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In the Name of Your Dream

An AruSheri role reversal AU where Sheryl is a pilot of the Galaxy, and a blind!Alto is a famous singer and dancer from the Frontier

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Where Alto had to rebel to become a pilot, Sheryl was actually encouraged by her family to pursue her dream and was supported by them until the Galaxy came and wiped out those who would defy the new law that made cybernetic implants mandatory. Orphaned, she lived on the streets of the slum area until she was found by Grace O’Connor, who took her under her wing and managed her to this very day where she’s become a top-notch stunt pilot. Playing around with exosuits can only sate her for so long, however, and the false sky of the Galaxy fleet is stifling. 

Alto still dreams of flying thanks to the inspiration from his late mother, but his blindness poses a real obstacle in becoming pilot. No matter how great he’s gotten at navigating the world through echolocation and other helpful means, there’s only so much that can be accommodated in such a demanding profession. With this logic as a discouragement, Alto never strayed from the path of a performing artist, but if he was going to stay on it, he’d walk it to his own beat. 

After secretly being introduced to modern dance by Yasaburo, Alto surprised and impressed a contest audience and his father with a style that tastefully combined the old and the new, and Ranzo gave him his approval to pursue this branching path so long as he returned to his roots down the line. Alto couldn’t say yes fast enough, and with Yasaburo by his side, he hit the ground running. He hadn’t felt so free since his mother passed away. 

This idol career has taken him far and wide across the galaxy, and eventually, he arrives at the Macross Galaxy fleet as part of his tour. 

He and Sheryl meet as you might expect: In the middle of the concert, a novice teammate’s reckless stunt knocks Alto off the stage, and when Sheryl recovers him, he has her continue flying him around a bit so the audience doesn’t know it was a mistake. However, Alto’s still the one who gets Sheryl’s precious earring snagged on his person, and she storms the hotel where he and Yasaburo are staying to demand it back. 

That’s when the unlikely romance begins to bloom.

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PS Notes

Sheryl is as surprised as anyone else who’s not familiar with the Interstellar Princess by the fact that he is, in fact, a male. Absolutely nothing about his stage persona suggests that he’s masculine in any way. His vocal range and control is that incredible, and Sheryl would’ve been none the wiser had she not met Alto in person. 

On top of that, she didn’t realize he was blind, either. At first, she thought he didn’t look at anyone out of arrogance, but the reality was that he couldn’t see them. 

(Consider this: Alto’s blindness is caused by the V-Type virus. He contracted it when he was very little, and it settled predominantly around the optic nerves, effectively killing them. The Frontier doctors couldn’t repair this damage by the time they knew what had caused it; however, they put Alto on a strict medical regimen to keep it from spreading to anywhere else.) 

The Galaxy still gets destroyed, and the rest of the story takes place on the Frontier. Sheryl was was able to get Alto and Yasaburo there thanks to her quick thinking and ability to steal an aircraft. 

For her first few weeks, the Frontier’s military has Sheryl under supervision because of a distrust toward people from the Galaxy. However, with Alto and Yasaburo’s testimonies toward her character, they back off and let her have some room to breathe. 

At some point, she’s (forcibly) enrolled at Mihoshi Academy in the piloting course to keep her from being idle. There, she meets Michael and Luca, who thank her for getting their friend back safely. Michael actually says, “Ah, so you’re the princess’s knight in shining armor. You have our thanks.” He gets a book thrown at him by Alto. 

Ranka is one of Alto’s friends from another school who wants to be a singer like him, and her character arc is still her journey to stardom. She also still has her massive crush on him, and she’s a little jealous when this other lady from the Galaxy steals his attention from her. She is grateful, though, that Sheryl got Alto out alive. 

When the Vajra attack during one of the first concerts Alto’s had since returning home, Sheryl ends up saving Ranka, who was at the concert in support of her best friend, by piloting a VF-25 Messiah whose pilot had been killed. This is how she becomes part of the Frontier’s SMS.