Initializing Yakuza.
Initializing Leningrad.
Initializing Liberator.
Initialization complete.
Warning: Unknown contact approaching.
Yakuza - Requesting captain input.
"Fuck you, you damned gajin!"
Yakuza - Input uninterpretable.
Yakuza - Assuming direct control.
"Sir, don't you think we should stop them?"
"Nah, I'd rather not."
For the past hour, the three captains had stood on the decks of their "battleships", aggressively launching insults and slurs at each other.
"Fuck you!"
"Fuck you!"
"Fuck you!"
"Fuck you, I lost my brother in the war thanks to you!"
"Yeah well, I lost my mother in the war!"
"Shut up you dick!"
While the three captains had devolved into just yelling for the sake of it, nobody noticed the large battleship approaching their position, nor the Imperial Battleship's act of launching Burst Drones, which flew off in the direction of the said ship.
The battleship that approached them appeared to resemble a massive WWII-era battleship, colored a dark gray, decorated with ominous, almost alien green markings.
At the stern stood a female human-like figure. The wind blew through her green hair as she sped towards her targets. A white yukata covered her body, a large magenta parasol hefted over her shoulder.
A Mental Model; a physical embodiment of a ship, created to better understand and combat humans.
She watched in curiosity as several mechanical child-sized "Dragonflies", as the humans called them, landed on her ship.
Contact identified as Fast Battleship Hiroshima.
State your intentions.
[Who are you?]
Yakuza - I am Shogun Battleship Yakuza.
[Shogun Battleship? Yakuza? Are you a new addition to the Fleet of Fog?]
Yakuza - Fleet of Fog? I am part of no such fleet. I serve my Emperor.
[So you're a traitor, just like I-401. If that it the case, then I must sink you.]
Threat detected.
Data uplink established with Liberator and Leningrad.
Scanning battle data...
Replaying.
Analyzing data.
Rewinding.
Analyzing.
Scanning human terminology...
"Preemptive War" - A preemptive war is a war that is commenced in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived imminent offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war shortly before that attack materializes.
Calculating.
Attempting "Preemptive Strike".
Yakuza - Initiating Top Secret Protocol: Final Squadron [Omega]
Yakuza - Initiating Top Secret Protocol: Honorable Discharge
"Fuck you!" The captains continued to yell at each other.
All three were caught off guard when section of the Yakuza's deck opened up, catapulting fifteen Final Squadron kamikaze drones into the air, their propellers creating a distinct buzzing noise as they chopped up the air at supersonic speeds.
"W-What the hell?! Command deck, what's going on?!"
"That's what we want to know! The ship...it's acting on its own!"
"What?!"
At that moment, the other two ships began to act on their own as well.
The Battle-Carrier and the Battle-Dreadnought moved into positions to where all there ships were facing in the direction of their enemy.
"You know what comrades, the insults can wait! We need to figure out what's going on!" The Soviet captain called out as he ran back into the command room.
"He's right. Let's go!"
[Battleship Yakuza]
Kazuhiro made his way back to the command deck, where his crew was frantically going over the controls.
As he entered, he glanced over at a life-like mannequin suit of samurai armor, complete with a sheathed sword, made out of Nanosteel. He couldn't exactly recall it standing there before, but he shrugged it off and focused on the current issue.
"Kazu-senpai! We've got a single contact on our radar headed in our direction!"
"And you're saying that the ship acted on its own to intercept it?"
"Yes, Kazu-senpai!"
"Don't be ridiculous!"
Hiroshima continued to watch as the drones buzzed around her ships, until she heard a different kind of buzzing.
Looking up, she saw flocks of fixed-wing drones headed right for her ship. The mental model was caught off guard when the drones began to open fire, shooting light blue tracer rounds at her.
A hexagonal barrier appeared in front of her, blocking the bullets.
'What were those supposed to be? Those bullets traveled significantly faster than those fired by other planes...!'
She opened fire with her anti-air weaponry, as green tracers filled the air before her. But it was too late, the drones began to dive right at her ship, giving her barely enough time to set up her KLEIN field.
-boomboomboomboom!-
'The hell?! My KLIEN field went to 10% from that?!"
-boom boom boom!-
She realized that she'd been had when the Burst Drones began to self-destruct, damaging parts of her ship and disabling her cannons.
'Damnit. Are they toying with me? Hmph.'
She set to work, sending her nanominerals to fix her cannons.
'I've lost 5% of my ship's size to fix that. I'll just have to get within torpedo range, then these traitors will know not to mess with the Fog!' She thought, smiling just a little as she put her engines at maximum speed.
"Before I forget, may I get to know the names of these other captains I am with?"
"Captain Johnson of the Allied Fleet."
"Captain Ruskov!"
"I'm Commander Kazuhiro. Or should I say, captain Kazuhiro." Kazuhiro smirked and chuckled to himself at his own joke. "Anyways, are you two picking up the same contact that I am?"
"Indeed, and it appears to be speeding towards us!"
"Does anyone have a visual?" Before anyone could answer, a holographic image appeared in front of the Yakuza's crew, showing a detailed image of the Hiroshima.
"Hiroshima..?"
"Fleet of Fog...?"
"Where even are we?"
"Men!" The Imperial Captain yelled, startling them. "Worry about that later, we have an enemy approaching us! I want a checkover of all systems as fast as possible–"
[Battle-Carrier Liberator]
"–Check the armory, see what we've got" Captain Johnson finished as he stood at the helm of the Battle Carrier's command deck.
"Roger that!"
A woman wearing a secretary outfit, a blue suit with transparent knee socks and high heels, walked up beside him. She had long black hair that reached waist length, and carried a clipboard under her arm, the edge of which pushed into her sizable bust.
"Captain, we are fully stocked on Prism, Mirage, Cryogenic and Proton ordinance. Fast Battleship Hiroshima is well within Sky Knight range, with the launch position being that of our current position. Superweapons are currently stabilized and ready to charge."
"Alright." The captain then did a double take. "Who the hell are you? How'd you get on my ship?"
"Incorrect. I am the ship. My official designation number is 2334-1223-847294. I was built on January 14th, 1986. We currently have five Sky Knights on standby and armed. Crew member Lt. Mike is currently playing solitaire at his station."
"Hey!"
Johnson stayed silent for a moment, before he sighed.
"We'll talk about this later.
"Alright, crew. Launch the Sky Knights."
A hatch on the Liberator's runway opened up, revealing the VTOL bombers hidden inside. Their engines started up, and one by one, they launched, first taking off vertically, then speeding off towards the Hiroshima.
Hiroshima watched as the bomber squadron flew towards her in a straight line, smirking. Her ship's anti-air opened up, once again filling the sky with tracers.
The lead jet burst into flame as it was riddle with holes, shortly followed by the second. Then the third.
Luckily, the last two managed to drop their 500Ib bombs before being shot down, only for her to deploy her KLEIN field.
"Hmph. Annoying humans..."
"Damnit, she destroyed them all!"
"Mental Models and the ships of the Fog have incredibly powerful processing abilities."
"Processing..that's it!" Johnson reached for the radio. "This is Captain Johnson. We need to put some pressure on our target!"
"...Copy that. I'll launch the Final Squadrons."
"Alright, comrade! Entering firing position!"
"Men! Restock on Sky Knights!"
"What are you trying to do, captain?"
"You see, I figured that if we attack her with everything we can all at once, from different directions, we'd overwork her. And you know what happens when one is put under stress for too long?"
"Analyzing..." She stayed silent for a moment. "You tend to make mistakes?"
"Exactly!"
"But a Fast Battleship of her class uses a lot of computer power, in theory it's impossible to do such a thing." The "Secretary" replied, adjusting her glasses.
"You forgot something..."
"And what is that?"
"Nothing's more unpredictable than a drunken Soviet."
[Dreadnought Leningrad]
"Within rocket range, captain!"
"Launch them, comrades! Show them the power of Mother Russia!"
"Aye aye!" A female voice called out. A rather large (in many ways if you catch my drift) brown-haired woman stood by the captain. She word a red slightly oversized conscript trenchcoat, and held a bottle of vodka in her hand. Her face was covered with a drunken blush.
Hiroshima sighed as she watched the three human ships split up, moving away from each other.
Great, now she's gonna have to spend a little extra time taking them out.
A sudden whoosh, picked up by her powerful hearing, alerted her.
Big rockets. Of course. The humans sure loved their cruise missiles– except for this fact that this one looked like it belong in World War II.
She smirked, aiming her anti-air weapons up high, and started firing when she heard a familiar buzzing sound. She nearly cringed in surprise, aiming her ship's unused anti-air equipment, opening missile ports on her prow.
"Trying to take me from two different directions, are we? We'll see about that!"
Missiles with Corrosive Warheads flew up into the air, flying at the Final Squadron Drones.
Mistake number one: In her arrogance, she had used bullets against the dreadnought's V4 rockets due their large size and relatively slow speed, not bothering to scan its payload. The rockets were using Multi-Warheads, which would burst open to drop a flurry of smaller explosives across a fairly large area.
Faced with attacks from multiple directions combined with the fact that she was outnumbered, she began to panic.
'KLIEN field at 45% saturation and rising...! What did the humans create this time?!'
She commanded her photon cannons to aim and fire at the Sky Knight UCAVs, only to detect something odd.
Or rather, failed to make a connection to her weapon controls.
Turning around, she came face to face with a large number of Terror Drones, who were busy cutting up her ship's cannons.
While she had been focused on the airborne threats, her radars failed to detect the slow-moving Terror Drones that simply swam over from the Soviet ship.
Hiroshima screamed with rage as she went ballistic, using her parasol, made of nano-machines, as a spear, impaling the drones and slinging their decommissioned bodies overboard.
More kept on rushing her, jumping up and lunging at her, only to be blocked by her KLIEN or stabbed by her parasol.
Mistake number two: Getting distracted.
While she fought off the Terror Drones, prioritizing her Mental Model and Union Core's safety first, she failed to notice the other two ships approaching her.
[Liberator]
"Ma'am, what's the range of our Cryo beams?"
"Only a few more meters."
"Alright. Mike, I want those beams on that ship as soon as possible."
"Roger that!"
Hiroshima smirked triumphantly as she swatted away the last Terror Drone, disposing of it with a significant lack of grace.
"Ararara~" She giggled softly to herself.
-skreee-
All of a sudden, she felt her body's temperature lowering, her simulated nervous system going numb.
Warning: External temperature dangerously low.
The Liberator was using its Cryo-beams, focusing them on her Mental Model.
She grimaced, her left leg frozen to the ship's surface, holding up her KLIEN shield to block it, only to flinch when it too began to freeze.
"No...Nonono! Stop it!"
Her body continued to freeze up until finally she was essentially an ice sculpture.
Yakuza - Cease your actions. If you try to cut your way out, your entire body will shatter.
Cornered like a rat.
So this was it.
Resigned to her fate, she entires a state of what humans would call "unconsciousness".
"Sir, we've recovered the person piloting this ship."
"Just one, hm? How peculiar..."
"What should we do with this?"
"Just tow it, I'm certain we'll get answers from the..."Mental Model", or whatever the hell they called it."