard smiled. "I've got what's called the Shining."

"Sure you do." Minmei winked at him playfully. "Actually, I'm from Yokohama, but my parents are from China."

Richard nodded. "How does a pretty thing like you end up hoping the galaxy? Adventurer?"

Minmei leaned back in the chair. "Well, I was on South Ataria Island when the war started, and when the Island was destroyed, naturally..."

"That's funny, my sister ended up on Macross the same way. You know, I find it sadly ironic that that the largest group of survivors walked off a gigantic battleship."

"Yeah, me too. Anyway, when it was all over I tried to move in with one of my cousins and start a business, but then he started taking advantage of me, and spending all my hard earned money so he could get drunk and pick fights with my friends. Eventually I just dropped him and went off on my own, and that's how I ended up here." Minmei left out the part about her cousin becoming her manager, booking her to endless tours and concerts between the starving desert towns on a landscape where great forests once stretched for miles. Earth was just a shell of the planet she once knew, like Richard she had joined this colony ship for a fresh start.

"We all work hard to make a living, and in a place like Earth it certainly isn't easy." Richard said, speaking from experience. "But here on the Megaroad, there are alot more ways to make a buck. An artist like myself has no problem finding work on a ship like this."

They paused in the conversation as the waiter took their orders, and then Minmei changed the subject. "Where do you live?"

"Galaxy Boulevard." He said plainly.

If she hand't been sitting, Minmei would have facevaulted. "Are you kidding me?! That's one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city!"

Richard sighed. "I know. But I'm worried that I might have to move to a new place soon. The rent keeps going up."

"Why don't you just get a roommate?"

"I did. He turned out to be one of the laziest people in the known universe. He hasn't paid his share in over 6 months, and I'm already in the process of displacing him so I can get another roommate. But I worry that by the time I find a new one, I'll be sleeping in a gutter."

"Sorry to hear that." She said. At this time, the waiter arrived with the food. As per Richard's suggestion, she bit into a chicken quesadilla. "It IS good!" She said. "Thanks for the suggestion."

"No problem." Richard said. "I'm just glad I could cheer you up." He watched her eat for a moment, watched her new and improved mood with the sense of a job well done. "You have a beautiful smile."

Minmei looked up at him and paused for a moment. "How about the rest of me?"

Richard shook his head. "The rest of you is pretty, but your smile is... it just shines. I like that."

All of a sudden, Minmei liked it too. "Thank you." She sad, blushing.


--23:40--

Harriet's Demise was originally intended as a comedy, but it's director has a notoriously dirty sense of humor. Broli and Corina had both laughed through the first half, but a scene about halfway through, depicting Harriet Parker's late night rendezvous with Aaron Sanders in the back seat of a Porsche, is considerably more graphic than necessary. All things considered, the movie was mostly entertaining, if not a bit distasteful at times.

Corina had enjoyed this remake quite a bit more than the original, but Broli had not made a sound for the entire second half of the film. When the credits rolled and the lights came back on, Corina looked over at Broli's face and saw one very stunned Zentradi. He was staring wide eyed at the screen, jaw hanging open in disbelief. "Broli? Are you okay?" She said sweetly.

Broli seemed to snap out of his daze and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "M-m-micronians do that in real life?!"

Corina was overwhelmed with embarrassment, but she knew it would be over soon. "It's part of our life processes. We do this... well whenever we feel the urge."

"How often do you feel the...the urge to procreate?"

She felt her throat tightening. "Well, normally about once a month. But most people... well normal people anyway... don't always act on it. More often than not we just ignore it and get on with our lives." Corina could see that Broli had more questions, but she didn't feel like it was a good idea to be discussing the subject in a movie theatre. "Look, let's talk about this in private."

With due haste, Corina dragged the incoherent Zentradi out of the theatre and around the corner to a bus stop, which they took all the way back to Corina's apartment near the army barracks. She led him upstairs and quickly brewed a pot of tea to try and calm him down. "You'd better sit down." She said, depositing him in a chair in the kitchen and handing him a cup of hot tea. "This could take a while."

In the privacy of her apartment, Corina found she was able to clarify most of Broli's misconceptions quickly and articulately. After nearly two hours of questions and answers, she felt like he was beginning to understand fully. But he still had a few more questions to ask her. "If micronians do this to produce offspring, then why does it so rarely result in pregnancy? That seems counter productive... a waste of energy really." He asked, again the curious Zentradi she had come to know.

"Like I said, the experience is most often very pleasurable. But there is a psychological element involved that was probably handed down from our ancestors. We feel driven to procreate at regular intervals in order to keep our numbers from thinning out. After what Bodolza did to Earth, this seems like a pretty useful instinct."

Broli nodded in understanding. "That may be another influence from protoculture engineering."

"What do you mean?" Corina said, not truly understanding his observation.

"Well, Bodolza's attack left just under a million of you alive right? This kind of thing wasn't all that unusual during the Supervision War, in fact it was pretty common. Entire planets would be bombed flat and entire species would be lost in a matter of hours, and the protoculture probably altered their own DNA to speed up the reproductive cycles and further their species. Maybe they built it into your culture to produce offspring whenever possible? After all, it can be done without all that heavy machinery and all you really need is a place to educate and train the offspring, so it's like a low tech cloning system..."

"I don't think you understand. It's totally different form cloning. Each baby born is unique, different from it's parents and everyone else in it's family..."

"Of course. Zentradi may all originate from the same set of prefabricated stem-cells, but every Zentradi is different in subtle ways. I'm sure you can tell me apart from other Zentradi, but I might bear a close resemblance to some of the others in my squadron because we were manufactured from the same bio-cells. Alot of people say I look like Admiral Britai, and I know the only reason for that is because he's a commander type like I am. It's the same reason you look alot like your mother."

Corina had to admit, he was right. She DID look alot like her mother, just as Broli and Britai could have been brothers. "I see your point. Anyway, unless you have any more questions, I think we should find something else to do."

"Why? It's enlightening to talk to you like this."

"Well, most micronians do alot of different things on dates other than talk. Maybe we should..."

Broli experienced an unexpected moment of panic as he seemed to realize for the first time that he was in Corina's apartment. "N-No thanks... That'll be enough for tonight! Thanks Commander Matheson, I'll be leaving now!!" Broli jumped up from the table and started clawing at the door knob.

"You have to unlock it first." Corina said, moving behind him. "Anyway, are you sure you don't want to stay?"

"I'm sure! I'm sure!" Broli unlocked the door and threw it open.

Corina caught him before he could leave. "Well, good night I guess." she said sweetly, and she leaned forward and kissed him goodnight.

It was all Broli could take. With a panicked yelp, he turned and dashed down the hall and out of the building before Corina could even close the door. "What's gotten into him?"