YSS Tin Man
The lights came back up on the bridge flickering at first, then raising to their fullest brightness. Lulu blinked away the spots in her eyes from her position over the back of her chair with one hand dipped into her purse. She raised up slightly, plucking at the black boy-shorts she'd worn under her slacks and softly said, "Status report."
"Power is restored throughout the ship." Replied Honda from the systems station, his eyes fixed firmly away from his captain's plump posterior. "Engines are up to twenty-five percent power and the Aether Reactor is cooled down enough for steady thrust. Casper is being overwhelmed by support craft, but she's putting up a steady fire on the Soyokaze's engines."
Lulu turned and sat again, reaching for the pants she'd tossed on the floor with a sigh. "Reckon they didn't finish off because Mite actually gave them a little trouble." As the redhead slid up one pant leg and then the other, she looked around the bridge with a sideways expression, considering the situation in its fullest. "Whelp, the whole plan's been ruined." She concluded at last, "Mite fucked up from the start and we took a few hits too many... Casper can hold off those fighters long enough to do something, but the big ole' bitch will float yet if we leave her to it by herself. Let's do it like they do it on your samurai shows, Hon-kun."
Honda turned in his chair to consider the captain, watching her buckle her belt again with a curious glance. "My... 'samurai shows'?"
Lulu smiled back at him. "Blaze of glory, seppuku by combat, somethin' like that?"
The XO leaned back, crossing his hands over his stomach as he made what could only be called a disappointed face. "I'm sorry, Lulu-san."
Space
The YSS Casper kept up its determined pepperpot assault on the Soyokaze's backside, its anti-armor and point-defense weapons twisting and turning to lash out at one fighter after another as the shots kept tearing away at it's bruised and battered hull. Still, for all her previous cowardice, Mite had kept up the order to fire and intended to continue doing so for as long as she could stay fixed on the heavy cruiser's tail. The Chiaki-class roared with its railguns between cries of fire from its Aether array, plunging recklessly onwards to the Soyokaze's backside without so much as a thought to the Tin Man.
And then the Tin Man awakened.
Life had been breathed into the hulk once more, and though it showed up as only a weak ghost on sensors, it would prove to be as terrifying as any phantom could hope to be. With twenty-five percent engine power, the ship could've moved back out of Aether range to draw out the engagement, or retreated altogether with clever enough use of its distortion fields. That, Lulu had decided, would not be an effective use of resources. Giving the Soyokaze an easy prey to hunt down when it finished shaking the Casper from one side to the other in its jaws like a chew toy would do little more than buy time. And so-- though it would certainly spell the Tin Man's doom-- Lulu aimed her ship point-for-point right towards the Soyokaze's center where her armored bridge and support decks lie. With their shields focused on the rear and their turrets focused on the Casper, the Soyokaze itself was as vulnerable from the front as was possible for such a behemoth. And here, in the few instants that Tin Man had life breathed into it once more, the full force of the Plumeria's Aether cannon struck out along with a ragged, mixed volley from her remaining turrets. All fire directed to cause as much systems damage as possible.
If it had been real, it would've looked really fucking cool.
