Illuzo finally reached an empty area of the Macross 8's flagship, Battle 8. He returned to his normal form but felt drained from staying invisible for so long and was craving spiritia.
"No spiritia! All metal! Why did Illuzo come here?"
He found himself in what appeared to be a storage room. Illuzo jumped and hid next to a mop when he heard the door slide open behind him.
A young man in uniform walked in, exhaled, then started to arrange some boxes to make a makeshift bed. "They won't notice me gone for a few hours," he whispered. He stretched out on the bed, relaxed, then folded his arms to doze off.
Illuzo didn't want to miss this opportunity. He floated lazily above the man, then slowly started draining the spiritia from the man.
Strength returned to Illuzo, and the young man slowly turned into a dried-up husk.
"Ahhh! Much better!" Illuzo said, feeling satisfied.
The man's comm suddenly went off and played a ringtone.
Illuzo jumped in fright again, but when he saw that it was harmless, he went over to investigate the device.
"So small yet so loud... what is it for?"
Illuzo pulled the device off the man's wrist and poked it a few times. A message about the device in a locked state appeared on the screen.
"It seems important. I need another one of these, but first..."
Illuzo hovered above the unconscious man, then lowered and let himself be absorbed by the man's body. A few seconds later, a copy of the man lifted out of the body.
"Excellent as always!" Illuzo cackled. Illuzo's special ability allowed him to change his form into another being. He couldn't read their thoughts, but he could read strong emotions and desires. Unfortunately, the sleeping man only had a strong desire for a nap. While it wasn't powerful, passing it on to someone else could be useful.
"Let's see if it still works," Illuzo said. He then stood up and walked out of the room, impersonating the young man.
"Lloyd! I know you didn't finish cleaning duty yet!" Another young man in the same uniform virtually yelled in Illuzo's direction.
Illuzo wasn't sure if the man's name was Lloyd, but he didn't feel any other presence nearby. He turned to look at the man talking to him, then hurriedly walked over.
The other man stepped back when he saw Illuzo walking towards him, then froze when their eyes locked.
Illuzo put his hands on the man's shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes, "Illuzo says you want to take a nap!" he whispered.
"I... I want to take a nap," the other man whispered. His eyes regained focus, and he said, "Take your time, I need to nap." The man meandered past Illuzo toward the storage closet.
"Success!" Illuzo grinned in victory.
The storage room door slid open, and the other man's face turned white as a ghost when he saw the dried-up husk left behind. He reached down, pushed the panic button on his comm, and shouted, "Man down! Need a medic on deck 8, port side utility closet!"
Alarms blared all around Illuzo and the other man.
"Whoops," Illuzo said. Illuzo couldn't understand how a fallen comrade was taking priority over a nap, but he also had never had a comrade before. He ran up behind the other man and started to quickly drain his spiritia. Once the man was dry and empty, Illuzo then said menacingly, "Make that two of those medics!" and the man's body crumpled next to the other one.
Illuzo returned to his original small form, then became invisible again while cackling, "Not much to show, now Illuzo must go!"
__________
Dirk and Elise finished eating and tossed their meal trays into a return bin.
"Off to practice again?" Elise asked.
"Of course, we have a gig soon! You and Louis coming?" Dirk replied.
"Would you be mad if I said I'm not? Your keytarist, what was his name... Roy? He's a bit much."
Dirk laughed uncomfortably, thinking about how Roy didn't leave Elise alone after their last gig. He was impressed that Elise only slapped him once.
"He is a bit much, but he's one of my best friends and has never let me down when it counts."
Elise shrugged. She then wrapped her arm around Dirk's when a small group of officers passed next to her and Dirk."
Before Dirk could pull away and reprimand her, an alarm blared throughout the deck, and everyone's comm lit up with a notification.
Dirk, Elise, and everyone else nearby started running toward Deck 8. When they got close to the designated area, a small crowd had already gathered around the area.
"Medic coming through!" shouted a man in a white uniform.
The crowd parted for him, allowing Dirk and Elise to look at the scene.
"What's the big deal? Two old guys fell asleep in the utility closet. Wait, did they die?" Elise whispered to Dirk.
Two levitating stretchers sped down the hall with two more medics guiding them.
"I don't think that's it. They're moving too fast for dead bodies," Dirk replied while motioning toward the stretchers.
Everyone watched the medics load the bodies onto the stretchers and slowly take them away toward the medical wing. They gasped when they saw the names on their uniforms and realized that these two shriveled old men were supposed to be young men.
The Military Police arrived and blocked everyone from following the stretchers, then asked everyone to return to their quarters for the time being.
"Was it a vampire?"
"Was it a disease from the planet?"
"Did they ingest some weird mixture of cleaning products?"
Questions of varying degrees of absurdity flew from the lips of everyone nearby as they headed toward the crew quarters.
Dirk and Elise split when they went to their respective quarters.
A few minutes later, another notification sent ship-wide informed everyone that a quarantine would be in effect for an unspecified amount of time.
Dirk felt his whole body shake slightly. Looking out the viewport, he saw that Battle 8 had moved.
"Damn it, they must've separated from City 8. Now it will be really hard to get back unless I borrow a fighter."
Battle 8 and City 8 were usually conjoined. During a battle, they would split apart so the fight could move away from the city. Macross 8 has been quite fortunate and never needed to engage in a full-scale war, so they've only split during routine drills.
"This sucks," Dirk said, sulking by himself. The crew quarters he was in didn't have anyone else, so he figured they made it out before the quarantine started.
The door to Dirk's quarters slid open, and Louis walked in and said, "Didn't make it out?"
"Louis! Glad to see someone else not make it out. Did you see or hear anything?"
Louis shook his head, "No, Helena and I were in the hangar after we met with General Maddox. We came back once we got the quarantine notice."
"Yeah, I met your sister in the mess hall, and we ended up seeing the two officers getting wheeled out. They looked like they dried up like raisins!"
"That's not good. I hope it's not something from the planet. We were down there for awhile, although we never left our craft."
A quiet voice spoke from the top bunk, "We'll be fine."
Dirk looked in the direction of the voice and said, "Alek! Speak up, man! I thought I was all alone here!"
"Sorry."
Dirk knew Alek was quiet, but he could've at least said "Hello" to let him know he was there.
"What makes you think we'll be fine?" Louis asked Alek.
"It's not a disease."
Dirk had a very bad feeling but felt it necessary to ask, "What do you think it is?"
Instead of replying, Alek held out a small tablet toward Dirk and Louis.
Dirk and Louis looked at the article Alek left on the main screen, then exchanged glances with each other. Simultaneously they blurted out in surprise.
"Vampires?!?"
Dirk and Louis almost burst into laughter together.
Dirk barely managed to ask, "Why vampires?"
"It fits."
Dirk considered continuing his inquisition of Alek, but his short answers made it a pain to get any information from him.
Suddenly, Dirk's comm lit up with a new direct message.
Dirk turned his wrist to look at it, then blinked a few times.
"What is it?" Louis asked.
"It's... it's... it's..." Dirk stammered.
"It's what?!?" Louis asked, agitated.
Dirk shouted for joy, jumped out of his bunk, and then yelled, "It's front row tickets to a Night Ravens show!"