Dead Oceans: A Kantai Collection Quest

-Keep going at your current speed and take a more cautious approach; the watchpoint reported a full raiding party, and you'd just get torn apart if you engaged with them. Better to make sure they've cleared the area before you arrive.
-Keep one drone with the ship to make sure you're safe, send one drone ahead to the target site, prepared for (Air support / Reconnaissance)

"I want both drones up and in the air ASAP. We're getting close to where that raiding fleet hit, and I don't want any stragglers finding us," you order, plotting out a pair of course paths. "We're going to stay clear of the shallows, so turn us 15 degrees starboard now to give us the leeway we need. Get both the drones ready for airstrikes. Keep one nearby, keep it ahead of us and on our starboard to be our guard, and send the other out overland down the west coast to find where the raid hit."

You sigh. "That shouldn't be too hard, just follow the smoke."

Orders given, you sit down, and listen to the scuffle of activity as orders get relayed, feeling the ship turn as it changes course. Now comes the worst part; the waiting. minute after minute stretching on, constantly wondering if there's something you missed, waiting for signs of an enemy, for contacts.

Just waiting

And waiting.


"Captain, I have visual on the raid site." The voice of one of the drone pilots breaks the tension, giving you, and everyone, something to focus on. "Looks like a fishing village. It seems quiet, I'm not seeing any abyssals... wait, there's one on the beach- it's not moving. I think it might be dead?"

That can't be possible; there's no way a village like this could have anything that could kill an abyssal. "Show me," you say, rushing over to peer at the screen. "Zoom in closer"

He complies, getting you a better view of the scene; lying on the sand of the beach is what was an abyssal destroyer, a cow-sized, fishlike beast of black metal and grey flesh. And it is clearly dead, a crater blown in it's side, black blood and quickly-rotting flesh staining the sand it rests on. Directing the camera about the village, you see other dead abyssals; some with the same cratered wounds, others crushed under rubble, all scattered throughout the village. There's still no sign of anything that could have done this, but if you had to guess, whatever happened here started after the abyssals started shelling the village and after some of their forces moved inland.

Which means that if you're going to find any sign of what did this, it's going to be further up in the village, away from the ocean. And since you're seeing no sign of active fighting, with the first people beginning to leave their shelters, it's likely that things have quietened down.

"Right..." you glance at the drone operators nametag. Ren Ibara. "Ibara, I want you to keep your eyes on the upper part of the village. If you see anything out of the ordinary, tell me at once."

He nods, and you step away from his screen, returning to your own position. "What we have here is a mystery." You declare to the bridge. "We have an abyssal raiding party which has attacked a village and been wiped out by something. It wasn't us. We've never seen an abyssal fight another one, so it probably wasn't them. And from the looks of the villagers, it sure as hell wasn't them, and it's all over now."

You pause, taking in the confusion of the bridge. You can't blame them. You're running in the dark here as well. "So here's what we are going to do. I want us to get to that village as fast as possible. I want all missiles, including the drones, to be armed, but not ready to fire. Whatever killed the hostiles here hasn't harmed the villagers, but we can't let our guard down in case anything happens. As soon as we get to the village, we'll be doing search and rescue duty. Prettyboy, you'll be in charge of that."

From the back corner of the bridge, you hear the soft voice of your Lieutenant, Akemi Ito, as he speaks up. "Fuck off, Captain."

You grin, and turn to see Akemis surprisingly feminine form leave the bridge, on his way to organise the rescue parties. You've got a handful of infantry taken from last line duties, who'll be heading up the search teams, with the rest being a mix of medics and whoever else Akemi finds who doesn't look like they're doing anything important when he shows up.

With that well under control, you finish off your address to the bridge. "And while Lt. Ito is leading the rescue, I'm going to find whatever killed the abyssals."

Orders given, you take your seat again, as the ship speeds up, taking you closer and closer to your destination. You're not leaving this island until you find out what happened here. And as the minutes pass, you slide your hand into your pocket, thumbing the good luck charm you always keep there, brushing it's polished metal surface, and giving the gentlest of touches to the blackened metal dogtag that accompanies it. Gods, let this be something good.

---

Coming on half an hour later, you arrive at the village, your ship manoeuvring alongside the harbour wall. Akemi is the first to disembark, leading the rescue efforts himself. As you wait for the crowd to follow him off the ship, you take in the sight of the village. It's a fairly small village, rising up the hill from the small harbour, surrounded by forest. A nice little place, or at least it would have been before the raid hit; multiple buildings have collapsed, and several small fires burn among the rubble, which the villagers are trying to put out before it gets much worse.

Checking your radio to make sure it works, you leave the ship, setting foot on the harbour. Grabbing a couple of the stragglers from Akemis search party to help you, you...

---

[] Go uphill; from what you saw from the drone, you're most likely to find some clues about what happened here in that part of town.

[] Ask around; there's a few villagers around here, who Akemi's already started talking to. They might be able to tell you something.

[] Radio Ibara, see what guidance he can give you from the sky. You might be able to narrow down your search area.

-Ask around; there's a few villagers around here, who Akemi's already started talking to. They might be able to tell you something.

Setting dry land, you stride forward towards the villagers who've already come to meet with Akemis party, your two helpers struggling to keep up with your pace. You take a moment to look over the villagers there; there's a couple people who clearly know where people are buried under rubble, since they're guiding people up and into the village. Some more of Akemis men are getting to work dragging corpses out of the way, grouping them together for identification.

Looking over at where the medics are treating the wounded, you see the types of injuries that you'd expect from the situation; a mixture of burns, broken limbs from falling debris, with the occasional shrapnel wound. There'll be worse injuries of course- unconsciousness, head injuries, people being trapped under rubble; but those injuries aren't ones that can be brought down here. They'll need to be treated at the scene.

As you examine the crowd at the medics; patients, people bringing new patients, or people telling the medics about people with more serious wounds, you notice a boy in his teens walking away from there, struggling to wrap a bandage around his arm. As he loses his grip on the bandage and it unravels, you see bite marks on his arm. Now you're looking closer, you see his clothes are spattered with the black blood common to abyssals.

"Need a hand with that?" you ask, approaching the boy, taking one end of the trailing bandage before he gets a chance to respond. "Here, let me get this end."

You hold your end of the bandage in place, allowing him to wrap it around his wound, letting you get a better look at it while he does so; it's definitely a bite wound, but the edges seem... ragged.

You introduce yourself, getting the boys name in return. "You get that wound from one of those eels that show up with the rest of those monsters? Looks about the right size for one of them." He nods, seeming a bit swept along by you. "Make sure to give it a good wash each night then. You'll have gotten it washed with antiseptics, but you don't want to take any chances."

You pause for a second, before pressing to the part you're really interested in. "You are quite lucky, managing to fight it off. How'd you do it?"

He blinks, taking a step back in confusion as he stammers. "I-I didn't do anything. Everything happened so quickly- I was hiding when it found me and then I was trying to get it off and then something just tore it off as it went by me; the first thing I really remember after the pain was seeing that fish thing lying on the ground, ripped in two..."

"Show me where this happened" This is exactly what you were looking for- whatever killed the abyssals passed right by this kid, and while he can't tell you what it is, he's taking you to where it is.

Picking your way through the devastation, the boy takes you to an alleyway further uphill, where you find signs of a scuffle in the dirt, and stains of black blood leading uphill, where you find the rapidly-decaying remains of the abyssal eel that had attacked the kid, ripped in half. The trail of blood continues onwards for a bit, continuing up the hill. Perfect.

As you start to run uphill, the boy calls out to you again "I- There's something else. It's not much, but seeing this has made me recall it now- Orange. I'm not sure what, but that's all I can remember here."

Well, that's not very useful, but it still tells you that there's nothing abyssal which did this, assuming that's what he means by orange. There's no proof that's right, but it's hard to think what else he could mean. Clever.

Running up the hill, your two helpers following close behind, you pull the radio out your pocket, feeling the cool metal of your charm, still safe at the pockets bottom. "Gehekm-" Fuck. "Get. Up. Here. Akemi. I've got a lead." You have to force the words out, making sure that you actually say what you want to say, compensating for your slur. You switch channels, speaking through the bridge speakers. "Ibara! Look for anything unusual in the upper half of the village. Check thermals, check visuals, check everything you can think of. Someone else, get him a radio so he can talk."

After a couple more minutes running, you slow to a walk to catch your breath, when you hear the radio once more. "Captain? I've found something- there's a couple of collapsed buildings the next street over from you, and there's something off about the thermals there- it looks like there's people trapped under there, but there's patches where it's a lot hotter than it should be, and there's something larger than a person in there."

Following Ibaras directions, you head to the fallen buildings. Directing your followers to help with rescuing anyone trapped underneath the rubble, you look around, searching for a sign, anything that doesn't fit- there! In the centre of the two collapsed buildings, where an alleyway would have been, are bloodstains. Some red blood... but a lot of black. You sniff the air- gun smoke. There's got to be something in here. Grabbing a discarded metal pole, you shove it into a gap in the rubble near the bloodstains, where the smell of smoke is strongest, putting all your weight on it as you wrench it into place low enough you can use your legs to push on it, as you can't really get enough force with your one arm.

Bracing yourself, you kick the pole once, before forcing your foot down on it. Stone shifts, and you push harder, dislodging a slab of concrete, opening up a space within the rubble. Peering into the gap, you see nothing at first, but as you hear panicked shouts over the radio, you see motion from within the rubble, a massive pale arm reaching forwards, digging into the dirt, and pulling itself forwards. With it's motion, the rubble shifts, sending you falling backwards as you lose your footing.

Picking yourself up off the ground, you call out a warning, telling everyone nearby to get away from here, as whatever was under the rubble breaks free.

Two pale arms drag the monster forwards into the light, sticking out from the sides of a body which is little more than a meeting point for the three tooth-filled jaws that make up the bulk of this monsters car-sized body, while a pair of twin-barrelled turrets sit atop the outer jaws, and cabling and other scraps of half-coherent machinery covers the outside of the its armoured shell. An abyssal, and it's wounded; it's guns are twisted wrecks, the central of the 3 heads has it's lower jaw torn apart, and blood drips from it's left arm with each movement.

Even so, being this close to an abyssal is chilling; while you've got enough missiles on your ship to kill it, there's still people too close for you to launch... it's still right in front of you, and more than capable of beating you into paste. You don't have anything that can hurt it; even if you did carry an officers pistol, you'd probably still manage to miss the bloody thing. Don't worry. You're not going to die here.

Still... it's badly hurt, and if it's guns are out of commission the ship's safe... so you might be able to distract it for long enough for them to get a shot at it.That's it, show me what you can do.

On instinct, you step forwards, as if you'd been slapped on the back, and you...

---

[] Run circles around it to keep it here; you wont cause as much damage to the village if you hit it here where the buildings are already collapsed, you've got a good line of fire because of that. And with it's arm being hurt, you ought to be able to outmanoeuvre it.

[] Draw it away from the village; you're not that far from the edge, and if you can keep it's attention on you, you ought to be able to lead it away from the village; an abyssal like this is many things, but smart is not one of them.

[] Charge right at it; all you want is to buy time for people to get away, and this is the best way of doing it; with how wounded it is, there's a spot in between the heads where it can't actually get there- wedge yourself there, and you've got all the time you need.