RP: YSS Miharu Prologue, Day 4

Miyoko nodded, standing up and looking just a bit glad to get a reprieve from watching the carnage outside. Before she left, she glanced back at Nyton. "Claymere-juni, the Ship Operations console has been making a full-spectrum recording of the new battleship ever since we went into passive sensors. The feed may contain more data than the recording you requested." Without waiting for his response, she set off at a near-sprint for the medlab. Not knowing the state of Leutre's injuries, she couldn't afford to waste any more time.

Miyoko met with Maya at the entrance of the medical laboratory. The sprite was half-holding, half-dragging Leutre as she tried not to jostle his neck too much. The back of the young nepleslian man's hair was sticky with blood and part of it had smeared over the sprite's orange-paneled uniform.

"He fell on his head," Mara explained, though she was pretty much stating the obvious.

<center>* * *</center>

Kotori watched Miyoko leave and then turned her seat around to look at Mizuho. "Yukisato-san, I want you to head for one of the virtual reality rooms. You'll undress and use skin holography to cover yourself into something dark edged - I'll leave the pick to you. You're going to act the part of the captain commanding the Kurohyou; the Black Spiral ship we are currently masquerading as."

To Leutre it felt like an eternity had passed as the mental fog and pain clouded his thoughts. Like a tide the fog washed back and forth, growing thicker and thinner as his head throbbed with pain. Back and forth, back and forth, until finally it had receded enough for him to realize he was moving. As his senses began to return he noticed the pressure of someone's arms around him through the material of the suit. Then he noticed the eerie silence of room he was in, which unlike engineering was completely devoid of the hum of machinery.

He groaned as his eyes flickered his eyes open. The throbbing of his head increased as his mind was assaulted by the lights of the room. He began to struggle against the arms around his body, until he dropped to the deck on his hands and knees. "Where..." He croaked, closing his eyes once more in an attempt to dull the pain. Fear began to grip him as his mind finally put together that he was in an unknown room with a figure he couldn't see. Sitting up on the deck he blindly stretched out his arms towards the figure that was carrying him moments before, like a child who wanted to be embraced by a parent. His mouth opened once more as he croaked, "Who..."

"It's Mara... Hush now, you'll be fine," The sprite answered softly, reaching out to meet his gesture, grabbing his hands with her own.

I'll have to thank you later. Nyton thought as Miyoko had already left to attend to Veressis. When he watched the smaller scout ships that had phased and struck the Odori he could feel a strange excitement. Not so much at the destruction of one of their ships but that the Mishhu had created phasing technology and applied it. "Miharu, please tell me you caught that. That phasing ability of those smaller ships is incredible, even if it does have a glaring weakness." he said. Even as the battle raged he then shifted over to another subject, that one being of where to misdirect the Mishhu strike force and with what bait. "Give me a moment to figure out where we want to send the enemy ships and how"

"We aren't doing anything of the sort Nyton." Kotori turned back to look at her tactical officer. "That Melisson - the fleet commander - isn't stupid: if we overreach with our bluff, we might not be able to use it again later. Just representing one allied ship while she's occupied with commanding a fleet is more than enough."

The Taii narrowed her eyes. "SAINT had a presence here because they were investigating the death of Motoyoshi-Taisho... so this time around, the Black Spiral might not have been able to pull off the communication jamming. Still, that interpreter will probably want to know why she has more than the token force the 5th XF had here to contend with. I intend Mizuho be there to hear her complain."

"Hear and see," Yukari said to herself. That meant video and audio. Subspace? It must be so, she thought, distancing herself from the carnage behind them as swiftly as her brain would let her.

"Taii-san ... our transponder codes will make do for communication. If they scan us, however ... perhaps we should reverse our interdiction field and fully escape?"

Kotori smiled slightly and thumbed back to the ship condition display where the four CFS units clearly showed as nonfunctional. "I don't think it's possible for now. As long as we are in silent running and out of visual range, all they'll register is an allied Nozomi-class scoutship. I'm counting on the fleet commander to be overworked, Yukari, and only see what she wants to see." She took a deep breath and added: "She might make a mistake - a slip up that might somehow make up for all the lives that are going to be lost. This might be the way we can make a difference, here and now."

Tom groaned. So much for final checks. He nodded to Mara when she left, then turned his attention to the two remaining neko technicians.

"Look, we don't have time for me to take care of all the CFS units. I'm going to go check out the port CFS unit and get it operational again. You two take care of others. The starboard wing CFS needs to be fixed now. I have reason to believe that it's a matter of the breakers being overloaded, so if you replace those, we'll at least be able to have them operational. Be sure to take some extra cables and a toolkit just in case, though."

He went into the portside damage control room, shouting from in front of one of the lockers, where he was grabbing another set of supplies.

"Also, keep your environmental suits on and power down the CFS units before you try to repair them! Just because they're not running doesn't mean that they aren't carrying energy!"

Freeman hoped that the two neko technicians could work quickly.

"MEGAMI, can we safely activate the capacitors and our single CFS unit to make sure they are operational? Can we repair the others while they are operational?"

He left through the portside door.

"Resupplying power to the capacitors will allow me to charge them if the connection has been properly made." Miharu answered. No one had doublechecked Leutre. "The central CFS unit will be insufficient to compensate for the interdiction field presently created, but I will be able to run simulations on it to see how I can use three or more units to cope more effectively with our current situation."

"We will leave power management to you, Kurohoshi-Juni," Ichigo said. The twin sprites shared a silent look and split up, Nimura heading for the starboard CFS unit while Ichigo was going further back aboard the Hoshi. Changing breakers was not going to be a problem with either of them: it was simple enough.

Miyoko watched uncertainly as Mara comforted Leutre. When it was complete, she crouched down and wrapped an arm around him, looking just a bit ridiculous as she carefully helped the far taller man to his feet. As she steered him toward the medbay, she turned her head to address the sprite. "Thank you for bringing him this far. You're needed on the bridge, but I need to know a few details of his accident. Did he lose consciousness? If so, about how long was it for?"

"Please do so at your discretion, MEGAMI," Tom said, his voice a tad hoarse now. "I can't tell what's going on up there."

He tapped some commands into a nearby control panel, powering down the portside CFS unit.

"There we go."

Then he went about replacing the breakers on the CFS unit, taking care to note any possible complications.

I tell you, for a top-of-the-line ship, you've got a lot of problems...

The thought made Tom smirk.

With Tom taking the portside CFS and the two sprites dealing with the Starboard and the Hoshi CFS devices, Masako was left to man Engineering proper by herself. Someone had to do it and with combat going about the ship, they couldn't afford having engineering being left unattended.

So Masako manned one of Engineerings many monitoring consoles, with one window monitoring major systems and another for operating power regulation. So far, only the four CFS devices with the capacitor seemingly working. Had anyone double-checked the injured Leutre's work?

Thinking hard, the young neko couldn't come up with an answer. "Freeman-Heisho....don't have Miharu power up the capacitor just yet," she called out to him hurriedly. "Double check the connections after getting the port CFS running, we don't want any more problems to arise just because we made a mistake."

Turning her head towards power regulation, she frowned as the butterflies in her stomach seemed to multiply. If she were Yamataian, she'd probably be sweating bullets right now. She'd have much preferred being in an armor to sitting in engineering in just an AMES.

"Just a couple of minutes," Mara replied to Miyoko and then quickly turned to make a run for the bridge.

Upon reaching the medical laboratory, Miyoko sat Leutre on one of the examination tables, gently guiding him to a horizontal position before adjusting the table to slightly elevate his head. After a moment's hesitation, she loosely attached the table's restraints to him, remembering his febrile writhing in the hallway. She pulled a scanner down from the ceiling and set it to do a scan of his head for any fractures or hemmorhaging, with the results displayed in a holowindow to her left. Lightly patting his chest reassuringly, she bent over to inspect his face and the wound on the back of his neck, speaking quietly as she did so. "Veressis-hei, you're in the medlab- can you remember how you got here?"

Through the mental fog Leutre could make out a familiar voice, but couldn't understand what it said through his confusion. 'Who was that? Where did Mara go?' He opened his eyes and squinted towards the figure, but all he could make out was a head of violet hair.

"W-Where am I? Who are you... I can't see... Where am I?" He tried to sit up, but found himself held down by the restraints. He panicked as he realized he was tied down the medical table. Struggling against the restraints he strained to raise his head. "Why am I... W-What's going on?" He asked with uncertainty.

"It'll be an excellent way to see just how they interact with each other between the Mishhu and the Black Spiral factions. The more insight we get on this the better." Nyton said and he returned to monitoring the ship's condition as well as the battle.

This is it. The pivotal moment. While this battle itself may be lost, what we find out here could be the crucial step to lead us on the right track. Nyton thought to himself excitedly.

The hand that had been comforting Leutre now changed roles, firmly pressing down on his chest to discourage him from rising. In retrospect, Miyoko wasn't sure if the restraints had been a good insight or a horrible idea. Keeping him on the table was good, but things would be very difficult if he kept thrashing. Speaking a bit more loudly and clearly, she repeated, "You're in the medlab. You were in an accident, and I need you to hold still so I can see how badly you were hurt." The scan of his head completed, and she quickly pushed the scanner out of the way so she that she could lean closer to him, forcing a smile. "See? It's just me. I'll take off these straps in a few minutes, but first you need to calm down, okay?"

Still holding him down with one hand, she pulled up the results of the scan and browsed them with the other. No fractures in the skull or upper spine, normal intracranial pressure, and nothing that her admittedly not-very-trained eye identified as the leaking of a broken blood vessel. That ruled out most of serious possibilities.

Now if he would JUST HOLD STILL.

At least she felt useful.

"Yeah, ok," Tom yelled once again across the hall as he put the breakers into their appropriate positions. "Almost done here!"

After he fixed the last of the breakers, he quickly moved over to the connectors Masako had mentioned, giving them a good lookover. Apart from appearing a bit rougly-handled, the cord and its connection seemed to check out.

Looks like the recruit did a fine job...

After one final lookover at the equipment in the room, Tom returned to main engineering. He was panting from the exertion he put himself through trying to hastily fix all the broken systems.

"When the others get here, Masako ma'am, I recommend a rolling boot up of all our systems, one at a time, so as not to force too much stress upon the equipment at once."

He said this while surveying engineering for any other problems.

"I tell you, this job doesn't get any easier!"

Of course, now wasn't a good time for sarcasm, but he couldn't help himself.

Mizuho bit her lip at Kotori's instruction, not much liking the role she was given, but after a moment, offered a curt nod and rose. "...as you will, Kotori." She turned then, tracing a path off the bridge. This coincided at once with realizing she was not yet fully versed with where things were, and so came in the form of...

"Miharu, if you would be so kind as to guide me to the virtual reality rooms..."

This was murmured barely audible, but she had enough experience to know that she needed scarcely to think it before MEGAMI could know her issues. So onward went to the VR rooms, working as she walked (and, incidentally, anti-gravved. New word, yee!) at the neatly hidden buttons of the dress.

Something dark-edged. My, that had been some extremely fucking vague instructing! Still, Mizuho did as she was bid, donning, as per instruction, dark edges.

"...desperate means to survive." A wan smile. "Maybe they'll fail."