Track 2: Pre-Launch 1-Minmay
The morning sun had just risen over the rim of the concert stadium, casting bright shafts of light across the deserted stands. The sunlight just barely reached the stage at the rear ground level of the stadium. Upon the stage, where she had been standing just a short while before, was Lynn Minmay herself.
It was extremely unusual to see her alone without any sort of entourage. She had not told them she would be stepping out this morning. She did feel slightly guilty that they were likely freaking out right about now and trying to find out where she had gone to, but she had had to come here alone.
Gazing out across the stadium at the empty stands, she could see in her mind’s eye the crowds of cheering fans that had filled them the previous night. Last night had been the final performance of her Goodbye Tour. Why was it a goodbye tour? Because later today she would be boarding the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 before it launched on its maiden voyage. Many people had reacted with shock when she had announced this. Indeed, it had even drawn a response from her estranged cousin Lynn Kaifun. In the letter he had expressed outrage that she was “going along with some moronic plan cooked up by the government.” Yep, that was Kaifun all over. Minmay never had understood what exactly her cousin had against the military and government, although she was pretty sure it had to do with the Unification Wars. Still, that attitude had seemed horribly out of place in the war against the Zentradi but at the time Minmay had been so wrapped up in having her dream come true that she hadn’t paid much attention. Once the Earth had nearly been destroyed though, it was harder to miss Kaifun’s attitude, especially once he started drinking.
In any case, Minmay hadn’t deigned to respond. She’d grown fed up with Kaifun and his attitude and that was partly a reason why she wanted to go with the Megaroad. Mainly she just wanted to get away from Earth. On Earth people saw her as almost something of a demigoddess. The Girl Who Ended A War With Song. It was part of the cause of her apathy some months ago when she had wanted to give up on singing and just live a normal life with the first boy she had ever fallen in love with, Hikaru Ichijo. She had struggled to find meaning in her songs but as long as she still had those unresolved issues with Hikaru and Kaifun’s condescending and bullying attitude, her singing had languished. Once Hikaru had finally made a choice, things seemed to become so much clearer.
Hikaru. She hadn’t thought about him in a while, at least not until she received the invitation to the wedding of Major Hikaru Ichijo and Admiral Misa Hayase. She had thought it would hurt, seeing those words. Instead, she felt a sense of happiness she hadn’t felt in a while. Everything became even clearer when she’d gone to the wedding and seen how happy Hikaru and Misa were with each other. Even though she still felt some twinges of sadness because of her love for Hikaru (yes, she did still love him in a way), seeing him so happy made her happy. And that was what made her a good person, she decided. It was then, during the reception, that she had sang one of her most famous and powerful songs, Ai Oboete Imasuka (Do You Remember Love?), for Hikaru and Misa. Some had said later on that it might not have been appropriate, but they hadn’t seen Hikaru and Misa’s faces.
Still standing on the stage where she had sang her final song, Tenshi no Enogu (Angel’s Paints), Minmay swept off the wide-brimmed hat she was wearing and bowed one last time to the audience in her memory. Even though she harbored no regrets for deciding to leave Earth, it was still a little hard. A man had once said that Earth was the cradle of humanity, but that humanity would one day grow up and have to leave its cradle. * Such a big change was a little nerve-wracking no matter how you sliced it but Minmay was a completely different person than she’d been when a dashing pilot in his transforming fighter had rescued her. She’d grown up. And that wasn’t a bad thing, she thought.
*Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
