[@Shiyonichi][@Blade17][@KenjuGuy][@Crimson Lion]

Riku had to admit, he was a little anxious. He hadn't had a chance to run as many tests on the Yamato's secret weapon as he would have liked. This left him feeling uncertain it would work if they needed to use it today. And so, to alleviate those nerves, he addressed those concerns to the team, particularly Naoki and Haro.

"Hey, Naoki? You too, Haro." Riku said over comms everyone broke off and went to their positions, "Let's try not to use the trump card today if we can help it. I haven't been able to test it as much as I'd like to. And besides, I think we'd all prefer a grander stage to really show it off on, yeah?" he said, but was quick to add, "But Haro can go ahead and keep it on standby in case it comes to that."

For this first mission, Riku chose to deploy in his Manticore. He'd given it some slight modifications in the intervening two weeks. Namely, he added a wrist mounted retractable Heat Rod to give the suit a close range option for attack. Other than that, the only other change was to the paint job. The urban camo on the suit's armor had been replaced by a much greener jungle camo. So for areas with heavy foliage, it would blend in pretty well. Riku figured his could use the long range scope functions of his Long Rifle to survey the area after they launched and pinpoint the locations of the Taurus on the ground. He could destroy them pretty simply with his armaments but predicted that he might need backup against the enemy team. He was in a mass production unit, after all, so any fight against an ace unit would be an uphill by default. He'd only beaten Seo as soundly as he did because of good tactics and terrain advantage.

Eventually, their ship launched into the simulated battle zone. There had been much discussion between himself and Naoki about which class of battleship would best suit Riku's idea for replicating the Space Battleship Yamato. Eventually they were able to settle on using an Amalthea-class ship, as its relatively simple and symmetrical bow made it suitable for fitting it with the secret weapon: the Wave Motion Gun. The ship of the original series used a vastly different power system for the gun, a Wave Motion Engine, that could be overclocked up to 120% to provide the necessary power to fire the weapon. Riku's build, on other hand, sported a different method of powering the weapon. It probably didn't look like it on the surface, but the Amalthea model that Riku had built had actually had its original engine parts replaced entirely. In their place was a 00 series GN Condensor fitted with two GN Drive Units. It not only gave their ship the ability to use the Trans Am System, but the Trans Am System itself was the ship's primary method of overclocking its engine output to power the Wave Motion Gun. As for the look of the ship, on the outside it appeared to keep the same shape as an actual Amalthea-class. Of course, Riku wouldn't allow the ship to have anything less than a completely original paint job. In this case, the ship was painted to have a color palette reminiscent of Japanese WW2 Era Battleship. The bottom third or so retained it's official red color, being the part of a battleship that is traditionally submerged in the water. The upper deck sections on the other hand, was given a classic bluish steel color, again as an homage to the armored hull of a WW2 Battleship. And finally, a large golden yellow emblem could be seen on the top of the ship's bow in the middle section. It was a stylized anchor, the image often used as a symbol of the Earth Defense Forces in Space Battleship Yamato. Just above it, the ship's name painted in romanized letters: [i]Yamato[/i]. And on each side of the anchor's center bar, there was a stylized "I" and "V" respectively which stood for the name of the team: [i]Imagine Victory[/i].

"Oh, uh... I may have sort of... created an insignia without running it by you first." Riku said to Naoki with an innocent chuckle, "I kinda only came up with it late last night, so I didn't have time to show it to you guys first. Sorry about that."