Fanfic / Muv-Luv: DYRL

In the year 2061, a team of elite Strategic Military Service pilots from the SVF-118 Mobius Squadron performed a test on an experimental new fold engine. In the resulting accident, they found themselves stranded in an alternate universe with seemingly no way to return home.

It is once again the early twentieth century, and mankind is embroiled in a war against an unstoppable alien foe. They are outnumbered, outgunned and pushed to the very edge of extinction.

But this time, there is no hope.

In this world, the enemy cannot be reasoned with, the thought process of the enemy too alien to even comprehend or communicate with. In this world, mutual understanding cannot be found even among the disparate factions of humanity. In this world, the sky, and all the freedoms and possibilities it promises, is seemingly forevermore denied to man.

This travesty, above all others, is the one that the four wings of Mobius Squadron will not accept.

Muv-Luv: Do You Remember Luv? (aka Muv-Luv: DYRL) is a series of interconnected fanfics written by Sasahara 17, a crossover between Macross Frontier and Muv-Luv Alternative. The general thrust of the story is this: during a field test of a new fold booster, four pilots of SMS' Mobius Squadron are flung from their home universe into the world of Muv-Luv Alternative, arriving just before Total Eclipse begins. Alone and cut off from their home verse, they do their best to survive and reunite, and to bring hope to a shattered world.

The first story, Try Again, opens just after the Kamchatka arc, with newly-promoted Captain Takamura Yui announcing the new direction of the XFJ Plan: To reclaim the skies for mankind, by introducing a new type of weapon. Officials call it the Variable Tactical Fighter. The pilots call it the Valkyrie. And as she makes her speech to the world, SMS Lieutenant Yuuya Bridges, callsign Mobius One, takes to the skies to dance, and to plan for when the four wings of Mobius Squadron will be reunited.

Several months later, Valkyries follows IJA Cadet Sendou Yuzuka, as she prepares for the last day of pre-graduation training exercises, and runs into a interesting TSF mechanic by the name of Hibiki Tatsunami. But there are other forces at work, and Yuzuka finds herself in the middle of a web of intrigue focused on Hibiki.

And moving the setting forward by over a year and a half, Journey Home follows four of 207B's alumni, as they meet again after their paths have wildly diverged.

While the setting does feature mecha, it's mostly window dressing to the real focus of the story: the interaction of characters with completely different worldviews, and the culture clash between the despair of Muv-Luv and the hope of Macross.

Sadly, the story is now a Dead Fic as the last update was in 2013.

Tropes included in this fic include:

• Ace Pilot: Yuuya and his team, which consisted of Ilfried von Feulner, Lilia Kjellburg, and Hibiki Tatsunami.^note  All of whom are protagonists of their own Alternative Chronicles: Ilfried is the main of Euro Front, Lilia's perspective experiences The Day After 0, and Hibiki is the hero of The Day After.
• Alternate Universe: The crossover has led to a number of major divergences from Alternative, particularly the tech inlfux. For example, by 2003, the F-35 Joint Strike TSF program has been revamped and is now in EMD phase, the F-23A Black Widow is in initial low rate production, the Shiranui Niigata is the Type-02, being deployed in 2002, two years earlier than canon, and Boeing never makes the F-15SE Silent Eagle.
• Arc Words: Valkyrie also keeps popping up, for A-01, Project Valkyries, the nickname of the VTFs, and as the VF-12 Valkyrja.
  "I am one who flew on the wings of the Valkyries."
• Bigger Stick: The whole point of Project Valkyrie is to do this, by introducing gamechanging new technologies (that are reverse engineered from Yuuya's VF-19A). The VF-19A itself is a unique case; it's almost 15 years old, has been ridden hard, and is outdated compared to the VF-25 Messiah or the VF-27 Lucifer, but is still decades ahead of anything on Earth.
• Breaking the Fellowship: the A-01 Valkyries all go their separate ways after a terrorist incident at Yokohama. Yuuko, Akane, Michiru and Mitsuki are presumed dead, and Marimo returns to the IJA. Class 207B likewise splinters: by 2003, Chizuru is a Captain in the IRG, Kei is an IJA battalion commander, Mikoto is an intelligence agent, Tama-chan is a Project Valkyrie test pilot, and Meiya is an ISAF VTF mechanic.
• Codename: All the Mobius pilots seen have their own personal callsigns. Yuuya is Cipher, Hibiki is Blaze, and Ilfried is Friday.
• Colonel Badass: Surprising everyone who knew her, Ayamine Kei becomes this.
• Cool Plane: The Valkyries, all of them, from the VF-8 Crusader II to the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus to the VF-19A.
• Death by Adaptation: The fic presumes that Zhar Battalion was wiped out as per the anime, while most of their members actually survive in the visual novel.
• Didn't Think This Through: Akane realize her mistake when apart from the fact Yuzuka is friends with Akira whose is Michiru younger sister, she has nothing else to convince Yuzuka to help her get Hibiki.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The Japanese Shogun, Kobuin Yuuhi, is apparently killed in 2002 by Alfred Walken.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Has so far happened twice, played for laughs each time.
• Dynamic Entry: Ilfried's preferred modus operandi. Nothing like bouncing a castle at Mach One in afterburner. This causes Hibiki to worry when she makes a quiet, no-fuss landing: Illfriede doesn't make normal landings.
• Easy Logistics: Discussed and mostly averted for the Valkyries. Yuuya's VF-19 runs out of ammo very quickly, and can only make a few sorties before lack of spares grounds it permanently; Lillia Kjellberg runs out of ammo in short order, and the F-15OT Over Eagle that Vincent designs has a lot of guns pilots love and ammo consumption logistics personnel hate.
• Expy: The VF-8 Crusader II is essentially this to the VF-0 from Macross Zero, with some modifications.
• Giving Valkyries to Alternative Earth: Yuuya and his backseater, Shinsei Industries engineer Vincent Lowell, decide to help Alternative Earth tech up as much as possible, by reverse engineering the technologies in their VF-19A. As a result of this, the XFJ Plan, originally conceived to develop a new TSF for Japan, is reborn as Project Valkyrie, an R&D project to develop new warfighting technologies (though it's less developing, and more reverse-engineering technologies from Yuuya's VF-19, and adapting them to the limitations of Alternative Earth). Among their early successes include making the EML-99X railgun a more practical weapon and developing prototype Valkyries based off the VF-0.

• Insistent Terminology: It's not a Variable Tactical Fighter, it's a Valkyrie.
  • While in Japan, Hibiki writes his name in Western order (first name, last name) instead of Japanese (last name, first name).
  • Roy Focker refers to the John F. Kennedy as a boat and is corrected by Claudia La Salle; "boat" is for small boats and submarines, a carrier is a "ship."
• Interservice Rivalry:
  • Humorously shown in "Anchors Aweigh", the first sidestory in the snippet collection, where US Navy Commander Roy Focker leads Skull Flight and their Crusaders on a Mission from God: to defeat the US Army's Infinities and their Raptors. Both groups are later found sharing the same bar, thanks to the Marines in their Crusaders winning Blue Flag 02.
  • More seriously, Journey Home shows that the Imperial Royal Guard has succeeded in marginalizing the Imperial Japanese Army, to the point where the Type-02 Shiranui Niigata is an IRG machine, with the IJA forced to make do with the near-obsolete Type-94 Shiranui and Type-89 Kagerou.
• Marshmallow Hell: Makabe Seijuro is subjected to this by Illfried. He just calmly rolls with it.
• More Dakka: Vincent Lowell manages to build an F-15 variant with up to six assault cannons for even more dakka.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: Yuuya pulled off a fantastic one-man airshow, with multiple vapour trail drawings in the sky in Try Again. Unfortunately, everybody was captured by Yui's Rousing Speech and so missed the airshow.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Occurred during testing of a new fold booster. It transferred Yuuya and his flight into the Alternative world, and apparently swapped them with their Alternative counterparts. What happen to their Alternative counterparts is never explained.
• Noodle Incident: Due to the In Medias Res format and the timeskips, a number of these occur, such as the details behind Project Valkyrie's move to Dover from Alaska, what really happened during the Red Shift incident, Makabe getting the Golden Kite with Illfriede's help, and so on.
• Oh, Crap!: Akane gets this reaction, when Yuzuka decides to bring Alternative IV and Project Valkyrie together.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • In Valkyries, Suzumiya Akane and Natassja Ivanova come to a confrontation because their parent organisations have no idea what each other is doing and instantly assume they're out to get them and steal Hibiki. It ends badly for Akane.
  • To clarify, Project Valkyrie believes Alternative IV are part of Allegiance due to the latter being a top secret group they have never heard before and Alternative IV believes Project Valkyrie are part of Alternative V due to their supporters redirecting Alternative IV funding to Project Valkyrie.
• Rank Up:
  • By 2003, Sakaki Chizuru is now a Captain in the IRG. Her rival Ayamine Kei, meanwhile, is now a Lieutenant Colonel in the IJA.
  • Also, it's mentioned offhandedly that Marimo has gone from being a Sergeant in the UN Army to a Brigadier General in the IJA.
• Red Baron: Yuuya picks up the sobriquet "White Knight of the Atlantic." A so far unnamed ISAF pilot has picked up the handle "Demon Lord of the Pacific."
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: In Valkyries, A-01 and Project Valkyrie come into contact; Yuuko suspects Project Valkyrie to be their enemies, while Project Valkyrie is mistrustful of A-01, having never heard of them before. They're both working towards the same goals. They're in a catch-22 because both parties won't trust each other unless they talk, but neither party will talk unless they trust the other. See Poor Communication Kills above.
• Running Gag: Ellen Aice keeps being declared dead, and keeps showing up alive.
• Shout-Out:
  • Yuuya's flight being part of Mobius Squadron.
  • Also, Yuuya's mentor was Isamu Alva Dyson.
  • The fighter launch sequence in Journey Home is a shoutout to Going Hunting, while the AWACS callsign is Crux.
  • In Journey Home, the UN has established a new special task force called ISAF, and Stella Bremmer is now a pilot in the Warwolves Squadron.
  • Ayamine Kei's first command is nicknamed Bad Company.
  • Illfried has a habit of wearing aviators when she's bouncing people in Dover Castle.
  • Makabe's XO is Kei Nagase of the Ace Combat series.
• Take a Third Option: Alternative IV and Project Valkyrie don't know anything about each other and mistrust each other, and their only options are either ignoring each other or opposing each other. Yuzuka instead decides to try and open a dialog between both groups.
• Time Skip: There's a gap of about six months from Try Again to Valkyries, and about a year and half to Journey Home.
• The 'Verse: Apart from the main stories released, there are also some sidestories set in between the timeskips:
  • Snippet Collection: A series of sidestories set around the verse, mostly humorous in nature.
  • Garuda Wings: Project Valkyrie, as seen through the eyes of COSEAN's Garuda Flight.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: A mild version between Hibiki and Ilfriede, where they trade barbs, Ilfriede fills Hibiki's cockpit with Haggis, Hibiki makes an earnest attempt to kill Ilfriede (or at least brain her with a heavy wrench), but they're as close as siblings.