Hyuga swung her cannon-sword around while her katana was poised to intercept any ship girl foolish enough to get closer to her.
Yamato caught her cannon-sword with her hand, standing in front of her and facing her directly as she readied her umbrella to swing down at Hyuga.
But Hyuga was quick to respond by quickly lifting her boat slipper to place on Yamato's unsuspecting face, falling backwards and dragging a surprised Yamato down with her until Hyuga's rigging hit the ocean floor.
She emptied her boost right into Yamato's face, Yamato reeling back from the Inverted Stomp Face-breaker as her head ricocheted off of Hyuga's boat slipper and let go of her cannon-sword.
But Hyuga wasn't out of the woods yet, as Nagato joined their fight while her thunderous footsteps threw up water beneath her feet, Hyuga rotating her legs and hips to flip herself up.
She steadied herself, sheathed her cannon-sword and swung her katana at the approaching Nagato.
The thing that surprised Hyuga was that instead of hitting "soft" flesh underneath her black elbow gloves, she instead heard an unyielding and sharp "CLANG!", instantly recovering from her look of surprise by retreating and blocking with her flight deck as Nagato threw a punch, impacting the makeshift shield with a dull impact that was only achieved by two metal objects impacting each other.
Hyuga commented as she put some distance between them,
"Wearing metal plates inside your gloves, hmm? Not bad."
To which Nagato said nothing and simply pointed at her, cannons now at the ready and fired in Hyuga's direction.
Hyuga could only react reflexively and empty the boost gauge in her right leg to dive to the left as Nagato's cannons fired, resounding throughout the ocean with a mighty roar.
But Hyuga found that Nagato didn't fire all her cannons in one go, instead firing two of them while waiting for Hyuga to steady herself as she came out of the dive, Nagato grinning in response to Hyuga's grimace as her last two cannons sounded off majestically, forcing Hyuga to empty the boost gauge in her left leg to evade the incoming bullet.
What Hyuuga didn't expect was the Yamato-Class battleship standing a distance behind Nagato and out of sight due to Nagato blocking Hyuuga's view, and what Hyuuga saw made her heart stop.
Yamato usually had three main cannons, two at her shoulders and pointed forward, one right behind her and flipped back.
Yamato's rigging was now transformed to point all three 46 Cm Triple Gun Cannons and all four of her 15.5 Triple Gun Mounts at Hyuga, causing Hyuga to wonder if this was where she was going to meet her maker before being revived at the docks.
But this wasn't the first predicament that she found herself in.
She did the unthinkable and put her weight on her left feet, pushing off of it to charge at Yamato.
This went against every survival instinct that screamed at her to simply dive to the floor, as her boost gauges were both empty.
If she dived, at least she could survive somewhat with a damaged rigging and two battleships to face off against, although the fact that she was in a tag-team with Musashi did help even the playing field.
But if her next move succeeded, she could fight on as per usual.
Now somewhat closer, she noticed that Nagato was tackled by Musashi whom Hyuga had teamed up with, both of them pausing their battle to gawk at her fearless move to charge into certain doom.
She could see that Yamato also looked rather shocked, but was still focused on arming all her cannons, a streak of blood streaking down a superficial gash running vertically down the side of her face, and even had some burn marks surrounding the wound.
Yamato had the cannon behind her fold out in front of her to act as a makeshift chest cannon and the transformed part of the rigging serving as a pseudo-tank with forward sloped armor, Yamato holding the third cannon with the help of two folded-out handles.
Her umbrella was being stored behind her in some sort of holder that allowed for the quick draw of the umbrella as the handle was pointed up towards the sky.
But the thing that got Hyuga's attention were her exposed legs.
A rigging, no matter how powerful, couldn't protect every part of a battleships's body, and Hyuga focused with all her might to run towards Yamato while banking on the fact that Yamato would hesitate to fire at a ship girl at point blank range.
True enough, she could almost see the sweat on Yamato's brow with her enhanced eyes, the battleship's head exposed as she looked down at the approaching Hyuga in trepidation, finally stepping back as Hyuga ran towards her.
She could hear Yamato announcing,
" … all systems, ready…"
And knew that she had seconds left before her impending doom as she flipped her body backwards so that her feet would face forward, Yamato surprised by the sudden development but pointing her rigging a little downward, the rigging transformation further hindering her ability to move as it surrounded her like a tank as she slowly shuffled back.
Hyuga used her momentum and her hips to propel her forward as she quickly pulled off a variation of the French savate move, the chasse bas.
She raised her right leg and held it close to her, bent and ready to strike, with Yamato announcing,
"… All cannons… "
And she shoved her right heel into Yamato's left knee with the intent of throwing off her balance, emptying whatever boost she had recovered in her right boat slipper into the battleship's knee as she put all of her weight on her right foot to propel herself backward.
She put a clockwise spin in to dive to the right, while Yamato's leg crumpled under the surprise force of Hyuga's weight on her kneecap as the whole "tank" rigging tilted slightly to the side and upwards, Yamato's commanding voice fading as she failed to comprehend what just happened.
" …FIRREEeee?"
As the world exploded in a plume of smoke and fire.
Everyone watching was spellbound by the aftermath of the previous event, Nagato and Musashi speechless at the fearless charge made by Hyuga and the last-second maneuver to throw off Yamato's aim before the cannon-fire engulfed her.
Even the normally cheery Mutsu was silent, her eyes transfixed by the plume of smoke that shrouded the two battleships, the waves thrown about by the cannon-fire shaking the ocean surface beneath everyone's feet and made them struggle to maintain their balance.
No one missed the fact that the rounds fired from all of Yamato's cannons flew upwards, meaning that Hyuga's last-ditch attempt served its purpose well as the entire salvo of naval artillery shot into the sky, eventually splashing off into the distance or disappearing over the horizon to self-destruct in the air after flying a certain distance.
The smoke eventually cleared to find Hyuga getting up shakily, scrambling away while she supported her body with her trembling hand on the ocean, still trembling from the death-defying stunt she had just succeeded in pulling off.
As for Yamato…
She was on the ocean surface, the third cannon already folded back into position as she clutched at her knee and whimpering in pain.
Musashi rushed over to her injured sister, waving the smoke away to find Yamato softly crying as her relatively large body trembled, the knee in question bending at an unnatural angle as a red line cut into the flesh and bruised the flesh around the wound.
Along with slight burns plaguing the area around the wound as a result of boosting right into a ship girl's flesh, no matter how tough it was, the skeletal structure of a ship girl was inherently weak at the joints.
And it seemed that Hyuga's strike hit the mark as Yamato tried to muffle her sobs, holding up her pride no longer on her mind as she felt true pain for the first time.
The Fairies around her were sitting on canoes as they paddled around her knee while others stood atop Yamato's thigh, all of them chirping worriedly as they pointed at and diagnosed the broken knee, the almost invisible nano-machines that were installed in a ship girl upon creation already being directed by the engineering Fairies towards the most injured areas.
Musashi held her sister's elbow, her eyes threatening to water as she tried to calm her sister down with her words, whispering.
" … It's going to be alright, Yamato. I promise … "
While Nagato spared a glance behind her to look at Hyuga, who was trying to dry her clothes and shake off the water gathered on her blade, having dunked herself into the ocean to evade Yamato's barrage and was glancing back at Nagato as the Nagato-Class battleship slowly turned to face Hyuga, simply commenting.
"That was not nice."
Musashi looked up and glared daggers at Hyuga, but a comforting hand on Musashi's elbow distracted her, looking back to see Yamato struggling to tell her something, gasping as she started sweating profusely.
"Don't… Just... don't."
And Musashi looked right into Yamato's crying eyes that were pleading with her not to hold a grudge against a fellow comrade, Musashi finally closing her own eyes, exhaling slowly and nodding in acceptance while Mutsu approached them with a heavy-duty cable to tow Yamato away.
She sluggishly stood back up to turn back to Hyuga, cracking her knuckles menacingly as she glowered, announcing.
"I shall withdraw from this sparring session, since Yamato is unable to fight anymore."
But Hyuga simply shrugged her off, pulling out her cannon again to serve as a second sword, readying herself as she looked towards Nagato with an unparalleled focus of her own as her deadpan face belied the deadly killing intent within, Nagato returning the hardened gaze in kind.
"Well now, Nagato-san. It looks as if it's just us two left."
"No, Hyuga-san. It'll be just me.
You're going down."