De3ta Reads....Greatest Generation

De3ta · Sep 10, 2016

(Staring @Whiskey Golf , @XenaC , and Myself.)

*Taps Mic* ….Is this thing on? It is? Okay let's go!

Hello all, De3ta again. And yeah we're reading GG.

Introduce yourselves people!

Whiskey: Hi everyone, I'm Whiskey Golf. I was originally the anonymous secretive hidden beta for GG, and then I became Comrade Archivist and the face of the Committee for the Restoration of The Greatest Generation… and now I'm the de facto author for GG. (And I might have gently purged the Committee and enacted a palace coup.

)

Glad to have you on board Commissar Golf.

Whiskey: Technically I'm Comrade Archivist. I should also note that before he seized power, there was a random dude who was committee secretary named Joseph Stalin.

Ah you know Ol'Joey Handlebar? I hadn't heard from him. Something about a trip up north, I don't know the details.

Well while we wait for the others to arrive, tell me more about how you got involved with GG. Let's get some backstory up in here.

Whiskey: Eh, sure. So this was early in 2015, at the height of the whole "Abyssals are USN meme" and I think the anime had just finished airing, and then sasahara17 drops a bombshell on me: "Hey bro I'm writing a kancolle fic, would you do the usual?" So at this point I've known sasa for 2 years and I've been beta editing his stuff for about as long and so I went "Sure!"

Whiskey: And then after I was done with chapter 1 I was like, "Man, I like this, and I don't even know anything about kancolle except that Lenfried's lewdly cosplayed as Kancolle girls, and Shimakaze looks cute and lewd and lotsa ero-cosplayers seem to like cosplaying as her."

And don't forget the abundant amount of Doujins with dudes in Shimakaze's outfit.

Whiskey: I know nobody will believe me but honestly this time around I got into Kancolle first, doujins later. Also my focus on lewdity was aimed at ero cosplay sets.

Anyway I basically went into Kancolle blind and fell in love with the story and the settings and… well I was very happy to be the beta for GG because I liked the story, and I liked sasa's writing. But I wanted to be anon beta since I didn't want rabid readers hounding me haha.

XenaC: If you're done introducing your history right up to your fetishes, I'm quite ready to begin myself - and would be...partial to your silence. Temporary silence.

Say hello to XenaC, he's like Whiskey without a Libido.

XenaC: I have a libido. I just...know when i should be telling the world about it.

No one has a Libidio compared to whiskey's. It's a whole nother scale.

XenaC: So yes, I'm Xena and I still don't really know a lot about Kancolle beyond 'it's cute girls against the monsters from Pacific Rim' and that it was once revisionist history to some degree but now apparently it's okay since the local crowd has been sufficiently pleased, and thus gaijin teitoku can be given something to keep us happy! There. I guess if you caught the sarcasm you have a good idea of where I stand on Kancolle. But, stories are stories, and Kancolle stories can be and are good ones. I have...very recently become an SVer no thanks to all this discussion surrounding KC so I guess I blame everyone related to the game on SV for that. Every. Single. Person.

XenaC:Let's get this show on the road...once we're sure we're not getting any more joiners.

Whiskey: It's still revisionist actually. Morgane had a post on that that got taken down but tl;dr Tanaka, who created and runs Kancolle and shills Fubuki because she's his waifu, is quite revisionist. Which is ironic in a way but that's discussion and theming for later chapters.

Fuck Tanaka. (Is still salty about when he played the shitty RNG waifu game)

Well I suppose now is a good time to start, I'm sure our number three will pop-in at a later point.

Chapter 1: Part 1: Arrival at Yokosuka

We start the fic with...what'd ya call this? Title crawl doesn't fit because it's static text, opening narration maybe?

From the ocean depths, they came.

No one knew who they were or where they came from, but what is known is that the Abyssal fleet, powerful entities taking the form of young women, emerged one day without warning to force mankind from Earth's oceans. Appearing first in the Pacific, and then spreading across the seven seas like a black plague, mankind soon found itself under siege.

The world was thrown into chaos by this new threat. Shipping lanes were severed, global communications were disrupted and millions of lives were lost at sea.

Civilisation itself was at stake.

Mankind tried fighting back against these enemies, but found that their most powerful ships could barely hold the line against an enemy that seemed numberless. Worse still, despite the bravery and courage of many brave souls, that line eventually broke.

With the destruction of Pearl Harbor and Norfolk, it seemed that mankind's defenders had finally failed, and that fall of humanity was at hand… but then a miracle happened.

As if hearing the call of duty once more, protectors in the form of young girls, bearing the reincarnated souls of warships of ages past, took up arms.

First appearing in Japan, young women wielding powers that could fight against the darkness were found, trained and then sent into battle against the Abyssal fleet.

These heroines were dubbed 'Kanmusu'.The ship girls.

It has been one year since the first ship girl took to the battlefield. Since then, the Abyssal fleet has been pushed back, away from many of the world's most vulnerable port cities, by the combined effort of the brave ship girls, giving mankind some much needed breathing room.

In the Pacific, the young women of the former Imperial Japanese Navy fight valiantly to rid East

Asia of this menace. The Royal Navy, Marine Nationale and the Deutsche Marine work as one in an unrelenting war to keep the English Channel and the Atlantic convoys safe from the Abyssal raids. The Regia Marina, now flying the standard of the Marina Militare, have swept the Mediterranean clean of Abyssal presence and now turn to aid others. In the northern seas, the

Red Fleet braves the harsh artic cold in a deadly game of cat and mouse against their quarry.

Around the world, warships from every nation have returned from the grave in a time of direst need to serve their countries once more…

Warships from every nation… save, it seems, those of the United States Navy.

Whiskey: You're pulling this from FF.net, right? Daily reminder that I need to fix the formatting that got borked. :/ I hate FF.net. >_<

*headpats* We all do.

XenaC: All things considered this is a very good summary of the setting that the author wants. It is very barebones, and is very strongly reliant on everyone knowing the gist of the setting - but I guess people do. What it does that's less forgivable is putting clunky expressions in various places. To name a few…

XenaC: ...I'm quite sure our northernmost ocean is known as the 'Arctic'. Also, a sentence with four commas in it is no sentence, but eye cancer in disguise. I refer of course to 'since then...breathing room.' This is symptomatic of a larger problem, which if that if you aspire to an over-dramatic opening blurb you need to keep your punchy drama consistent! Things like 'Mankind tried fighting back against these enemies' is just...lame.

Perhaps something more along the lines of "Mankind fought valiantly against the relentless tide of the Abyss." Something with that punch needed to keep things moving.

XenaC: Aye I guess. I'm more of a short-sentence-when-I-can person but even that's better. Finally there is this cardinal sin. 'Warships from every nation… save, it seems, those of the United States Navy.' This has me shaking my head. Not five hundred words in and we're already revealing that the principle conceit of the story may not be as it seems! Now, there is something to be said about Whiskey having given us context as to the USN-is-the-Abyss meme. But if you've established something as your premise, you go with it in-universe. You don't start undermining it right from the outset. Not as The Narrator at least. It's simply not done.

" Appearing first in the Pacific, and then spreading across the seven seas like a black plague, mankind soon found itself under siege."

I find calling it a Black plague rather unneeded here, simply calling it a plague would work as well and be a biiiiit less on the nose with the still very obvious reference to the Bubonic Plague.

Another Point of some note"

XenaC: It's something of a Ye Oldene Tides Trope, actually, to give disasters or disasters in human form a color. You know, like the Red Death, or the Yellow Fever, or a Blackguard. I don't think he was referencing the Bubonic. Also, one of the Abyssals' primary color aesthetics is Black, Grey and Sexy, so he's not completely wrong there.

First appearing in Japan, young women wielding powers that could fight against the darkness were found, trained and then sent into battle against the Abyssal fleet.

I feel mentioning Japan specifically a tad too specific, saying they appeared across the globe would have let him show "shipgirls are here to unfuck things" in less words, and much more clearly.

So it's nothing too bad, but has some details that coulda gone through another draft.

Whiskey: It was a stylistic choice, IMO, since Japan's kanmusu popped up first. *shrug*

Fair enough.

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit work of fiction using characters from the Kantai Collection franchise, developed by Kadokawa Games and published by . Please support the official release.

Additional note: Please be advised this work contains allusion to certain contemporary issues, namely war crimes perpetrated by Imperial Japan in World War 2. This work is meant to be for enjoyment, and no offense is meant. Also note that, as a fanfiction, many liberties were taken with Kantai Collection canon for the purposes of this story. That being said, please enjoy.

Additional Note 2: Please take note that this is a continuation of the story with the blessings of the original author, sasahara17. The content of the originally-published chapters will be preserved to the best ability of the KC:TGG committee made up of:

biodude711

kct

LostJman

Shaithan

Sheo Darren

TheBleachDoctor

vren55

Whiskey Golf

ANs!

Whiskey: We felt this was necessary, given that sasahara had taken down the original version of this story in November 2015 and we didn't want me getting hit with a plagiarism complaints on FF.net. ^_^;

XenaC: Something something dedfic remake farming tears.

Please be advised this work contains allusion to certain contemporary issues, namely war crimes perpetrated by Imperial Japan in World War 2. This work is meant to be for enjoyment, and no offense is meant. Also note that, as a fanfiction, many liberties were taken with Kantai Collection canon for the purposes of this story. That being said, please enjoy.

Pfffft, Kancolle having a canon, good one.

Whiskey: I know, right?

But some people can get salty over the strangest things.

XenaC: Isn't it the official stance that Kancolle HAS no canon? It's either that or I cannot read Japanese. I stake my mastery of moon runes upon the idea that 'I'm sorry you're not allowed to tell me I violated KC canon because there isn't one, chum!'

There pretty much isn't, sans what little you might get from the anime.

XenaC: That one had a story? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Milton thou should'st be awake at this hour, fiction hath need of thee. Actually I think Pratchett would do too for the extra piss-taking, but Milton will do.

It was a memory that she would never forget.

Pearl Harbor was burning.

The sheer horror of what was before her was like nothing she had ever experienced.

Great plumes of smoke reached into the sky from the fires, a sound accompanied by the desperate screams of the dead and the dying. Indeed, the water itself was aflame from oil that coated it.

It truly was a scene out of hell.

Never in her career had she ever experienced anything like this.

She wasn't the only one who had trouble believing what she was seeing. Around her, thousands of sailors of the United States Navy looked on from the deck at the inferno before them. The bastion of America's military power in the Pacific, Pearl Harbor, was burning.

Impossible.

An attack as brazen and destructive as this should have been unthinkable, but it had happened.

Now people were dying, her comrades, and she was powerless to do anything but look on. Thousands dying, and she had arrived too late to do anything.

The cold chill of the knowledge that, but for the whim of fate, she too could be in amongst the dead and dying, was something she would never forget…

No, knowing that Yvonne is a shipgirl-no one going into GG with any knowledge of what GG is doesn't know or assume that's what's going to happen-makes this rather obviously the historical attack on Pearl Harbor

But I will give Sasa points for later mentioning that Pearl harbor got fucked again by the Abyssals, throwing some people off.

XenaC: It's nice. Also rather over-long. It's like someone tried to be a Poe or a Tolkien, but too long after the tropes they established as creepy-clever became creepy-period...and then became creepy-staid.

XenaC: I'll explain. Contrary to popular opinion, most readers are intelligent enough to know that when Pearl Harbour or any place as big as Pearl burns, the horror of it would be worse than anything a normal person has experienced. Or that no one has idea what to do when they're standing on deck or on shore looking all slack-jawed at a scene of massive destruction. My response to being told things I could have derived from the first two lines over and over again is "of course it is, do you think I spent my elementary school life in the dunce corner?"

Agreed, less is more.

Whiskey: In hindsight I probably should have been more ruthless in trimming down, but due to bad experiences in prior collaborations I've noticed I have a tendency to be pretty lenient when beta-ing.

XenaC: And in hindsight I think I was quite a dick about this, but I guess being the fic-hugger isn't my role is it...

One of us is supposed to be a fan of GG, and i don't think that was you. That might have been winter, but they dropped out. I guess whiskey will pull double duty.

XenaC: Crap, I forgot I was supposed to like it! Actually, let me say right here that I LIKE GG. Okay? I LIKE GG. I still think that there's not a lot of material out there that beats the prosaic quality and direction that GG at its best brings. If I was forced to go through a lot of other KC-related material line by line like this you can be sure I would exact a nation's worth of a blood-tax in exchange. From the same person. While they're alive, breathing, and preferably screaming. But then I put on my critic cap and I become a complete ponce. So for what it's worth...I'm sorry.

It's fine, you're insight is invaluable. Remember thqat half the purpose of this is to show and teach what went right and wrong.

As to liking GG, I...don't, but I'm curious if these readings might change that.

Shit that means Whiskey is good cop.

XenaC: It does, don't it?

At least until he snaps and goes full Armstrong.

XenaC: Please hold out till then, Whiskey. We have DDs! Errr...nevermind, let's not go there.

"Commander Swanson? Commander Swanson, are you alright?"

Yvonne Swanson gasped awake, the feeling of someone shaking her shoulder pulling her mind back from her dream. Cracking open her eyes, the young officer remembered she was still strapped into her seat on that stupid C-17. Beside her was the USAF airman had been sitting beside her, Master Sergeant Hammond, if memory served her correctly, who had shaken her awake.

The flight was fairly empty today, with barely a dozen or so men and women milling about, so there had been no one else to notice her discomfort.

"Goddamn, ma'am. That must have been some nightmare," the man said, his concern evident.

"No shit. Are we there yet?" Yvonne asked dourly, brushing her blonde locks out of her eyes.

The young officer wore Service Dress Blues of a commissioned officer of the United States Navy, and filled out the uniform smartly. She was very tall, in fact she was a few inches taller than the man addressing her. Her normally untamed sandy blonde hair was tucked neatly into a bun and covered by the white peaked cap resting nicely on her head.

She was the very picture of a model officer of the Navy, even if she was absurdly young to be wearing the rank of Commander… or she would be, had she not just woken from that accursed nightmare. Much to her displeasure, Yvonne brought her hand up and noticed it was still shaking, and she didn't need to look into a mirror to see how pale her face probably was.

Protagonist got! Yvonne has joined the party!

XenaC: I'm not sure 'gasped awake' is something that exists in written English.

Stirred awake, shot awake, usually see those more. Awoke with a start maybe.

XenaC: You know, things like 'lol, jk, meme' and the like made it into the English language. Maybe some day when we are but a forgotten memory and everyone has taken to diving physically into the true globalization that is the World Wide Web no one will care about these petty differences, but till then...

You gave me the thought of everyone in the world being subject to autocorrect. Well there's my nightmares for the week.

XenaC: ...Well. Apart from that there are one or two places where a sentence would have been better served by a fullstop/period instead of a comma or a run-on. Otherwise there's nothing big here except Big E.

Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy.

XenaC: Feel free to edit this if it's early spoilers, but yes.

Eh, it's nothing Major. Well, it is. But Late Arrival spoilers.

XenaC: This thing gave the game away for me, a tabula rasa of KC knowledge in 2015 within the first chapter. Spoilers my arse.

*Is zoned out* Wha? Sorry someone posted this video of corgis being adorable. What year is it?

XenaC: Just another year in the history of the world before it goes out in style. Not sure what you're on about, putting a time frame on 'when-Corgis-are-cute'.

"Last I checked, it's still another two hours before we land at Atsugi," Hammond supplied. "Are you okay? You were tossing and turning something fierce back there, Commander. Do you need me to get-"

"No need, it's just old memories," Yvonne replied dismissively. "And I thought I told you to not address me by my rank when we started this trip."

Not really one to stand on ceremony and wanting to avoid the any unnecessary awkwardness,

Yvonne had asked Hammond, a career soldier of least two decades, to avoid addressing her by her rank. She was a slip of a girl who looked barely older than twenty, and he was a man well into his late forties. It felt awkward for a man clearly twice her age to keep addressing her as his better, especially since she didn't like being reminded of her rank.

It was one thing to have gone up in rank through experience, hard work and dedication. It was another to have been made a Commander because the battles against the Abyssal fleet had left so many vacancies that the Navy was promoting anyone they had left with any sort of experience who could even remotely fill the billets.

The old saying was true: promotions came fast in wartime. It wasn't pleasant to be reminded of that, and Yvonne knew she wasn't the only one in the Navy that felt that way.

"Sorry ma'am. You're an officer, and well, old habits die hard."

"Well, stop doing it. I'll make it an order if I have to," Yvonne sighed as she settled back into her seat, "and I'm fine. I just can't stand being on this plane any longer than I have to."

"If you say so, ma'am," Hammond said, although his tone of voice hinted that he wasn't convinced.

The "Young and humble rank officer doesn't wish to be addressed by that rank by their older, more experienced subordinates." Trope. *ding*

Whiskey: No comment.

w

XenaC: If you've been in the military you'd probably understand. There's the chickenshits who would lord their rank over other, but they can go...insert whatever anatomical anathema you would have them commit here. Most sensible young commanders are kinda self-conscious about it in a good way, and rightly so.

Eh, I'm not judging. Just pointing it out.

XenaC: Then to put it in Tropey terms, it's something of a Justified Trope.

Although Yvonne was annoyed that he seemed to be treating her line some kind of porcelain doll, this was something she'd gotten used to. Hammond wouldn't be the first to treat her like this, or many other US Navy officers with more than three years under their belt for that matter.

The casualties the Navy had taken just trying to hold back the Abyssals in the early months of the war were mind boggling: no other armed service had lost so many men or material trying to hold the line. At the start of the war the USN was the largest most powerful blue water Navy to ever exist, responsible for keeping the peace and protecting the world's oceans.

When the Abyssals appeared, it fell to them to stop this new threat.

The men and women of the Navy did their duty, and died doing it. The majority of their surface fleet, including nine of their aircraft carriers, and a good number of the fast attack submarine force… all gone. Their arsenals at Pearl Harbor and Norfolk razed to the ground. So many good men and women, dead, and people were still trying to figure out why.

Before the Abyssals had appeared, Yvonne had thought that December morning in 1941 was the darkest day in the US Navy's history.

Clearly she had been mistaken.

Great, now she was thinking about Pearl all over again.

You know the subtlety I praised before? Yeah this kinda kills it in it's infancy.

It was going so well to, buuuuuuuuuuuuuut she had t mention December 1941. Also does GG Pearl get got the same time as it did the first time, or was that plot point thought up later?

Either way, it's not like this screams E E E E E, but it does set people on too right a track, when without it you'd still send them that way while showing less of your hand.

XenaC: See, I did warn you earlier.

I forgot this happened when I said that, to be honest.

"So, why are you going to Yokosuka anyway?" Yvonne asked, wanting to distract herself from those dark thoughts. "I can't imagine what an old Air Force guy like you will be doing over there."

"Well, since you asked, I'm a tech. Predators and Reapers," Hammond supplied. "Not sure what good we can do though, since I hear those carrier girls of theirs have pretty much got everything covered."

"Don't sell yourself short. Conventional weapons can kill an Abyssal just as good as a ship girl's can."

This wasn't just Yvonne trying to make Hammond feel better. The Navy had won plenty of engagements against the Abyssal fleet before the ship girls were finally implemented. The problem was just that every single one of those victories was won in blood.

The Abyssals were endless in number.

The US Navy, significantly less so.

It was a simple matter of attrition, and it was one that the US Navy simply could not win.

MY GOD, HE ACTUALLY DID IT. HE MADE IT SO CONVENTIONALLY FORCES AREN'T USELESS GARBAGE AGAINST ABYSSALS!

I mean, I don't know how well he'll actually portray that, but god damn it's nice to see it was intended!

Whiskey: Thanks. Conventionals being useless is a trope I myself don't like.

XenaC: This is what I meant by I Actually Like GG. It had all these ideas man! I feel sad all over again. This sucks. This hurts. I need to burn something.

*hugs*

"Yeah, but it costs a shitload of lot more money to shoot a dozen Hellfires at one Abyssal destroyer than it is for a ship girl to do the same job. She'll probably do it a hell of a lot better than we could do it too since she doesn't have to cross her fingers and hope something hits either," Hammond sighed. "Man, getting kids to fight this damned war for us. I know there's not much we can do but… It just ain't right, y'know?"

Yvonne, a girl that looked young enough to be Hammond's daughter, couldn't help but find humour in Hammond's statement, but decided to keep her mouth shut. This was the welcome distraction from her restlessness that she had been looking for, after all.

Child Soldiers, someone grab the mine detectors.

Seriously though, does that point ever actually come up again?

Xena: I don't think the opportunity ever came. Not seriously I mean. Like beyond the usual oh-these-DDs-look-so-young business. But that's par for course.

Shame, even if I don't trust that'd gone down well it's still be something worth trying/

Whiskey: I'm pretty sure the intent was that to old salts like Hammond, all these new 18 year olds enlisting are kids.

Xena: Point is well taken. Now this is actually a good thing that GG does in the previous few sections. It answers a significant chunk of worldbuilding questions raised by its premise and the mini-prologue. Yes, as hard as I gave it flak for how it was written, it does raise the correct questions…

XenaC: ...Which this part then answers. Questions like: what could conventionals do against the Abyssals? How effective were they, and how did the fight go? What has America been doing to recoup its losses? What do people think of that? All of this is done is a relatively short period of time - and in a decently entertaining conversation. It's not very detailed, but this is Chapter 1 in a setting that's already predetermined in some ways by Kancolle and Real Life. We don't need massive amounts of specifics.

"Well, every little bit helps. We all do our part, and trust that one day it will matter."

"Ma'am, you sounded like a damn recruiter," Hammond said, his amusement finally

overshadowing his earlier concern. "Bet you got sucked in with all those recruitment slogans, eh?"

"You know the one; America's Navy, a global force for good," Yvonne nodded with a faint smile.

"Jesus, look at you. I just got that Captain America vibe from you. They should be sticking you on the recruiting posters!" Hammond laughed, "So why are you heading down there? Going to tell how those Jap girls how awesome our ship girls are going to be when we finally get some?"

""Jesus, look at you. I just got that Captain America vibe from you. They should be sticking you on the recruiting posters!""

*Inhales*

So should we talk about Why E is Yvonne? I feel like now might be a good time to talk about E being Yvonne.

So, personally, I do not like the fact that E is Yvonne. The idea itself could work, but not with E. In a situation like this you would not assign The Enterprise to such a role, especially when she could be much better used for PR and improving morale.

Basically E, in the context of her being the only know USN ship summoned, should be more like Yamato in this fic. Having a similar role.

XenaC: As I recall, the USN and the Joint Chiefs had more pragmatic reasons for not revealing them. Some of them are a bit less than completely noble. Don't worry, it's not Muv-luv-level ignoble bastardry.

I don't much care for their nobility in this instance, I just want to know why they made this decision. What was the reason.

Whiskey: I could explain but that would be spoilers. :/ It's addressed in Chapter 8. Oh. Right. I haven't released Chapter 8. :/

XenaC: ...I was about to say that. I don't recall chapter 8 well, myself, but here's what I can come up with on the fly and from what I do remember. It makes sense as a course of action because revealing them would...

A. That would make them targets.

B. People start asking questions 'why so few?' And as I said, people aren't dumb, but they can panic. If it did not take much for the fandom to come to the conclusion that the USN might be the Abyssals, what do you think the public at war would say?

C. They had an excuse in that they were still rebuilding, so they wanted to take that time to figure out how the hell to summon more, and what the problem is. So it was a stalling tactic.

D. Let's face it, 5 ships, no matter how bold or strong in their previous lives, are nothing. The girls themselves are also revealed to have wanted to help in whatever way they could, so oh well.

Well I feel like E being a PR figure would help more than this, but that's just me.

XenaC: It's a valid alternative take for sure. But at least this wasn't an unreasoned leap of logic.

Whiskey: This is really something on which one's mileage will vary. *shrug* Look at least it's better than Ambulance or Lady Liberty's worldbuilding and justifications.

XenaC: It's better than a lot of our worldbuilding period simply by virtue of having so much more of it. Ah, GG, you lost lamb. Why?

Ambiance and Lady Liberty is a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow bar, and you know it. d;

XenaC: We can piss on their stoops later. For now, Greatest Generation: Prepare to Divide Edition! Out now in Forums near you.

"Well no. I'm with the Office of Naval Intelligence, actually. I was sent by Admiral Briggs to find the origins of the Abyssal fleet."

Hammond stared.

"You're shitting me. Ma'am."

Yvonne looked at him dead in the eye.

"You're serious. Fuck. That's… wow… just… wow." Hammond leaned back into his seat, as if to steady himself. "That's a helluva responsibility they handed to you, kid. I mean, ma'am."

"We're short on manpower. Somebody had to do it," Yvonne shrugged. "We know how to fight these things well enough, but we understand so little about them. I expressed by thoughts to my superiors, and the next thing I knew I was an O-5 with a plane ticket to Japan."

"Shit, good luck to you then," Hammond said.

"Thanks. I'm going to need all the luck I can get."

Finding the origins of the Abyssals was going to be a tall order. There was a reason nobody had been able to figure out what they were until now: they always shot first, they never surrendered and were never taken alive… or dead for that matter.

There was speculation about what they were of course, but no real definitive answers.

With luck, Yvonne was going to change that.

"Say, you're with ONI, right?" Hammond turned to face Yvonne with a hopeful expression. "Hey, if it won't get you into trouble or anything, do you know when we'll be getting ship girls of our own?"

Yvonne couldn't help but roll her eyes.

"Not this question again."

Good goal, really fucking vague so you have room to work with.

XenaC: Well the question needed to be asked at some point in the story. It also would have been an excellent red herring from the idea that she was a shipgirl...if he hadn't made it so damn obvious at first! Which is a pity. This goal, and her reaction to his question would have made a good diversion otherwise.

Kantai Collection: The Greatest Generation

Part 1: Arrival at Yokosuka

Unnecessary second chapter title.

XenaC: Think of it as the eyecatch section of an anime. You know, the one with a totally fanservicey picture that has nothing at all to do with the rest of it? Except without said picture. Because we can't have nice things.

The dawn sun rose over the land of the rising sun, just as the C-17 finally touched down at Atsugi, and Yvonne had the good fortune to be treated to the breathtaking sight of the morning sun illuminating the bay.

While most of the USAF personnel were too busy offloading their own equipment to pay heed to the spectacle, Yvonne took a moment to admire the view.

"Well, I hope this is a good sign."

"Commander Swanson?" Yvonne turned to find a young Japanese man standing behind her in the JMSDF service dress uniform. The young officer gave her a snappy salute. "Lieutenant Satoshi Matsuda. I have orders to take you to Yokosuka Naval Base."

"Pleasure to meet you, Satoshi-Ittō Kaii. Please don't stand on ceremony," Yvonne crisply returned the salute, while speaking in Japanese… only to notice the man's lips curl into a smile.

"Sorry Commander, looks like I was trying to be a little too smart for my own good," he said in perfect English. "My first name is Satoshi. I just thought I'd reverse the order since most people from the States are used to having it the other way 'round."

"Oh, well. Yeah," Yvonne grumbled. She'd spent all that hard work learning the language too!

"Goddamn it, I could swear that's a New York accent."

"Bingo. I grew up in New York while I was still a kid. My Ma used to be on the UN delegation and I tagged along for about six years. Never quite lost the accent."

"You went with your mother to New York?"

"It was either that or live on a boat with the old man."

"Huh, well isn't that something." What were the odds that a JMSDF officer who grew up in New York would be the one to pick her up on her first day in Japan?

"I had my subordinate grab your bags to save you the trouble," Matsuda informed her, as he motioned Yvonne to a nearby jeep, clearly the one that they would be using for transport. Stowing what was clearly Yvonne's luggage into the back of the vehicle was a very conspicuous dark haired young woman in a dark blue uniform and an eyepatch.

Yvonne didn't have to be a genius to know what that girl was.

"Thanks for the help," Yvonne said graciously.

"Well, we'd best be on our way. The Admiral has been looking forward to your arrival for some time now," Matsuda agreed, "Still, it's nice to know you know Japanese. You might not need it with me, but trust me, you are going to havta to use it a lot where you're going."

I admit, this section I liked. Made me smile.

Also: TENRYUU GOT!

Whiskey: In the original version of this text, Matsuda sounded more proper. I went and binged cop shows set in New York to try and get an idea/feel for how people talk in New York.

Can Confirm, it's good enough.

XenaC: I guess we can just say that this bit does fine. Also, Tenryuu! Goddamn it Chapter...whichever it is with the DDs in it. Why did you suddenly throw the Serious Ball into a Crack scenario?!

Chapter 3 I think, or 4.

XenaC: Whichever. Still, I'm grieving at the vitriol I already know I will spill when I read that bit.

Yeah that's gonna be….a thing. But that's later talk.

Yokosuka Naval District had a long and storied history.

Originally a quaint little native fishing village, its strategic location would result in the district becoming home to some of the greatest concentrations of maritime power in history. It was the main arsenal of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and then later became a major centre of US Naval power as United States Fleet Activities Yokosuka.

In the light of the near total destruction of the Seventh Fleet against the Abyssals, Yokosuka had once again reverted to its original ownership. The US maintained a small section of the base for themselves since the USAF was now an active part of the war effort in the region, but otherwise the whole district was more or less back in Japanese hands.

This was very apparent to Yvonne as she watched her surroundings go by while the small jeep travelled towards its destination. Years ago, this was the home port of Carrier Strike Group Five, a fleet with enough military power to challenge entire countries.

Now, the only thing left that indicated that the USS Ronald Regan was ever here was the odd signpost in English that the JSDF hasn't taken down in the district's remodelling.

Expositiooooooooooooooon. Needed, granted. But it could have been done better.

XenaC: You know that nice conversation they were having? Just comment on the sights! The real problematic exposition, in my view, is internal exposition. Thoughts, emotions. That one sucks. This stuff is just unnecessarily long. If you're going to do exposition, you either go full wordsmith or you outsource. If you're neither, you're done. Next batter up. This sounds like a stupid plug, but I used to love Ayezur's stuff for wordsmithing. Granted, the stories were much smaller in scale and relied much more on familiarity with setting than GG, but still.

Agreed, people would explain or bring up this stuff by talking. Makes things feel more natural, flow a bit more.

"You've been awfully quiet, there," Matsuda asked in Japanese from the driver's seat., "You okay?"

"Sorry, it's just… it's hard to take in how much we've lost," Yvonne replied in the language. "We used to be all over this place, but now it's like we were never here."

"Yeah, Carrier Group Five. Went down swinging against an Abyssal battlegroup thrice their size, when they refused to abandon a passenger ship full of refugees." Matsuda shook his head sadly.

Yvonne closed her eyes and grit her teeth, fighting back the anger she felt towards the Abyssal fleet for that massacre. Her anger was tempered with the feelings of pride at the bravery and courage of her countrymen, but this didn't change the fact that good people had died because of those monsters.

Yvonne's discomfort must have been apparent, as Matsuda quickly took it upon himself to change the subject.

This is sliiiiiiiiiiiiiightly better, but I feel it portrays Yvonne's emotions a bit too….bluntly. It kinda feels like she's telling us how she feels, rather than showing us.

XenaC: It's kind of more egregious because it starts well with the talking...and then they hit you in the face with the emotion hammer. PSA: Your mistakes are more obvious if you put them next to things you did well. Like, one line away. So if you're going to do silly things, please put 'em where the sun don't shine.

"So, you're not going to ask about Tenryuu or what?" Matsuda inclined his head towards where the ship girl sat in the back seat. Tenryuu was leaning against the window with a bored expression, the kind that indicated just how little she cared about being there. "Most people get quite excited when they meet their first Kanmusu."

"No problem, just pretend I'm not here. I just carried your bags for you and all that," Tenryuu snarked grumpily, earning a reproachful look from Matsuda in the front seat.

"Oh, uh, sorry," Yvonne said abashedly.

She'd been so caught up in her own thoughts that she'd neglected to thank Tenryuu for helping

her with her luggage, because she had been so focused on the base itself.

Now that she had realized this though, Yvonne was getting a distinctly uncomfortable feeling at allowing Tenryuu to be right behind her.

This was going to be a problem.

"Fufufu, ya scared?" Tenryuu chuckled upon noticing Yvonne's silence.

"Not really. Just kind of overwhelmed by everything that's all," Yvonne recovered smoothly.

"Besides, no offense, but compared to Abyssals you look kind of… normal? Does that make any sense?"

"Che. Admiral, this is a waste of time. Why do we have to be the one to drag this Yankee over to the base anyway?" Tenryuu groused lazily. "There could be so many other important things we could be doing with our time. I mean c'mon, I could be training or something, not playing a bellhop."

"Tenryuu! She is a guest. Watch your tone."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll shut up. Going to take a nap, so wake me when we get there." Tenryuu leaned back, and within moments was out like a light.

I like Tenryuu, Tenryuu is a character I enjoy seeing. And I like how this fic shows more than just "Momboat to DDs lol," that some lesser fics might do. Shows layers to the character, seems more three dimensional.

Whiskey: That's probably because momboat Tenryuu hadn't become a thing yet, haha, so we got cool big sis delinquent Tenryu.

I do think that maybe i should have gotten you guys to help me go over GG's restart haha.

*Hands business card made of napkins and marker* Call me~ ;b

XenaC: Hey, I just met you-sorry. But yeah each year has its shipgirl tropes, now that I recall what I was told. I admit I liked delinquent Tenryuu a bit better, but I feel like Sasa later goes full retard with that too, I mean.

I understood that reference. *sips*

And it's like he went full meme because he probably started said meme. Or at least popularized it.

A better term for that might be he exaggerated her character , Flanderized a bit.

XenaC: Sort of. I'd say part of it comes of having put serious consequences onto a crack situation with characters acting like they were in a crack fic. There's something to be said about flanderization, more to be said about bad dramatic choices. Granted he did have a purpose for it, but what was lost in the process was a step too far. A story for next time, though.

Whiskey: Like I said, this is what happens when you have a crack author stepping outside his comfort zone.

"Bad subordinate?" Yvonne said to Matsuda in a hushed tone.

"Temperamental. Very good at her job though, and she's invaluable in keeping the kids in line," Matsuda explained with a sigh. "This was not what I expected to be doing when I received my commission."

Ahahhahahahahaaaaaaaaam chapter 3 is gonna be 'Fun'.

XenaC: ....

"I can relate. So… Admiral, huh?" Yvonne quickly glanced at Matsuda's insignia and confirmed that the man she was with was indeed a mere O-3. There was probably a story behind that, hopefully one less morbid than how she had come into her own rank.

"Little cultural quirk all our Kanmusu have. If you're their commanding officer, you're an Admiral to them, regardless as to what rank you really are," Matsuda clarified. "It helps that most people that are in charge of them are really Admirals, but then you get an officer like me who's put in command of a few Kanmusu because of efficiency or necessity."

"Yeah, so how did you wind up in charge of her then?"

"Expeditionary force: basically I'm in charge of logistics, and since I work with Destroyer Division

Six so much, they ended up putting me in command of them to save me the runaround, and it pretty much went from there. Now I have two light cruisers and four destroyers under my command. Well, one cruiser and four destroyers: Tatsuta's over in the United States at the moment as part of our detachment at San Diego. Normally I have her as my de facto secretary ship, but since she's on the other side of the Pacific at the moment, well… we make do."

"Sounds like you lucked out."

"More or less. So, Commander, huh?"

Yvonne couldn't help but give an amused huff. This guy had a bit of snark of his own. The pair quieted as they had arrived outside at a large imposing building that was clearly the main headquarters of the base. Pulling into the driveway, Matsuda stopped to allow Yvonne to disembark.

"Thanks for the ride."

"Don't worry about your bags, we've already assigned a room to you so I'll have 'em sent there. Just go straight to the lobby and take the elevator to the Admiral's office on the top floor, you can't miss it." Matsuda helpfully directed her.

"Thanks for that."

"It's not a problem. Call me if you need anything, Commander," Matsuda said, before taking off.

So I heard Matsuda X Tatsuta was the go-to ship for these parts.

XenaC: Again, as we said, never got there. This is all-around decent build up. Interesting points about shipgirls, also why Tatsuta isn't around. I wouldn't complain.

I like Matsuda, so far he's the most enjoyable character we've seen. That guy who was with Yvonne on the plan I can't remember, and Yvonne has had to should the clunky exposition.

XenaC: This is because Matsuda has no baggage man.

True, but I feel like I should care a bit more for the Protagonist than…."eh, kinda."

Whiskey: that's because Matsuda is honorary Jersey. Okay, Brooklyn but eh, close enough?

Yvonne hasn't shown much character other than the stuff about her position and the stuff about Pearl. Could have used a bit more back and forth with Matsuda, less internal ramblings.

I get that she is very upset about what has happened to the USN, and has a traumatic connection to pearl. But that's not so much a personality as it is character traits so far.

But on the other hand, not done with chapter one yet.

XenaC: Long chapter is long...taking Warframe break. Also it probably feels long because we're not just shitting on it. Which is a good thing because it doesn't deserve it.

kk.

"Commander Yvonne Swanson, reporting to Yokosuka Naval Base, as ordered," Yvonne announced, coming to attention. The Admiral, seated behind his desk, simply nodded as he skimmed through her papers and acknowledged what was in them, while she waited patiently for him to finish.

"So, a mission to discover the origin of the Abyssal Fleet? And you are all they sent?" The weathered old sailor looked at Yvonne with curiosity.

"We are very shorthanded right now, sir."

"Shorthanded as the US Navy is, I am sure that they could have sent more, given the significance of this mission," the Admiral noted matter-of-factly. "Sending a girl of your age alone to take care of a task as monumental as this either speaks of desperation, or of your ability. I wonder if it is the former, or the latter. How do you intend to succeed, where so many others have failed?"

"The outline of my mission, as well as its specifics, have been outlined in detail with the brief included with my transfer papers, sir."

"I am aware of that, but some parts of this briefing have been redacted."

"My methods are classified, sir. I have been instructed to keep them on a strict need to know basis. I can, however, assure you that I am confident in my success," Yvonne replied smoothly.

The Admiral raised a curious eyebrow, seemingly both intrigued and taken aback by the confidence and oddity of her reply. "That is an interesting reply, Commander."

"It's the only reply I am authorized to give, Admiral."

"Indeed. Military intelligence… always so vexing." The Admiral set her papers down. "Your orders come with the approval of the Chief of Naval Operations himself, so I see little reason to hold you for longer than I already have. I will call my assistant to show you to your quarters."

"Thank you, sir."

"Welcome to Yokosuka Naval Base, Commander Swanson."

Foreshadowing how people won't be too friendly to Yvonne as an Intelligence officer. Props should be given for that at least.

Whiskey: And this is the part where I have to call it quits, it's 2AM and I'm nodding off in my chair. I'll leave some post chapter commentary way below tho. Good night. *waves nervously, envisioning what he'll wake up to*

XenaC: You'll also forgive me for being a bit nitpicky at 2am, but usually the Japanese aren't so direct with people they don't know well. The bit about 'military intelligence' is more true to form, while the first part is a bit...eh. I dunno. Author discretion, I'd like to say. It completely forgivable for someone not well accustomed to the way Japanese people tend to speak to not know the difference between the way people speak in anime versus other scenarios.

When the Admiral's secretary showed up, Yvonne was quite surprised to find that the aide to the

most senior officer on the base was, in fact, a ship girl.

"I am Battleship Nagato, pleased to meet you. I am the Admiral's secretary ship." The long haired beauty gave a respectful bow to Yvonne, who had been waiting outside the Admiral's office for her escort. "I welcome you to Yokosuka Naval Base, Commander Swanson. It is an honour to have you in our base."

"It's… an honor to be here?" Yvonne said.

That feeling that uncomfortable feeling she had from Tenryuu returned, this time tenfold.

Yvonne knew how irrational the feeling was, but allowing one of the most powerful big gun warships ever built so close to her person, knowing well that Nagato had enough firepower to level the entire building, if not the entire base, was a terrifying prospect.

She felt so naked and alone without someone with her.

Good god, she'd only met two Japanese ship girls so far and already she felt like running to Dakota and O'Bannon for help.

Maybe they were right; this wasn't such a good idea after all.

*Bites tongue* We'll get to that….

XenaC: Again, I told you so. And again, shipgirl sense hammer strikes again.

"I am making you uncomfortable."

"Not… not a problem." Yvonne squelched down on her discomfort with her considerable force of will and successfully regained her composure. Get a hold of yourself woman, she chided herself.

"Sorry, but this is all very new to me. I haven't met many Kanmusu before. My experience with this sort of thing has been mostly with the Abyssals until now."

Nagato seemed to study Yvonne with interest. It seemed that the battleship wasn't about to let the issue drop without one final push. Thankfully, Yvonne knew exactly what to say to that.

"…I was at Pearl."

"Oh. I see. You have my condolences, then." Nagato winced sympathetically.

"Could have been worse. I could have been at Norfolk," Yvonne grunted sourly as she recalled the horror stories. A good portion of the fleet had been docked in there for repairs when it had happened. Poor bastards hadn't even gotten the chance to weigh anchor before the Abyssals stormed in and turned the whole place into a charnel house.

Okay Pearl I can get being fucked, but Norfolk? There would be a loooooooooooooooot more shit fucked than Pear if they got to Norfolk. And with Pearl gone Hawai is pretty fucked already.

XenaC: I think we're forgetting that this fic is supposed to be 'America is at least 6/10 on the desperation scale'. That said, Yvonne's reaction sort of puts the lie to it. So I guess this passage in general sort of fails at its own un-stated goal anyway after setting up well enough of it. I mean, Yvonne wasn't there personally (and she doesn't have double the bad memories of Norfolk), so it probably doesn't sting as bad but I don't think 'sourly' is the way you would describe a person talking about a naval base being turned into a 'charnel house'. That's like Guts-level not-giving-a-shit right there.

Like, you all know where Norfolk is right?

whiskey: in my understanding they only went after the base, they left NAS pceana and langley afb alone.

XenaC: I did look it up, yes. And damn, that insider information trading.

""Could have been worse. I could have been at Norfolk," Yvonne grunted sourly as she recalled the horror stories. A good portion of the fleet had been docked in there for repairs when it had happened. Poor bastards hadn't even gotten the chance to weigh anchor before the Abyssals stormed in and turned the whole place into a charnel house.

"

Two things, why only hit the base, and how did they get there to storm it undetected?

Whisky: Abyssal bullshit. They do it again in ch 6. I'm a little ashamed sometimes of how much GG relied on that.

XenaC: Abyssal bullshit. Also, the whole 'only the sea is important' thing is also really silly, and I'm glad that fics like Belated Battleships took on that idea and gave it a bit of a shakedown, albeit in a very sideward manner that I wish got expanded, but as was once said by men much wiser than I - 'not as I will'.

So they did it because Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiic. FIne.

All I'll say is, we call it Abyssal Bullshit for a reason.

Whiskey: that said lookup NORPAC 82. The USN had 2 CVBGs off the soviet coast running mirror image training strikes for four days and the soviets never found them or knew they were around until the us let them know.

Okay.

"Then do not worry, Commander. We are nothing like the Abyssals. You will have nothing to fear from any who serve. In fact, take comfort in our presence: each and every Kanmusu on this base would lay down their lives before allowing you to come to harm."

"Well hopefully that won't be necessary."

"Indeed. Shall we?"

With that the two women walked through the winding halls of Yokosuka's main HQ. Nagato proceeded to give Yvonne a brief tour of the building, pointing out where all the basic facilities were or anything that might be of interest to Yvonne, before showing the American to the guest quarters they had set up for her.

One thing that caught Yvonne's attention was just how empty the building was.

Unlike Naval Station Everett where she had been stationed previously, Yokosuka base seemed to be operating on a skeleton crew. There were people around of course, they encountered the odd officer here and there, on their tour, but it was far less than even what Yvonne had been used to. When asked about it, Nagato was all too willing to explain.

"The Admiralty prefers to keep us Kanmusu segregated from the regular troops, because it makes people uncomfortable to know that we are fighting in their place. As such this base is operating on essential support personnel for us Kanmusu only. Aside from the helicopter destroyer Izumo and the guided missile destroyer Mirai, which both are operating at a reduced crew on the south quarter of the base, the majority of our conventional fighting strength has been relocated to Maizuru."

I don't quite get that last part about segregating the Shipgirls from the normal people. What the hell does " it makes people uncomfortable to know that we are fighting in their place." even mean?

Whiskey: cute girls fighting and dying in place of all us fat otaku

XenaC: I feel like sasa's downplaying the idea that we otaku would be 100% okay with this. I mean, Japan is just as well-known (depending on what circles you walk in) for vocal civil society as much as they are for being Otakuland. But I'm very sure that most militaries would see the value of at least training for combined arms operations. So this bit of the armed forces looks different. They have magic bullshit. Whatever, move on and get on with life. Or you know, with the war we're supposed to be winning against those things that came out of a one-night-stand between Pacific Rim and Sex Appeal for Dummies. At the worst we just need the MPs at the ready for...you know. Incidents. People will have to be...relocated, if necessary. Things like that.

"Wise choice," Yvonne agreed.

After the absolute bloodbaths that were Pearl Harbor and Norfolk, several navies had opted to relocate their conventional fighting strength to safer waters, away from large oceans where the

Abyssals seemed be coming from. Sure, it meant that those ships would have to take a considerably longer route to get to the engagement zone, but the added safety was well worth the inconvenience. It wasn't as if conventional forces where that effective anymore, now that the ship girls were on the scene anyway.

If she remembered her geography correctly, Maizuru was facing away from the Pacific Ocean towards Russian waters, and thus would be less vulnerable to attacks from the Abyssals coming in from the south-east. Even if it were to be attacked, they would have at least some advance warning to prepare defenses, or at worst case, evacuate.

Except they wouldn't have that warning, because Abyssals can just sneak up and attack you anyway any time they please.

XenaC: You do realize they haven't had the time to write a dissertation or ten on the kinds of magic bullshit the Abyssals have. So they've got a serious disadvantage here, and I'd say they legitimately don't recognize that. I'd give it a pass.

"Can't imagine it was easy fitting all your ships in Maizuru though."

"Not much left to fit. We lost half our surface fleet before we Kanmusu were developed. Nowhere near what your Navy has lost, but still not an inconsiderable amount. Those Abyssasls will pay for that they have done," Nagato glowered darkly.

"Amen to that."

"Ohy, Nagato!" A cheery voice interrupted the pair mid tour. Both Yvonne and Nagato turned to regard an excitable brown haired young girl in a white shrine maiden's outfit - at least what Yvonnethought was a shrine maiden's outfit - who was bounding down the hallway towards them.

"Hey! This must be the American girl I've been hearing so much about! IT IS NI-CE TO MEET YOU. HOW ARE YOU DO-ING! WELCOME TO YOKOSUKA."

What.

Oh fuck me with a bag of dicks…..KONGOU'S HERE EVERYBODY!

XenaC: I'd rather he saved excitable for after he's had Kongou like...maybe say more than one line. Because Kongou very quickly shows herself to be excitable once you let her say enough. Again, show-don't-tell. Next.

"Kongou, I see you have returned from your mission. I trust it went well."

Jesus Christ, not another battleship.

"YES. I, Kongou, completely dominated the enemy with my BURNING LOVE for the Admiral. He was most PLEASED with my performance!" Kongou animatedly clenched her hand to display her unbridled passion, something that went directly over Yvonne and Nagato's heads. "But enough about me, this is the American who's come from abroad to help us? GOOD DAY MY NEW FRIEND!HUGS!"

Then Kongou scooped Yvonne up in a big bear hug, a true feat considering Yvonne was at least a head and a half taller than Kongou, causing the American to go completely rigid in the excitable battleship's arms.

Yvonne had been already uncomfortable by just being near Nagato.

Getting hugged by Kongou was enough to make the naval intelligence officer's every thought process come to a screeching halt.

"Eep," Yvonne squeaked.

Nagato, having buried her face into her hands, seemed to be on the verge of weeping, before she turned to Yvonne and gave a low sigh. "Kongou…"

"MY NAME IS KONGOU, NAME SHIP OF THE KONGOU CLASS. I COME FROM ENG-LAND. WHAT IS YO-UR NAME? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEA?"

….that's adorable. I don't get why SHE'S YELLING SO MUCH. But it's cute!

XenaC: It's supposed to indicate when she's speaking in conspicuous Engrish. You know, like in her voice lines. It's not the most elegant solution, but it was the solution sasahara chose, I guess. Bridge over something something lay me down.

Huh.

"She can speak Japanese, Kongou."

"Please… let me have some personal space," Yvonne gasped, wondering if it was just her imagination that her ribs felt like they was cracking under the crushing embrace of the fast battleship Kongou. Holy shit, this girl was strong. Thankfully for Yvonne's lungs, Kongou released her, allowing Yvonne to lean against a nearby wall to catch her breath.

"Ah, SORRY," Kongou said, cheerfully apologetic.

"Kongou, she is a foreign officer of the United States Navy and a guest. Please try not to embarrass us completely and show some tact," Nagato rebuked sternly. Kongou gave a nervous laugh, having realized she may have been a little too excited about Yvonne's arrival.

"It's fine Nagato. I'm not hurt or anything," Yvonne said as she caught herself. "It's nice to meet you Kongou. I did some research before coming here, and it is an honor to meet one of the more decorated members of the ship girl fleet."

"HA! Yes, so you have heard of me! GOOD JOB!" Kongou beamed happily at the praise. "Anyway,

GREAT that America is finally joining the fight. So, which ship are you?"

Yvonne groaned.

"Oh, not this again."

"Kongou, please, we've been over this," Nagato sighed.

"Which ship? America has so many cool ships I, Kongou, can't even begin to guess who you are!"

The brunette continued undeterred., "I'm sure they brought back their best. So? WHO ARE YOU? Are you the Iowa? Wait NO! She's still afloat as a museum ship… Missouri! Wait no, that's not it either. Houston? Hm, no REACTION. Pennsylvania? No. Arizona? Hm, not her either. AH, YES! With that flight deck chest as flat as yours, you must be-"

"Commander Yvonne Swanson, United States Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence," Yvonne said sharply. "I was sent here to discover the origins of the Abyssal fleet."

There was silence as Yvonne allowed this to sink into Kongou's brain. It almost made Yvonne guilty to see the disappointment fall over the excitable girl's features, as she understood the full ramifications of what Yvonne was saying.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," she added, not unkindly.

"You're not a Kanmusu?" Kongou said in a tone reminiscent of a kicked puppy.

"Would a ship girl be working for naval intelligence?"

"Kongou, we've been over this," Nagato cut in to spare Yvonne the trouble. "The American Navy was decimated by the Abyssals, trying to hold the line while we were being trained. At the moment they're still in the process of rebuilding their fighting strength. They can't help us just yet."

"You mean the official story is right? I thought that was just the American President telling fibs," Kongou sighed. "Man, SO DISSAPOINTING."

"If it helps, when we do eventually get some ship girls ready to help you out, Yokosuka is at the top of the list for places that are going to be reinforced," Yvonne placated her. "The JSDF has been kind enough to station a task group at San Diego. The least we could do is pay you back when we get the chance."

"Oh, SORRY. I didn't mean any offense. I was just so excited since I thought I was finally going to meet some new friends," Kongou hung her head apologetically. "I've been reading up on history and the US Navy had some of the most POWERFUL ships in the war. SO COOL! If we had them fighting with us, this war would be over in no time."

Yvonne couldn't help but agree with that.

*Grooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan*

I don't like this section. Not a single bit. Even without the spoiler that E IS YVONNE OH MY GAWD, it's still so very obvious that Yvonne is a shipgirl, Fuck at this point they might as well have had it be officially revealed at the end of the fucking thing! The mystery is nonexistent.

XenaC: I would say what I said a few times before already, but let's talk about Kongou's characterization instead. I think this marks the beginning of a certain tendency towards flanderization, as we mentioned before, that becomes more egregious as time goes by. There are exceptions, but the trend in GG is always toward this and reflects a lack of planning as to the ramifications of what characters say, when they say it, and how the author chooses to portray the process.

Sasa was a crack writer, and this is what you'd see in light-hearted comedic one-shots or snippets. This doesn't translate well to actual characters.

XenaC: Basically this. This is okay in crack fics, but it is the absolute no-go in the long-term. These are characters you may and indeed do see more often, you cannot afford to have them completely come off as a cardboard cutout straight from a dime-store novel. This lack of planning the fic as a long-term RealFic will prove to be the flaw that sinks this ship eventually, but let's move on.

The brunette continued undeterred., "I'm sure they brought back their best. So? WHO ARE YOU? Are you the Iowa? Wait NO! She's still afloat as a museum ship… Missouri! Wait no, that's not it either. Houston? Hm, no REACTION. Pennsylvania? No. Arizona? Hm, not her either. AH, YES! With that flight deck chest as flat as yours, you must be-"

Fuck all of this. I'll elaborate on why in the next section.

XenaC: Duly...noted.

"You mean the official story is right? I thought that was just the American President telling fibs,"

It is.

"This is your room, Commander Swanson."

Yvonne's first impression of the room was that it was nice, if in a humble cosy sort of way. Certainly better than her old accommodations back in Everett, but then again back then she wasn't a Commander. It was modest room, sporting a single bed, a cupboard, a desk and a chair, but the make of the furniture and the nice view afforded by the single window overlooking the base made it feel more like a hotel room than assigned quarters that apparently doubled as her personal office.

As promised by Matsuda, Yvonne noted that her effects had been left at the foot of the single bed in the corner of the room.

"Thanks for showing me around, Nagato," Yvonne said as she walked over to her duffel bags to begin unpacking.

"The Admiral has nothing for you for the rest of the day. It has been decided to allow you a day to overcome your jet lag and get settled in," Nagato said from where she stood at the doorway. "He has advised me that from tomorrow onwards you will be assigned an aide to assist you in your duties as you see fit. While you are a foreign officer, please remember that this is a Japanese Navy facility and you are to adhere to all our rules and customs as required…"

And the lecture went on.

Wow, what a square.

XenaC: Well...characterization just got a bit harder didn't it?

Yvonne what is your personality.

XenaC: The problem here is not so much with Yvonne, it's with the narration suddenly losing patience with itself. Here's the thing. When you pick a PoV character, you're given this much time to establish how the person thinks. You can break with it, but you need to give some warning first, not-

It's not First person, but it's biased third.That is doable, but here it's taking away from Yvonne.

XenaC: -yeah, straight up going an inch away from authorial voice and going "FIVE MINUTES LATER". Even Brecht needs to establish his play's Brecht-ness from the outset first before proceeding to go "screw logic I have a message!"

Even so, as a representative of the US Navy, Yvonne did the honorable thing and listened to Nagato as she continued on about protocol and discipline for some time. Thankfully, the impromptu lecture was 'only' for about ten minutes or so, and soon the secretary ship turned to other matters.

"I will see to it that Kongou is reprimanded for her actions," Nagato noted once she had finished,

"What she did was impolite, and an embarrassment to our Navy. I will see to it that the Admiral knows about this. On behalf of the Japanese Navy, I offer you our sincerest apologies over what inconvenience she may have caused you."

"Hey, I told you not to worry about it," Yvonne insisted, with a wave of her hand. "Look, there's no need to go bother the Admiral. It's actually nice to have met someone who was so friendly like

Kongou. I was actually a little worried that my reception on the base would be a little, well, cold. I don't think it'll do me any favors making enemies on my first day here."

Nagato shifted on her feet awkwardly.

Oh, that wasn't a good sign.

"…Yes, it might be wise to remain on Kongou's good side. Very well, if that is your order, I will not tell the Admiral, just this once. Any other breach in protocol after this will be dealt with, however."

"I sense there is something else you want to say?"

"You will find that Kongou is a… minority on this base," Nagato stated carefully, with tactfully chosen words. "Many of our comrades are not as understanding of the current plight of the US Navy and feel affronted that you have not produced Kanmusu of your own yet. Some of your Navy's more vocal critics will not take your arrival to Yokosuka very well."

"I see." This was upsetting, but not something Yvonne hadn't foreseen before coming.

Caustic relations, fun times!

XenaC: I've said this before. Readers are not idiots. A person shifting their feet is nervous, and of course that's not a good sign. A person speaking carefully is being tactful. But it's the same chapter, so the point shall not be belaboured. It's not as if you should count on a person will magically learn of a mistake -however earnestly made!- they made in the middle of a chapter.

Subtle as a sledgehammer. That's how I can describe this chapter to far.

XenaC: ...you know, a lot of other stuff we could read isn't that much better. Word-smithing is hard man. It's hard.

Never said it was. It's more so, if Sasa had less than he did, taken a few key parts away, it'd be much more subtle. But again, gonna get to that soon enough.

While the rest of the world's navies had solidly established their ship girl fleets, to the point where the Italians had already certified that the Mediterranean was Abyssal-free, the United States was lagging behind. It wasn't surprising that this was the case; a quarter million casualties, the destruction of the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and two of their largest installations fleet bases wasn't something that the Navy could recover from quickly.

It was so bad that most of the Navy's operations for the last nine months were centered on trying to assess just how much they had lost and tallying the death toll. Reconstruction efforts had only just begun. Going from the most powerful blue water navy to what they were now was traumatizing to everyone wearing Yvonne's uniform.

Most, even those who had been formerly critical of the US Navy's power, understood. It had been the US Navy that had held the line while everyone else struggled to find a solution. After all they had been through, after all their blood, sweat and tears, the US Navy deserved some slack.

Unfortunately, there were always detractors who wanted to know why the exhausted remnants of the once proud United States Navy weren't doing more by throwing themselves back into the fray.

Most of these detractors were politicians, civilian commentators… and ironically enough, many ship girls of foreign powers, who couldn't appreciate what the conventional forces had suffered holding out against the Abyssal threat.

Oh fuck the exposition is back. These would be fine enough on their own, but this is the third in one chapter. And we're still only half done.

XenaC: Even the conversation is being tinted by the exposition bug. Good word…

XenaC:...and actually this is where I suggest we take an actual break. We've been at this a while, and I feel like it's only a matter of time before we devolve into same-old-bullshit without picking out what's actually done nicely and what's not. I'd rather put this off for another time than push on and let us actually devolve into bullshit ourselves.

Okay, Next time. GG Chapter one, Part one, Part two.

Oh god this is gonna take another three months isn't it?

XenaC: Eternity? =P

Whiskey: Some further commentary: in the original first ever draft of this story, the chapter would have ended with fairies trying to comfort Yvonne and cheer her up, and make it clear she was Enterprise. Then on SB it was suggested to try and conceal things from the reader, and so Sasahara rolled with that and generally it was favorably received (except for a few people who were and remain salty over hidden Enterprise). In hindsight, I probably should have gone over the earlier bits of Chapter 1 and made things more subtle, but back then, as I said, I was a lot more hands off, limiting myself to dialogue, voice and general research, while letting SB's spoiler thread be the sounding board. Ever since November 2015, I keep thinking that was one of my biggest mistakes with this story. :/

sebsmith · Sep 10, 2016

De3ta said:
MY GOD, HE ACTUALLY DID IT. HE MADE IT SO CONVENTIONALLY FORCES AREN'T USELESS GARBAGE AGAINST ABYSSALS!

I mean, I don't know how well he'll actually portray that, but god damn it's nice to see it was intended!

Whiskey: Thanks. Conventionals being useless is a trope I myself don't like.

Maybe it's just what I've read, and I'll admit that it wasn't so settled when this was written, but nowadays this seems ubiquitous. Are there any good stories where this isn't the case?

To clarify, I generally find stories can be split into three categories in regards to this:

Conventional forces are completely meaningless. These stories generally focus much more on the spiritual side of ship-girls. The examples that come to mind are this and this.
Conventional forces are useful for exploding to show how high the stakes are, but don't meaningfully contribute to combat. I'll agree that this is usually a strike against a story. Pacific is the only fan-work which comes to mind while I'm writing this that's decent and fits here.
Conventional forces are useful. GG, Belated Battleships, Kant-o-celle quest, and so on all qualify. Often have some form of leveling effect.

If you have other examples of 1, I'd be interested.

XenaC · Sep 10, 2016

Most likely, none that I personally would find easy to acknowledge, for the simple reason that this takes large chunks out of two levels of story complexity:

1. Aforementioned combined arms.
2. Meaningful interactions between the common soldiery and shipgirls on and off the field.

You could still have them, but that would necessitate the coloration of those actions by the sense of purposelessness that many soldiers would most certainly feel for their impotency and/or knowledge of logistical workarounds and contingencies (not to mention the very high possibility of 2 occurring due to lazy writing and thus the issue not coming up in any decent form at all if it does.) I'm not sure a lot of people have steeled themselves to write that yet hold themselves back from going into...pretty bad territory.

Without being too inflammatory suffice it to say that words could be had about the examples posted, but that is neither here nor there.

TranscientLurker · Sep 10, 2016

...dammit, I really have to start working on that rewrite.

Whiskey Golf · Sep 10, 2016

I have more comments but they should wait untimthis chaptermis finished lol

De3ta · Nov 25, 2016

De3ta said:
Oh god this is gonna take another three months isn't it?
/

TWO AND SOME CHANGE IS CLOSE ENOUGH.

CompassJimbo · Nov 25, 2016

Next round is on the way. Hopefully we can get this done today and I can get back to preparing for new boats in WoWS (TORPEDO CUT-IN GODDESS).

De3ta · Nov 25, 2016

Happy Leif Erikson day!

(Note: Leif Erikson day is actually october 6th.)

Oh I know I'm probably typing, i'm just stealing a joke from Spongebob.

Leif Erikson Day is an annual American observance which occurs on October 9. It honors Leif Erikson (Icelandic: Leifur Eiríksson, Old Norse: Leifr Eiríksson, Norwegian: Leiv Eiriksson), the Norse explorer who led the first Europeans thought to have set foot in continental North America

That basically.

Lel.

Jimbo: Top kek.

Remember to put your names before you posts so I can tell who the hell you are. I get to not do that because as host (and walking typo factory) I'm harder to miss.

Speaking off, Roll call to who's here!

Sheo: Clustered Cloud Admiral here. The Muras are at home while I work

XenaC: Newface of newfaces! Xena here, and I'm definitely still working on a Chapter 2 while we talk. Definitely.

And Jimmy Jam is here, woot. Let's pick up where we left offf last time.

------------------------------------------------------------------

While the rest of the world's navies had solidly established their ship girl fleets, to the point where the Italians had already certified that the Mediterranean was Abyssal-free, the United States was lagging behind. It wasn't surprising that this was the case; a quarter million casualties, the destruction of the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and two of their largest installations fleet bases wasn't something that the Navy could recover from quickly.

It was so bad that most of the Navy's operations for the last nine months were centered on trying to assess just how much they had lost and tallying the death toll. Reconstruction efforts had only just begun. Going from the most powerful blue water navy to what they were now was traumatizing to everyone wearing Yvonne's uniform.

Most, even those who had been formerly critical of the US Navy's power, understood. It had been the US Navy that had held the line while everyone else struggled to find a solution. After all they had been through, after all their blood, sweat and tears, the US Navy deserved some slack.

Unfortunately, there were always detractors who wanted to know why the exhausted remnants of the once proud United States Navy weren't doing more by throwing themselves back into the fray.

Most of these detractors were politicians, civilian commentators… and ironically enough, many ship girls of foreign powers, who couldn't appreciate what the conventional forces had suffered holding out against the Abyssal threat.

We left off at the third exposition dumping in chapter one alone.

XenaC: This leaves me wondering a little. Where are our Scorseses? Our Capras, our Lanzmanns? The simple solution to this is probably broadcasting memorial services and showing them, you know, the probable thousands of photos taken by ABC, CNN and the like.

Jimbo: I blame the Millennial attitude or whatever…

XenaC: I'm afraid 250 000 losses is too spectacular for a Millennial attitude to take hold. Much less 250 000 losses at the very heart of the global zeitgeist and academic framework from which we derive much of our thinking on what we call the Millennial attitude.

Jimbo: Point.

XenaC: I was expecting post-Nam but worse.

Sheo: I've forgotten just how seriously traumatized and crippled the USN was by the Abyssal War. And while the rest of GG humankind is nowhere near the level of Muv-Luv humanity, quite a few of them are still prone to kicking other people when they're down. Or at least snidely chiding them.

ALSO

"

Oh god this is gonna take another three months isn't it?"

THIS WAS SEPTEMBER 20th AND NOW IT'S NOVEMBER 25.

So we're a month early! *Pops champagne*

Jimbo: Here's to maintaining a good-ish schedule!

XenaC: For a certain definition of good, but sure.

Sheo: Hurrah!

R32: Waiting for CT scan right now so I dropped in.

XenaC: Hope that goes well for you.

Let's see what we got to last time….Tenryuu and Chunni, Me disliking the Kongou foreshadowing that's as subtle as a shotgun, some other third thing….

Jimbo: I think it was the generic Admiral? Or someone being an asshole for no reason? (Just wait until we get to Shimada)

XenaC: As I recall it the major faults were…One: we've spoiled a few big secrets of the plot 500 words in. Two: how are these minor characters more interesting than the main character. Three: How is this exposition slowly creeping into the plot?

Jimbo: On two: Because they've already been established as popular, anyway?

XenaC: Our comments in specific were about Yvonne's Driver and Matsuda. In fact this brings us to Four: The ill-omened beginnings of flanderized portrayals of canon girls. Case in point that links to three: Nagato is such a secretary ship she becomes the exposition for a good few thousand words. It's so bad Yvonne has to partly shatter the fourth wall and call her a square.

I know *where* We left off I just can't fucking find it.

Sheo: Let's go Google it.

"

"MY NAME IS KONGOU, NAME SHIP OF THE KONGOU CLASS. I COME FROM ENG-LAND. WHAT IS YO-UR NAME? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEA?"

"

Obnoxious Kongou is Obnoxious.

Another issue we had is Yvone's personality being very scattershot, at least I brought it up.

Jimbo: Why am I thinking she sounds like a Dalek? Oh good Christ, Dalek!Kongou...

Fuck it let's just start here.

"Yes Admiral, I see. Thank you. I'll do my best. Goodbye."

Given that she hadn't brought much in the way of personal effects with her, it didn't take Yvonne very long to unpack her effects and arrange the small room to her liking. After that, she'd slipped away to the former US section of the base.

Effectively abandoned by both the US and Japan, this gave her a bit more privacy to freely use some special ONI equipment she'd brought along… like the encrypted satellite phone she'd used to call Admiral Briggs and let him know that she was alright. It wasn't strictly necessary, since she'd already left a message with his secretary shortly before seeing the Japanese Admiral, but given how much he'd helped her out, she thought he'd appreciate the call.

As it turned out, he did.

"I can't believe he waited until 1 in the morning for me." She'd forgotten the time difference between Yokosuka and Washington D.C. and had been slightly embarrassed to discover that, especially when Briggs revealed that he had stayed up with worry just waiting for her to check in.

A four star admiral, worrying about lil' ol' her.

How embarrassing.

Well, she had one more call to make, and if her calculations weren't off it shouldn't be that late over in Seattle. Punching the number into the phone, Yvonne patiently waited for the operator to pick up.

"Naval Station Everett-"

"Naval Station Everett? This is Commander Swanson for Advanced Naval Weapons Research and Development. I wish to speak with Lieutenant Dakota Leigh Gatch."

"Oh, E-um, Commander Swanson! She's been waiting for your call all night. I'll put you through to them right away!"

Jimbo: Not-so-subtle hint regarding Yvonne's identity is not-so-subtle. *DING!*

Sheo: When I first read GG, I had no idea who Leigh Gatch was, though the 'Dakota' part was obviously a giveaway. Curiosity made me look it up. That proved to be quite interesting.

XenaC: It had me looking things up straight away. But aside from that I think it's not very well hidden clue if it only takes...like, less than One-Step Authentication to get from that to the truth. In an in-universe way, actually - how has anyone with at least decent Google-fu not at least found this a funny name to have? TL;DR you need a certain level of subtlety to maintain plausible secrecy, and this is not that level. ANTI-FUN INTENSIFIES.

The THIS IS BOAT Signals are never subtle, no.

it didn't take very long for the operator to transfer Yvonne's call to the newest and most secretive division. When the line next picked up it was the familiar voice of one of Yvonne's oldest friends.

"Calling over an unsecured line? You make for a lousy spook, Swanson."

"Oh put a sock in it, Dakota," Yvonne chuckled, just picturing her bookish friend on the other end of the line. Knowing Lieutenant Dakota Leigh Gatch, she was probably multitasking at the moment, likely reading a book or watching the news while talking over the phone, all at the same time.

"So did I win the bet?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah you did," Yvonne sighed as she ran a hand across her forehead, "I kid you not; they got me in the room right next to Yamato. So yes, I sure as hell wish I hadn't been so stubborn and let you come along. I could use you as a meat shield right about now."

There was a slight pause.

"…okay, now I'm thankful I didn't. Being in so close proximity to those eighteen inchers? I'd need a clean change of pants. Sucks to be you, my friend."

As it was in the first part: I don't get the whole uncomfortable with battleships thing. Well I get it, it just takes any foreshadowing and shoots it in the head.

Jimbo: And so begins a legendary and slightly annoying ship.

Sheo: *attempts to hide from Jimbo due to guilt over shipping Yamaprise*

Jimbo: We'll always have Skytoga.

Sheo: ...Can't argue with that.

XenaC: Yamaprise was a good ship, come on. Wait, how am I on the defending side now?

"I haven't met her yet, though, but I sure as hell am not looking forward to the experience," Yvonne grumbled, "You called it. I bit off more than I could chew by coming to Japan on my own."

If Yvonne's reactions to Nagato or Kongou were anything to go by, she was probably going to faint dead away at meeting the most powerful battleship ever built. Her friends, the people Yvonne normally leaned on for support, were an ocean away.

Without them, she felt exposed, vulnerable, especially now that she was a stranger in a strange land, surrounded by unfamiliar people.

But then again, maybe they'd be in the same boat: all of them fainting dead away one after another like a bunch of falling dominoes.

Freaking Yamato.

Yeah, actually, that's probably what would happen. So much for the US Navy's best and brightest.

ENT-ER-PRISE, ENT-ER-PRISE, THIS-IS EN-TER-PRISE.

Were we holding off on bringing that up until later? I've forgotten.

Jimbo: Be-cause I am a stran-ger who has found an a stran-ger war~

Sheo: Heh, I always liked that phrase. 'Stranger in a strange land'.

Jimbo: Metal Gear Rising references are always appropriate.

Sheo: Actually that was the title of a Heinlein book.

XenaC: Hail Grok!

The term always made me think of Lawrence of Arabia for some odd reason.

XenaC: I find the second paragraph questionably written. 'If Yvonne's reactions to Nagato or Kongou were anything to go by, she was probably going to faint dead away at meeting the most powerful battleship ever built.' This sounds like something written in Third Person Omniscient all of a sudden, and the paragraph would simply be better without it.

Sorry, found that Corgi video from last time and I zoned out again.

"So what's happening back over there? Anything to report?" Yvonne asked as she filed away that amusing thought for another day.

"You know the story. Same shit, different day. Politicians spinning their wheels, Navy planners going apeshit over the amount of things needing to be done and not enough stuff to actually do it… the works," Dakota complained gruffly.

"I thought you guys were working with DARPA?"

"Please. We have the toys, but can't play with them. Do you have any idea how boring that is?" Dakota sighed "The whole budget's been going into reactivating that old carrier they dug up."

"They greenlighted recommissioning the Kitty Hawk?"

Yvonne ran her free hand down the side of her face. The USS Kitty Hawk had been decommissioned for years and had been languishing as a museum in Pensacola, Florida. However, with the loss of nearly all their aircraft carriers, Yvonne had been aware that there had been a movement in the Navy to find, overhaul and recommission any still seaworthy ship to replace their losses… even ones as old as Kitty Hawk. She'd personally thought those guys were out of their minds, especially since the Navy should have been using their limited resources elsewhere, but apparently some guys on high really couldn't picture a US Navy without aircraft carriers.

*Pulls at nonexistent suspenders*

Now I may just be a simple country reader, but even I can tell you that sounds fucking loony.

Jimbo: The "Shitty Kitty". I don't think she'd last terribly long, whether it be at port or in battle.

XenaC: I think this comes back to our 'wow thank goodness the Abyssals are just waffling about after scoring this massive victory' analysis in the previous part.

Sheo: Now that I think of it, I'm sort of surprised the Abyssals didn't hit as many of the coastal cities as they could. Humankind got a very lucky and timely breather.

XenaC: Exactly our point. I think even Whiskey admitted it was an odd idea. Actually, now I'm interested to see the movie about how people desperately try to summon shipgirls before the Abyssals can wreck our last Shatterdomes.

Jimbo: That trend has shifted, of course. Whenever the current imaginings of the Abyssals attack, they go for coastal cities and even try for decapitation strikes (In Sky's case for the latter).

XenaC: You can say that ship...has sailed.

I mean Jesus what's next, Texas and Iowa? Enterprise again? Fucking Connie?

Sheo: No bully USS Constitution, De3ta.

Sorry Mama….

Jimbo: Remember, Konnie is looking at you with disappointed eyes. Alongside the numerous friends she made in the USN and elsewhere.

Sheo: And aiming all their guns as well.

XenaC: ...if we're done crossing dimensions of thought into the Twilight Zone...

"Oh, yeah. Sandy is over there helping out. Said something about not trusting anyone else with proper anti air, whatever that means, and then off she went. I don't think it was everything she expected though."

"She's not the only one. This wasn't what I expected to be doing when I got out of training." Yvonne grumbled.

"I don't think any of us expected this when we got out of training," Dakota laughed, . "Well at least you're doing something. I spend most of my day brainstorming new ideas and staring at blueprints that we can't actually build. Navy Intelligence gets to do all the awesome shit, Sandy's working with that carrier, and I don't think O'Bannon's had a day off since she started with the Seabees."

Yvonne couldn't help but roll her eyes at Dakota's misconceptions about the Office of Naval Intelligence. The master of multitasking had clearly been watching too many tv shows and had gotten the wrong idea about what ONI actually did. "Any word on Tresh?"

"Probably gone off to work with getting the submarine fleet back up and running, but you know her. She's not exactly the social type," Dakota said jokingly. However what she said next took on a very different tone. "Hey, Yvonne. Are you sure you're over there alone? It's just you over there along with every Japanese ship in the war. You could always come back, you know?"

Yvonne stayed silent for a while as she contemplated how to reply. Dakota had disagreed with her rather vehemently over Yvonne's instance on going to Japan. She was alone, surrounded by ship girls and no friends in sight.

"I wouldn't have come halfway around the world if I wasn't serious, Dakota," Yvonne replied with a sigh. "I can't just sit around anymore and hope things get better. At least this way, I can be useful. I can do something worthwhile."

"Stubborn as a bull, as always," Dakota sighed. "Well, if that's the way you want to play it, go right ahead… but for god's sake, you call me if shit hits the fan, alright? The whole gang will be over there before you know it to bail your sorry ass out."

"Yeah, I got that. Thanks, mom."

XenaC: Carriers at the center, folks.

I remember the part we gotta keep quiet about, the BLANK are BLANK thing isn't in the story proper so we're holding off on that.

Sheo: At this point the Halo franchise had not yet utterly ruined everyone's high appraisal of any iteration of ONI, given how Dakota still thinks they're like the CIA in a Tom Clancy techno thriller.

Jimbo: That was the fault of Karen Traviss. Such a Travissty.

Oh god don't get me started on Traviss.

XenaC: Choo Choo, brakes on the hate train! I don't think this passage is awful by any means. It's awful by association however since I believe the conceit of this fic was initially to hide who was and wasn't a ship. Not to jam "you should go research this and then you'll see how smart I was, tee hee hee" in your face.

The ONI thing didn't even make me bat an eye myself.

XenaC: Speaking of 'tee hee hee'. Let's all laugh at an industry, that never learns anything - tee hee hee.

Heheheheheheh.

With the only remaining obligations she had for the day done, Yvonne had just focused on getting readjusted to her new surroundings, the time difference between Yokosuka and Seattle was quite significant, and by late-afternoon when she finally returned back to the Japanese ship girl portion of the base, Yvonne was feeling very drowsy.

Still, the best advice she had been given about jetlag was to stay hydrated, keep herself active and adjust to her new schedule, so Yvonne did the only thing that came to mind – go for a drink.

For off-duty personnel at Yokosuka, Houshou's café was the place to be.

Owned and operated by a retired 'decommissioned' ship girl, a true rarity considering how new they were as a whole, the café catered almost exclusively to the Kanmusu of Yokosuka and what few support personnel they had on the base proper.

Nevertheless, its fame reached the ears of jealous USAF and USN personnel who had their access restricted from going anywhere near it, given how touchy the Japanese were about their ship girls, something that the American brass had apparently agreed with. If access to the base wasn't so heavily restricted, the place would probably be the next big tourist hotspot.

Okay this is weird. A lot of this is weird.

First off: The fuck does a 'decommissioned ship girl' mean? I can guess, but joey layman of the KC fandom wouldn't. Is she like not a shipgirl anymore? Is She Retired ?

Jimbo: She got scrapped and now lives life as a civilian, mortal and more-or-less normal.

XenaC: I'm like, weren't we pressed for soldiers again? Or did we start to forget that we are up against foes more numerous than you know...that last opponent the girls had? And remember how that one turned out with the numbers we had at that time? Very well, right? Totally did not end in devastation. Not at all.

Sheo: I always wondered why Houshou had to be decommissioned. Sure, she's sorely outdated, but at this point every ship girl counts towards fighting the Abyssals. Hell, historically the IJN kept her running as a training ship until the end of the war, though she stayed in the Seto Inland Sea towards the end. She could still do ASW work like an escort carrier, which she technically was by that time.

XenaC: Exactly. The IJN had more sense than to waste tonnage that could still be used for something. Not that the Seto Inland Sea was closed waters or anything either. I don't see why the JMSDF wouldn't have the same iota of brains.

See: Even for a dinky little ship like Houshou that doesn't make sense. I mean they kept fucking Tenryuu around.

Also why can't US personnel go there? Why are they so touchy about someone who isn't even a shipgirl anymore?

Jimbo: Because… "Muh national pride"?

Sheo: YAMATO DAMA- *is shot*

XenaC: Well, wouldn't it be more Yamato Damashii to keep her instead? We'd have women rioting in the streets for sure if she was made to retire - I can already see it. Without getting into too many specifics, keeping her just makes more stance from any standpoint, especially because shipgirls aren't exactly upgraded the same way ironclads were.

Makes about as much sense as anything else.

Given that Yvonne was apparently one of the few US Navy officers to whom the restrictions didn't apply to, she decided that, on behalf of the service, it was her sworn duty to go where no American had gone before and see what the fuss was about.

And so it was that Yvonne Swanson walked through the doors of the café. It was a modest establishment that couldn't play host to more than a dozen patrons, but its small size created a simple air of homeliness that Yvonnne found pleasant. The time of the day Yvonne had chosen to visit also meant the place was more or less empty.

Behind a kitchen counter was the owner herself, Houshou, the ship sometimes referred to as the 'mother of all aircraft carriers'.

"Oh! You must be the American that I heard would be coming!" Houshou, a matronly woman in a

pink kimono, turned from where she had been washing some dishes to give Yvonne a warm smile.

"Please take a seat, I'll be right with you."

"Don't mind if I do," Yvonne said, as she chose one at the counter. "With how famous this place is,

I thought there would be more people here."

You just went off on how access here was restricted, the fuck are you on about?

Sheo: Maybe the implication was that Houshou was given the head's up that Yvonne was coming and should be allowed there? But yeah, even that is thin...

No, I mean: Why is she mentioning the lack of patrons when she knows access is restricted.

XenaC: And this "her sworn duty to go where no American had gone before". Ahahaha. Yes. Very subtle. These are not the shipgirls we are looking for. We have been under a rock while science fiction and pop culture moved these last 50 years. And that is why we are here on SB and SV forums, Rip Van Winkles all, to be educated out of our imbecility. This is probably not intentional malice on the author's part, but there comes a time when the disrespect-to-reader-intelligence quotient gets a bit high, and for me this time is now.

Yvonne becomes a Harem Protagonist.

Sheo: Please no, and I say this as the shipping magnate of SB whose instinct is to ship ships...

Jimbo: Well, a carrier needs escorts… shit.

Do remember I started Shipping @TheJmpr and @OldIron on discord *because I felt like it*. You've got *nothing* on my mental disease known as crackshipping.

XenaC: That's actually amazing.

Sheo: Is that a challenge? Fite me, De3ta! I'll ship… XenaC and SAR-21-chan!

XenaC: ...that escalated quickly.

XenaC and Whiskey Golf! Sheo Darren and IcyWinter! Whiskey and-Oh jesus fuck The Phantom Menace is on TV someone help.

AWACS Sky Eye and- *is hit by a Tomahawk missile*

Murakumo (Zumwalt): "Get back to work, you idiots!"

I'm sorry I'm too busy watching Star Wars.

ANYWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

"You probably don't know this, but the Admiral suddenly called for a large meeting that all Kanmusu and support personnel had to attend." Houshou finished cleaning the dishes and dried her hands on a nearby towel. "He probably heard about you getting accosted by Kongou and decided that they needed another prep talk."

"Wait, what? I thought I told Nagato-"

"Don't worry. The Admiral found out about it from Kongou herself. I know you tried covering for her, but that child is honest as they come," Houshou laughed in the same way a proud mother would when recounting the mischief of her children to a friend, "Don't worry, she won't get angry. I think she was actually worried that she offended you or something and went to the Admiral for help."

Yvonne shook her head in disbelief. Fast battleship Kongou, one of the most famous warships of World War 2… it boggled the mind that the girl had ended up becoming such a klutz.

A loveable klutz, but a klutz nonetheless.

DESS!

Sheo: Loveable, indeed.

XenaC: I'm not sure this is the textbook definition of a klutz. But I don't employ physical comedy in my writing a ton, so I might not be the best consultant for this.

"It is so rare to get new patrons. May I know the name of the person I am speaking to?" Houshou

produced a menu for Yvonne, who graciously accepted it.

"Commander Yvonne Swanson. United States Navy Office of Naval Intelligence," Yvonne introduced herself politely.

"I see. I am pleased to meet you, Commander," Houshou bowed politely from behind the counter.

"My name is Houshou, light aircraft carrier and proprietor of this café. Retired, of course."

"If you don't mind me asking, what's the story behind that?"

Oh hey we do learn this!

Also *It's still fucking Chapter one guys*.

XenaC: I'm waiting to be impressed.

I'm waiting for the opposite.

Sheo: I'm waiting in line to order food from Mama Houshou. Please hurry up, Yvonne, I'm hungry as it is.

Xena: Next part! Away with this preamble!

Kanmusu were very new, having been only having actually been fighting for the past year or so due to training requirements, so coming across one that was retired was a surprise indeed. Houshou was also a carrier, a rare and expensive commodity, even despite her outdated technology compared to other Kanmusu. Her having retired to what was more or less civilian life was a puzzle that Yvonne couldn't pass up.

"Well, I was the first aircraft carrier Kanmusu," Houshou explained with a nostalgic smile. "While officially we Kanmusu did not actively begin operations against the Abyssals until a year ago, the JMSDF had actually started using small groups of us in limited numbers well before that.

"Really? That's news to me." Yvonne said with some surprise.

The public reveal of the Kanmusu by Japan was only about a year ago, and it had taken the world by storm. The remnants of the US fleet had been fleeing the burning inferno Pearl Harbour, their battered hulls packed full of refugees from Honolulu. With escape to the mainland United States deemed too dangerous, given that they had learned Norfolk had been attacked at around the same time, they had instead chosen to make best speed for an allied port in the Philippines, thinking it the safer option. It had been the wrong decision.

They had come under attack from Abyssals halfway there. Exhausted, demoralized and low on supplies and munitions, there wasn't a thing the convoy could do but look out at the approaching storm and wait for death. Then, just as things had seemed hopeless, their miraculous saviours had appeared - war goddesses riding the waves, slaying those demonic monsters and saving the lives of every man, woman and child in the flotilla.

Safe to say, it was generally agreed by the world's populace that ship girls were pretty hard to miss.

"Unfortunately most of what we did were sea trials and tests. We were new weapons and people were still trying to get an idea on how to use us, so there wasn't much we could do," Houshou admitted sadly. "Back then, there were just ten of us separated into two battlegroups: plenty of younger girls were in training, but only ten of us were actually seaworthy at the time."

"I see."

"I really wanted to help you know," she sighed forlornly a shadow of guilt cast over her features falling into memory, "It was tough waking up every morning to hear news reports of how your people were fighting and dying while being unable to do anything because we just weren't ready. When I heard about the Battle of the Bering-"

"Coffee."

"Excuse me?" Houshou blinked as she looked at Yvonne, who was now pointing at an item on the menu. "I'd like some coffee. Black. Strong as you can make it."

"Oh. Oh! I'll get right on it, Miss Swanson!"

Houshou quickly gathered herself and went about satisfying Yvonne's orders, not noting the understanding look of pity Yvonne was giving her as she did so.

Linebreak!

XenaC: Still waiting for my explanation.

Jimbo: Isn't Inazuma supposed to be the coffee fairy?

Sheo: How rude, she interrupted Mama Houshou...

"…so after that, with Akagi and Kaga ready for battle and with my injuries making it difficult to hold a bow, it was decided that that I should retire. Maintaining an obsolete carrier when resources are so thin isn't cheap. So after I was decommissioned and had my equipment scrapped, the Admiral was kind enough to offer me this building so I could say close to my girls and support them as best I could out of respect for my years of service. So, now here I am, proprietor of this café."

HE DIDN'T EVEN TELL IT. *Flips table*

XenaC: Reborn, and still aching from your wounds?! What is this rebirth you speak of? Paging upstairs, we need a fix on the reincarnation machine! Also inconsistent to boot. Then shouldn't Pringles and Nagato literally be burning with tainted love and the intensity of a man-made sun?

Jimbo: GG no re, Sasahara. Also, isn't this the reason repair baths are a thing?

You know if he wrote Sara like this she probably would be glowing, yeah.

Sheo: I wonder if he got the idea of Houshou getting permanently crippled and forced to retire from Mothers Are Strong, that doujin by Shino. *Googles* It got uploaded to Danbooru on March 2015...

Jimbo: Oh god, Sky would tear apart Sasa for that.

R32: sheo can you pm me link to that doujin on discord?

Sheo: Sure, Hash.

XenaC: ...what are we, a doujin sharing circle now? XD

Houshou finished her tale just as Yvonne had finished her cup of coffee.

"That's quite an adventure you've had, Houshou. I had no idea that there had been so much fighting before you went public."

"Well, as I said, it was mostly small skirmishes as field tests. Nothing quite like the battles that are happening these days. We only picked fights we knew were in our favour and left most of the heavy lifting to the regulars," Houshou replied modestly.

To be honest Yvonne felt Houshou was selling herself short: the matronly woman before her was a pioneer that paved the way for every other ship girl that came after her. Maybe she was right in that she only fought in battles stacked in her favour, but she had also been doing so using untested equipment and tactics. In Yvonne's opinion, going into battle with that kind of the risk involved made Houshou even more courageous than many of the still serving girls.

"How did you manage to fly under the radar for so long anyway?" Yvonne asked with great interest. "You said you worked with researchers for years before announcing your existence. How'd you manage to blend with normal humans in so well?"

"Do we ship girls really stand out that much?" Houshou said.

"Well, from the few I've met so far, let's just say they stand out in a crowd. No offence, but you're the first one that I've met so far that could pass for a normal person."

Yvonne couldn't help wonder how Houshou had managed to remain secret for so long, especially after meeting Tenryuu, Nagato and Kongou. Every single one of those girls dressed flamboyantly and carried personalities to match. More than that, just being around them caused Yvonne to feel like there was an incredible weight to their very presence.

All this was missing from Houshou, who by all appearances seemed to be a normal woman. If Yvonne hadn't already known who Houshou was, she'd likely have just pegged the café owner as

'that nice lady who runs that shop' and left it at that. What was her secret?

"Well, the younger generation certainly like being as flamboyant as they can be!" Houshou giggled in that matronly way again. "Well to be honest, it's simple really. Take away the uniform, our rigging and equipment, and we're just ordinary human beings that just so happen to have the souls of warships in our bodies. Unless we're deliberately trying to make our presence felt as warships, it's quite easy to blend in if you don't try anything to outrageous."

SUBTLE SASA, SUUUUUUUUUUUBTLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE.

Jimbo: Well, remove the Rigging and the Myoko sisters would blend in well. Their outfits could be passed off as business suits or something. Though Nachi may need a haircut.

XenaC: To be fair, Yvonne hasn't met them. And again, when I'm not shitting on this thing I'm defending it with all my might. It must be the manifestation of my polarized feelings towards this as my very first Kancolle...anything, ever. But yes, he's not making his love of the momboat very subtle… and yet the best use of the momboat is a universe-ignoring housewife role. Paging Judith Butler, someone's missed their memo.

Jimbo: So I guess we found Sasa's Shipfu?

Sheo: He has good taste, but his potential daughters-in-law may protest XD

NoNo, I refer to:

"Well, the younger generation certainly like being as flamboyant as they can be!" Houshou giggled in that matronly way again. "Well to be honest, it's simple really. Take away the uniform, our rigging and equipment, and we're just ordinary human beings that just so happen to have the souls of warships in our bodies. Unless we're deliberately trying to make our presence felt as warships, it's quite easy to blend in if you don't try anything to outrageous."

Because Yvvone is a shipgirl, did you know? Did you know Yvonne is a shipgirl? Did you know she's a shipgirl with hang-ups about Pearl did you know DID YOU KNOW XENA. THAT SHE IS A BOAT.

XenaC: Calm down. The Japanese (or English, for that matter) term 'we' doesn't mean anything here. It can be taken to mean 'we shipgirls' - excluding Yvonne. 'You' is used similarly as a singular term that addresses a group instead - also with the possibility of excluding Yvonne.

Sorry..

That's also not what I mean. COmbine that line wth all the not subtle leaning that Yvvone is a shipgirl *in one fucking chapter* and you are just HAMMERING THAT IN far too hard.

Sheo: ...Must I summon the drunkbote to calm you down?

Jimbo: Drunkboat would be funny.

Sheo: And drunk.

XenaC: I'm just saying that as far as offending sections goes, this isn't too bad. There's only so much we can bang on 'shitty-by-association' as an issue before we start ignoring points of exposition and narrative that were pretty good by themselves, actually.

It's just the fact it keeps building upon itself because this chapter is still not done.

Thankfully we passed the halfway point.

"Really? That's it? I thought there would be more to it," Yvonne said, with some disappointment.

When the Japanese had unveiled their Kanmusu, their secret weapon that they had managed to develop while the US Navy was bust getting pounded, it was entirely to the surprise of the Office of Naval Intelligence: to this day it had been a sore point for them that they hadn't even caught of whiff of what the Japanese had been doing, and that this war winning development had happened entirely without their knowledge… let alone with actual sea trials dating back well before their most conservative estimates!

Granted, ONI had their attention elsewhere at the time, but it still stung.

Maybe it was all in the past, the secret was out so there was no point in fussing over it now that there were more pressing matters to attend to, but many of the surviving members of ONI still felt that it was a blow to their professional pride. As such, Yvonne felt like she had to ask this, for her office's sake at very least.

"There really isn't. I do have some supernatural powers that allow people to feel that I am more than human, but as long as I don't do that well… I'm just little old Houshou that owns a café."

"Really? What about those little people you girls have?" Yvonne tried making an appropriate gesture with her hands. "What do you call them? Fairies? I heard Carriers like bringing lots of them

everywhere they go. That has to be a bit conspicuous, don't you think?"

"Oh my, whatever gave you that idea?" Houshou giggled, "Why, I just left my fairies back at the base whenever I had to leave for outside business so I didn't stand out. Simple as that. Really, if you want any more proof, just look at me now!"

Well, Houshou did have a point there.

"Well darn, many of the boys back home are going to feel really silly when they hear about that. I was so sure you had some hocus pocus card trick up your sleeve," Yvonne grumbled.

"If it helps, the prototype Kanmusu all dressed much more conservatively than they do now." Houshou motioned down at what she was wearing. "I think most of the younger girls dress the way they do as a show of solidarity. At least… I hope so."

"Yeah, some of the stuff they're wearing is kind of… odd." Yvonne sighed.

"I could give you some tips on how to deal with being around the active duty Kanmusu," Houshou offered, "I know it can be a bit overwhelming to a first timer at being around them. We do bear the weight of history on our shoulders, and some people have trouble with dealing with that."

"Nah. Thanks for the offer, but I'm good." Yvonne said. Despite what had happened with her run ins with Tenryuu, Nagato and Kongou earlier, the problem wasn't so much that Yvonne was unused to ship girls. Rather, that Yvonne was alone and next to THOSE ship girls.

Light cruiser and two battleships. Freaking hell, why couldn't she have run into some destroyers or something?

Jimbo: Wait? Prototypes?

I mean the idea that Shipgirls needed a year of training was odd, but acceptable. This however is getting on a bit.

XenaC: Heeerrrrreee we go! I actually forgot this was a thing. Maybe 'prototypes' was the wrong word though, because this never, ever gets brought up again. Probably the 'first batch'.

Sheo: Probably the wrong word. 'Predecessors' might have been a better phrase. I mean, look at CarDivs 1, 2, and 5, then compare with- wait, not the Unryuus, they hadn't been released yet at that time… Um… *browses the KC Wiki for the immodestly-dressed kanmusu* Tone and Chikuma, say. Or, well, Musashi, full stop.

XenaC: That works fine. Although then the question comes back to why-would-you-retire-them-dammit-we-have-baths.

Jimbo: I have no clues, let alone jokes.

XenaC: Whoever beta'd this originally deserves to have a few jokes thrown at them, that's for sure. Some of these are really blatant continuity crises waiting to happen.

Jimbo: Whiskey Did Nothing Wrong

Look we can bully Whiskey for this later, I need to sharpen my whips.

Krieger: BEANBAG SHELLS

XenaC: We probably also need to hold off because Whiskey will go on an epic round of beating himself up first. Which we don't really need. We need cheerful, funny Whiskey. Not sad, bullied Whiskey. I'll hold off on the jokes.

Whiskey needs hugs.

Sheo: And Fubuki and Mashiro.

"I'm very used to having friends with me. It's been that way for a while now," Yvonne informed the matronly woman before her, "They're my safety blanket so to speak. My armourarmor. Without them, well to be perfectly frank, I feel exposed."

"…I'm not sure what to say about that." ," Honshu replied with a look of pity.

Houshou probably drew the conclusion that Yvonne was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and had used being with others as a way to cope. It was a reasonable conclusion; practically everyone in the US Navy with more than two years' experience knew someone who had died, and that had left plenty of people suffering from PTSD from the horrors they had seen.

"If that's the cause, you shouldn't push yourself," Houshou said concernedly. "I can only guess what it must have been like for you, but…"

"Hey, it's fine. MO gave me a clean bill of health before I even left the base," Yvonne said. "But we're so short-handed I felt I was being a burden. They were needed elsewhere, and I figured Yokosuka was a friendly port, so I took this assignment to go cold turkey on my needy ways."

"This is a pretty extreme way of going cold turkey."

"Well, that's what it means. You don't do things in half measures, you know?" The pair shared one final laugh before Yvonne pushed herself off her seat, deposited the payment of yen down on the countertop. "Thanks for the coffee. It was great."

"It was my pleasure. Feel free to come again," Houshou said, but then paused as she considered

something. "Commander Swanson. A question, if I may?

"Go right ahead. I'm not in a particular hurry to get anywhere."

"I know you probably get asked this a lot, but since you're with Naval Intelligence, do you know when the USN will be starting up their ship girl program?"

Upon noticing Yvonne's face darkening with irritation at having being asked that same question again on the same day, Houshou quickly amended her statement.

"I mean, I know the USN is in the process of rebuilding their forces so it might be some time until you will be able to, but I would like to know if there's an estimate you can give me," Houshou asked. "Also, if you can tell me, do you know which ships will the Navy try to bring back first?"

XenaC: Pity is not the right word. Doesn't the word 'sympathy' exist in a dictionary somewhere, or have I been reading dictionaries wrong all my life?

\

TYPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS.

What is this mythical ArmorArmor?

Jimbo: Again, unsubtle hint is unsubtle.

Sheo: Mmm, this is a problem of "Telling, now showing". Like the reader is being explicitly told that Houshou does not suspect anything strange out of her American guest, so the reader should not suspect her either *wink wink nudge*

XenaC: Hence the 'these are not the shipgirls you are looking for' from earlier.

Krieger: The reader did know that the USN shipgirls are not showing up yet, right?

Jimbo: The readers were probably awestruck considering that for many, it was their first exposure to the franchise. As a result, they didn't pick up on the flaws that in hindsight, are now glaring.

XenaC: All well and true. To be honest I still don't know a ton about Kancolle beyond It's a Giant Ship of Shipping Shippers Shipping Shippy Ships. But I'd like to think some of the critiques about failing to live up to narrative conceit still hold precisely because of that ignorance.

Sheo: Being one of those readers, I can relate. Though on repeated re-readings, the flaws do come out from behind the shiny veneer. And that makes me want GG to be all the more better.

Jimbo: There was a reason Sasa mostly stuck to crack ideas before this.

Krieger: Because?

XenaC: Because narrative consistency is something that becomes more salient as your fic grows longer, and crack fics are usually shorter and need to make less sense.

Okay this was slightly different. Houshou was clearly looking for something far more specific now instead of a general ballpark figure. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, as I told you earlier, I personally trained both Akagi and Kaga. I know they've physically not that much younger than I am, but I think of them as my daughters," Houshou explained, motherly concern apparent in her eyes. "They're very brave and I'm very proud of what they're doing, but I can't help but worry about them. They carry such a heavy burden, and I sometimes wish there was someone who can help them shoulder it."

A lump settled in Yvonne's stomach as she listened to Houshou's words. She could see where this was going.

"You are looking for someone," Yvonne surmised, fighting to keep her feelings in check. "You don't just want the US Navy to have ship girls… you want them to have a specific shipgirl."

Krieger: Subtle.

Oh no…

Jimbo: Yep. It's just as bad as you expect.

Sheo: Brace yourselves.

XenaC: I'm going back to writing for a while. Call me when the storm blows over.

"Yes I am," Houshou replied, "Please, Commander. Do you know when the US Navy plans to bring back the Enterprise?"

"You, light carrier Houshou, the one called the 'mother of all aircraft-carriers', are hoping that the USS Enterprise would take to the field as a ship girl," Yvonne stated bluntly, frowning. "Why?"

Houshou nodded and explained herself.

"Among us aircraft carriers, none have won more renown then the Enterprise. Even though we were on opposite sides of the war and even if some would not openly do so out of pride, I can tell you that many of us carriers regard her as the greatest of our number. Maybe there were others later in the war that were larger, more powerful or advanced… but none were braver, determined or more corageous. If she was with Akagi and Kaga, I would feel much better," Houshou said, the quiver in her voice at the fear for her daughters mixed with the reverence she had for the most decorated aircraft carrier, hell, most decorated US Navy warship, to ever exist.

"You speak of her as if she was a hero," Yvonne stated evenly.

"She is. One of the best," Houshou replied with lowered eyes. "I think you would agree that in

times like these, heroes are what we need."

"…I see."

"Do you… know when she will come?"

Jimbo: Bitter irony is bitter. The carrier who burned them alive protecting them and all that.

Sheo: That hype. That massive hype about Enterprise. I could probably trace Yonaga's conception to this moment. Also WOEnterprise. Hell, all of the Enterprises I've written...

Xena come back! I don't even wanna acknowledge this section existing! We can move on!

Krieger: The language will be spoken in hell….

Tav is that you?

Krieger: NO I AM NOT THE CLONE OF ADOLF HITLER

*Sips*

Hitler was white tho.

Sheo: ...So, Krieger is it true that you're the son of Jose Rizal? Because he looks enough like Hitler if you squint, and given the old commentary...

Krieger: Nope! I was born and raised in Brazil. Braz-sistol county. Brazil.

Yvonne couldn't help but hide her clenched fist behind her back, venting her anguish and frustration in private, cursing herself all the while. She looked Houshou in the eye, and told the first lie she truly regretted making that day.

"I'm sorry, Houshou. But I don't."

Yvonne is Enterprise, fuck that's what chapter one part two is gonna be named now.

Krieger: Yaaaayification

WE HAVE MORE THOUGH.

Even though she had spent hours at Houshou's café, it was still light out by the time Yvonne returned to her room. Her previous good mood at having made a friend in the café owner had evaporated, and had been replaced with revulsion and self-loathing. Yvonne practically stormed all the way back from the café into her room, ingoing the few surprised looks from the few she had passed along the way, and securely locked the door behind her as she did so.

Yvonne wasn't really one to vent. She prided herself on her composure and professionalism as befitting of an officer and gentlewoman of the United States Navy.

But thinking back to Houshou's earnest pleading look and having to give that bald faced lie was too much for even her to take. Throwing herself down her bed and seizing her pillow, Yvonne proceeded to let out a muffled scream of rage and frustration into it.

Maybe this might cause a scene.

Maybe this was unbecoming of her.

Yvonne didn't care.

What the fuck was she doing? She was IN Yokosuka Naval Base, practically the front line of the war… and she couldn't give them the help they deserved.

She was surrounded by young women who were actively fighting in that said war, risking their very lives for emperor and country as was their sworn duty. They had asked for help from the US Navy, who once fielded the most powerful armada of ships the world had ever seen… and if history was anything to go by, had the potential to field the most powerful armada of ship girls out of all of humanity's potential defenders. They needed help.

Commander Yvonne Swanson, a mere intelligence officer who had been given her rank because there were so few people who could fill the empty shoes she now wore, couldn't give that.

She wished she could tell them the truth. That the Navy wasn't as bad off as everyone thought it was – the United States had four major branches after all, and while the Navy and Marines had been almost decimated, the Air Force and Army were still going strong. Even with all the re-organisation that was going on, it had been a simple matter to redirect resources from those the healthier services back to the Navy to jump start the crucial Ship Girl program.

The US Navy had been bloodied to be sure, but all their losses hadn't caused them to break. Rather it had steeled their resolve: even after all they had lost, the Navy wanted see the fight through to the end as was their duty.

At least, that was the plan.

The program had been a debacle. Attempts to bring back the spirits of ship girls were unsuccessful. No matter how much the USN tried to follow the tried and tested procedures as dictated by the JDSF, they were confronted with failure after failure.

No matter how much they tried, it seemed that the spirits of the departed United States vessels, from their greatest generation no less, had refused to answer the call to arms.

The German Deutsche Marine had seen the return of the legendary Bismark and nigh unkillable Prinz Eugen. The French Marine Nationale was heroically led into battle by Richelieu and the Georges Leygues. The Italian Marina Militare's Littorio sisters had successfully led a campaign to make the Mediterranean Sea Abyssal-free.

The UK's Royal Navy had been pleasantly surprised when an over-eager HMS Termeraire, the 98

gun second rate ship of the line, had enthusiastically reported for duty, only to discover she was an two centuries out of date in terms of equipment.

And Japan? Well, Yvonne was seeing firsthand just how well Japan's ships had responded.

Around the world, warships of ages past heard their nations' call, and had heeded it dutifully…. except for the ships of United States of America.

Yvonne lay in her bed staring at the ceiling as memories of anger at and frustration played over and over in her mind from witnessing all those repeated failures to produce usable ship girls played over and over in her mind. Houston. Pennsylvania. Arizona. None of them responded to their nation's call.

Not when America, and the girl named Yvonne Swanson, needed them most.

XenaC: ...easiest not-reveal reveal of my life.

I'm sorry the exposition dump, the fourth one, is making my eyes roll so fast the sound barrier is getting fucked.

XenaC: It's actually decently written, I suppose?

Yes but *Four in one chapter*. And some of them in the first part of this LR were preeeetty bad. Fatigue has set in with that in mind. This should have been two Chapters at least.

It's decent, but it's still far too much for one go. Don't forget that for us we read half this thing *two months ago*, so it's hitting us less.

Jimbo: Sasahara loved his exposition.

Sheo: I kind of wonder how Sasa developed that preference. Godoka knows I write long exposition even to this day. I trace it to the books that I read when I started writing, especially if their author likes exposition. Terry Brooks or Tom Clancy, say. So with Sasa I'm curious what started this...

XenaC: I'd say a lot of writers love their exposition. If written well exposition isn't a bad thing. I think the problem is that he's too preoccupied with trying to balance out the bigger secrets he's trying to disguise (or is he) with the worldbuilding. Both come out kind of half-ass.. .and his inability to resist taking pokes at the veil does not help. At all. I mean, I don't think Sheo is alone with loving exposition. I love exposition too.

AN!

Beta Note: Hello, folks. I'm Wild Goose/Whiskey Golf, sasahara17's regular beta and the formerly anonymous beta for The Greatest Generation. You may be reading this and going, "wait, didn't I read this last year?" and "Hey, wasn't this taken down or something?" The answers to those questions are "yes" and "yes". So, I think some explanations are in order.

Essentially, around November 2015, as I was doing beta work on the latest chapters, sasahara17 was going through a pretty rough patch IRL, and that adversely affected the fic and it's creative process. After a number of straws that broke the camel's back, he felt that he could no longer carry on with the story, and so he handed it over to the Committee, and gave us his blessings to carry on the story as we saw fit. We've spent the last several months planning out the story, and we're proceeding on at a good pace - we know our destination now, so what's left is the journey.

So what does this mean for the story? Let me assure you - we're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The main meat of the Greatest Generation remains, albeit with a little more tweaking, a little further polish. We will be making our own story, yes - but it will be a story told from the shoulders of one who's gone ahead of us. (Yes, this means that the Indefatiguable omakes will return. )

Thank you for waiting. Thank you for all your patience. Thank you for reading.

-WG

Hello Whiskey.

Sheo: Oh, Whiskey… This was the start of your suffering, poor soul...

XenaC: Quick note, GG 7 is currently in Beta hell. Because the new betas basically decided to leave like...10 notes per page on a 33-page Google Doc.

Jimbo: 7 is where the flaws start really coming out of the woodwork. It only got worse when Wash… erm… Marshall showed up. Unfortunately there was no Gale to keep her occupied (seriously, JMP handled her way better).

Krieger: Japanese human ships things is surprisingly serious business.

XenaC: I'm still confused as to this person's identity, except that apart from that one fascist psychotic break in the middle somewhere he's the Straighter Man to my Straight-ish Man.

I am looooost as fuck and I think now's a good time to end it for now before we get too far ahead of ourselves.

Sheo: Good job, everyone. Especially you, De. Go hug Drunkbote as your reward.

Jimbo: Back to another long grind. Shiggy… you'll soon be my own Torpedo Cut-in Goddess.

Yaaaaay *hugs*

Whiskey Golf · Nov 25, 2016

I am a monument to all my sins.

Except for typos like armourarmor.

That's what happens when you set Word to track changes, then import the document into FF.net. So something that appeared in word as

~~Armour~~Armor

Would appear in FF.net as

ArmourArmor.

Goddamnit FF.net.

Anyway, the issues with the Enterprise hinting and hype came about because in the 1st draft of this chapter, the chapter ended with the reveal that this was Enterprise, and her fairies were comforting her over her sads. Then somebody suggested on SB "what if you hide Enterprise from the reader?" And Sasa tried that out and most people generally liked it, except for the occasional voice or two that was salty about hidden Enterprise and continued to be salty about hidden Enterprise in the rewrite, and was disappointed I didn't get rid of that. :/ Can't please everyone.

But yes, the sins of betahood can be laid at my door. I was a lot more hands off in terms of story things, limiting myself to proofing and research, since Sasa was using the SB spoiler thread to bounce ideas. Mistakes were made. (That'll be my autobiography. Damnit Whiskey. :/)

Could i have made major changes, sure. But at the time the rewrite was starting, I foolishly thought "eh the story is mostly sound I just need a little touchup here and there, it's okay." By Chapter 6 I am making sounds of inarticulate rage and screaming soundlessly and borrowing my mum's Revlon hair dye because my hair is turning white. >_<

Also I love and hate you beta dudes. Love because of your effort. Hate because dar god what the fuck over arrrrrgggggghhhh.

Also I think I seriously hate GG at this point. (Who am I kidding i crossed thst line months ago. I'm already a demon.)

One's perspective on a work changes a great deal from being a beta to being the author. >_<

De3ta · Dec 24, 2016

PREVIOUSLY, ON GREATEST GENERATION:

**Yvvone:** What the fuck is with all these battleships!

**All these battleships:** YOU SEEM ODDLY FAMILIAR SOMEHOW.

**Yvonne:** WELL GOTTA GO

And some other things happened I guess. Look we seem to only manage to do this on a bimonthly basis and we're just getting to chapter two, and there's still a surprising amount that I've forgotten.

Didn't help I stopped paying attention last time because Star Wars was on TV.

XenaC: I think this more or less sums it up, nonetheless. Where's the rest of the party?

Probably not up yet because it's 5:41 AM. Or because I didn't give them the link. One of the two. Things get a bit crowded (Read: entirely off topic) with the whole crew and I want to actually do a chapter in one sitting, god willing.

XenaC: God willing indeed.

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit work of fiction using characters from the Kantai Collection franchise, developed by Kadokawa Games and published by . Please support the official release.

Additional note 1: Please be advised this work contains allusion to certain contemporary issues, namely war crimes perpetrated by Imperial Japan in World War 2. This work is meant to be for enjoyment, and no offense is meant. Also note that, as a fanfiction, many liberties were taken with Kantai Collection canon for the purposes of this story. That being said, please enjoy.

Additional note 2: Please be advised sections of this chapter were authored by Whiskey Golf from the Spacebattles forum, who kindly allowed me to use his work as part of this fanfic.

XenaC: Well that's amusing. People should generally be prepared for allusions to various major events of the 20th century in anything they read.

But muh waifus tho.

XenaC: Okay, nothing to see here, carry on.

One thing to note, this is the version that Whiskey headed, yet still has the AN saying he wrote part of it like someone else was the main author. Either he just left that in or this was before the committee was purged by Comrade Goose.

While there were many ships that would be remembered by history for their significance, reputation or valor, there were a few that stood tall above all others. Ships with stories that elevated them beyond the mass of steel and oil of their physical forms, to the point where the mere mention of their names would trigger instant recognition. Such was their renown, they left a permanent mark on the nations they served and the nations they opposed.

The German battleship Bismarck might not have been the largest or most powerful battleship fielded in World War 2, but she forever engraved her place in history with the sinking of the battlecruiser HMS Hood and her subsequent last stand against the might of the Royal Navy. Such was her gallantry and courage in the face of certain defeat that her memory would endure in the dreams and imaginations of the British and Germans for generations.

Such was her fame that when she returned to battle as a ship girl of the Deutsche Marine, she became a rallying point for not just her own country, but for all of Europe.

Bismarck wasn't the only ship to leave such a cultural impact on mankind.

The return of these warships was more than just humanity leveling the playing field against the Abyssal fleet. It was a return of living legends… and Yvonne Swanson was well aware that in the Far East, there was one other battleship who rivaled Bismarck's fearsome reputation.

A battleship of such size, speed, and power, she was considered an enduring symbol of Japanese military power even to this day. It was believed that as long as she existed and continued to fight, her country could never fall or surrender… and when she did fall, it was in a blaze of glory that none would ever forget.

That ship was the Japanese Battleship Yamato.

XenaC: I don't recall Ten-Go being quite that much a war headliner, but okay.

I'd never heard of it before I got into general boat stuffs, but I'm also American so our learning is crapshoot.

XenaC: Where's Sara's hubby when you need him? But okay, so this is understandable as a dramatic opener. I think it's just a little bit overblown, i.e. missing the point that maybe only 2-3 generations have gone by since the Second World War, and of these generations I think those who don't share any deep fascination with ships probably take up a more sizable portion of humanity by far than those who do.

Actually sleeping like a sane human being who might actually have to visit far away family on christmas eve. Or just enjoying a break.

I digress.

(Side Note: XenaC with the C and the : makes a smiling face, and that amused me.)

Kantai Collection: The Greatest Generation

Part 2: Pride of the Navy

IT'S THE CIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE-Wait,wait. Wrong kind of Pride.

(I am so ~~not~~ sorry)

Standing before the mirror in her quarters, Yvonne gave herself one last inspection, just to be sure she had everything right. The young woman in the mirror stared back at her, long blonde hair neatly tied in a bun. On the right breast of her khaki blouse, her nametag rested. On her left breast, just the meager three "I'm in the Navy now" ribbons. Last, but not least, her collar devices: the silver oak leaves of a full Commander.

Yvonne sighed. She felt like a little girl playing dress up. The digicam Navy Working Uniform was a lot simpler. Back stateside, the NWUs had become the uniform of the day, as a deliberate reinforcement of the fact that the Navy was at war. Even the Chief of Naval Operations wore NWUs in the Pentagon, only changing to his Service Dress Blues to report to the President or to brief Congress. The Service Khakis, formerly the day to day "office" uniform, had been quietly tucked away (if only for now).

Still, the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force wasn't the United States Navy, and Yvonne had resolved to herself that she'd try and fit in as best as she could with her hosts – she was, afterall, a visitor in their house. That meant service khakis, and all the other assorted uniform regulations that entailed.

Still, she couldn't help but crack a small smile at her mirrored image. There was something special about the khakis – probably because in the American psyche, the classic image of a USN officer at war was wearing service khakis and a leather G-1 aviator's jacket.

It was a little irrational, but Yvonne felt a bit comforted at that though. Any little thing that could help her in her mission, she'd take. Though the jacket was probably pushing it.

She glanced at the jacket hanging in the closet, virtually unchanged from the first leather jackets worn by naval aviators in the Pacific War, collected her things, and settled her khaki combination cap on her head. She slipped on her shoes, and took a deep breath.

Then she exhaled, and Commander Yvonne Swanson, intelligence officer of the United States Navy, set out to execute her mission.

(Note, all the sections including the one directly above have been separated by line breaks, and not by me just copying that bit..)

XenaC: The debut of the Jacket of Destiny!

Normally I'd question the logic in having such a section dedicated to clothing, but it has purpose here. Setting a mood of things. That and it's still early in the chapter so we can afford some expositing.

Whether or not we'll get the same bulk another dozen times over like the first chapter remains to be seen.

"Good morning, Admiral, sir. Commander Swanson, reporting."

"Good morning, Commander. I trust you are well rested and settled in?" The Admiral returned her greeting. At his side was Nagato, waiting dutifully with a clipboard in hand for her Admiral's orders.

"Yes, sir. I wish to begin my investigation as soon as possible," replied Yvonne, remaining at attention.

Yvonne's orders were very peculiar, hence the need for her to come to Yokosuka Naval Base and work with the Japanese ship girls. Had it been a simple matter of analysis from third party reports and other action reports, she would not have needed to come to Japan, let alone Yokosuka. In fact, had her plan not been so specific, she could still have stayed over in the US section of

Yokosuka, or commute from Atsugi.

However, as it stood, Yvonne's ideas required her to work with the Japanese ship girls in a very intimate capacity, and the lack of available personnel to actually carry out the mission meant she, an able and capable volunteer with ideas of her own, had been sent.

"Very well. To begin with, I will be assigning you to work with Destroyer Division 6," the Admiral said, approving of her work ethic. "They are our top expeditionary specialists who have just returned from one of their missions this morning. Their temperaments should help you get a feel as to what working with Kanmusu would be like before you move on to some of our more… 'colourful' personalities."

Well, that was an understatement if Yvonne had ever heard one.

XenaC: Your hopes dashed, right away! Here comes the next exposition dump!

Well….I mean….It's still early! We still have a chance at this being well paced! (Sobbing)

"Yvonne's ideas required her to work with the Japanese ship girls in a very intimate capacity"

Bow chicka bow wow.

XenaC: Woah it's hot in here; must be some GG atmosphere. Okay, more seriously I feel like some of this could have been worked into the conversation. Just a bit of small talk about how her mission is unusual and all would have broken this chunk up quite nicely. I feel like this would be quite the break from the Admiral and Nagato's everyday duties (even overseeing ops). The earlier chunk had the 'first part and Yvonne is alone' going in its favor. This bit doesn't.

It's inelegant and expository, but it's also not too far in. It's bad but not bad enough to collapse in on itself into a horrific void of chugging along while telling us every little world detail in the most direct way possible.

It could be much worse, so for now I'll give it a passable rating. If it stays like this for the rest of the chapter however…..

XenaC: I guess?

Wait when the hell did I become good cop!? Ugh is this how morning people feel? I hate it! Let me go back to being a grumpy arsehole!

XenaC: Well some switch play is good from time to time. Maybe when someone else shows up we can go back to what we normally do.

"I understand, sir," Yvonne agreed, maintaining her poker face.

"I also believe you are familiar with Lieutenant Matsuda. He can help you in your endeavours," the Admiral added. "Additionally, as you are the highest ranking non-JMSDF officer on the base, and to assist you in your mission, we have also assigned a Kanmusu as your aide. She will act as both your personal liaison with us, as well as your assistant. Please use her as you see fit."

The wisdom behind this measure was easily apparent. While having a normal human adjutant would be certainly serviceable for Yvonne's purposes, having a ship girl be her assistant had many useful benefits. Given that Yvonne would be interacting with the local Kanmusu a great deal, it was only natural that a Kanmusu aide would act as her go between.

There was also the fact that her 'assistant' would be able to monitor Yvonne's movements and report back any findings, but it was something that Yvonne had expected. If the situations were reversed, if she had American ship girls of her own to spare, she'd do the same thing.

She might be a guest, and goodwill to the US Navy was at its highest as it had been in years, but at the end of the day she was still an outsider, an outsider who was also an intelligence spook no less, poking around in places where she might not be wanted.

"Be aware we have selected one of our Kanmusu who is mostly idle due to resource constraints rather than one of our frontline personnel, and as such she won't have much in the way of firsthand information about the Abyssal fleet you can use directly, or hard combat experience for that matter. She was only given the broad strokes of your mission before we assigned her to you, so you will have to brief her yourself. We have reserved a conference room for you to properly brief her on the specifics of your mission."

Okay first off: The spacing is a tad cluttered, not unreadable but you could do well with separating the dialogue a bit more. Maybe some back and forth with nagato and the admiral explaining things to break up the monotony.

Two: Dammit man you're still expositing at us.

Three: It's totally gonna be a battleship she gets assigned to her.

XenaC: And, excuse my very unlikely bet, but my money's on it being the one that was, you know, introduced in the first few paragraphs! Remember what I said in Chapter 1 about exposing your conceits too early?

I mean, maybe he'll be a bit clever and not have it be the obvious choice of Yamato. Musashi doing a desk job should be fun? (Note: We've already read all of this beforehand) (Note2: I have only read bits of it and not the whole thing, at least from what I can recall.) (Note3: This note thing has gone too far)

XenaC: Actually...Musashi at a desk job? Sounds like a beautiful idea.

I know right? @Swordomatic get on that shit in your Vignettes mate.

XenaC: I, MUSASHI, HAVE COMPLETED THIS PAPERWORK! (See @thejmpr I actually love you)

(Chuckles)

"Thank you, sir. That's very kind of you."

If a little unnecessary. Booking an entire conference room for just two people? She knew the base had a lot of spare room, but still!

The Admiral turned to Nagato, sharing a silent look with her. The battleship gave her admiral a nod, and her eyes flicked to the name on the clipboard, the name she'd already known would be there, having written it herself.

"Yamato, please enter."

Wait Yamato what.

The line "Wait Yamato what" is pretty great, sad it was wasted by being in no way a surprise.

XenaC: Also by completely breaking the expository tone that the author has set so far, but hey, small steps towards the Shura, no problem!

Yvonne might even be a character with personality by chapter 3!

XenaC: Now neither of us is the good cop. This is going swimmingly.

The side door to the Admiral's office opened, and a beautiful young woman entered the room. Her appearance was entirely unique, an elaborate white red and black uniform that showed off too much skin and had a distinctively oriental flair. Her long wine-colored hair had been drawn into a ponytail, and it was perfectly accessorized by the blooming sakura flower that adorned it. She wore a 4-color armband on her left arm, patterned after the Z signal flag. The final, most noticeable piece of her ensemble was the gorget bearing the emblem of the golden chrysanthemum.

Alarm bells starting going off in Yvonne's head.

There was no doubt in Yvonne's mind who this girl was.

Well there shouldn't be because you already know who it is.

XenaC: I find the descriptives altogether very amusing. In no order of merit or demerit: the author clearly does not drink a lot of wine - Yamato is a brunette. Next, I think most human beings look unique if you stare hard enough at them or are within 10 feet of them while not being blind. And lastly, as awkward as they are as a combined Caesar salad all of Yamato's descriptors do a good job of scream she's beautiful you ponce so why even start with 'beautiful young woman'?

If your wine looks like Yamato's hair then you have some problems. Or you're drinking it out of a box.

The young woman quickly walked up to Yvonne's side and saluted the Admiral.

"Japanese Battleship Yamato, reporting for duty as ordered, sir! Thank you for choosing me for this assignment. I will do my best!"

Oh. Shit.

"Very good," the Admiral nodded, before turning back to Yvonne with a satisfied smile. "Is this agreeable to you, Commander Swanson?"

Oh hell no!

Yvonne's poker face hid her inner turmoil at being between a rock and a hard place. As much as she wanted to say no, for that feeling of anxiety was back in force stronger than ever, to do so would be to turn down an incredible honor and insult her hosts.

Yamato was the ship that bore the hopes and dreams of the Japanese people, the vessel that most exemplified their warrior ideal. To say anything but 'yes' to having the Yamato be her liaison would be the gravest insult Yvonne could give.

She had no choice.

"Yes, sir!" Yvonne said, allowing her awe at Yamato to mask her fear. "To have the battleship

Yamato herself escort me is an incredible honor!"

I am so boned.

It was then Yvonne realized, she was a raging Lesbian. And the shippers rejoiced.

XenaC: That. Last. Line. Is Yvonne predicting that Yamato will be on top? Is this clever foreshadowing for Chapter 31.4159 when they finally make little PTs together? Am I missing something? I NEED ANSWERS WHISKEY. ANSWERS!

LINEBREAK

It was irrational. Yvonne knew that the war was long over, and that she had nothing to fear from the young woman, Japanese Battleship Yamato, who walked to her left, exactly four paces behind her. In fact, Yvonne felt ashamed and embarrassed by her weakness.

Out of her five friends, she had been the one to be most vocal in espousing the idea of international cooperation between the ship girls of various nations. Yvonne had believed that, for the sake of the future, mankind needed to present a unified front against the Abyssal threat. Old grievances and rivalries couldn't be allowed to cloud their better judgment.

That was what she had told her comrades, at least.

But now that she was actually face to face with the Japanese ship girls, Yvonne was furious that she couldn't get over her uneasiness at their presence.

She had to keep fighting the urge to put distance between herself and Yamato. It made her feel like the biggest hypocrite to ever exist, especially so since Yamato, a person who had every reason to hate the United States, didn't seem to have any of the hang ups she did.

See, this is something I kinda get, but don't like how it's usually used.

The idea that the losing shipgirls of say, Japan and germany (usually Japan) would hate the country that beat them. Bitter, sure. But hating america because of the war and their loss? That i'ma bit iffy on.

And again, Yvonne is not (by the characters) thought to be a shipgirl, so they don't even have that excuse. I can get them being a bit bitter maybe, but irrational hatred is a bit too much.

XenaC: It's called being too paranoid in your foreshadowing. We already exceeded the 'woah too much info bro' threshold like six different times in Chapter 1. This...isn't new, unfortunately.

Eh, I was on a bit of a tangent there. Besides it's not even that he's saying Yamato is bitter about it, just that Yvonne thinks she would be. So here it's not as bad as what I was talking about.

XenaC: It doesn't really matter to me if Yvonne thinks something or the author does. To some extent or another every character is a voice for the author. What we know, the author speaks through narration or speaks through the characters. What you choose for them to say, you choose for the readers to know. And it seems to me that with regard to the whole 'she and her friends are shipgirls, and you should know who she is *winkwink*' deal the author here chooses to say too much too often.

Oh yes, the 'Yvonne is tots a shipgirl" thing was well beat into our heads even halfway through chapter one. What is a subtle?

XenaC: That's what I'm saying. And I'm pleading 'mercy, mercy please! I yield! I'll spontaneously develop amnesia and forget this ever happened, just spare me till Chapter 3!'

Let me get the brain bleach and we can start this alllll over.

Oh right, late dinner is happening. You wanna troll around the bridge and wait for the rest of the crew?

Sure. *starts flipping water bottles like a jackass*

FILLER TIME

FIVE MINUTES LATER

*bashes head into wall*

FIVE MORE MINUTES LATER

Why am I even bothering to type all this shit I'll be cutting out anyway?

(Because you're a jackass_

FUCK YOU JERRY

So much later we stole a joke from spongebob

FINLAND

This is how he entertains himself when he's alone, sad ain't it?

(Sobbing)

Jimbo: *Arrives and sees breakdowns* *pats*

Tavvy:ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, ISAAC TOLD ME A STORY ABOUT BUNCH OF ADMIRALS WHO STILL PLAYING THE FUCKING GAME.

Dammit, now I actually have to keep that bullshit in. Hello Tavvy

Tavvy: yo.

Also: People who actually play Kancolle. One moment. (Laughs ass off)

Anyway let's move on!

"May I ask where we are going, Commander Swanson?" Yamato queried.

"The Admiral asked me to fill you in on what we're going to do, so I'm heading to the empty conference room the Admiral booked earlier to do just that."

Dialogue so clunky it makes Orange Juice with pulp and battery acid taste smooth.

Jimbo: In short, my grandpa's favorite kind of dialogue.

In hindsight, Yamato's importance probably was what made the Admiral decide on giving them an entire room. From what she'd read from the history books, for all of the battleship Yamato's capabilities, she was treated like a porcelain doll by the Japanese Navy and hardly ever had to rough it out. As a ship girl, it seemed that this Yamato was more of the same.

It went without saying that Yvonne disapproved.

Alas, this was something the Admiral had done, and with how important Yamato was to the Japanese, Yvonne had to watch herself to avoid offending anyone.

Japanese Battleship Yamato… how the hell had THIS happened?

The pair had soon located the vacant room, and they settled in on opposite sides of a mahogany table. Having already anticipated the need to brief her new assistant, Yvonne had brought a copy of her orders and the supporting documentation with her.

"So how much did the Admiral tell you?" Yvonne asked, once she had provided the copy to

Yamato, which the battleship promised to read on her own time after the briefing.

"Only the broad outline," Yamato replied, with her demure, shy voice. "I, Yamato, was informed that your plan involved interviewing our frontline Kanmusu about their experiences with the Abyssals."

Oh my fucking god you just explained this! Why explain it again but worse.

Jimbo: Oh, Sasa, you have to realize most of your readers aren't *that* kind of moronic.

Tavvy: "Porcelain dolls". Oh my god. This is during the war, right? Against Abyssal?

Yeppers, the reason given above as to why she isn't fighting has been "Resource constraints" and yet they decommissioned Houshou. Whom while not great must be cheaper to use than most that followed her.

Tavvy: I could get it if the reason is that they all doesn't know how and if they could get another shipgirls back, but i expected that in this circumstances, they gonna use everything they have and not just keep one or two behind for "niche" and "historical" purpose.

But muh Figurehead! Muh cultural Icon! Muh PR!

Tavvy: Oh sure, PR, Figure head! Culturual Icon! Yeah, keep her around in a gilded cage and not let them fight while seeing everyone they knew die?

Jimbo: To be fair, Yamato and Musashi weren't exactly cheap to sortie in the last war, either.

Tavvy: Expensive or not, atleast she could do a sortie once or twice? And not just for showy morale booster show and actually fought with the fleshy enemies?

Curiously, Yamato's tone and her use of 'frontline Kanmusu' seemed to indicate she didn't consider herself one of them. This, combined, with the Admiral's earlier introduction, confirmed Yvonne's suspicions about that, like her historical counterpart, Yamato didn't get out very much.

We realize this, yes. No need to remind us so friggen much.

"And that's all you know?" Yvonne said, keeping her thoughts to herself.

"Regretfully, I do not. Yamato was chosen for this position at the last minute."

"That's not a problem," Yvonne nodded. "I'll fill you in on the details then."

The mission's objective was simple: understand the nature of the Abyssal fleet, where they came from and, if possible, find insight on how they could be defeated.

This was easier said than done, of course: with how long the war had gone on, Yvonne would not be the first to try. However, she aimed to be the first to succeed.

Yvonne had gone through every known report and recording of or documentation of the Abyssals.

It was in these documents that she noticed a startling trend, a trend that she felt had been the reason that every single one of these prior attempts at understanding the Abyssals had failed before.

Welcome to the department of redundancy department, exposition division. I get chapter one was long as fuck, but that length was a lot of expositing so I doubt a reminder of what was established last chapter is that necessary.

The excuse that it needs to be told to Yamato in-character doesn't cut it, because you could have just A: had that told to her beforehand instead of her not being told shit. Or B: not explain it so goddamn much and just give us, the reader, the TlDr version of things.

All that above had to be was "Our mission objective is simple, we need to try and find out the nature of the abyssal fleet." and bam there ya go. If you have to include it at least leave it at that.

Because all of the stuff described above was mostly done in chapter one.

I could let this slide more if most of the chapter to this point hadn't been mostly exposition in some form or another.

Jimbo: I have nothing to say. This is just becoming more and more awful of a story in hindsight.

Tavvy: Same as well.

Well when you're a small niche fandom of weird shitty japanese browser game about boat waifus, you take all the fanfic you can get. This was before your belbats and your Destinys and your pretty-much-everything-Sheo-writes, this was all ya had apparently.

Tavvy: eugh ambience.

Jimbo: Well, this and KCQ. Which was crazy and incoherent, but in a fun way.

(Pukes in mouth)

Ugh, exactly my point. All terrible terrible things made popular because they were all that existed in English.

(Side note: I might have to Read KCQ one of these days just to finish the unholy trinity)

Jimbo: Just remember the word filters Lord Ford put in.

Tavvy: Yeah. It's Planefriend. Not Plane-USER WAS BANNED FROM SV, REASON: IDIOCY AND MORE IDIOCY (and he's stupid).

Do note I say all the stuff I do about KCQ and GG being the first big things of the english KC fandom in hindsight, I was never part of either of them. I came in much later, when even Belbat was pretty long in it's own right.

Jimbo: I was quick to get to the front lines *Quietly sweeps stuff under the rug while mumbling on about memes*.

Tavvy: I'm proud to say that i first began on KCQ. However i played the game before KCQ was a thing. It was when Demetrius (Okay fine, be that way!) was still hiatusing from SWQ.

Jimbo: Rather not piss the Admins off.

We get it Tavvy, you're older than Kongou.

Tavvy: Something that i can get proud off.

"Stage one will be to profile and interview each and every single Kanmusu on this base," Yvonne stated. "I've spent the better part of the last six months reading through everything about Abyssals, and, if I'm being honest, half of them're complete bullshit and not worth the paper they're written on. I want first-hand accounts from the people who've physically seen and beaten these things, to help me verify what's accurate and what's not."

Indeed, part of the reason there hadn't been any progress in understanding the Abyssal fleet was that none of the experts could agree upon anything. Although there were plenty of armchair analysts who had weighed in on the matter, it wasn't entirely their fault.

The findings of any study were only as good as the evidence it was based on, and with the Abyssals it was hard to get such information.

Getting accurate data about the Abyssal fleet was difficult, thanks to the confusion of the early days of the war. With ships getting sunk left and right, people dying by the droves, rampant uncontrolled panic and hysteria, flotillas being destroyed before they even knew they were under attack, the whole refugee crisis… it was impossible to tell what was fact and what was the product of people in a blind panic.

By the time the ship girls had appeared and things had calmed down, the information repositories used by the intelligence services were so filled with reports of dubious accuracy that the entire process had simply ground to a halt while they got to actually organizing things. All the crap would eventually be sorted out, verified and discarded, but that might take months, even years.

That wasn't good or soon enough. Yvonne had decided to cut out the middle man and get that information herself, from the best sources she could think of.

So because of massive beaur-bauer-buear- (Slaps self) Bureaucratic incompetence, only Yvonne can figure out how this shit works.

I'm eh on the idea, it's a bit too "Only our PROTAGONIST can do the thing!" for my taste. Maybe if she had a team to do this, but it's pretty heavily a one woman show.

Jimbo: Muh incompetent US Government.

XenaC: And then when they actually shows up it turns out they aren't actually incompetent, just very beleaguered and understandably divided on what to do about that. What did we say once before about suddenly Growing The Beard?

"I want to identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I want to identify the tactics they use and how we could use that to our advantage," Yvonne continued. "More than that, I want to know how sentient each type of Abyssal is, and if there's any semblance of intelligence in any of them or if they're just acting on some kind of instinct. I want to know if there are any individual commanders or leaders that remain at large, or if there are any of them that act differently from the rest."

You've been fighting them for how long? And you don't even have the basic inklings of any of this?

Tavvy: And this is why we never won.

XenaC: Clearly the Japanese intelligence services are completely incompetent and flying people over from...you know, every other military intelligence service who would like to get in on the action is not a thing. Same applies to every navy now actively fighting the Abyssals. Intelligence gathering, as I recall, was a pan-operational process. But oh no, only Murica Can Save Us Now!

"There are many Abyssals that seem to act as flagships for their fleets," Yamato noted.

"Maybe, but each and every one of those are often surrounded by escorts and are part of a battlegroup. I'm looking for something smaller, at a flotilla level," Yvonne said. "Next, I need to know the capabilities and prior combat records of each ship girl on this base in detail. I need to get a feel of their personalities. I want to know how each girl will react to danger and how well they can function under extreme pressure."

Wouldn't this information already be gathered? Ya know, like any military would have done?

"Couldn't you just read a report? We have extensive physiological and psychological reports for you to follow," Yamato queried, her tone clearly showing she had asked this less to question Yvonne's judgment, and more to understand the intelligence officer's reasoning.

Dammit Yammy, that's my line.

It seemed like the battleship had caught on.

"Reports are one thing, but I'm looking for very specific people with very specific skillsets and mindsets. I need people who go looking for danger," Yvonne replied. "These interviews are to identify potential targets and candidates for the mission I came here to do."

"And that mission is?" Yamato asked. The battleship was leaning forward in her seat, her eyes intent. It was clear she'd already figured out the answer. Yvonne was still happy to give her that confirmation.

"We figure out where they're going to be, then set up a trap to capture one of those Abyssal fuckers," Yvonne grinned. "Then we move onto stage two: interrogate the shit out of her."

…..wut? Suddenly we are XCOM.

Jimbo: More like the Ship-girl Avengers.

Tavvy: Now we have another reason why we never won against them. 70% and right in front of them. We still missed.

Okay. very vague goal that makes me ask a lot of questions, but I suppose that's a decent end of chapter stinger I guess?

(Muffled speech)

Wait what do you mean it's not the end? Then why the fuck did he put this stinger here!

(More speech)

What do you mean we're not even halfway done with this.

XenaC: Incoming DLC: Kantai Collection - Terror From The Deep. Now for 20$ and a shit ton more exposition. I also wonder why it feels like Yvonne is like...you know, talking down in narration to Yamato when she's just as clueless, and Yamato's lines make it seem like she's the one with the answers here. Limited ones, sure, but still the answers. Also, psychological profiling is a thing in this universe, and I'm sure if an important anthropomorphic naval asset has a vague tendency to look for danger it would be in the profile. Either that or all your HR staff should go commit sudoku for the oversight.

LINEBREAK

Yvonne hadn't explained much after that. The following stages of her mission had been sensitive and classified by order of Admiral Briggs himself. It was on a strictly need to know basis, so there wasn't much else she could say to Yamato, especially about the part on how Yvonne was confident

she'd be able to set a trap for her intended quarry.

Yvonne did open up for a short Q & A session to allow Yamato to ask anything else she was unsure of, but the shy young Japanese woman turned down the opportunity, insisting she was satisfied by the explanation given so far.

Yamato no. Yamato question her please dear god give us some immediate answers, the stinger doesn't even work in the middle of a chapter please give us decent exposition why are you stopping now. Why. How are you satisfied by this she hasn't explained fuckshit.

XenaC: Eh and here we have the 'narrative tiring of itself and just skipping important shit over' problem rear its head again. We just got past the inane bits, and then we're treated to some Brechtian 'Ten Minutes Later' stuff. Wonderful. Just...wonderful.

Tavvy: In dull tone, 10 minutes later.

"Our first order of business will be to meet with Destroyer Division 6. "The Admiral informed me that they just returned from a mission, so their latest outing should be fresh in their minds."

"Ah, the Akatsuki sisters. I see. Interacting with them should give you some experience with dealing with us Kanmusu. The Admiral's insight is great as usual," Yamato nodded in agreement as she rose from her seat. "Very well, Commander Swanson. Shall I lead you to them?"

"Not just yet," Yvonne said, motioning for Yamato to sit back down.

"Commander Swanson?"

"Before we go, I have a few questions for you," Yvonne stated bluntly.

"I understand. As your assigned aide, I, Yamato, will attend to your needs as required. What do your require of me?" Yamato replied formally. It appeared that the battleship hadn't quite understood what Yvonne was getting at.

She decided to make things a little more explicit.

Hey Chikca Bum bum.

Jimbo: Nothing like out of context stuff.

XenaC: Innuendo! Love the smell of it in the morning. Nothing quite like it.

Tavvy: Ah. Explicit. Just right. [hand gestures]

Honestly this is the most fun I've had all chapter. I'm not sure which part of that is sader, me or the fic.

XenaC: Well we all literally had the same gut reaction. I guess we can call this one a success?

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

XenaC: Press C to Cheer.

Tavvy: [press C] yey

"Look. You misunderstand, Yamato. I mean I have questions for you." Yvonne could almost see the lightbulb going on over Yamato's head as she realized what Yvonne meant.

It was almost comical to see Yamato, the pride of the Japanese Navy, go beet red with embarrassment as she comprehended what Yvonne was getting at.

"I… I see. Very well. I, Yamato, will answer your questions to the best of my ability." Yamato fidgeted in place, wringing her hands nervously. Yvonne would have laughed at the sight if that persistent feeling, the feeling of knowing that a Japanese big gun battleship was right next to her, hadn't also been keeping her on edge.

That feeling was one of the reasons why Yvonne wanted to have this little chat.

Oh my gosh it gets better. (Giggles)

XenaC: I think I can take the shipping goggles off now. Don't need 'em no more.

Obvious sexual tension aside….

"Look, you don't have to be so formal around me. We're going to be working together for the foreseeable future, so it's important we set some ground rules and get some stuff out of the way first," Yvonne spoke bluntly. Seeing Yamato nod in agreement, Yvonne continued, "I don't mean any offense so apologies in advance if I do, but my first question is pretty simple: are you okay with working with a foreign officer?"

"What? O-Of course I am!"

"I heard that there were some of you ship girls that weren't too happy with an American being on the base. I just want to make sure there won't be problems between the two of us down the line."

Again with the Hatred of americans thing, my point on that still stands.

Tavvy: Humanity, ladies and gentlemen. You expected them to work together against a powerful menace, and they still planned to stab everyone in the back in a desperate bit for power.

XenaC: Well at least they're being forthright about it this time and threshing their problems out with one another, as droll as this whole assertive-controlled-American on M.Butterfly show is. YES I'M GOOD COP AGAIN. SUCK THAT DE3TA.

And then the fangirls rejoiced once more!

XenaC: Yuri.

Tavvy: yay!

After all, with Yvonne having to wrestle with her own problems, if Yamato had more of the same there was a non-zero chance the two of them could be heading for some turbulent waters. If that happened, Yvonne knew their performance would be negatively affected.

"There won't! I, Yamato, will not dishonour the name of the Japanese Navy by being discourteous to an officer of a foreign Navy. You have my word," Yamato insisted.

"Good. I just wanted to get that out of the way." Yvonne couldn't be sure of the sincerity of Yamato's statement, but it seemed that was the best answer she was going to get for now. "Okay, the next order of business is something that I probably should have dealt with earlier: the chain of command."

"Chain of command? I'm not quite sure I follow." Yamato tilted her head in confusion. "I am to act as your assistant and liaison, won't I? That shouldn't be a problem then."

Well that did answer one of her major concerns, but there was more to it than that.

"Okay, that's one thing out of the way. Now, I'm actually concerned about how you and the other ship girls fit into it," Yvonne clarified. "Aside from Nagato who's the Admiral's secretary ship, I'm not sure on how your ship girls have organized yourselves in relation to the regular military. I just want to be sure I don't step on any toes I'm not supposed to."

Yvonne felt that this was a pretty valid concern, especially since Yamato of all people had been assigned to her as an assistant.

My god, legitimately necessary exposition? Good questions? Fuck a duck things are looking up!

XenaC: Are you forcing me to play bad cop?

I'm Chaotic cop. With my good and evil slider in perpetual motion, I can't control myself.

So in short: Maybe.

XenaC: Sigh. Alright. So there's a lot of clunky sentences here, to be honest. I don't know about you, but I think the first and last paragraphs in this section were absolutely awful in the not-sounding-like-a-middle-school-science-report department.

Oh I agree it's clunky as all fuck, but at this point I'm taking what little mercies I can get.

The actual writing in execution wasn't good, but at least it's vaguely moving in the right direction.

To Yvonne's knowledge, the US Navy's policy was that in the event of a ship girl returning to active duty, she would be commissioned into the US Navy with actual rank. The Navy had intended this to be standard operational protocol with their ship girls, even to the point of preparing a truncated OCS program, before their whole project had been unexpectedly derailed.

It was more than just a courtesy rank; it would help members of the Navy, both ship girls and humans, understand where their positions were in the Navy proper, and make their positions in the chain of command clear to everyone involved.

In theory, under this policy, any US Navy ship girl would carry the same responsibilities and be afforded the same respect of any officer of that same rank.

I was going to say he was repeating himself, but then I remember that Yvonne being a shipgirl was supposed to be subtly hinted.

To be fair, writing levels are about par with that. So it's understandable.

XenaC: 'To Yvonne's knowledge'. And who else from the USN are we supposed to be asking about this again? And can't we have this as a lively conversation about ranks between Yvonne and Yamato? I'll even forgive the inevitable American Dominance Establishment-Regimentation Protocol that will surely commence!

Not everyone had adopted the same system, of course. The concept of ship girls was so unusual that there was no standardized system among mankind's navies for dealing with them.

Yvonne had heard Russians had adopted a similar approach to the Americans, albeit they promoted their ship girls based on skill and performance, both in battle and out of it, while the British, Germans and French had decided seniority among the ships was dictated by tonnage and size, with a few special exceptions.

She'd even heard that HMS Hood, leader of a quick reaction force that was quickly becoming analogous to a ship girl version of the SAS, even had a human aide of her own.

Ex-po-si-tion, and it's not even written well. Nothing new to see here.

Jimbo: "Skill and performance". In the *Russian Navy*. Pfffffffttttttt…

XenaC: VDV, SO MANY VICTORIES!

Why is it whenever people bring up the russian navy in KC works, and by that I mean Pacific, make them still relevant?

Here it's not as bad, just implying that have a bigger shipgirl force then they do. But to go off topic about pacific, the soviet's shouldn't be a major power with Abysals involved. At least with their more Cthulhu esque mind rapy abyssals.

XenaC: It might just make a sliver of sense from the whole 'well at least they have shipgirls' perspective.

Fair enough, and I grossly simplify the pacific thing.

I'm digressing, I'm reaching for new shit to talk about other than "this is still fucking a slog of bad exposition".

Basically, Russia and botes aren't too known to go together. At least not pre-cold war.

Yvonne had thought the Japanese had adopted something along similar lines to the Europeans, and had been blindsided when Yamato had been assigned as her assistant… she, a 'mere' O-5 from a visiting service. Clearly she had been mistaken. Yvonne needed to know the lay of the land, and fast.

"I see. Do not worry, Commander. Kanmusu have been ordered to obey human personnel, so you won't have to worry about offending any superior officers: even Nagato would have to defer to you, as long as your orders don't conflict with her ability to carry out those set by the Admiral. As long as it is within reason, we will try to accommodate you as best we can," Yamato said dutifully.

"Well, that's good to know." Yvonne inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Now she didn't have to worry about accidentally being like that one idiot in Portsmouth who thought he could order Hood around while she was visiting. Yvonne had had a good laugh at that when she'd heard about what happened to the poor bastard, but in no way did she want to repeat that mistake.

"As for seniority amongst Kanmusu, in theory we are all equal with each other, except for the 'flagship' of that specific unit, who is above her flotilla mates," Yamato concluded with a smile. "It is actually very simple compared to how some other nations have set up their own forces. You will not take long to familiarize yourself with it."

"I see. Thank you for clarifying that with me. Now, final question, and this one is just for my own curiosity. How did you end up with me anyway?" Yvonne asked. "I mean, you're the Yamato. You're the pride of the Japanese Navy. I'm a foreign officer, from the United States, and they made you my assistant. I'm sorry about being suspicious, but that feels a little weird since I'm not even an admiral. What happened?"

Yvonne wondered if this was too touchy, but she needed to know.

Yamato had thrown her for a loop. Yamato was the pinnacle of the military might of the Imperial

Japanese Navy, one of the most prideful and controversial military forces to ever exist. The danger of having what should have been the flag bearer of the Japanese Navy take a job that could be so easily done by someone less prominent was one Yvonne couldn't ignore.

While she was thankful that the battleship seemed willing to work with her, there was a potential political time bomb that had just been handed to Yvonne, and she wanted to know why.

Yamato had once again seemed to retreat back into herself, fidgeting in her seat as an internal war played out on her pretty features.

"I… I… I am sorry Commander. Regretfully, that is one question I, Yamato, do not wish to answer."

Damn, that was what Yvonne was afraid of.

"It's fine. I think that question was overstepping my bounds anyway." Yvonne sighed, her unease deepening. Chances were, something of note had happened. Something pretty bad, and likely career-ending, given she was looking at a battleship who'd been shitcanned and beached, in a time when every capital ship was seeing combat, when every shipgirl was going into harm's way.

Brilliant.

Just what Yvonne needed to start her mission over in Yokosuka.

Tacky use of Italics. *ding* (Note: I'm wearing plaid pajama pants, so I should know tacky.)

Tavvy: yay for tackiness. Atleast its better than say…. ACCENT.

Also: 20 years worth of exposition later we finally get hints as to why Yamato isn't in combat. I hold no hopes the reason will be any better than Resource cost.

XenaC: I think that the lack of payoff is not the biggest problem by itself. Nor is it the issue of having lots of exposition. The real issue is how much of that exposition has been banging on about Yamato being the pride of the Japanese Navy in more or less those exact same words like the whole chapter...and how there's almost nothing to show for it anyway. The whole chapter was belaboring this one point over and over and over. The impact would have been greater if they'd gotten to it faster. Now it just feels like a wet-noodle whap rather than a boom.

LINEBREAK

As Yamato promised, she led Yvonne towards where she would meet Destroyer Division 6. The pair had made their way out of the HQ building towards one of the main ship girl dormitories, as the Akatsuki sisters were on a break after having just finished their most recent expeditionary missions.

While Yamato admitted she was not certain that they were there, chances were that someone who was there would know where they had gone.

"The four of them are very close," Yamato explained on the way towards the dormitory, twirling the parasol she had collected from the front of the main office building on her shoulder. "They practically go everywhere with each other. If you find one, the others will not be far away."

"So you Kanmusu all live together in this building?" Yvonne asked, when they had arrived outside of the dormitory proper.

"Not all of us. There is a separate dormitory next to this one for the cruisers, and there are plans to build a third," Yamato supplied. "And of course, as you are aware, the battleships stay in the officers' quarters. There are also similar facilities in our other operational bases like Sasebo and Kure for those Kanmusu stationed there."

"Hm, we might have to do a bit of travelling in the future then, if we can't find what we need here."

An entire building dedicated to housing ship girls. The thought of something like this existing blew

Yvonne's mind. The Japanese had over a hundred and fifty of them, and almost all of them lived in buildings like these.

It represented what Yvonne hoped would eventually happen with the United States Navy, but at the same time caused her to feel anxiety, since she had never experienced something like this before.

"Well, shall we go in?" Yvonne said, taking the initiative to forcefully quench her own anxiety.

"Right this way, Commander Swanson."

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Yvonne followed in after Yamato.

Hopefully there wouldn't be a problem.

XenaC: Sure there won't be problems. Sure. What I'm not sure about is whether this is the 21st century or not, because I'm almost certain we've popularized the phrase 'famous last words' by now.

I expect shenanigans.

"What is SHE doing here?"

There was a problem.

"Zuikaku, please. Commander Swanson is here on official business," Yamato pleaded towards the twin tailed spitfire that they'd encountered in the main entrance to the dormitory. "She's here to see Ataksuki and her sisters."

"Why? They're off duty and resting after having that exhausting mission, and this American wants to bother them?" Zuikaku folded her arms stubbornly and glared at Yvonne. "Give me one good reason why I should let you see them. One. Reason."

Oh jesus christ….

Jimbo: Gobble gobble. And we're unfortunately past Thanksgiving (though just in time for Christmas, so it's not all bad).

XenaC: I'm more unhappy this happens so quickly and we're only given two things about Z-Kek that both already cloud any studious pupil of Animu Stodgeys' view of her: spitfire and twin-tailed, both tsundere traits so classic I could puke my internal organs out.

I'm just wondering why here, and why Zui. I don't quite get of all ships it'd be her.

Jimbo: Enterprise and Zuikaku were practically rivals back during the last war.

SHE ISN"T KNOWN AS ENTERPRISE YET, THAT"S THE THING.

(Spoliers)

XenaC: Durr. But this is not even getting into how Yvterpriss, our PoV character, would know that she's a bit of a flamer a split second after seeing her. Did she suddenly grow some super-perception that she could definitely have used earlier when plowing through Yameido's fragile ego? Or shock, horror and by everything that's sacred, has she actually read those psych reports? Or is it just that the author suddenly desires efficiency and economy in narrative that one single word should suffice to tell us about Z-kekku's personage - an economy that seems to have been dreadfully lacking so far?

*Google docs then has a seizure.*

Jimbo: Nothing to see here. Move along.

The girl that had barred their way was the Shoukaku-class aircraft carrier Zuikaku, apparently a feisty young woman with a serious attitude problem. The grey haired girl was wearing what appeared to be a shortened miko uniform and was carrying a bow and arrow. Apparently, she had been on her way out of the dormitory for practice when Yvonne and Yamato had entered.

Zuikaku had immediately taken exception to Yvonne's presence, and had made that opinion known.

Loudly.

So much for that promise about Japanese ship girls bending over backwards to accommodate the foreign officer.

"Please, Zuikaku. You're embarrassing us." Yamato seemed fully aware of the situation as she shot guilty, apologetic looks towards Yvonne. The battleship had boasted to Yvonne that her comrades would be helpful just moments ago, and now Zuikaku was living proof that this was not the case. "Commander Swanson is here to help."

"Yeah? Help you say?" Zuikaku pushed past Yamato, something that Yvonne noted with interest, and walked right into Yvonne's face. "Hey you. You speak Japanese?"

"Not as fluent as I would have liked, but I do," Yvonne replied smoothly.

"Good. So you want to help? You can help by telling me where the hell are our reinforcements are!" Zuikaku demanded angrily, her eyes ablaze with righteous anger, "We've been fighting this entire war for months now, and you guys haven't lifted a finger to help. What, do the Japanese have to win back the entire Pacific on our own? What the hell are you people sitting on your asses for?"

"Zuikaku!"

"It's fine, Yamato. I'll handle this," Yvonne replied without breaking eye contact with the other carrier. "Go into the dormitory and find Destroyer Division 6. We're wasting time here."

"I… I will do so, Commander Swanson. My apologies." Yamato, awed by Yvonne's confidence at staring down an angry aircraft carrier, turned to leave and carry out what was asked of her.

"Pretty confident for a human, Yank," Zuikaku said.

"You don't know the half of it."

And now we bring the fact Yvonne is a human and an American. Both as points of disrespect. Greaaaat…

XenaC: Well, shipgirls just defer to humans. They don't have to like it. And I think Zuikaku's more cheesed about the Yank bit, the human bit is probably an accessory.

See here is where Italics would have been more understandable, and yet it's absent. I'm not even saying it'd have improved things much but compared to it's odd use earlier this not having it is of minor note.

XenaC: I remember saying this elsewhere very recently, but that makes this seem quite tolerable now that I think about it. Ah, nostalgia. Also, I will just briefly say that Zuikaku's characterization here makes her description as a spitfire completely unnecessary and unnecessarily simplified. Like I'm not sure which dictionary the author read, but spitfire may but does not necessitate racism in the volatile mix.

Yvonne would have chuckled and thanked the other girl if she could. Zuikaku had just made a critical mistake, and it had been to Yvonne's benefit.

Yvonne had been having the jitters up til now. Getting assigned Yamato as an assistant, entering a dormitory full of other ship girls when she was more used to being around humans, all of this had understandably caused Yvonne to become nervous because she was outside of her comfort zone.

It had gotten to the point where Yvonne was beginning to worry that it might affect her performance.

Zuikaku didn't know it, but she'd helped immensely… because she'd pushed Yvonne right back into familiar waters.

If there was one thing the Yvonne was very familiar with, it was how to respond when under attack by the enemy, and it helped that, as a carrier at such close range, Zuikaku wasn't nearly as intimidating as Nagato, Kongou or Yamato was. Suddenly that nervous feeling was gone, and all was right with the world.

DID WE MENTION SHE IS A SHIPGIRL?

XenaC; I'm slightly more annoyed by the sudden return of Idiot!Yvonne. 'It had gotten to the point where Yvonne was beginning to worry that it might affect her performance.' Well you don't say! Frozen in near-terror, thoughts occupied with large-bore cannons, sleek armored belts and explosive payloads? One could never guess! Also 'If there was one thing the Yvonne was very familiar with, it was how to respond when under attack by the enemy,' ---> Now what does this sound like?

(Note: the C and ; is now a winky face. Heh)

"The United States Navy is in the process of recovering after our losses. As such, we are incapable of fielding ship girls of our own at present," Yvonne stated clearly and slowly. "You know the story. It won't change just because you want it to."

"Bullshit!"

"Two hundred and fifty thousand funerals say otherwise," Yvonne stated bluntly.

While she didn't like hiding behind the deaths of her countrymen to keep up the grand lie, it was something that she had gotten used to if she was to uphold her standing orders.

It was also a tried and true method at deterring people from further questioning, since most decent people stopped there out of respect for the fallen.

"Yeah, so what? We Japanese lost people too, and we're still fighting."

And apparently Zuikaku wasn't most people.

Did we mention Zuikaku is supposed to be the bad guy here? Because she juuuuust might be in the wrong. I have a slight feeling.

XenaC: I don't even have a defense handy for this. This is just flat out DRAMA because DRAMA.

"Okay, Yankee Doodle. It's been months. Why haven't you people gotten your shit together? Do you have any idea how big this damn ocean is?" Zuikaku growled as she moved right into Yvonne's face, "We've been busting out asses been protecting your convoys, your ships and your ports as well as our own. We're spread thin enough as it is, and you expect us to run across the Pacific to pick up your slack? What happened to the strongest navy on the planet, huh?"

The fact she tries using Yankee doodle as an insult makes me, as an American, laugh my ass off.

XenaC: I just read ahead to the conversation they're about to have. Brb committing preemptive sudoku.

*finishes glass of pink lemonade and sighs*

Well excuse the United States Navy for not being able to fight after losing nine carriers and their air wings, seventy surface combatants, a good number of fast-attack subs, and oh yeah, a few ballistic missile submarines. Of course, Yvonne didn't say that aloud, and used a bit more tact.

"The US military as a whole is still providing assistance in the form of logistical support and air cover provided by the US Air Force. Surely you have benefited from protection offered by our surface installations and use of drone strikes? We are doing everything we can."

Despite the decimation of the Navy, the United States was still militarily relevant. The US Army's surface to surface missile batteries and helicopter gunships could strike at any Abyssal that dared approach American shores, while the Air Force still had plenty of fighters, bombers and drones, and was getting a crash course in antishipping missions from survivors of the Navy's strike and maritime patrol communities. It was only further out to sea, where merchant convoys important for international trade and commerce needed to venture, where these advantages were nullified.

The United States was still very much a relevant player in the war, just not their Navy, and Yvonne wanted to remind Zuikaku of that.

"Drone strikes are useful on the odd occasion, I'll give you that, but we need to win the war! We can't do that if we're on the defensive all the time," Zuikaku insisted. "I mean, damn it, just the other month Shoukaku-nee and I had to go all the way around the Pacific to your 'San Fansciso' because you don't have any girls of your own. We have a rotation for that. What the hell?"

Okay… it was a little ridiculous, but Yvonne couldn't actually say her opinion out loud either.

Because the US Navy couldn't field their own ship girls, it had been agreed that a single task group of Japanese ship girls would be stationed at Naval Base San Diego in case they were ever needed, a small goodwill force offered by the Japanese in exchange for America's continued support.

Of course, with the amount of anti-Abyssal weaponry the United States Army had set up lining the coast since the appearance of the ship girls, any Abyssal fleet wandering even close to the coast would be blown to kingdom come, long before those girls would be needed. Other than escorting convoys up north towards Canada and helping deter small Abyssal raids, the garrison there didn't actually get involved in the fierce fighting that characterized the East Asian campaign.

It did offer peace of mind to the population at having them there, especially after Norfolk and Pearl, so Yvonne had thought it was worth it: she just hadn't considered that the Japanese ship girls would be resentful over that, although it was obvious now in hindsight.

Although…

"You do realize that overseas assignments are part and parcel of being in a Navy right?" Yvonne couldn't help but say mischievously. "Sail the seven seas, see the world, meet interesting people... don't you guys have any of that on your recruitment posters?"

"I'm just fine with staying in Japan, thank you very much!"

"What, you don't what a yank boyfriend? I thought Japanese girls loved the stereotypical surfer dude: tall, blonde and musclebound, and well, you look like the type that would go for that."

Where to begin…..

XenaC: That I take back the statement that this fic was pushing the Murica Is Actually Very Most Super Hyper Ebola Great envelope very hard, because it's very clearly pushing the Surprise I Understand Neither America Nor Japan On Any Level envelope instead? Which I applaud for honesty if nothing else.

Nationalist Fuckwittery, but the kind that doesn't even make sense.

Also Side tangent: I don't get the appeal of surfer dudes, That's just me. And the mention of it here is just kiiiinda odd because I don't know anyone who would bring them up like this.

Zuikaku had gone beet red, eye irises having shrunk into pin pricks and her whole body quivering with embarrassment. The ashen haired girl's mouth was moving, trying to form coherent sentences, but the only sound that came out was a high pitched whistling noise like a boiler.

"You mean you don't? Wow, you don't know to enjoy an overseas posting? Did you stay in your bunk all day or something? You did, didn't you?" Yvonne said with a mock gasp, trying to milk this for all it was worth, "Oh my god, you have no idea what you are missing out on! Listen girl, this is an order from a superior officer. I am going to take you out tonight for a pub crawl and we are going to pick up so many hot g-"

Zuikaku lost it.

"P-P-P-P-PERVERT!" Zuikaku screeched, leaping backwards away from Yvonne and making for the exit as fast as her legs could carry her. "THE AMERICAN IS A DEVIANT! DEVIANT I SAY! DEVIANT!"

Yvonne watched the other girl run like the proverbial bat out of hell with the biggest shit eating grin she could muster.

Chances were, Yvonne was going to catch hell for this later, but right now?

So worth it.

You've gotta be shitting me. I don't even have words, it speaks for itself. This is lazy anime cliche number 1243. Like what is even the fuck….

Also we're finally half done, and it only took us until 8 AM. Fucking brilliant…..

XenaC: I need to cry in a corner somewhere...after I say that this was worse than lazy. Worse. They basically switched topic from srs history bsns to Animu Bullshit out of nowhere. I suppose some might consider mood whiplash an art form, but anyone who raises this as an example deserves to be where this one section of Chapter 2 belongs. That is, where the sun never reaches.

I suppose we'll be taking a mid chapter break again. Because motherfucker these things are long, and so much of them are inane.

Always Late · Dec 24, 2016

De3ta said:
XenaC: That. Last. Line. Is Yvonne predicting that Yamato will be on top? Is this clever foreshadowing for Chapter 31.4159 when they finally make little PTs together? Am I missing something? I NEED ANSWERS WHISKEY. ANSWERS!

inB4 Whiskey gleefully sets fire to his hard drive.

De3ta said:
(Side Note: XenaC with the C and the : makes a smiling face, and that amused me.)

De3ta said:
(Note: the C and ; is now a winky face. Heh)

De3ta, I'm starting to get the impression you're bored.

De3ta said:
Well when you're a small niche fandom of weird shitty japanese browser game about boat waifus, you take all the fanfic you can get. This was before your belbats and your Destinys and your pretty-much-everything-Sheo-writes, this was all ya had apparently.

Tavvy: eugh ambience.

Jimbo: Well, this and KCQ. Which was crazy and incoherent, but in a fun way.

(Pukes in mouth)

Ugh, exactly my point. All terrible terrible things made popular because they were all that existed in English.

(Side note: I might have to Read KCQ one of these days just to finish the unholy trinity)

*thinks back to posts in KCQ thread*
Should I, or shouldn't I?

De3ta said:
XenaC: I think I can take the shipping goggles off now. Don't need 'em no more.

Obvious sexual tension aside….

Either hindsight is 20/20, or Sasa was unconsciously shipping them the whole time.
Either way, I'm laughing.

De3ta said:
And then the fanboys rejoiced once more!

XenaC: Yuri.

Tavvy: yay!

FTFY. Remember, girls like BL, it's men who like Yuri.

De3ta said:
You've gotta be shitting me. I don't even have words, it speaks for itself. This is lazy anime cliche number 1243. Like what is even the fuck….

Hey, when you want to make the the fiery tsundere self-destruct and run off, you make a sex joke.
It's being genre-savy, for people who have difficulty seeing when something is stale or stock.

De3ta said:
I suppose we'll be taking a mid chapter break again. Because motherfucker these things are long, and so much of them are inane.

OK, see you back here in March!

Whiskey Golf · Dec 24, 2016

I would never set fire to my hard drive. It contains some of my stash.

I should note two things:

1) I am a monument to all my sins.

2) Sasa himself is kinda embarrassed by this fic niw and would like it to die.

3) Be all my sins remembered. I should have been stricter as a beta. Having to face up to all this and look it in the face makes me uncomfortable and begins a litany of "damnit Whiskey."

Y'know that Terminal Lance strip? The age progression of a weapon platoon commander? I kinda feel like that on days.

CompassJimbo · Dec 24, 2016

Alas, GG had the opportunity to do great and wonderful things, but it was never meant to be. But we got one good thing out of it- GG helped to kickstart a fandom. From its ashes and with KCQ on seemingly endless hiatus, we've seen some amazing things. Sky and Sheo, who've proven to be incredible writers. The fall of Ambience.

Hopefully more will rise up and weave wonderful tales about a world where ships are waifus, and a part of me wonders what the Japanese fanbase would think if they came to know about these things.

Whiskey Golf · Dec 24, 2016

Well this is what happens when early on I go "nah GG is okay i just need to touchup some derps it's okay as is..."

By Chapter 6 I'm screaming about how GG is rotten to the core and needs to be burnt doen to the roots.

....hilariously there are still people who took until chapter 6 to learn the secret of yvonprise.

XenaC · Dec 24, 2016

Always Late said:
inB4 Whiskey gleefully sets fire to his hard drive.

Don't. You. Dare. Give him ideas.

Always Late said:
OK, see you back here in March!

With any luck, this will be semi-regular.

Famous last words, I know. But hey, you gotta commit on some things in life.

Whiskey Golf said:
I would never set fire to my hard drive. It contains some of my stash.

Foul fiend who weareth the skin of Weiss Schnee, th'art foiled, and rightly so for sooth!

Whiskey Golf said:
I should note two things:

1) I am a monument to all my sins.

2) Sasa himself is kinda embarrassed by this fic niw and would like it to die.

3) Be all my sins remembered. I should have been stricter as a beta. Having to face up to all this and look it in the face makes me uncomfortable and begins a litany of "damnit Whiskey."

That's three things as I recall.

Your sins are remembered but they are forgiven, my brother. If you need to be free, be free! Write whatever you please, just buy me a pair of earplugs for your more earthshaking ideas - I'm a heavy sleeper, but not that heavy.

CompassJimbo said:
Alas, GG had the opportunity to do great and wonderful things, but it was never meant to be. But we got one good thing out of it- GG helped to kickstart a fandom. From its ashes and with KCQ on seemingly endless hiatus, we've seen some amazing things. Sky and Sheo, who've proven to be incredible writers. The fall of Ambience.

Hopefully more will rise up and weave wonderful tales about a world where ships are waifus, and a part of me wonders what the Japanese fanbase would think if they came to know about these things.

I wouldn't say Ambience has fallen per se. But ah well, history vindicates its own - or else it falls to the historian to curate with an open left hand and actual human standards in their right.

Otherwise, I definitely share that optimism. Because why the heck not?

Always Late · Dec 24, 2016

XenaC said:
Don't. You. Dare. Give him ideas.

I wouldn't joke about that shit if I hadn't seen Whiskey threaten to nuke the story multiple times.

Whiskey Golf said:
I would never set fire to my hard drive. It contains some of my stash.

Point taken.
Set fire to your harddrive, after backing up the stash it is.

XenaC said:
Foul fiend who weareth the skin of Weiss Schnee, th'art foiled, and rightly so for sooth!

Oh no. My master plan to destroy Whiskey's porn has failed. Curse you @XenaC, curse youuuuuuuu./monotone
Also, it's 'rightly so forsooth'.

Whiskey Golf said:
Well this is what happens when early on I go "nah GG is okay i just need to touchup some derps it's okay as is..."

By Chapter 6 I'm screaming about how GG is rotten to the core and needs to be burnt doen to the roots.

And the rest of the committee just slowly backs away and resumes their own projects.

Whiskey Golf said:
....hilariously there are still people who took until chapter 6 to learn the secret of yvonprise.

Things like that are why I have My Rule Of Writing #6: There will always be that one person who doesn't pick up on things.
Rule #2 is: In each subsequent case where an individual is mentioned, it is also likley happening to multiple people.

Whiskey Golf said:
2) Sasa himself is kinda embarrassed by this fic niw and would like it to die.

XenaC said:
With any luck, this will be semi-regular.

Famous last words, I know. But hey, you gotta commit on some things in life.

Can't wait until you get to the 'canon omakes'. You know, the Euroboat parties.
You, @De3ta, and Whiskey been tearing into the story so far, why not start roasting the rest of Committee?

De3ta · Dec 24, 2016

Always Late said:
You, @De3ta, and Whiskey been tearing into the story so far, why not start roasting the rest of Committee?

Didn't whiskey sent them to Malaysian Siberia?

Always Late · Dec 24, 2016

De3ta said:
Didn't whiskey sent them to Malaysian Siberia?

They have internet there, shouldn't be too hard.

Whiskey Golf · Dec 24, 2016

Always Late said:
I wouldn't joke about that shit if I hadn't seen Whiskey threaten to nuke the story multiple times.

Point taken.
Set fire to your harddrive, after backing up the stash it is.

Give me 400 US dollars to replace my hard drives.

And the rest of the committee just slowly backs away and resumes their own projects.

The fellowship had already fallen apart at that point.

Also Sheo's doing Eternity and New Momboats, so i give him a pass.

CompassJimbo · Dec 24, 2016

I never really had any serious projects at the time. I'm just happy to contribute omakes and stuff. Granted, I had no idea how to contribute to GG, either.

Interested Party · Dec 24, 2016

Perhaps the ideal way to manage it would be to take the core principles of the story and the best parts of it, toss out the rest, and then build a new fic around the parts that have been retained? Just for instance, while I've seen the justification for why Enterprise has to hide be heavily debated, in principle I see no reason why an interesting story couldn't be built with that idea in mind - but in the attempt to "hide" this fact from the readers has been plainly shown to not work. So in the hypothetical new story that would arise like a phoenix from GG's ashes, you'd not bother to hide that and go with something more like the original plan of revealing Enterprise's identity at the end of the first chapter. That sort of thing.

It's a thought, anyways...

Always Late · Dec 24, 2016

Interested Party said:
Perhaps the ideal way to manage it would be to take the core principles of the story and the best parts of it, toss out the rest, and then build a new fic around the parts that have been retained? Just for instance, while I've seen the justification for why Enterprise has to hide be heavily debated in principle I see no reason why an interesting story couldn't be built with that idea in mind - but in the attempt to "hide" this fact from the readers has been plainly shown to not work. So in the hypothetical new story that would arise like a phoenix from GG's ashes, you'd not bother to hide that and go with something more like the original plan of revealing Enterprise's identity at the end of the first chapter. That sort of thing.

It's a thought, anyways...

Eh. To do that you have to build up the world from which that sort of thing would result. And either way, you'd have to trim back the exposition into something more natural.

De3ta · Jan 1, 2017

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(falls over)

I FEEL LIKE PURPLE!

(What the fuck is sleep)

Now before I talk to myself for the next hour, GG! Where did we leave off again?

(reads)

Right, Zuikaku was a shitty lazily written tsundere. Got it.

(Crickets)

Swordo: I'm confused and this is my first day. What do we do here?

Well, you did the thing with the name. So you're already better than the vast majority of first timers. Well I guess we're reading GG, since we're still in the middle of chapter two from last time god help you with figuring this shit out.

"I, Yamato, offer my sincere apologies, Commander Swanson. I wasn't able to stop Zuikaku from her unseemly behaviour," Yamato apologized profusely, bowing all the while. "Please forgive us being untoward you."

"It's fine, Yamato. I dealt with it," Yvonne replied.

She of course didn't add that she handled the problem by effectively teasing Zuikaku into full retreat, but knowing the military grapevine people were probably going to talk sooner or later.

Still, Yvonne wondered how the Admiral would approach this, since Yvonne had technically been the aggrieved party and Zuikaku the aggressor. They seemed really touchy about making the foreigner welcome for some reason, so maybe she would get away scot free. Briggs would have given Yvonne a right dressing down for pulling something like that!

SO worth it, though.

As usual we must deal with Yvonne's wonderbread personality, this time with some attempt at having one.

Swordo: Remind me, who's Yvonne?

Enterpri-(tazed)-USN lady who was sent to this base on the vague ass mission of investigating the abyssals. Her assistant is Yamato.

Swordo: Well then, the USN could do a lot better.

That is allegedly the point, I suppose. You shoulda seen the past exposition dumps, which I can't recall there are so many. Basically the USN got fucked up by the abyssals, they took pearl and attacked norfolk. As to why they did these things well that's for later chapters.

Swordo: So… I imagine the USN won't have much of a presence later on, yeah?

I dunno, I never read/GG never got that far iirc.

Swordo: Well I hope not. Because how else can they explain having children on foreign deployment?

Oh also the US can't summon their own shipgirls because spoiler reasons. Again we'll get to it because fuck do I have opinions.

As to why Yvonne is here, well TlDr her excuse is "lotta people ded so they gotta start promoting kids like me" but the actual reason is she's a shipgirl so they allow this shit, Again not stated outright but even here it is stupid obvious.

Swordo: ...Okay then. Well, let's keep going?

We shall!

"Anyway, enough about that." Yvonne turned to address the people that Yamato had returned with. Given the informal environment that was the small common room they were now meeting in,

Yvonne decided to forgo a salute and instead opted for a more informal handshake instead.

"It is a pleasure to meet you again, Lieutenant."

"The pleasure is mine, Commander." Lieutenant Satoshi Matsuda, now dressed in his own undress whites, took her hand with a strong confident handshake. Coincidentally, he had been with the Akatsuki sisters, congratulating them for a job well done when Yamato had found them, and had decided to tag along. "I see you didn't waste any time getting down to business."

"Time is precious," Yvonne replied before turning to the four young girls that were huddled together on the sofa across from her chair, "And these must be the Ataksuki sisters of Destroyer Division 6. My name is Commander Yvonne Swanson. It's nice to meet you."

When Yvonne had seen the four girls, all looking like they hadn't even reached their pre-teens, she had been very surprised at their youth.

How did you not know what they looked like? Did you do no research on this shit?

Swordo: Well, let's assume this information isn't easy to come by.

She had no idea that ship girls could even be that young. These girls looked and acted like they were twelve. No wonder why many people were reluctant to send ship girls into battle: even Yvonne was feeling uncomfortable with the mere thought of sending these youngsters to fight a war!

This conflict never really goes anywhere and I don't think ever gets brought up again. Which annoys me even more than if it had been and been done badly.

This thought was thankfully balanced with that now annoying sensation she had again around unfamiliar ship girls. While Yvonne was still feeling on edge at being so close to a group of destroyers, the fact they were a bunch of kids, and the recent victory she had over Zuikaku, had allowed Yvonne to shunt those unwanted feelings to where they couldn't bother her.

Did we mention she was a shipgirl? She's a shipgirl, and she is nervous around thee japanese shipgirls.

Swordo: Or she's bad with people. Which raises the question of why she's here and not at home. If she is a shipgirl… why the fuck isn't she defending her country. Just send some other fucker to Japan.

Okay remind me when we're done here to make you read our LR bits of the first chapter, it'll help. I think. I forget how deep we went.

Swordo: I'll do it right now!

Alrighty, i'll soldier on through the nonimportant bits.

"It is nice to meet you too, Miss Swanson," the girl with long dark hair and an adorable black cap on her head greeted formally. It seemed that she was the leader of their crew. "I'm first of the special type-III destroyers, Akatsuki."

"Hibiki, of the same class. Zdravstvuyte," the stoic faced white haired girl beside Akatsuki said. Russian? Hm, must be something she picked up after the war.

"Ikazuchi! Good t' meet 'cha!" The excitable one followed. "Not 'Kaminari'! Make sure you get my name right, 'kay?"

"I'm Inazuma. Pleased to meet you, nano-desu." The final member, who looked very similar to her sister Ikazuchi, gave a polite bow.

Yvonne wondered what that 'nano-desu' at the end of her sentence meant; her command of the language wasn't good enough to help her in that regard. She'd have to ask Yamato about it later. It didn't seem to be rude though…

"There's no need to be so formal. You girls are supposed to be on a break now," Yvonne said with a wave of her hand. "Thank you for taking the time to meet me."

"It was no trouble at all, Miss Swanson. We are 'ladies' of the Japanese Navy after all," Akatsuki insisted, puffing out her chest with childish pride.

"I'm sure you are," Yvonne smiled indulgently. What a cute kid!

"So you have questions for us? Ask away!" Akatsuki beamed, "We'll show you how good we are at doing 'adult lady' jobs for Admiral Matsuda here, even at night!"

@

(Coughs up blood)

XenaC: Present and accounted for, friend! And wow are some of these jokes pretty bad. It's like some of these lines were ripped clean out of the opening lines for the characters themselves. But that can't be true...Can it?

Swordo: I feel like so far, every single introduction has been the construction line of each of the shipgirls. Which is… well, okay, I can see why some people would like the nod. But it's really hamfisted, you know? And why does it have a dash. That annoys me in the pettiest of ways. I don't know why but argh.

Yvonne, Matsuda and Yamato all started choking while trying to hold down the sudden bout of laughter, or in Matsuda's case, sheer unbridled embarrassment. The other three Akatsuki girls simply looked at their lead ship like she'd grown a second head.

"Akatsuki, I don't think that's a good way you're supposed you're supposed to phrase it, nano-desu!" Inazuma said tactfully.

"Sis, you do know that say'n things like that is going to make Admiral Masuda look like a criminal, ya'know?" Ikazuchi said un-tactfully. From where he was sitting, Lieutenant Matsuda looked like he was having an aneurysm and a heart attack at the same time.

Realizing her mistake, Akatsuki tried back pedalling.

"I-It was a mistake. I meant that the four of us are perfect ladies that can do night battles! Like officers and gentle… gentle…"

"Gentlewomen, nanodesu."

"That's right! Gentlewomen! We are ladies and gentlewomen!" Akatsuki, now beet red in the face and radiating pure shame, jabbed a finger at Yvonne and tried looking as confident as she could,

"So don't you worry, American! You have come to the right place, for there is no group more ref… refin… 'elephant' as Destroyer Division 6!"

Come on De….this was a different time...these jokes weren't stale as fuck…..

(pulls self together)

It's not exposition! It's not fucking exposition! This is good, these are good things!

Swordo: Okay, Akatsuki is fun. Top littlest lady.

XenaC: Russian chick best fite me!

Swordo: Hibiki is in a league of her own.

Akatsuki's declaration was followed with a short period of silence as the other people around the table simply stared at her. Inazuma and Ikazuchi seemed frozen with their mouths hanging open.

Matsuda seemed on the verge of dying. Yamato was standing shock still at the side of Yvonne's chair with eyes wide as saucers, clearly unsure how to react….

And Yvonne?

She held out for five seconds, and then couldn't take it anymore.

"…Bwa-ha-ha-ha-hahahahaha! Jesus, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Jesus Christ! Can't breathe, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Yvonne roared, beating the arm rests of her chair while trying desperately to regain her composure. It was hopeless. Despite all of the Yvonne's discipline, there was absolutely no way anyone could hear that and still manage to keep a straight face.

"Bozhe moi…" Hibiki dropped her face into her hands and groaned.

Then Yvonne fell off the chair and kept laughing.

"Someone sink me now," Akatsuki muttered as she collapsed back down onto the sofa

Is this trying to make her a quirky character or something?

Swordo: I'm more annoyed by the painfully extended beat panel. Beats are short, snappy, and rely heavily on timing. A huge paragraph is not good timing. Humor, as with a lot of things, depends on brevity. It's something people struggle with, but when you're written by committee it helps to have a writer who knows brevity.

XenaC: Pretty much. As far as I can see the important thing is that Yvonne laughs like an idiot. Hearing what everyone was doing weakens the joke because we already know how funny it is in-between.

Swordo: Also, the best way to have her be 'quirky', or at least how I would do it, would be her going 'pff nice'. Sometimes less is more. That or having her fall off the chair laughing without going 'ha-ha-ha'. Also, again, dashes. Why the dashes?

XenaC: I guess it was to punctuate the laughter, but I agree that when you use too many of them you may as well use none.

Swordo: That's what italics are for. I would use them here to prove the point, but I have a problem with overusing them, so I gave myself a quota.

XenaC: I use one probably once in...A few paragraphs. If not less often than that. I feel like writers should construct their sentences such that the reader can read rhythm into them without being told what to do. Have a little faith.

I actually like the dashes, makes her sound as robotic and cardboard-like as she actually is.

XenaC: Man do those words burn!

One thing sasa does, words words words. Words for all the things.

Having thoroughly humiliated herself, it had been decided on the spot that the interview should be postponed until such time that Akatsuki felt like she could face Yvonne again.

Probably not anytime soon, that's for sure.

"I am very sorry about all this! This is so disgraceful to allow a member of a visiting Navy see such shameful acts!" Yamato kept bowing to Yvonne.

"Seriously, I told you to stop doing that. You didn't physically put Akatsuki's foot in her mouth."

Yvonne told Yamato, wiping the tears out of her eyes.

It appeared that poor Yamato had taken the two incidents thus far as a personal failing on her part to leave a good impression of the Japanese Navy on their guest. The poor girl was practically beside herself with embarrassment, even more so than Matsuda who had recovered from his own brush with humiliation.

Yvonne hoped that she wasn't going to make a habit of embarrassing the Japanese like this. Zuikaku had it coming, but poor Akatsuki had practically sailed right into a minefield of her own laying without Yvonne lifting a finger. If this kept happening, Yvonne's little trip was going to do wonders for future USN - JMSDF relations!

Noooooooooo, you fucker. Go back to the plot! God dammit man.

Swordo: I read it as USN - JMSDF rations and now I'm hungry. Anyways, Yamato remains the best hotel. Could use a therapist, though. Or a scantily-clad sister.

XenaC: I'm just a bit annoyed that we had to start by saying that Akatsuki had humiliated herself. I mean, of course she did, what were the previous paragraphs for? This is not mentioning the rest of the 'Yvonne is now an elementary school play narrator' moments in this section. Same shit different part of the exposition.

@swordo what if her sister *is* the therapist?

Swordo: You just blew my mind man.

XenaC: I, MUSASHI, BELIEVE IN YOU.

Swordo: Anyways, if Whiskey really was the beta… well, we might need a beta-beta.

Don't bully whiskey too much, he bullies himself over it enough when we post these. Granted if there is a place to bully him, this is it.

Swordo: Oh, this isn't bullying. There would be more ducks otherwise.

http://cdn.modernfarmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/whiteduck.jpg

XenaC: Strictly speaking Swordimon is right. This is some really substandard editing.

I would have thought Geese, geese are fuckers.

Swordo: I'm sorry, editing is just my giant bugbear, and a bad editor can break a fic even more than a good editor can save a fic. Anyways, let us go on!

"Are those four always like this?" Yvonne asked Matsuda, once the four Akatsuki sisters had filed out of the room, the others escorting a crying Akatsuki back to their room in what had to be the most diabetes inducing scene Yvonne had ever been witness to.

"You have no idea," Matsuda replied as he wiped the sweat off his face from the nasty shock with a handkerchief. "Those four are basically kindergarteners that I have to babysit on a daily basis. Well, Hibiki not so much, but the other three? Not the kinda thing I expected to be doing when I took my commission."

"No shit."

"I am so sorry, Admiral Matsuda, Commander Swanson. I have brought shame upon the Japanese Navy!" Yamato continued bowing. Yvonne rolled her eyes.

"Uh, I thought I told you…"

"Yamato, stop. That's an order," Matsuda said sharply at Yamato.

Yamato stopped. She was still sniffling, but otherwise she had ceased apologizing. Yvonne stared at Matsuda with wide, respectful eyes.

"There you go. Sometimes you have to be a little firm and put your foot down," Matsuda explained with a sigh. "I know it doesn't feel good to be an ass, but that's what being an officer is about: leading and discipline. You don't look like you're used to having subordinates, or went down a conventional command track."

"No, I didn't. I was an intelligence analyst that worked with a rear echelon team. The promotion was pretty unexpected, to put it mildly," Yvonne said. "I'm guessing you're a line officer?"

Swordo: Putting your foot down means sending your star battleship to a therapist (that may or may not be her bespectacled sister), not telling her when not to apologise for literally everything.

XenaC: Real life Japanese people don't apologise for everything. If this was memery, we've gone too far by half.

Maybe he can also address the Zuikaku thing maybe, that'd be nice. Also Yams plz, stop acting like….I don't even know what stereotype. Germans? Fuck if I know.

Swordo: I believe the term is 'soggy paper towel'.

XenaC: Towel. Bathrobe. Doormat? Uh, moving on!

"Served on the Aegis destroyer Mirai for two months before they yanked me out for the Kanmusu program," Matsuda said with some regret. "Don't get me wrong, I know I'm doing good work in my new job, but it's always been my dream to be the Captain of a warship like my old man, y'know?"

"Oh yeah, you did mention something like that yesterday."

Yvonne knew of the guided missile destroyer Mirai, hull number DDG-182. She was the lead ship of the relatively new Mirai-class Aegis destroyers, developed off the American Flight IIIA Arleigh Burke-class and taking cues from the venerable Kongo and Atago-class destroyers (most prominently, the additional two decks to accommodate flagship functions). The Mirai had come into prominence shortly after the Abyssal fleet had appeared, as Japan's answer to the new threat.

Arguably the most powerful guided missile destroyer class still in service, especially now that the Flight II Zumwalts were languishing at the bottom of the ocean, Mirai was ultimately hampered by the inherent limitations of being a conventional ship fighting an unconventional adversary.

Nevertheless, as far as the modern Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force went, she was the pride of their fleet. No wonder Matsuda had some residual regret at being pulled off. That was a dream posting if Yvonne ever saw one.

Alrighty Boatfuckers, tell me what the shit this means.

Swordo: 'This shit' is a whole bunch of boat exposition that really should have been trimmed. What I thought was bad seems more and more like shitty editing, the more I read.

Okay yes but what does it *mean*?

XenaC: Gdocs is kill.

Swordo: Smol Matsuda here used to serve on a Mirai-Class Missile Destroyer before he got reassigned to fuck boats for a living, and kind of misses the sodomy life on the high seas. The details of the Mirai-Class are unimportant except for the techwank, and could have been exposited better or not at all. This is savage, I know. But so is this Let's Read.

XenaC: I would have suggested they had a conversation about it. Like I usually do. Because well conversation is the natural man's exposition and people should do it more often. The only time you're excluded is if your MC is an antisocial ass, but even then!

Far nicer than I woulda been, i'd have just called it boatwankery no one cares about and moved on. For all it seems to matter.

"She's part of the support flotilla assigned here right?" Yvonne recalled that Matsuda had mentioned that both the Izumo and the Mirai were assigned to Yokosuka as conventional support vessels for the Kanmusu fleet yesterday. "You probably get to see her very often."

"Yeah. The Admiral uses the Mirai as a mobile command post now. I rarely get to actually be on her anymore, though," Matsuda confirmed. "She's outfitted as a fleet flagship, has the best radar in the fleet, a turret mounted railgun that can punch through damn near anything, and enough modified Anti-Abyssal missiles to sink a small fleet on her own. It's a pity that she's so damned hard and expensive to rearm, or we would have had this war in the bag."

"I hear you. Our Zumwalts would have kicked some serious ass if the railguns didn't keep overheating in the middle of a fight," Yvonne agreed.

Killing the Abyssals wasn't a problem. It was killing them cost effectively and keeping up with the rate of attrition that was what eventually wore the US Navy down. A railgun could kill an Abyssal easily, but there was never only one Abyssal. Sure, the Navy had plenty of missiles, but firing a few dozen millions of dollars worth of missiles to kill a single Ro-Class destroyer was not how you won wars, and since the Abyssals had more bodies than the Navy had shells and missiles, well…

Railguns, huh.

Swordo: Wonder how they solved the power generation problems.

I think this implies they kinda didn't. Hence the issues they have with using them.

You think that they'd use something other than railguns if that's the case, but or some reason missiles and shit didn't do the trick because….abyssal magic or something I have no clue.

Swordo: Well, from what I can tell, they do work, just that missiles are expensive and they couldn't keep up with attrition and all that jazz. The modern military paradigm resembles Battleship (the game, not the warships or the movie) more than anything, and missile systems on a boat usually need an ammo barge to reload now. They weren't meant to fire a thousand rounds a day, so this one I think gets a pass.

If that was the case though,why mention railguns. Especially if they still have that issue as the missles would.

XenaC: I don't like how this is where we choose to worldbuild through conversation and the conversation promptly becomes no less dry than the narration that came before it. It seems like the author cannot create a paragraph more than a few lines long without sounding like Wikipedia 80% of the time.

Swordo: The problem with railguns, as I said earlier, is power generation. Which they apparently fixed, because they cite 'overheating' instead of 'we fire like twice an hour like what the fuck'.

XenaC: Kancolle Is Magic.

Oh also

Stalin said it best: quantity had a quality of its own.

Let's quote Ol' Joseph.

Swordo: (bad russian accent) Yez, de russians love their quantity. Like de five bajillion missiles dey fire at every Abyssal! An dey never run out, for dere are always more dissidents to work in gulag! (/bad russian accent)

(You imply there are good russian accents): Da.

"Still, for something the public thinks of as obsolete, she's doing a damned fine job at helping us out," Matsuda said nostalgically, with more than a little pride in his old ship. "Honestly, she might not be able to fight as well as we'd planned, but as a mobile command centre she's second to none. Saves the girls having to go out all the way to the mission area on their own, you know?"

Dare I ask the bill for this mobile command center?

Swordo: Probably literal billions. Warships are expensive.

"I agree. It would really suck to have to go out there in the rain," Yvonne noted thoughtfully.

Traveling in the comfort of another ship did have its advantages, especially if it helped to keep ship girls well rested and supplied before needing to fight. "Plenty of ways to make a conventional warship useful even though she's been overshadowed by the Kanmusu."

"Yep, Mirai's like our own mobile hotel. Hell, she can even dish it out if push really comes to shove. Would be nice to meet a Kanmusu version of her, don't you think? That girl won't let anything keep her down!" Matsuda laughed as he got up from his chair. "Anyway, I'd better go see to the girls. Akatsuki's probably bawling her eyes out over embarrassing herself that badly."

Obvious joke in three…..two….one...

Swordo: Well obviously Yamato is secretly the Mirai, but a shipgirl pretending to be a human pretending to be a shipgirl pretending to be a functioning PR representative and/or representation of the japanese people. Wait, shit, that may have been too much. I'm sorry. :<

XenaC: 5meta7me bro.

Matsuda and Yvonne's shook hands once more before the young man turned back to attend to his duties. "Well, that was an enlightening talk."

"…not a hotel."

"Hm? You said something, Yama…to?"

Yvonne turned to face her assistant and was shocked to see the battleship in dire straits. Yamato had been so quiet and reserved, Matsuda and Yvonne had completely forgotten about the battleship. Now that she was looking at her, Yvonne wondered how she'd manage to miss all this.

The poor girl seemed like on the verge of tears, her shoulders shaking and her hands around her parasol in a white knuckled grip. Something was terribly wrong.

Christ this girl needs therapy.

Swordo: ...Okay, Operation Ten-Go may have gone ploin shaped, and Yamato may have never done much in WW2. But for fucks sake what does she do except cry and apologise?

I just noticed, i think Xena died at some point.

XenaC: Phototaking is hard. Apparently so is writing someone with self-esteem issues without making them the doormattiest doormat to ever grace the floor before doors.

Swordo: I recommend DOOM 2016, twice daily, once before lunch and once after dinner.

"Yamato? What happened?"

"I… I apologize for my unseemly appearance, Commander." The pride of the Japanese Navy sniffled, clearly attempting to put on a brave face and failing spectacularly. "I, Yamato, will be alright in a moment. Just some dust in my eye, that's all. Where… where do you want to head to next?"

This time, the watery smile Yamato gave Yvonne teetered on the edge of despair.

…fuck it.

LINE BREAK.

Yeah Yamato has issues.

Swordo: I, Swordo, see that the Yamato-Class has very self-centric ways of addressing themselves.

Musashi had to get it somewhere.

XenaC: I, MUSASHI, WOULD NEVER HAVE ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN WERE I PRESENT!

XenaC: More seriously we've gone full drama too fast too furious.

Again. This is like the second time this chapter isn't it? Or at least the second time in two chapters.

XenaC: Yes Yamato seems to spend most of her time in these two chapters suspended between 'withdrawing lily' and 'MEGUKA I CANNOT SAVE YOU', which I find very disturbing.

"Commander?" Yamato exclaimed as Yvonne bodily shoved both herself and the battleship into the vacant dormitory store room and locked the door behind her. "Commander, what are you doing?!"

(Plays 70s porno musics on a boombox)

Swordo: Well, you know what they say. Akatsuki is exceptionally headpattable. And yes, I'm talking about that doujin.

XenaC: Hang on, putting Take My Breath Away and another dime in the jukebox, baby!

Swordo: Bow chicka bow wow.

XenaC: *dun dun dun dun dun* *dun dun dun*

"Getting answers," Yvonne said, rummaging around the shelves to find something she could use to sit on. She eventually found two spare folding chairs and set them up facing each other in the middle of the room. Then she forcefully sat Yamato down on the chair across from her.

The lighting in the room wasn't very good, as Yvonne had opted to keep the ceiling light off and thus only had the small window at the far end of the room as a light source. However, Yvonne wasn't here to make a presentation. She was here to talk.

So talk she did.

"Okay, Yamato. You give me a straight answer, right here and right now." Yvonne said as she crossed her legs and folded her arms, staring down the battleship sternly. "There's clearly something bugging you, and I need to know what it is."

"There is nothing bothering me," Yamato insisted weakly, unable to meet Yvonne's eyes even in this dim lighting.

"And everything that has happened since we left the headquarters building has told me that you're lying to me right now," Yvonne challenged firmly. "If there is something that I have done that has offended you, I need to know what it is. Immediately."

"You? Offend? What, NO! C-C-Commander Swanson, it is my failing. Not yours! You are not at fault!" Yamato quickly said waving her arms about in a panicked manner.

"Really? Then what is your problem? Tell me here. Tell me now, sailor."

"I'd… I would rather not say."

"I'm making it an order. You tell me what it is or I'm going straight to the Admiral's office to ask for a new assistant, because clearly this is not working out."

"What? Why?" The horror and dismay on Yamato's face almost made Yvonne want to turn back and question just what she was doing.

This feels like some form of harassment.

XenaC: It is.

Swordo: I'll keep quiet on this one. What I have to say is not helpful at all. It's not a bad scene… Well, it's not a bad idea for a scene. I just… I really, really don't care.

(pats swordo)

XenaC: Basically the setup for this scene in the last 2 chapters doesn't convince on either side of the conversation so it just neither feels believable nor give-a-shit worthy for this scene to be occurring in this way.

Swordo: I'll give GG some slack here, introduction chapters like this one almost never start well. That said, this is why you don't do introduction chapters like this one. The reason why people still write chapters like these is because they're easy. And easy is lazy.

Swordo, remember. This is roughly halfway through chapter two when this is happening. We have a decent chunk of content and expositing all *before* we got here.

Swordo: Ah, the usual problem with words words words then. At some point, people will have to read those words. And words are boring. I want action. Like tits. Or guns. Or people with tits shooting guns. While dropkicking nazis. On a boat. Yeah.

XenaC: And that's better how? Not meaning you Swordo, I mean De. I think the fact that there have been this many words before this scene and I still don't see it playing out before me is in my eyes a startling indictment. Is Yvonne a professional, a woman of action, a crying (definitely not ship)girl in distress, or a wooden block made of 7-ply, 6-inch thick inelegant observation?

Swordo: The problem with complex characters is that there is a thin line between 'depth' and 'multiple personality disorder'. You know, thin in the cosmic sense.

XenaC: I think it's the writer's habit of drama-queening the hell out of every new scene where we see a new side of Yvonne that makes it the latter, and not the former.

Yvonne was going on an all-out verbal assault on the battleship Yamato. She was in a Japanese Naval base, surrounded by Japanese ship girls, many of whom didn't like her… and she was making the pride of their navy absolutely miserable.

If that wasn't a recipe for a lynch mob, Yvonne didn't know what would be!

However, if there was one thing Yvonne wasn't good at, it was backing down on an issue that needed to be forced, no matter the consequences.

This was an issue that most definitely needed to be forced.

Ah, so you can say Yvonne is a little Bullheaded.

Swordo: Yamato hasn't shown me anything that makes her worthy of being the Pride of the Japanese Navy, so… I feel bad for Yams in the same way I feel bad for little kids that step on landmines while playing in the field clearly labelled to be full of fucking landmines. Sucks to be you, kid, but you knew the risks.

XenaC: My main problem is that Yamato's problem seems pretty obvious, yet apparently everyone in the Naval Base has the emotional intelligence of a ten-years-dead lobotomy patient and can't figured out that she has these self-esteem problems.

(the joke was Halsey, because Yvonne is Enterprise.)

Swordo: I feel like we should lay off the Enterprising attitude (heh). Even salty jokes spoil after a while. (It's funny because salt is a preservative)

XenaC: No, let's just stop guys, please.

I'm just immeasurably salty about things and we're not gonna get to that shit for awhile. Also bad puns are my life.

Anyway!

"It's affecting your performance!" Yvonne jabbed a finger into Yamato's chest. "I've been with you for less than three hours, and you're a sobbing mess. Something's wrong and it needs to be fixed.

Get a hold of yourself, woman! How am I supposed to work with you if you fall to pieces like this? I don't know what the hell's going on in that head of yours, I don't know what's happened before this, but you're the Yamato. You should be better than this!"

Yamato stared at Yvonne with wide eyes and an open mouth, stunned speechless by Yvonne's rant, unable to even form a response.

"Start talking, or I start walking to the Admiral's office."

Yvonne delivered her final ultimatum, folding her arms back up and leaning back into her seat, as she waited for Yamato to come to a decision. Minutes passed as Yamato looked down at her hands, her face contorted with anguish as she wrestled with her own emotions. Anger, fear, hurt, shame, loathing, all played out on the young woman's features… but it seemed like she couldn't come to a decision.

If that was the case, Yvonne would make one for her.

"Okay. If that's the way you want it, I'm going," Yvonne declared as she rose from her seat and turned for the door… only to feel a tug on the sleeve of her uniform as she did so.

"Wait, Commander. I'll tell you," Yamato said in a small quivering voice, her trembling arm outstretched. "Please, don't go. I'll talk."

Good enough.

Yvonne sat back down.

"Talk," she said.

I really don't like Yvonne right now. Like even if it's in spite of everything the story has done so far (or what it hasn't), I care about Yamato far more than I do Yvonne. So seeing Yvonne bully Yamato like that just makes me not like her.

Swordo: Well, at least we finally find Yamato's bugbear. Touchy-feely emotional crap is really annoying in the vast majority of fics I've ever read, even if done by competent authors, so usually it's best to get it over and done with. I've fallen into this pitfall too many times to feel otherwise.

XenaC: Better now than later when there are more stakes and more important narrative points to mess up, you mean?

Swordo: Honestly all this should have come up later, when we get a better hold of Yvonne's personality (or at least like her better). Like, even charitably, this is two chapters of plot points shoved into half a chapter.

Yamato was silent for a few more moments, so much so that Yvonne wondered if she was going back on her word, before she finally decided on where to begin.

"Commander Swanson. This… ties back in to the question you asked me earlier. The truth is… the truth is that I, Yamato, volunteered for this assignment. I wanted to be your assistant. Originally you were supposed to be attended to by the light cruiser Ooyodo, but I appealed to the Admiral, and was appointed in her stead."

FUCK. I'd have rather had Yo-Yo here.

Swordo: ...Okay, I'm confused. Is Yamato upset that she appealed to replace Yodo? Does she think she's not as good as Yodo on this? Is she sad that Yvonne isn't what she expected her to be? Either way, I would greatly enjoy my yodo dess. Or maybe not.

Swordo: It's important to note that I don't hate GG so far. I haven't developed a real opinion on it. It's just in that vague pool of 'shit that I don't like or hate in particular'.

Well, this was an unexpected development.

"And this is your problem? That you volunteered for it?" Yvonne leaned in, genuinely puzzled by what she was hearing. "I'm afraid I don't see the problem here. So you volunteered. Okay. But that doesn't explain why you cracked."

"The truth is that I volunteered because I wanted to be useful." Yamato wrung her hands nervously, her face growing paler by the moment, even as her words became more coherent.

Yvonne realized that the reserved and shy Yamato was airing out her innermost thoughts to her: whatever was bugging her had been doing so for some time. In that light, her breakdown was a symptom of something that had likely persisted for long before Yvonne had ever set foot in Yokosuka.

"Commander Swanson, do you know about the nickname 'Hotel Yamato'?" She asked cautiously.

"It was a derogatory name the IJN used to refer to the original battleship Yamato in World War Two," Yvonne recalled from her readings of the history books. "There was a perception amongst the rank and file that the ship was a white elephant. They served cold Ramune and free flow sake on that ship. She had carpeted floors and five-star accommodation, and the best food in the Imperial navy. Yamamoto gained twenty pounds living on her. Her maintenance and operating costs were astronomical. There was no practical way to use her, she was just too damned expensive to sail."

"Yes. That is certainly the case."

"Is?" Yvonne echoed, northing the present tense of the words.

"Indeed. I, Japanese Battleship Yamato… I am not able to take to the field because I put too much strain on our resources. I, Battleship Yamato, am a burden to this base."

It seemed just admitting this to someone else was nerve wracking, and it was taking every ounce of courage the poor girl had not to fall down crying now that she had said it. The look of frustration and helplessness in her eyes showed just how deep those feelings went.

Feelings that Yvonne had become all too familiar with, these past few months.

"I cannot even practice," Yamato said despondently, her hands clenching and unclenching again and again as she did so. "Even a simple practice session consumes an unacceptable amount of our resources. I haven't been able to take to the water on my own power in months."

Oh hey Yvonne are you reading from a script? What that you have there, is that the script?

Swordo: How the fuck did Yvonne know they served Ramune on Yamato, but not know that DesDiv6 is adorable as fuck?

Because this was copied pasted from wikipedia?

XenaC: Told you so! And you know you have written poorly when people start comparing your narrative to Wikipedia.

No I meant It reads like it was *actually* copied from wikipedia. If this were an essay he's get into shit for that.

"Jesus," Yvonne whispered as the pieces of the puzzle slowly came together.

Cringeworthy Italics. *ding*

Swordo: And here we miss another opportunity to give Yvonne character. A more colourful swear would have been amusing and character development. Like "James T. Motherfucker" or "Sulu, go to Warp-Whatthefuck". Iunno, probably not those. I just can't raise a good example because I don't know Yvonne's character.

XenaC: Jesus probably fits quite right since she's a bit of a cardboard cutout until the author decides she needs some drama in her life. And boy is there drama.

Swordo: Oh my god we are all the bad cop. XenaC is the newly-transferred cop, De3ta is our toughened no-nonsense cop on the beat, and I'm newly transferred from the 'Arsonists, Rebels and Generally Awful Murder-Rapists' department.

I mean we all always were bad cop eventually. Xena is just the smart cop.

Also: So you transferred from the Worm department? (Ba bum tish)

XenaC: I'm just the book-Worm Cop. (Ba-dum-dum-tsh!)

Swordo: pls no ._.

Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy, Xena gets a cookie.

XenaC: I'll take a double chocolate brownie biscuit, please!

She couldn't believe what she was hearing, but the answer was so obvious in hindsight. She'd been so distracted by the Yamato's power and reputation that she'd forgotten the girl that the legend was attached to.

It was like she was looking at herself, but worse.

At least in Yvonne's case she could blame an external source for her woes. Yamato on the other hand had no such scapegoat: she was blaming herself.

Oh hey suddenly this is a fucking thing.

Swordo: I've… never not cringed whenever anyone has done this. I've never not cringed when I've done this. This is an authorial pitfall that everyone should avoid, because this is goddamn painful to read.

Doesn't help that here it isn't even done *well* by the standards of this scene.

XenaC: My issue is that when someone makes some realization and they realize they should have seen it all along, I would prefer to be shown it, not shown it and then have it shoved in my face right after.

Swordo: If there is a 'right' way to do this, insofar as there is a 'right' way to execute this god awful cliche (besides with a Mosin Nagant and in defense of the Motherland), it would be best to have a realisation that the audience hasn't made already. Make it legitimately surprising, or a real insight. Or at least funny.

XenaC: Basically you need to be Darker Than Black. Out with what you know, in with What The Hell Is Happening - one episode at a time.

Wait, what happened with Matsuda…?

Oh hell, no.

"My conversation with Matsuda?"

"Yes," Yamato nodded her eyes once again beginning to water, "When you spoke of the Mirai, it wounded me deeply."

Great. Now Yvonne felt like an ass.

Thinking back to her conversation with Matsuda, Yvonne realized how much of what had been said between the two of them would be hard on Yamato. While the two officers had been thoughtlessly making small talk about Matsuda's old ship, barb after barb was being driven into the heart of the girl who was listening.

Mirai was a conventional ship, considered impractical against the Abyssal fleet, and had weapons that were far too expensive to use in a meaningful way. However, even though Mirai was a vessel whose weapons were ill suited to the task, she still was able to do her duty, by serving as a mobile headquarters. They'd even made that joke about the Mirai being a fucking hotel.

Akatsuki wasn't the only person putting her foot in her mouth today.

"When I found out about you coming to the base, I thought, this was my chance to be useful for once. I thought, as the pride of the Japanese Navy, I would be a fitting representative for our Kanmusu, to the first foreign officer to ever be assigned to our base." The pitch in Yamato's voice increased, her sadness and anger at herself reaching a crescendo. "I thought I could help impress the honour and courage of the Japanese Navy on our visitor and show them ho-how good we are… that we're committed to the defence of more than just the Japanese mainland. To make sure that by the time you leave the base, you would only have good things to say about us and spread the word."

"Yamato… I don't know what to say."

"But look at this!" Yamato despaired, looking Yvonne in the eye. "I promised you that all of us would welcome you, but then you run into Zuikaku and my promise turns to ash right after I made it. I wanted you to think of us as capable professionals, but Akatsuki made you think we're children playing at war! And then… and then… now you're so disappointed in me you want to replace me with someone else! I-I-I don't know what I'm supposed to do!"

Yvonne was just barely able to catch Yamato as she fell out of her seat, sobbing and wailing all the while. The poor girl clung to her like she was a lifeline in the ocean, the battleship's tears dampening Yvonne's uniform, as months of repressed emotions came spilling out in one moment.

"Well this is a fine mess that I've stepped into," muttered Yvonne.

Well first: Enter key motherfucker.

Yamato, pull yourself together dammit. You're better than this.

Sidenote: this makes me look at the Yvonne Yamato ship in a new light. The light does not flatter it.

XenaC: There's so much stating the Obvious in here that you could promote the author from Captain right past Major Problem into General Incompetence.

Swordo: Is Yamato triggered by literally anyone saying 'Hotel'? Goddamn. I can see why they don't send her out in combat.

XenaC: It's the Meme That Got Away.

LINE BREAK

"Here. Towel."

"M-My thanks, Commander Swanson."

It was sometime later when Yamato had finally calmed down. The battleship had become a complete mess at that point; runny nose and reddened eyes had turned the Japanese beauty into an object of pity… one that could possibly enrage anyone who saw her and make them chase down the fiend responsible, in order to administer justice and the wrath of heaven.

Fortunately, it seemed that with most of the nearby Kanmusu out of the dormitory for practice, on missions, or otherwise distracted, nobody had noticed just yet.

Since Yvonne in no way wished to be beaten to a pulp, the pair had quickly made a beeline for the nearest bathroom for Yamato to freshen up. This was why Yamato was standing in front of a washroom basin and inspecting herself in the mirror, while Yvonne was leaning with her back to the wall, watching her.

"How long have you been holding that in?" Yvonne asked, once she was reasonably certain another question wouldn't set Yamato off again. She was now sailing in murky waters, and didn't want to take any chances.

"Months. You are the first person I've told," Yamato said as she turned off the water faucet and began drying her face with the towel Yvonne had given her. "Not even Musashi knows."

Oh hey Musashi is in this. How the fuck did she not notice any of this? How the fuck can they afford to field a musashi and not Yamato? Can they field her? Why does only Yamato have this issue? So many questions.

Swordo: I, MUSASHI, AM ACTUALLY NOT CERTIFIED TO BE A THERAPIST, FOR I, MUSASHI, AM ALSO FULL OF ISSUES. APOLOGIES!

XenaC: You know, I regret my previous joke about the entire base being lobotomized. Because it's too true. Also to answer your second question, De, it's so BIG BROTHER MURICA CAN BE USEFUL IN THIS PART OF THE STORY.

"Musashi?"

"My sister ship. She's the secretary ship for the Admiral down in Kure." Yamato gave a humourless laugh. "She makes herself much more useful over there than I do. I tried to be a secretary ship myself, but all the Admirals are either too used to their own personal aides to consider a replacement, or are too intimidated by me to accept it."

"Well that… sucks." Yvonne winced, wondering just how unlucky a person could get.

"If you… if you want to see the Admiral now, I, Yamato, understand," Yamato turned to face

Yvonne and gave a deep respectful bow. "I apologize for my failure to live up to your expectations, and hope that m-my r-re-replacement will live up to your expectations."

Yvonne stayed silent for a few moments, in deep thought.

Outwardly, it might have seemed to the untrained eye that she was thinking about what to do. In truth, Yvonne had already made up her mind and was trying to figure out what was the best way of putting it to Yamato.

"No. I've changed my mind." Yamato's head shot up to stare at Yvonne, astonishment written all over her face, "Look, if I go back to the Admiral, what just happened is going to reflect badly on both of us over something that, quite frankly, isn't that bad yet. It's going to take some work, but I think we can make this assignment work out for both of us."

"What?" Yamato whispered in disbelief.

"Look, you're a good person, but you take everything far too personally," Yvonne explained with a shrug. "Okay so Zuikaku was a bitch. Big deal. We're in the military. There are plenty of assholes like her. And frankly? At least she was a bitch to me for something she believed in. I don't approve of what she did, but at least I can respect why she did it."

"I-I see." Yamato fidgeted awkwardly.

It seemed like the poor girl wasn't used to dealing with profanity. Tough. She was working with an American. Profanity was going to happen.

Yamato needed thicker skin anyway.

"Akatsuki's a kid. So maybe she made her division look stupid. Fine. Fix that tomorrow. Yes I know that first impressions are important and hard to fix if done wrong, but it's not like that can't be turned around with enough time and effort. That's something you have plenty of time to rectify. I just got here for fucks sake!"

Yvonne also didn't add that she actually found the Akatsuki sisters' antics endearing; she knew that wasn't the kind of thing Yamato wanted to hear. By this point Yamato was rapt with attention, focusing entirely on Yvonne's words. It occurred to Yvonne that, somehow against all odds, she was giving Yamato a prep talk.

Wet noodle Yams aside, the delivery of this is pretty shit.

XenaC: Please wait while I fly into an apoplectic rage about Yvonne not knowing that Musashi exists.

Swordo: Yeah… still in the 'shit I don't like or hate in particular' pool. I nothing this fic. I'd say Whiskey should be able to do better, but… I've never seen him do anything with 100%. Because he's always bitching about how something happened that kept him from being 100%. Or talking about fucking boats. I don't know.

XenaC: The burns are real. Can we convince him to write at 100% about bedding boats? I write like a mountainous glacier, but I'm beginning to suspect that I will get to bedding a boat -like with lay-up and everything- before he will.

Swordo: This is really just an elaborate therapy session for my repressed loathing about everything and everyone, myself included, all framed through the lens of boats. I'm sorry guys. I'm just a selfish boatfucker.

R32: Hey all, just woke up.

Oh hey Hash.

Anyway Swordo: Is fine, this is where salty mothers go to fuck.

….let me try that again.

Swordo: Tell me more about how mothers fuck.

You should know, you motherfucker.

Terrible jokes aside.

XenaC: Look, self-awareness!

"Finally… I know what it's like to be sidelined," Yvonne admitted in a softer voice. Now this was the tricky bit. She needed to get her point across without disclosing classified information of the highest sort.

"You? Commander Swanson? That can't be right!" Yamato gasped in disbelief. "You're so strong and capable. You stared down Zuikaku like she was nothing. You came here alone on a mission of utmost importance. How could anyone have sidelined you before?"

Wow. From the look in her eyes, it was clear that Yamato, biggest goddamn battleship ever made and pride of the Japanese Navy, thought Yvonne was awesome.

Yamato thought Yvonne Swanson was awesome.

Nobody back home was going to believe this.

Now, I'm just a simple country lawyer (Disclaimer: is neither of those things), and I'm not one to use the term "Mary Sue" too much.

But I will say this is some Yvonne wankery that is wholly undeserved.

Swordo: ...I want more dess to cheer me up, but I'm worried that her CONSTANT SHOUTING might make me rue the day she was poured from her teapot at the Vickers shipyard.

XenaC: Oh yeah that was a thing in this fic. Tragedy of the century I tell you. Tragedy.

Swordo: Seriously, if you want to distinguish between languages use different fonts.

"You'd be surprised," Yvonne said without missing a beat, "Look, I understand how you feel, and believe it or not there are a lot of people in the US Navy who feel the same way."

"Really?"

"We used to be the most powerful navy on the planet. We had bases all around the globe. We had eleven aircraft carriers, each with enough planes to beat an entire air force. We had subs that could launch nukes that would wipe countries off the map. Our surface fleet fielded some of the most powerful cruisers and destroyers ever conceived. Now look at us." Yvonne gestured down at herself.

"It may be a surprise to you, but if the Abyssals hadn't happened I would still be a junior officer, not an O-5. They didn't send me here because I was capable. They sent me because they didn't have anyone else left to send and I was just the closest thing they had. The war wiped us out, Yamato. It broke us to the point where it's been a year since we stopped fighting to recover… and we're still picking up the pieces."

Yamato shook her head with a hand over her mouth.

It seemed the battleship had suddenly realized just how bad the US Navy was having it at this point and had no idea what to say in response.

"The Abyssals killed us, Yamato. They killed a quarter million of my brothers and sisters in arms.

Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to know the sons of bitches who did it are still out there?

That they aren't only still out there, but we can't do a goddamned thing to hit back because we're in no shape to? I think you do. And that's why I want to work with you." Yvonne held out an open hand towards Yamato. "I volunteered for this assignment because I wanted to do something useful. You volunteered for it for the same reason. We have that in common, at least. There's going to be kinks we need to work out, but are you willing to tough it out with me until we start kicking fate in the nuts and get our goddamn due?"

"I… I… YES!"

Yamato seized Yvonne's hand and shook it enthusiastically, beaming with the most brilliant smile Yvonne had ever seen on the girl's face.

"I, Yamato, would be so happy to work with you, Admiral!"

Hooooooooooow does she not know this bullshiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit~ Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy make this an excuse to preach at uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus~

Swordo: I thought she was a Commander.

She is.

XenaC: It is mentioned in some obscure buttcrack of this fic somewhere that all shipgirls call their superior 'Admiral' (though of course this is not true, some use shireikan which is a more generic 'commander')...but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't find that one line amid the sea of churning mud that this exposition is.

I vaguely recall that, yeah.

"Um, that's 'Commander'. I skipped like three grades to get to Commander, so Admiral sounds really awkward to me," Yvonne said nervously.

"If that is what you would prefer, 'Commander'." Yamato gave her a radiant smile, one that left no doubt to what she actually meant.

It was clear that Yamato was only addressing Yvonne as 'Commander' to humour the other girl, and in fact had made up her mind on what the American was to her.

Oh Christ on a Cracker, I 'seduced' the Pride of the Japanese Navy. What the hell have I done?

"Well, then. If that's the case, we should be going," Yvonne said, imagining damage control fairies panicking at being suddenly face to face with a ticking bomb. "DesDiv 6 is a bust for now, but there's other things that we could be doing in the meantime."

"Like what, 'Commander'?" Yamato said deferentially, though her smile was still radiant as ever.

"You haven't read the briefing yet, so I might as well help you work though that. I should show you what I've learned so far in my compiled research to bring you fully up to speed. You might even be able to give some insight into anything I've missed."

"As you say so Admi-Commander!"

As the pair walked out of the dormitory bathroom back towards Yvonne's office, it was a mirror of their earlier arrival, with Yvonne leading and Yamato following exactly four paces behind her… except this time, Yamato had a visible spring to her step and a smile that wouldn't fade.

Yvonne gulped.

Admiral Briggs is so going to kill me.

END CHAPTER 2.

I hate it. I hate it a lot.

Swordo: I have to say it. I'm not a fan. I don't hate it either. Unfortunately, GG is not very memorable. It stays in that vague pool of 'stuff I don't like or hate in particular'.

XenaC: I must admit that my feelings aren't half so kind? Partly I can see what it's trying to do, what it's trying to be, and seeing it consistently settle for so much less is painful. I'm in a state of perpetual cringe right now and I need to pass it onto something - so too bad for you, GG. Have fun becoming a harem anime, you're gonna need it.

Whiskey Golf · Jan 1, 2017

Advise to people: never bta while under a fever.

@Swordomatic i was too hands off and in sufficiently strict as a beta.

Whiskey Golf · Jan 1, 2017

Like at this point the only reason i havent burned gg back down to the ground is someone needs to challenge ambulance

For all readers and writers

After much ado, our new tagging system is here and being rolled out to the userbase. Read more here!

De3ta Reads....Greatest Generation

Mae

枪杆子里面出政权

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance

Mae

Where’s Your North?

Mae

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance

Mae

Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance

Where’s Your North?

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance

Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains

Mae

Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance

Where’s Your North?

Forever Tired

Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains

Mae

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance

Being of Editing & Technical Assistance