A to Z Challenge: Cyclones and Crystal, Marie

Cyclone in Invasion video game

In the first Robotech series the Veritech fighters were the iconic weapon of choice for the humans.  In the second series it was Hovertanks.  In the third series although they often used new-generation Veritechs called Alphas, much of the series they relied on Cyclone motorcycles.

Original Cyclone toy (non-transforming)

"Shadow" Cyclone in robot mode

The Cyclone was pretty neat in that when the user was wearing the armor to go with it the motorcycle could transform, merging with the armor into a sort of robot mode.  The motorcycle part then was good for the trek Scott Bernard and company undergo from South America to Reflex Point, but when the Invid showed up, they could transform to fight the Invid troopers.

Being a motorcycle the Cyclone was a lot smaller than a Veritech.  In fact the Cyclone armor was stored in Veritechs of the REF so the pilot could use that if the Veritech was damaged or I guess just if a smaller vehicle was needed.

In the 2000s there were two Robotech video games for the PS2/XBox.  The first focused on the Macross saga and let you fly a Veritech.  The second was called Invasion and you got to use a Cyclone.  The crappy part of the game was you couldn't transform at will.  95% of the time you were in the robot mode with a couple of death races on the motorcycle to change it up.  It was a lot more fun in the first game when you could change at will.  Basically the Invasion game was HALO with Robotech stuff.

The Cyclone features a hand blaster that could be upgraded with a longer barrel.  It also had missiles on the back, legs, and arms.  In motorcycle mode the rider could hold the blaster and the missiles could be used pretty normally.  So it was a versatile weapon though not as powerful as the Veritech.  Because of its small size it did have more maneuverability than the Veritechs in fighting the Invid, which with a good pilot could be used effectively.

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Marie Crystal

Marie Crystal (or Marie Angel as she was apparently called in the Japanese series) was a pilot in the Tactical Armored Space Corps branch of the Army of the Southern Cross in the second Robotech Series.  When it starts out she's a young, inexperienced pilot but she goes on to be an ace pilot and commander.

Marie in an old comic book

After the first battle in space, her unit returns to Earth and gets in a bar fight with Dana Sterling's Hovertank squadron.  But later she and Dana sort of become friends.  When Sean Phillips of Dana's squadron saves Marie's crashing Logan Veritech, they begin to fall in love with each other.  She's skeptical of Sean early on because of his ladies man reputation; at one point an old girlfriend spoils a date and Marie drives off drunk before being saved by Dana and Nova Satori.

Marie and Sean survive the final battle with the Robotech Masters and then go with Dana to find the SDF-3.  While Dana goes to visit her family on Haydon IV, Marie and Sean join the SDF-3's Veritech squadrons.  There's some rivalry between those who in the Southern Cross and those who went with the REF as the Southern Crossers are kind of pissed that they had to fight off the Robotech Masters while the REF was out fighting the Invid Regent.

After the SDF-3 returns to Earth, Marie and Sean join Dana to create an exploratory firm that gets in its share of scrapes with the law.  It doesn't really say if Marie and Sean get married but I presume they're at least hooking up.