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[PROLOGUE] Manning The Illustrious

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Masako yelped and shouted in discomfort as her spine interface registered the damage to the CFS and a few sizzling expletives echoed over the comm system as she did. She'd remember a few lessons she'd had in flying back during basic training and instead of trying to get out of the spin she tried to get it to level off by turning into it. Finally managing some form of stability though her visual sensors were fried for the time being. Sakaki, let's not try that again... she said over teh telephatic link they seemed to constantly have. Her thoughts passing on the element of relief at being able to communicate with her friend.

"Shut up Shin. Right now isn't your time to shine as some kind of glorious hero." she barked over the voice communications. "We'll manage on our own so keep your brown-nose out of it." she said.

Unfortunately the direction she was going in her violent launch away from Sakaki temporarily put her in the middle of a battlepod swam, but once she leveled herself off she attempted to use teh CFS stealth to vanish and would make an attempt to get back to her friend. "let's see, I'll have to literally fly blind." she said relying on teh data from teh Hayabusa's other sensors to guide her back toward where she had to be. "Not a good day. I so much love power armors more..." she muttered.
 
"Gloryseeker, huh?" Shin was angry at the two nekos now, and his piloting showed it. No longer was he cautious, his piloting calculated and methodical. No, now it was like he had been possessed by a tiger, charging into the heart of a large cloud of battlepods, actually yelling at Sakaki and Masako over the comms, his voice sounding like a vicious jungle cat's.

"You two! You areBOTH unbelievably INCOMPETENT in a starfighter!" Shin opened up with his cannons, aiming at a single battle pod. Cutting his plasma engines, he used the CFS to slide to his left, keeping a single turret on that battlepod, his other turrets firing on multiple other pods.

"You abandon your wingmate, and blame your failures on him! That, You two, is ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE for someone who serves THE EMPRESS as a pilot!" Turning the fighter to the two hayabusa piloted by the objects of his ire, he focused all of the CFS' power to forward movement, and reactivated the TAPs, blasting away from the swarm of pods, scorching them with the engines. It was obvious, that the pilot was heading right for the two nekos, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

"You two, I'll show you right here what a Gloryseeker really is!"
 
Yaeko listened through the comm chatter and all she could hear was constant yelling. "Masako-Hei, no need to be rude. Lets all get along and concentrate on the problem at hand." All of the sudden Yaeko's comm boomed with extremely aggressive yelling. "And Shin-Hei you should calm down before you do something that you're going to regret." She looked up at the space map in time to see the blip from one Hayabusa speeding out of the cloud of battle pods and towards two other Hayabusa. Something kinda like that.

She pulled up the specs for Onyx 4 and started typing in commands to so she would be ready to act if needed. "Shin watch yourself! Juni, keep an eye out for Onyx 4, he seems to be disengaging the battle pods and is speeding towards his own squad mates." She pressed a few buttons and the holographic map zoomed in on Onyx 2, 3, and 4; this way she could get a better view and make sure nobody was doing anything stupid.
 
"Shut your trap Shin or I'm going to shoot you down too." Masako snarled at him over the comms and sighed a bit, rethinking it. "Sorry. I'm just in pain from the grinding on my CFS registering through my SPINE interface and it's making me irritable." She apologized as she regained control of her fighter. "And You're right. I am incompetent in a fighter. I prefer the power armors to something as gangly as this thing. These fighters lack the reflex time of the armors. not to mention the armament." She pointed out, swivelling turrents and opening fire into a cloud of battlepods in a vague attempt to cover the idiot's ass at least.

Sakaki we might notl ike him much but let's at least try to cover the moron. She said to her friend .
 
"That's Enough Yelling, Onyx!" Kail yelled at her rowdy squadron. forcing a battle on a squadron that had barely met was a horrible idea, but it wasn't like they could help the situation. "Next person who yells gets to clean the Illustrious' main cannon with a Cotton Swab!" she growled, turning her fighter around as soon as she and her wingmate were out of the flurry, spinning the fighter and leveling it off to travel backwards and allowing it to fire 'down' on her enemies. "Just follow me, and do as I do, Five." she told Kouta. Their travel through the furry had managed to damage a good number of battlepods, and Kouta even managed to down one, but the new vantage point would make the destruction of enemies easier.

*****

Shin's concentrated fire on that first battlepod resulted in its quick destruction, but the other scattered fire was not as effective. Shin's Gloryseeking drew in something, but not glory, necessarily. Instead he got about ten battlepods following him, opening up and starting to wear down his CFS with glancing blows.

*****

Sakaki and Masako's jumbled CFS made them so that the stealth didn't quite work. However, careful flying succeeded in keeping them from taking much more damage, as their pods were now busy with a much more pressing threat; Shin. Masako's fire managed to land on the distracted pods, blowing shields and starting to reduce armor. It seemed that the girls would be left alone to form up for now.
 
"Not much of a choice Masako, replied the yellow eyed Sakaki, he is dragging them to us, more than likely we would be caught up anyway."

Sakaki rotated herself and launched herself toward the enemy, while calling for a little assistance, "Bridge, could you assist in targeting hostiles for my turret fire?" As she asked this, she began targeting by hand herself, but would only get to five of them painted for turret blasting when she entered firing range.
 
"Targeting now," Yaeko responded to Sakaki. She spun her chair so she was facing the floating window detailing Sakaki's hayabusa. She pulled up the interface for the turrets, then turned to the radar poked a spot near Sakaki and drug her finger across the radar, highlighting the area. She pressed a few buttons and the turrets were set to automatically target enemies in the area. She also made a few adjustments to the turret settings to make them more effective: putting the turrets in groups in pairs for targeting so they would be able to take down enemies quicker, setting them to fire for power rather then speed, and setting so they would continue attacking one target until that target was out of range, rather than switching targets once another enemy was closer. "Onyx 2, I've set a group of fighters around you as primary targets and tweaked some of the settings on the turrets. You should find them more effective now."
 
Kouta stuck to Tarrim-Juni's wing as ordered, and continued his defensive fire on the battlepods that threatened the Element.

However, now that they were firing from above the group, he could focus his cannon and missiles on targets below.
 
After selecting only 3 targets, Sakaki's enemies all turned their respective colors and guns announced they were ready. With only a few seconds left to engage the enemy, she gripped her controls and guided the craft to the enemy craft, waiting for effective fire range to began blasting away paying no head to her gun turrets.
 
As his fighter passed by the two girls, Shin put it into a hard turn, now heading straight back the way he had come. Targeting the battlepod closet to him, he opened fire with his main guns in short, controlled bursts, angling his fighter's nose to fire on two more battlepods.

"Ronin-chan, Mune-Mune, Let's finish up these battlepods and get back to the ship for a victory party!"
 
The concentrated action succeeded beautifully. It was amazing how teamwork was actually proving effective, or, it probably seemed so the the three big-headed pilots firing on the battlepods that had been until recently following Shin. Kail and Kouta's fire from above helped to take out some more of the battlepods, and soon a kill count showed up for each of the pilots.

Shin had five, Sakaki four, Masako Four, Kouta Three, and Kail two. The computer was not counting the damaged pods that now flew around nearly uselessly, no longer with weapons and unable to maneuver fast enough to hit any of the fighters. However, there was no rest for the weary, and another group of Battlepods took notice of the five fighters, charging in to do what they could to take them out. It was a futile attempt, as sensors now showed that the Hayabusa outnumbered the battlepods ten to one, and several giant lances of white from the Sharie battleships resulted in the Mishhu ships taking heavy damage, and a number of losses. Truly, it seemed that nothing could hurt such a large group of battleships all working together.
 
That worked well, thought Ushimo-hai before the next group came. Being a little caught up in the moment, the wannabe samurai said, "Masako, Shin, let us do that one more time, this time in unison. Let us show the might of Yamatai once more and shatter their will to fight!" she concluded with a bit enthusiasm.

Getting a little better at flying, she made a hard turn and waited for her wingmates to hopefully create some kind of formation, if not at least forming a line of some sort, before charging into the remaining enemy. Any remaining time she used to lock her turrets onto enemies while contemplating, Only a few more left, I must not let down my guard.
 
"If you say so Sakaki, it sounds a bit over enthusiastic to me." Masako quipped dryly and turned herself toward the battlepods and tried to line up a clear shot with her main cannon while using her turrets to snipe at any pods trying to get the jump on her while she did. She didn't care for showing them the "fury of yamatai" or whatever, but it paid the bills so why not just get into it like that? "Man I could use a drink, anyone else?"
 
Kouta grunted, watching the Battlecruisers' fire.

Tearing his gaze away from the fireworks, he oriented his Hayabusa to open up on the incoming group of Pods. Keeping as close to Kail's wing as possible while doing so, he sought out locks for his missiles and fired his turrets and cannon. Any locks would be fired, and the rest of it... He tried to aim carefully, from his unique position on Kail's wing.
 
"If we're going to do that, I'm going to take the lead. Sakaki, Masako, form up on my wing for our next pass. Staggered Line formation. Sakaki, you take right and above, Masako, take left and below." Shin's fighter accelerated into his position at the head of the makeshift formation, letting Sakaki and Masako form up behind him before making a turn that was tight enough to turn them around and put them on the opposite heading, but not too tight to shake off his wingmates inadvertently. Confident of his plan, Shin waited for the right moment, then keyed his comms.

"Sakaki, Masako, now!" Shin's Hayabusa accelerated sharply towards the center of the formation of NMX Battlepods, letting Sakaki and Masako take the upper right and lower left respectively, keeping his guns limited to well aimed burst fire, shooting at one pod per burst until it died, switching to the nearest pod and repeating the process. Hopefully, this would work, and he could return to the lusty to get yelled at by his commander.
 
Meanwhile, in the battleship's command center...

"Captain! We've got more NMX ships incoming! KAMI estimates up to 170 of them!"

Taisa Sydney nodded. The enemy was just here to stall them, as he'd expected. He stood up from his chair. "We should be able to get away from them now." Turning to Yaeko, he ordered her to contact all squadron leaders and have them return to the ship at once.
 
Shin, always seem to be full of energy, thought Sakaki as she regained her calm, and then attempted to stay in formation with Masako, moreso than with Shin. She almost began to open fire when her scanners started flashing for her attention, which she noticed the larger force.

"A little more than we can chew..." she said to herself over comms.
 
Masako just sighed to herself, not wanting to follow the gloryhound's lead but wasn't left with much more of a choice and did her part. But when her sensors got reading of a much larger armada on its way she panicked for a moment mentally. "UH right now MIGHT be a good time to turn tail and retreat. I'm not patriotic enough to take on all THAT with just a pissy little fighter." she said to the other two.
 
When Yaeko herd the Taisa speak of a larger force she looked up to her space map and zoomed out a bit. Sure enough, there was a large circle of a couple hundred littler orange circles. She put her headset on and started and set it to contact all squadron leaders. "All squadron leaders attention. Incoming enemy fleet. I repeat, incoming enemy fleet. Return to the ship immediately." She then flipped to the engineering channel. "Bridge to engineering. Standby for returning ships." She looked up at the Taisa. "Taisa, the squadron leaders have been notified."
 
"Good," Taisa Sydney nodded. "We'll fold out of here as soon as our fighters or back, or just before the enemies arrive, whichever comes first. They need to hurry. I don't want to have to leave anybody."
 
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