"It's a simple questino, really--almost a no-brainer. If someone handed you a ticking time bomb, what would you do with it? You'd throw it away or run away from it. Like I said, simple. The last thing you'd do is put your arms around it, or hold it in your lap.

"I'm Nina Lang, lead singer for Absolute Zero. I've been on Macross Island only a few months now, but every time I look at the SDF-1, I see only one thing--

"--a ticking bomb."

It is April 2005, and at the headquarters of the Robotech Defense Force on Macross Island, Roy Fokker is giving Dr. Emil Lang some advance warning that his sister has actually gone ahead and started showing up and speaking out in anti-Robotechnology ads. Dr. Lang thanks him. "Frankly, I wasn't sure that I should say anything. But I figured you should know about it before it showed up on the news," Roy tells him. "Because you and Nina are related, these commercials are being shown worldwide and being talked about worldwide." Lang says that's exactly what the Faithful want. Roy wishes there was just some way to counter these ads, take the wind out of their sails a bit. Lang believes there is. "I talked to Clayton Fortenspeil, the anchorman on MBS," Lang says. "I told him that I want to face Nina in a public debate about Robotechnology. If Nina accepts, MBS will arrange the time and place." Roy figures that makes sense, but worries that it'll drive an even bigger wedge between Emil and his sister. While he admits it's a possibility, the stakes are too high now for him to do anything less.

Elsewhere in the city, Anatole Leonard and his associate Jessica have just seen Nina Lang's anti-Robotech spot. She notes that the commercial was really slick, but Leonard tells her that's not enough. "Davies and his people are kidding themselves if they think commercials are going to do any good. Still," he muses, "it might not hurt to find out more about this Nina Lang. I understand she plays regularly at Club Pulse. The next time we have a general meeting we should--" His train of thought is interrupted by a knock at the door. It turns out to be a scruffy-looking man in a tank top, one Reynaldo DaSilva. Leonard has apparently hired him to help with the cause, to provide some "big explosions" as DaSilva puts it. At Leonard's cue, they get down to business. "We have learned that the Robotech Defense Force is about to begin field tests on a new type of Destroid. The RDF is trying to keep a low profile, but our--contacts--have been able to ascertain the time and place of these tests. We intend to create the maximum amount of chaos possible at this test. But, to do that, we need your ... specialized ... help."

The following day, a crowd of protestors with signs have gathered have gathered outside of the RDF's testing ground. Armored Global Military Police officers are all over the premises. Roy is also hanging around, evaluating the situation and assessing its volitility. As Dr. Lang starts the tests from his control tower, Anatole Leonard is sneaking around on the ground with a detonator in hand. The Spartan Destroid, a spindly-legged walking missile battery, exits its hangar bay and begins firing on incoming attack drones. It nails one, and as it fires at the other, an explosion rips a hole in the fence surrounding the test area. The MPs race towards the explosion, but from within the crowd, Jessica tells her fellow protestors that they're leaving the gate unguarded and they can now swarm onto the field, which they proceed to do. Within the cover of the spreading crowd, DaSilva makes it onto the field.

As Roy watches, he feels a need to do something. He figures that if he can track down Nina, perhaps he could persuade her to calm the people down. Meanwhile, the Spartan pilot asks Lang what he should do. Lang orders him to stay where he is. "But this thing was designed for civil defense," the pilot says. Lang knows this, but figures there's a simpler way to defuse the situation.

Unfortunately, the situation doesn't want to be defused. Jessica persuades the protestors to begin throwing things at the Destroid. Roy starts to approach them, but the GMP orders him to halt--they claim they can stop this. One of the officers informs the crowd that they have sixty seconds to disperse before he fires the N48 anti-personnel gas at them. Out of the corner of his eye, Roy spots DaSilva shooting pictures of the Destroid. In hopes of stopping him, Roy shoves the GMP officer out of the way and runs for DaSilva. They end up in a brawl, DaSilva getting the rough end of it, when the GMP officers fire their promised gas and end up knocking Roy out before he can apprehend DaSilva.

As Roy and Captain Gloval take a walk around the field the next day, Roy relates the situation to the captain. "By the time I straightened everything out, all the other demonstrators had been released, and even if we could find him, we don't have any proof. I know what I saw, but I can't prove anything." He thinks it's probably the same people who shot at his plane when he was leaving the press conference following the Shane Gleason incident. "But is it those anti-Robotech fanatics, the Faithful, or is it someone even more dangerous?" he wonders.

Halfway across the world, a silent solitary man listens to a report on the incident at the testing center. He decides that he can no longer ignore the situation and, however much he loathes the idea, he must return to Macross Island ...

ARTWORK

I really like Abbott's simplistic, manga-esque style quite a bit. His backgrounds are simple without being blending away or sacrificing a sense of place, his characters simple and stylized without sacrificing characterization or recognizability. I've always liked his lean, big-haired and cocky rendering of Fokker, though I think his Anatole Leonard does differ a bit too much from Sean Bishop's earlier pre-Masters portrayal of the character. At least right now he's looking rather trim, more like his earlier look; by the time this arc is over, the man will have ballooned to gargantuan proportions.

I'm pleasantly surprised by Abbott's precise renderings of the GMP body armors; while I still can't fully agree with their use in this timeframe (kind of jarring seeing Southern Cross designwork in a pre-Macross timeframe), Abbott sure can draw them in action.

Finally, of the characters Abbott originated in terms of overall appearance, I'm always a fan of his rendering of Nina Lang--shame she's not in more of the issue--but I'm less enthused about his version of Reynaldo DaSilva. I prefer the slightly more clean-cut version Dusty Griffin later did when the character became something of a major player in the book.