45: A Watched Pot
With a series of clicks, clean blue flames broke the not-quite darkness around Trinitite, illuminating the propane stove further. As she watched the blue flames fade to the normal orange, The Wo-class felt tension throughout her frame start to ease. Slumping against the tree behind her, the Abyssal relaxed, allowing herself to bask in the moment for a few seconds. Right now she was wasting propane, but that didn't matter too much to the abyssal. For the first time in weeks, Trinitite's logistics situation had become… comfortable. Inefficient use of her propane was nothing compared to how much material she carried had suddenly transformed from ballast to useful food. She was going to let that sink in before she actually put the stove to use.

As she'd walked from the Walmart Fleet's warehouse to her now-common 'anchorage' in the woods just outside Mill Creek, she'd speculated on what she'd try to make first. There was so much food in her hold that the decision hadn't been easy. A moment or two of thought passed. This stove had two burners, meaning she could prepare two foods at once. Good for a ship who needed plenty of food to stay supplied, but for now it widened the number of options she had to choose from. After some experimentation she might be able to figure out the best combinations, making her choice a little easier, but that wasn't the case yet.

Tools weren't going to be a limiting factor. Beyond the 'griddle' that had come with the stove, she'd also bought a pair of pans for most food, and pots to boil water in.

Boiling water… she should probably give rice another try, shouldn't she?

Producing one of the pots from her hold and placing it over the lit burner, Trinitite reached back into her hold. A bit of searching and queries with her quartermaster eventually got her a bag labeled 'Organic White Rice.' She wasn't sure how 'Organic' made this rice different from the… failure she'd had a few days ago, but hopefully they were similar enough that cooking this would give her an idea of what she'd missed.

Along similar lines, she removed the bag of hamburger patties she'd tried that night, ready to see what they tasted like once the new stove had unfrozen them. She started the other burner, placing a new pan on it and letting it warm. She now had both burners happily consuming propane, blue-orange flames obscured by the pot and pan she'd placed on each.

What did she do now?

Somewhat frantically, she turned the bag of rice over, holding it to her face so her eyes would illuminate the instructions. Right, she needed water. That was the point of the pot in the first place, after all. Unfortunately for her, humans had somehow created variants of that, as well. She knew saltwater and freshwater were different, but sparkling water? Did the existence of drinking water mean you weren't supposed to drink the others? Well, she knew distilled water as the product of condensed steam, making it probably the purest and the most basic, so she opened that container and poured the majority of it into the pot.

And then, she waited.

Compared to her massive oil-fired burners that ran her boilers, this tiny propane one was going to take a while to warm up, so she was going to have plenty of time. Realizing that, she quietly shut the other one down, returning her frozen burgers to her meat locker to ensure she didn't have to eat them all tonight. That wouldn't be terrible, but it would mean she'd have to experiment with a different meat, something that would make the lessons learned from her cooking training less reliable.

...Actually, since she would be burning most of these and had already tasted a few frozen, she should try one raw, shouldn't she? That way, she'd get an idea of what the human-made meat was like before she started messing with it.

That, of course, meant she'd just stored the frozen hamburgers for no reason! Unable to keep from blushing despite not being watched, Trinitite hesitantly reached back into her hold, re-procuring the bag of hamburgers and pulling one out. It plopped on the now-cooling pan with a clunk and a slight sizzle, and Trinitite returned the rest of the burgers to their rightful spot in the meat locker.

That was another thing out of the way. There was nothing else she could do until the water started boiling, was there?

The abyssal relaxed again, idly watching the pot while her thoughts left her. The work day hadn't been that busy, due to the crew that ran the crane neglecting basic maintenance. No one else had known about the problem until the vital machine failed to start this morning, when Austin's team needed it's help. The idea of something that important being neglected was appalling to Trinitite, of course, but she had seen things like that happen before in abyssal ships who hadn't been properly trained, usually those who served under Princesses with no experience of their own. To see it here didn't speak well of the fleet she had volunteered to join, but considering how angry everyone else she'd seen had been, it must be an unusual occurrence. Hopefully Dan would make sure something like this wouldn't happen again.

In the end, Trinitite and the rest of the work crew had spent a good portion of the day building a pulley system, intent on hoisting the pallets of supplies up themselves. It had meant hours of delay hunting down pulleys and a long enough cable or rope, but in the end they had managed to get something worked out. After lunch they'd gotten started on finishing the braces for the rebar cages they'd erected, ensuring the concrete would remain contained in the pillars when whomever poured concrete in the fleet got around to doing so. Hopefully Trinitite would be able to help with that. Patching some of her damage with concrete was a bad idea in so many ways, but if she needed to become combat capable quickly she might have no other option.

Leaning forwards so the light from her eyes better illuminated the pot of water, the Abyssal checked to see it's progress. Seemingly unchanged, but that wasn't a surprise. Trinitite knew it would take longer to heat the water properly, so she wasn't sure what she was hoping for when she'd checked.

The Wo-class was just getting impatient, she guessed, which was unusual for her. It wasn't like the next meal she made was going to compare to those made by the lunch trucks she ate from, and she'd been eating enough that she wasn't desperately hungry now. Forcing herself to look away from the pot and towards the dimly glowing clouds above, she sighed, focusing on the radio broadcast she'd been listening in on.

The soothing 'classical music' continued to be a mystery to her, but it was one of the few she was content not knowing much about. When the humans on the frequency reported on songs, concertos, composers and orchestras, she was alright with leaving the unfamiliar terms off of her research list, and often when they spoke of what feelings or images the music was supposed to invoke, she didn't spend much time trying to draw a connection. It was just… music, and the complexities behind it would probably take months to understand. Months she didn't want to spend on something so unimportant, considering she content listening to it while remaining ignorant.

Looking down and impatiently checking the pot again, Trinitite turned her attention to the no-longer-frozen hamburger. The frost that had initially encrusted the meat seemed to have faded, leaving it an even pink. Speculatively, the abyssal picked the partially-thawed meat up, getting a feel for it's texture under her gloves. Oddly it didn't seem to be one piece of meat at all, instead several miniscule chunks moulded by humans into an easy-to-store disk. It would explain some of its properties, like how it didn't return to its original shape when Trinitite pressed divots into it with a finger. As she did so, blood slowly seeped from the meat, far less than she'd expect from a normal animal, but considering there weren't any veins in this, it was more than she'd hoped for.

Her inspection was almost complete. Eager to see how the thawed burger differed from the frozen ones she'd eaten, Trinitite raised the meat disk to her mouth, stretching her lips to allow as much of the hamburger into her mouth as possible before biting down.

Crunch.

The almost thawed burger was still a little too cold for her tastes, but she guessed that was what cooking it was for. There was a distinct flavor to the meat, unique from the fish she was used to, and ignoring its icy core the processed texture made it feel very smooth for a meat. She wasn't too sure she liked that part yet, but she'd withhold judgement until she'd cooked a few hamburger patties. What little blood there was pooled around her lips, forcing the Trinitite to get a taste of her lipstick as she licked the red liquid away. She couldn't afford it dripping all over her makeup and human clothes, after all.

After sliding the rest of the raw meat into her mouth over the course of a minute, Trinitite leaned forwards again, checking the water.

Still no boiling, obviously.

Leaning back and trying to find a comfortable position, Trinitite forced herself to look away from the stove. Maybe it was time for an impromptu test of her marines' stealth abilities. Trying to ignore their presence in her mind, she squinted, attempting to make their forms out in the darkness. Another minute passed like this, the abyssal searching her surroundings for her sentries, but they stubbornly remained unseen. They'd probably gone to ground once they realized she was looking for them, the little crabs.

Her interest waned again, and her thoughts returned to her day. Searching for Circuit Breaker Coolant had been a colossal waste of time, either returning articles on specific pieces of equipment or those answering the question of why plugging an 'air conditioner' in set one off. Nothing helpful. Not wanting to waste the rest of her time in the library, the abyssal then moved onto the next term:

Family.

The trees around Trinitite suddenly seemed much further away from The Carrier than they had a few moments ago, alone with her crew and the human radio transmissions. Unlike a lot of the other terms she'd looked for, this one had brought up a 'Dictionary' entry that summed up the word in a concise manner.

A group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit.

That had described her fleet fairly well, which was reassuring. Below it was a link to the term 'Nuclear family,' which had initially caught Trinitite's interest but was surprisingly boring. What did having two parents, a necessity for humans if Trinitite recalled correctly, have to do with The Fire?

However, Trinitite was starting to recognize questions with needlessly complicated answers, so she had discarded that line of inquiry and focused on the rest of the search. After the first definition, three others were listed. Initially, it seemed that having multiple definitions for one word would only cause confusion, but it only took a moment of thought for Trinitite to realize the problem was relentlessly common in the language she was used to. Plus, the definitions had seemed similar enough here that they wouldn't cause much of a problem.

Things got more serious when she found the Wikipedia article.

Phrases like 'builds a person into a functional adult' and 'ensures the continuity of humankind,' although not fully understood to the abyssal, clearly carried a massive amount of weight. Fleets were important to humans, yes, but she wasn't sure anyone she worked with would consider them important to the continuity of humankind. Again she didn't know the exact meaning of the phrase, but she could guess its jist. Considering how casually she'd joined the construction group she was in, humans came and went in fleets, but their families were their anchor.

Something she was lacking, right now. She certainly wouldn't trust her fleetmates with her concerns and worries, after all.

Her coworkers had asked her about her family a couple times. Perhaps tomorrow, she should return the favor. Informed guesses from reading articles was one thing. She'd get a better idea of what that meant to them in their own words.

Unfortunately, the library expelled her before she could finish reading the article, but it was mostly technicalities and unfamiliar jargon by that point. She'd gotten most of the information she needed from the introduction, anyways.

...

Oh, hey! The water was boiling! Eagarly tearing open the bag of rice, Trinitite triumphantly upended the rice and poured the contents of the bag in. That was probably far over the 'two cups' indicated on the back, but she was planning on eating more than that anyways. Tomorrow, she'd have to invest in some measuring tools, but guessing like this was probably fine...

- - -

"I'm home." Katie Harmon mumbled, yawning to herself as she slid into her house's entryway. The drive down from Everett, which had eaten up pretty much all of her Tuesday, had been stressful, but for once the traffic hadn't been the worst part of her little business trip. Working with Brad, of course, was always a negative in her book, but it was only one of many problems with this shitshow of a job.

There was the paperwork. There were the self-righteous feds she'd have to work with. She had to cope with the fact that an unknown number of shipgirls were secretly former princesses, now. Finally, there was the knowledge that despite the Navy's size and supposed power, they'd let a regular abyssal just walk ashore, and it was her turn to track down the monster before things turned into a public shitstorm.

At least Brad hadn't seemed to woo over any of the shipgirls. That disgust in Nashville's denial could have been directed at her or the idea itself, but it had been real. Katie knew she hadn't made a good impression with the shipgirl, but she wasn't there to make friends. She'd wanted to know who she was working for, besides Brad, and she'd have a chance to win some respect back once she beat the FBI to finding Trinitite.

Smirking to herself, the private detective dropped her overnight bag on her couch, zipping a little-used pocket open to remove a thumb drive. It had been given to her by… some sailor under Brad, she'd forgotten the name stitched into his uniform, featuring images of the roving abyssal that he had photoshopped to look human. Obviously Katie would have preferred something undoctored, but she'd gotten them under the pretense she'd be providing the image to several human contacts she used to find people, meaning it had been censored to hell and back. While she would be providing this image to some of her flesh-and-blood contacts, complete with the witness cover story they'd created, her real ace would have worked better if she had the raw data.

Speaking of which, after the hellish commute down the length of the West Coast, Katie wanted nothing more than to head off to bed, but she should probably check out her 'contact' and get it introduced to Trinitite before she took her long-awaited nap.

While her office's lights were off and her computer was powered down, the ceiling fan continued to run, sucking cool air in from adjacent rooms to keep her secret weapon running at peak efficiency. The room's doors remained permanently propped open, allowing Katie to get a brief glimpse of the beast lurking in the converted bedroom's closet.

It had been a bit of a passion project from another ex-boyfriend, a Computer Science Professor at Berkeley, and a small team of his students. Eventually, it became clear that the nerd loved his field more than any woman and the relationship fell apart, but unlike Brad her fling with the professor was still helping her today. If anyone asked about the server in her closet, the unassuming box was simply a side gig she had: Taking advantage of some excess power from her roof's solar panels to host a few domains for people.

In reality, 'The Contact' only ever connected with two devices: her desktop computer, and the servers of a VPN based out of Panama. The specifics were very beyond her, but by working with it over the past three years she'd gotten a good idea of how to run the thing.

Sitting down in her well-worn office chair, Katie tapped the power button with her foot, the desktop's fan whirring to life as she leaned forwards to activate both screens. Through the VPN, The Contact ran a small collection of web scrapers, each pulling and pouring through new images posted to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. From there, it ran a facial recognition program her ex had put together, trying to find any matches with Katie's Queries. Trinitite probably wouldn't use any of those pieces of media, but with today's cameras on phones being as good as they were?

She had an automated surveillance system that spanned the entire country, more if she was willing to expand her server and messed with the crawlers' geolocation filters. The abyssal didn't have to become some twitter star to show up: She just needed to be walking down the road while someone took an image of their breakfast, or a reporter snapped a quick image of a building. Not a foolproof system, but it meant something was looking for the little monster at all times.

Her monitor finally lit up, and Katie hurriedly entered her PIN when prompted. Her bed was calling, so she wanted to get this done as soon as possible. As her desktop loaded in, she hurriedly opened up her documents, plunging into a few folders before opening an innocuous looking program titled Carmen.

The legal technicalities were also beyond her, something she used to know but no longer cared about, but it certainly violated a few points on the websites' terms of service, and some negligible provisions on crawl speed and privacy. Nothing important, especially considering how many missing kids or suspects she'd found through The Contact. A bit of legal bother was a price she was willing to pay. Plus, while she was already the best private detective on the West Coast, The Contact had put her quite a bit ahead of her competitors, even dropping her prices to ensure she stayed ahead.

It wasn't like anyone would figure out where the resource-hungry crawler from Panama was actually from, anyways.

Carmen finally opened, displaying the results of The Contact's work during her road trip. Katie's thoughts on the abyssal were disrupted when the program announced a positive match, linking her to the file on one of her cases. Her quarry opened up, linking to some post a certain 'McCally Construction Group' left on their facebook page. According to The Contact, it had been made from somewhere in Utah, but the image's geolocation data pointed back at Washington.

Great, it looked like she had another reason to go up there. Well, she'd be visiting Brad's team again next week. Perhaps chartering a flight up a little sooner to track him down would be in order.

Her Ex and his team of unpaid programmers had done a good job. The missing person was in the background of the image, his face at a strange angle while he walked in the corner of the picture. Judging by what he was wearing, Katie had probably just learned his place of employment, as well.

Triumphantly she stood, walking over to the corkboard of images and pulling the picture of Tirto off the wall. She'll finish getting the abyssal's information uploaded, then hit the sack. After that, she'd get a flight back to Washington to hunt Tirto down, then present the good news to her client.

She could already imagine how his daughter was going to react when she told her the good news.

Should have rinsed that rice, Trin! It's gonna be all sticky! It's progress, though.

This chapter was a little experimental. Since Trinitite isn't getting that personable with her coworkers this arc, I'm a bit limited in the types of chapters I can present, so I tried a bit of a flashback sequence to mix a cooking chapter, a research chapter, and a little bit of a work chapter. It may or may not have worked here, and it's not a format I'm going to make a habit of using (breaks 'show, don't tell' a little too much for my liking), but hopefully it was some pleasant variety.

Also, does anyone remember Tom Clancy's Net Force? That really 90's thriller series written by someone who wasn't Tom Clancy about a bunch of FBI agents who stop techno-criminals through the power of virtual reality? I don't remember it that well, only read the handful of books that my middle school library had, but writing the second part of this chapter gave me big Net Force vibes, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
 
46: Formwork
He was working with a Monster.

The idea was insane, perhaps dangerously so, which is why he didn't dare share it with his coworkers. However, he couldn't think of anything else the white-haired girl could be. She clearly wasn't human, considering her strength and endurance, leaving two reasonable options: Shipgirl, or abyssal.

"Here." The abyssal prompted, handing Alton a pair of steel clamps. The 'clamps,' steel bars bent into a hook at one end, didn't look like one at all, but their unorthodox form was required to compress the formwork in all directions. It took a titanic effort to keep his hands steady as he accepted the components. His thoughts still focused on his coworker, Alton placed one of the clamps lengthwise against the side of an upright panel, allowing it to rest on two of the more traditional-looking corner clamps holding the formwork together.

When you factored everything else about the new girl in, however, the possibility of 'Elizabeth' just being some shipgirl got lower and lower. Why would a shipgirl make up a weird story about living on a cult-controlled island, instead of just saying they came from Brooklyn, Newport, or anywhere they'd been built or stationed in? How had she never had soda before? Finally, why would they be so… ignorant in their food choices? You'd think a shipgirl would at least ask someone back at base for lunch ideas, instead of just bringing random foods.

The second clamp rested on another corner clamp, the hook at the end wrapping around the first steel bar at a right angle. The pair hooked into the two his impostor coworker had placed on her side of the formwork, encompassing the panels in a ring of steel.

It seemed like Elizabeth was just… improvising. Poorly. As far as Alton could recon that only pointed to one thing: The only difference between the monsters who'd destroyed his home and the woman helping him assemble the pillar's formwork, was in how they acted.

Removing a pair of wedges from his pockets, he slotted them into holes notched into the clamps. A few pounds from a hammer and the wedges were pressing the clamps against the formwork, holding the future column's shell together.

It was terrifying, so much that Alton almost called in sick so he could start looking for a different job, but in the end he decided against it. He may be within spitting distance of an eldritch creature who could pulp him and everyone here with a thought, but since he was the only one who actually knew this, he needed to stick around until he could get some real evidence.

Until that happened, however, another question lingered in his mind, refusing to dissipate despite his knowledge that he would never get an answer:

Why was she here?

Was she a spy? Alton was no strategist, but if she really was the ship from the Kalouch video, aircraft carriers seemed like the worst possible choice for espionage work. Perhaps she was part of a larger operation to sneak into the continental US and attack Everett from land, but if that was true, why was she working here instead of biding her time in Washington's rugged wilderness?

With the four steel rods now snugly fitting against the frame, Alton and Elizabeth were safe to remove the four corner clamps.

"So…" The abyssal hesitantly spoke up, her voice trailing off for a moment. "Alton?"

Looking up from the corner clamp he was unfastening, Alton found Elizabeth looking directly at him. Now that he was sure what she really was, this should have been terrifying, but the part of him that instinctually read her expression helped him stay calm. That stupid part of his brain, the one that hadn't evolved to deal with abyssals, looked at her wide eyes, loose expression, and raised eyebrows, and refused to interpet her as a threat.

"...Yes?" He asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

"You're, uh, family." She started, redirecting her attention to a corner clamp as she re-attached it higher on the formwork. "Did they all make it out?"

Alton froze.

It wasn't the question that gave him pause. Not many in his position could say this, but his family was fine. Thinking of them didn't remind him of those dark months in Oahu's mountains: It reminded him of moving back in here, reuniting with Mabel and getting his job here.

No, it was the fact that 'Elizabeth' was asking him this question in the first place that caught him off guard. Why would an abyssal care? Unless she was a startlingly good actor, the look on her face seemed sincere. Was she just curious?

"Yeah, they did." Alton finally replied, focusing back on his work. "In my family, I've gotten the worst of this war."

His parents were still in extreme danger since they refused to leave the big island, but they'd gotten out of Oahu safely, His sister had moved to Austin years before the war started, avoiding any risk of an abyssal encounter. His in-laws had always lived around here, which was why Mabel had fled here in the first place.

"That's good to know," the abyssal replied. She suddenly stiffened, looking back up at Alton in alarm. "I mean- about your family."

Alton snorted, feigning amusement. If anyone else had said that, it would have been a given.

"I understood." He reassured, accepting another pair of clamps from the abyssal. Come to think of it, she either had hundreds of those thin black gloves, or they were a part of her abyssal clothing. They were black, after all, and remarkably undamaged for work gloves.

That was only confirming what he already knew, but while it was better evidence then most of what he and brought him back to his current question: why would she ask?

Well, if he phrased it correctly, perhaps he could get some information without arousing suspicion. As he grabbed his hammer and fished another pair of wedges out of his pocket, he tried to think of the perfect question.

What has you thinking about that?

No, too blunt. She might assume Alton was trying to be confrontational, when Alton had already 'confronted' far more abyssals then he'd ever wanted.

"Is your Family on your mind?" He finally spoke up, not daring to look at his coworker.

There was a moment of pause as both workers' hammers slammed against the metal wedges, the dual cacophony making any speech impossible.

"...Yeah." Once the noise had died down, she replied. "My mom might still be alive, but everyone else I knew…"

She paused, absently grasping at her pockets before removing a disposable water bottle and taking a drink. Alton fished his own water bottle out of his pocket, but didn't drink, instead focusing on the abyssal's body language.

"Anyways," she sighed, pocketing the bottle, "that was the only family I ever saw. Just… wondering what everyone else's is like."

Alton was still pretty sure the dead family story was just that, a story, but given how she delivered that line, he was no longer entirely sure. Then again, her face was somewhat hidden as she focused on undoing a corner clamp.

The two continued to work in silence, leaving Alton alone with the possibility. Sure, abyssals were anything but rational, but loosing every other member of their little murder band would shake one up, wouldn't it?

...Ah, what the hell. Let's see how she reacts to this.

"My parents are stubborn bastards." He started, trying to keep his eye on the imposter. "They're still living on the big island, I think, ready to move back to Oahu the moment the shooting stops."

"Hawaii's big island?" The abyssal questioned, looking away from her corner clamp she was setting.

"Yeah." He confirmed, pausing from his own work to look back at Elizabeth. "Crazy, right?"

She nodded intently, which Alton wasn't entirely sure what to think about. His sappy family story wasn't that interesting.

"Anyways, it was that stubbornness that made me the man I am today..."

He wasn't really exposing himself to the abyssal, at least not seriously. The personal information wasn't of any real strategic value, and it wasn't special compared to anyone else. If anything, forcing himself to act nonchalant about the monster he was working with might be good for him.

...If she never got violent, of course. Getting a black-gloved hand driven through his ribcage was still a very real possibility.

As they completed the rest of the formwork, Alton allowed himself to drone on a bit about his childhood. Between talking about getting an early job as a lifeguard and discussing how he'd sneak away from his parents to go surfing, he made sure to pay special attention to how nice living in Oahu had been. It was a very petty version of revenge, especially since the abyssal probably didn't have a conscience to stab at, but if she did, he'd be giving her something to think about.

...And if she didn't?

Well, the solution to that was still in the mail. Abel had argued against the purchase, but to Alton? It would be five hundred dollars well spent, especially if it proved him wrong.

- - -

"Here you go."

The lady manning the food truck leaned forwards, handing Trinitite a paper tray laden with her well-earned meal. The abyssal made sure to give her a thankful smile as she accepted the meal, but the human was busy with everyone else swarming the truck, so the Wo-class wasn't sure she'd been noticed.

She didn't mind that, of course. The food truck was struggling to work through the line that had formed around it. She'd given them money; that was probably good enough.

After scaling Building Two's temporary set of stairs, she turned her attention to the contents of the paper tray she was carrying.

So… this was how you ate a hamburger.

In many ways, it was similar to the sandwiches she'd seen. The most obvious difference, of course, was the shape of the bread, and perhaps the meat. She hadn't inspected the sandwiches she'd pilfered from the Fred Meyers yet, so she wasn't sure.

Finding a seat near Alton and the rest of the crew, Trinitite plopped herself down, resting the paper tray on her legs. All of her coworkers seemed to be more interested in their meals than each other, which was fine by her. It let her focus on the hamburger.

The tray didn't just support that, though. Another food, a pile of rigid, narrow strips dominated the rest. They looked a little like bread, but Trinitite was pretty sure her guess was incorrect.

Well, they could wait for later. Eager to see what an expert could do with those still frozen in her meat locker, she carefully picked up the burger and lifted it to her eyes for close inspection. There was some kind of sauce between the upper… thing… of bread, and the leafs that had been that topped the stack of ingredients. Investigating further, she revised that impression: The texture of the sauce was uneven, as if several different types had been mixed together to create a unique blend of flavors.

Deep, she hardly knew how two or three individual sauces tasted! How was she going to reverse-engineer a combination of three or more of them!

...By asking the library, maybe? She had her crew add 'What sauces go on a hamburger' to her growing Research list, underlining it to ensure she got to that before burning through the rest of her hamburgers.

Huh, apparently she'd also underlined 'How rare are Nuclear Bombs,' then forgot about it. That was… pretty stupid of her, considering how important that information was. Next Library trip, she needed to investigate that before looking into the sauce issue. As serious as that mistake was, however, there wasn't anything she could do about it now, so she returned her attention to the hamburger.

The leaves were a bit confusing. She'd grabbed bundles of them during her raid on Fred Meyers, and they seemed a major part of 'salad mixes,' but just the concept of eating leaves didn't sit right with her. A plant's fruit she could understand, and it seemed like the brilliant red slice was one of those, but these dry, flimsy leaves? Maybe she'd be proven wrong once she'd tried it, but she was skeptical.

After that and the slices of what she assumed was a fruit, a yellowy substance coated the top of the hamburger, cradling two thin slabs of… something else. It might have been a meat at one point, but the blackened flesh was so charred Trinitite had no chance of identifying it. At least the hamburgers were thick enough to retain some juiciness after you'd burned the outside. Even though it didn't look great on it's own, Trinitite doubted the additional meat would make the hamburger worse.

The yellowy substance was a complete mystery to her. Judging by how it partially slumped over the hamburger, the overly-cooked meat above it sinking into the substance, it had definitely been melted by the heat used to cook the hamburger. If she had any of this in her hold, she'd probably have trouble recognizing it.

This was about everything she could learn from looking at it, so after squeezing it slightly to ensure it fit into her mouth, the Wo-class finally took a bite. Razor-sharp teeth slid through the bread, sinking into the meat and releasing the juices trapped inside. They mingled with the bread and the sauces, flavors combining and disappearing in an ever-changing cyclone of taste. With a satisfying crunch, the leaf snapped, giving Trinitite an answer as to why it existed in the first place. The slice of fruit fell with the leaf, its sour-sweet juices gushing out to mingle with those of the hamburger as the burnt strips of meat broke off. The burnt meat had clearly been deliberately flavored, kind of like the Jerky she'd had before, but made to complement the other meat, instead of overpowering it.

Her eyes slid closed as she started to chew, a deep, rich flavor she didn't recognize complementing emerging from the ever-changing orchestra of taste. Orchestra… yes, that seemed like a good word for it. The specifics were a mystery to her, but the way the flavors supported and complemented each other reminded her of the music she'd sometimes relax to. Alone, it was just noise or taste. Here? It was a feeling.

This was no longer a simple issue of logistics. If she could figure out this cooking thing, she could be even more useful to her princess! There was no guarantee that she'd be able to show off these skills to her former fleetmates. Some had no doubt already emerged lashed to another princess, and others would probably never return at all, but a less tactical skill like this could be invaluable for Jellyfish if Trinitite somehow managed to get her back.

Swallowing satisfactorily, Trinitite eagerly took another bite, enjoying the same tapestry of flavors. While she chewed, though, her thoughts drifted to other's fleets.

No, not fleets. Families.

She hadn't realized just how old Alton was. He hadn't given an exact age, but when he talked about turning 18 like Trinitite talked of her days as a green Wo who couldn't even steam properly, the abyssal had to pause.

He'd spent years on Oahu, leaving his home far less often than Trinitite did from Bikini. Leaving her own island had been hard, and she'd only existed for two years!

A lot of the stories he talked about flew over her deck, partially because she had no idea what things like surfing were, but mostly because she didn't know Oahu at all. She'd never been there, after all. She took another bite of hamburger, the wonderfully complex taste a fresh comfort. On the bright side, that meant she could listen to Alton's stories without the knowledge that she'd played a part in tearing their lives apart. Beyond helping to prevent The Fire from annihilating her, Her Princess's passiveness had some hidden upsides.

She swallowed, but an uncomfortable thought prevented the Wo-class from taking another bite from the hamburger.

...She had protected convoys running to the Aircraft Carrier Princess, hadn't she? Without those, Hawaii probably would still be in human hands, much to the frustration of most princesses she knew. Not just that, but plenty of other offensives throughout the pacific had succeeded due to her efforts. Each successful convoy might have meant more humans, humans with names, families, and jobs that she'd never know about, getting killed or forced to flee. They'd be lost, separated from their own Families, and in logistical straits as desperate as hers were now.

She'd had to do those, though! Even her mother hadn't wanted to help in The Abyss's war against humanity! They needed to help those convoys if they didn't all want to starve to death in Bikini. Sure, contributions to logistics were bad, but not nearly as bad as cruising up to human cities and dropping bombs into apartments, right?

If she asked the humans and shipgirls who'd attacked Bikini that question, or that one Navy officer with the megaphone, she doubted they'd agree.

She took another bite of the hamburger, but the concoction of flavors didn't taste quite so good, this time.
 
Annoyed Catholic - Strange Shipgirls in a Strange Land: A Show, A Meal, and a Meeting!
Strange Shipgirls in a Strange Land

A Show, A Meal, and a Meeting!




Trin looked down at her daughter tucked into her bed snuggly. She paused and gently kissed her offspring's forehead.

"And after slaying the dragon and taking Codex Genestealer Cults from its lair," Trinitite said softly to the lightly snoring darling as the aircraft carrier quietly backed away from her bed and towards the door. "So then the brave warrior lass lived happily ever after!"

The little darling had asked for THAT particular bedtime story: the one which Trin had made up on the spur of the moment in desperation for something suitable. What she created instead was a tale that was only vaguely related to both how she had obtained her starter Warhammer 40k kit AND what had lead to . . . other things eventually. Things the aircraft carrier had no clue about actually were happening at the time.

...

You know the usual state of affairs back when the Wo-class first was trying to "blend in" with humans! And even NOW humans still confuse her to no end! Being "Kanmusu-ized" had not changed that.

Still! Yes, she did remember it so very well...


Long ago at the Mill Creek Library parking lot (tent display)...

Sam Handrex glanced oddly at the young woman who was staring at the improvisation he had been forced to utilize for keeping the snack trays warm for this event. Yes, one of MANY workarounds and bypasses to make THIS F*cking thing WORK!!

...

The storekeeper who had made arrangements with the librarian for this publicity stunt had been nice and reasonable. Nice girl, her and her wife!

Nothing at all like his *sshole cousin say what "her" type are like, not that Sam had expected anything different (not being a bigotted Klan asshat and such like SOME in his family tree he'd rather not remember)! The librarian had pointed him in the right direction on who to contact to set up the tent for the event when it turned out the poor library's conference room proved to be too small for His side of things.

He knew a guy who knew a guy who had access to some tents like you might have seen (and eaten within) at the food places when the government had pretty much-banned dining within restaurants. Just because things had become safe again on THAT front did not mean that the tents had just vanished into thin air. So, it was perfect for his needs here and now what with finding out about the library conference room's shortcomings!
Oh, it was large enough and then some for the initial 3d printer display to work, but a guy has gotta make ends meet. Doing his civic duty and educating the masses was nice and well, but that wasn't going to pay the hole-in-the-wall apartment's rent. Let us not mention of COURSE it wouldn't pay for his store's rent! SO! That meant that he was also going to do a little bit (or more than a little bit) of promoting his store and it's WARES! His game hobby/comic book store was doing okay, despite having to practically pull miracles during that Covid-19 bullsh*t AND THEN the strain and stress on supply lines for some of his good selling stuff on the gaming side of things!

At least Game Workshop finally had gotten that d*mn stick out of their *ss and started to ALLOW for honest, hard-working businessmen like him to create and sell 3d printed miniatures. Oh, he paid them a monthly fee for use of their digital wares online. And for a modest markup? Turned quite a profit at it, being one of the places one could still GET miniatures that don't look like complete garbage.

HIS 3d printer was a fine machine! Oh, he had to . . . cut a few corners to get cheap enough filament. There was enough plastic "material" around town for that and some pretty primo Youtube videos on how to make the stuff! Just took a bit of practice! Oh, it meant that the filament was a dirty BROWN color after chopping up all those plastic bottles and other plastic garbage, but not as if that mattered IF the client painted it properly, right?! They get their figures and HE did his part in combatting plastic getting into the environment. Recycling at its finest and all that!

Hey, he was more forward-thinking than SOME in his family. Idiots, those inbred . . .

"Help you with something?" the storekeeper asked. "The event for the 3d printing demonstration isn't quite ready yet and I am afraid that the Ikea meatball stuff isn't quite ready yet for eating."

It was something of a questionable risk, including food for this event rather than just sticking to a simple sales pitch and 3d printing demo. However, he'd always felt that it WAS true: the way to a customer's heart WAS through their stomach. And with the heart soon would follow the wallet... It had worked in the past AND with a little bit of charity afterward, the leftovers would be offered to the local charity. Which . . .as low and cheap as it sounded was a great way for the end-of-year tax return.

Hey! He had to make ends meet and that had worked for him! Kept him afloat and his employees employed! Don't judge him!

"But may I interest you in some of my wares . . .being that is kind of the other reason why I am here today and all that jazz?" Sam continued, pointing at some of his more colorful pictures of his products. "It isn't for sale here and now, but it DOES show what I have! That and we're having a raffle for those who buy a ticket for the food we're providing after the first demo."

What? You thought that the food was going to be free? Oh, it was a very reasonable price, those tickets for a fine (or at least decent) meal here for this event. That and there was going to be a starter pack for various roleplaying games and such. Sam had no high hopes that this young woman would be INTERESTED in such things, but one should NOT judge a possible book by its cover! Was a stupid thing to do AND a bad business practice to say the least!

"Oh! I was just . . .noticing how you had set up there for cooking your 'Ikea meatball stuff'," Trinitite blinked, turning away from staring at the open flame of the THING underneath each food tray. "You're not using propane to heat the food but . . .whatever that is there?"

The carrier gestured to the open flame coming out of the improvised food heating gear he'd set up ahead of time.

"Oh, that?" Sam smiled slightly. "That's kind of a product of my youth back when I was in the Boy Scouts! The hobo stove! It's a homemade camping stove they taught me how to make whenever I wanted to go camping and roughing it out in the woods! Makes for a great way to cook things when out there and you don't HAVE access to easy propane and all that, especially when I found out that Walmart had sold out of propane AGAIN when I really needed some for this shing ding!"

He'd bought some cans of the stuff, but had crunched the numbers and realized that he'd not gotten enough for this even for the duration planned. SO he'd done some last-minute shopping and come up short . . .so yet another improvisation with washing out the cans and "sourcing" a few bricks to avoid burning spots in the tables and such. Basically, he was cooking with both propane AND various scrap wood he'd scared up at the last moment.

It worked, but it had been a struggle to set up on time and all that!

"Interesting," Trinitite mutters, looking back at the affair before coughing. She remembered she HAD been rather happy to manage to obtain some propane, but it had NOT been the very last of the stock!

Though it had been apparent that there had been not a lot left when she'd gotten her supply. Thank the Deep she had lucked out, considering everything!

But she just had learned something which could prove VERY useful in the future if she should need to cook again and NOT have propane handy. Very useful indeed!

"Oh sorry," Trinitite apologized, shifting the bag with the latest purchase she'd made from Walmart. "I was seeing the sign about the 3d printer demonstration and was curious about it."

She remembered seeing notices in the library in prior visits about this event but had not made much notice of it. Indeed, she'd not realized that the event was today (or really cared about it much). She had seen the tent and had realized that she knew what the term"3-D" meant. It was a term she was VERY familiar with, having been able to coordinate flight plans and vectors while being what she was: an Abyssal aircraft carrier. Through her experience with seeing various office equipment used from time to time while at the worksite, she'd seen computer PRINTERS in action, so knew basically what that was about. But the two terms put together like this?

Nope, not as much.

She'd come in to remedy that shortcoming and had noticed both the food AND the cooking arrangement. She'd become distracted briefly before this somewhat portly blonde man had snapped her out of it.

"Okay, then you'll be please to know the demonstration is starting in a moment . . .," Sam smiled, going onto point out that the raffle tickets were already for sale and (again) mentioning that the purchase did allow for rights to a dish of food.

The mention of food, as well as her curiosity, drew her into the "trap" and the demonstration of the 3d printer printing a "space marine" (and Sam giving background lore on WHAT a "space marine" was and the setting it came from) was what KEPT her in "the trap".

When she had WON the Warhammer 40k pack for the Tyranids, she vowed to read UP on this board game and be READY to play at least ONE game when she visited Sam's store! It sounded VERY interesting. Rather LIKE what she and her sisters did with combat simulations, but not quiet.
That and set up the "burner phone" she'd purchased from Walmart. Her coworkers at the worksite had cellphones (and cellphone numbers). If somebody should INVITE her out for a friendly get-together after work and ask for her phone number so they could call and arrange to pick her up it would be NICE to have a number to give!

"Elizabeth?" a familiar voice calls, making her pause in her track towards to library entrance. "You play Warhammer 40K?!"

Sern had been running late for today's demo after that tearful reunion for Tirto with his daughter and granddaughter after that private investigator--Katie Harmon--had visited the work site a few days ago. Work hadn't stopped for the entire day, but everyone had gone by the old man and congratulated him for his good fortune. Trinitite had been maybe the most sincere (albeit awkward) in her congratulations when she'd hugged Tirto, almost like she was afraid she might HURT the old man for some reason!

Still! Even that brusk investigator had been a bit teary-eyed at that sight of the hug in the end (even IF it was kind of funny to see Trinitie in full PPE . . . rebreather and all . . .hugging Tirto).

Sern had heard the investigator mutter something about hoping that her contact, which had been able to find Tirto, would luck out in finding somebody named "Trinitite" as well.

Sern hoped for the PI to have good luck at that as well if family this Trinitite (whoever that was) was in the same situation as Tirtro had been in until now. Yes, there had been SO many families separated by those damn Abyssals. And with that thought he had hared off after Elizabeth to work with her and the others to lay down some concrete and hopefully actually get the building done before the contract deadline...

That said, the idea that Elizabeth should be holding a Games Workshop product surprised him! He himself was somewhat familiar with the game, having begun playing the video game "Dawn of War" ...

The fact that it could have been considered a DATE only occurred to both well AFTER the fact. . . .


"Of course that leads to an interesting conversation which leads to a dinner conversation in which Sern told me more about Warhammer," USS Trinitite chuckled softly to herself as she closed the door to her daughter's room. Amanda might have been a heavy sleeper at times, but no need to disturb her sleep while guests were here, right?

"Ah, and now that she's asleep we have much to discuss!" Trinitite smiled, looking over at the submarine princess as she ruefully shakes her head in consternation.

"Since WHEN and how did you get a daughter?!" USS Georgia sputtered, finally giving voice to what had been a very BIG surprise to the submarine. "Kanmusu (and Abyssals) are about as fertile as a toaster!"

Sern and Trinitite give each other a wry look before looking back at Georgia but it is USS Saratoga, commanding officer of the orbital assets over MARS who answers.

"Georgia dear," the Lexington class aircraft carrier smiled gently. "That is over on your side of the Portal. As things turned out, Kanmusu and Abyssals HERE are crossfertile with humans."

"As for When," Sern chuckled slightly, not exactly humorously remembering that particular 'accident'. "It happened a few years ago. I and Trinitite use proper protection, but turned out that the station got shipped a faulty BATCH so. . . . I think you get the idea?"

Sern remembered that night like yesterday. A long session of delight finishing up with a sudden "pop" and wetness as it was left both he and his wife VERY surprised and disgruntled. They had planned on having children LATER when the facilities around there had been more complete. Or at least when back on Earth, where the environment wasn't so hostile outside, what with the vacuum of space around the station or the thin atmosphere around Mars.

Rocketman kind of had it right about raising kids here. It was no place for it. At least not until a bit before their (and a few other surprised couples) unexpected offsprings' birth.

There had been a safe but frenzied hurry to finish up things around there so the kids could do kid things and all that...

"Technically Robbin's sister who you brought back as a Kanmusu also could have children but that is by the by," Trinitite coughed before changing the subject. "What brings you here?"
 
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47: The Shakes
Her after-work research had been terrifying.

It hadn't been learning of her namesake, the glassy remains of sand subjected to The Fire, and the uncomfortable question of why her mother had chosen that name for her. It hadn't been the wide array of weapons types, from shells to immense rockets, that could carry a nuclear payload. No, it had been the numbers.

Thirteen thousand!

She didn't know how many abyssals there were, but the number was definitely lower than that. Deep, ignoring every other 'nuclear state,' the United States alone could win the abyssal war in a matter of days, and there wasn't anything the abyssal fleets could do to stop it. The only reason she could imagine they wouldn't was all the expensive land and equipment the abyssals occupied. Maybe those sparse surviving humans she'd heard so many complaints about were shielding The Abyss from nuclear wrath.

That couldn't be the only reason though, could it?

Needless to say, the Wo-class hadn't gotten any sleep that night, and that her attempts to reverse-engineer the hamburger hadn't been as successful as she'd expected them to be. Some lettuce, cheese, buns, and a handful of sauces she'd gotten from her research had improved them, but her mind hadn't been entirely on the task, and the quality of the burgers she'd cooked worsened accordingly. Dry, crunchy meat wasn't that bad, but she knew she could have done better.

Even though her job needed the majority of her focus right now, the question of The Fire loitered over her head like an enemy scout plane. After work, she would look into it a bit more and put this question behind her.

The distant whine of a pump suddenly wounded down, and the grey torrent in front of her dwindled to nothing.

"Alright," the human operating the pipe clipped, motioning to the fresh layer of concrete, "pound that down."

Trinitite nodded, muttering an acknowledgement, but the human operating the pump didn't hear it. He was already guiding his end of the pipe to the next column.

She leaned forwards over the formwork she was attending, stretching to extend the wand of her concrete vibrator into the settling material.

She hated the vibrator. Carrying the bulky generator in one hand and the hefty wand in the other was no issue, but in order to use the thing like humans had to, she was forced to drape the thick hose connecting the two around her neck. It wasn't an obvious issue, until the abyssal submerged the wand and toggled the generator.

BVRRRRRRRRR

The Abyssal grimaced as the wand started to shake, waves of kinetic energy causing the concrete to shiver and traveling up both her arm and the hose. The vibrations would have been unnoticeable if she could enjoy the mass of her hull form, but of course she didn't have that luxury. Instead, the abuse the tool was giving the concrete was reverberating up her hand, through several decks, and directly into her keel via that deep-damned hose pulling down on her shoulders!

All throughout her hull, work came to an abrupt halt. Sailors in her hold scrambled to ensure the torrent of motion didn't knock anything off its shelves, to limited success. Work on her flight deck halted as a particularly unlucky fairy tumbled from her work to the hangar deck below. The shift that was trying to sleep grumbled and spun in their racks with frustration, finding it impossible to sleep in these conditions. Her machine shop had already closed down for the day, after her first use of the concrete vibrator had caused several casualties.

Thankfully, the vibrations were centered around her fore, meaning her boilers didn't get too disturbed while she worked.

The thirty seconds of suffering stretched into sixty, then ninety as the Wo-class focused on shaking air pockets and other impurities out of the concrete. She just had to do this for two minutes at a time. It sucked, but it was better than getting shot at. She would endure.

Still, how did other abyssals do it? The task forces sent by the supply depot princess to build for the Crossroads Fleet weren't this loud.

Maybe they just didn't bother? It wasn't like anyone in the Crossroads Fleet would know they didn't do a full job…

Damnit, she almost liked the Supply Depot Princess! Had she been lying to the Crossroads Fleet this entire time?

- - -

The microwave beeped, uncaring of the dire situation Dan Pratt was in. Pausing for a second so he didn't tear the door off, the frustrated foreman opened the microwave, removing this morning's coffee, now lukewarm. Today had been such a clusterfuck he hadn't even found time to finish it until now. It wouldn't go great with the mashed potatoes and leftover meatloaf he was having for lunch, but he desperately needed it right now.

Removing the coffee and replacing it with the open container of leftovers, Dan carried the warmed cup back over to the coffee maker and topped it off with the constantly-warmed carafe. It would be a bit burned, but unlike the folks who diluted their coffee with the goods, Dan wasn't picky.

His phone buzzed as he watched the carafe's coffee mingle with the leftovers he'd reheated, but he ignored it. Whatever it was, it could wait until his lunch break was over.

Unfortunately, Thomas wasn't on his lunch break.

Dan was trying to focus on his food, but he still noticed when The Project Manager suddenly sighed, leaning back in his chair.

"...Damn." he muttered. Despite himself, the curse got Dan's attention. It could wait, he really wanted the issue to wait… but Thomas typically wasn't the type to curse, so something must have gone wrong.

Noticing Dan's gaze, his manager clarified. "You know the replacement gasket we ordered for the crane?"

"Yeah." Dan flatley replied. The tower crane's very avoidable breakdown had been the reason why the last couple of days had been such a headache for the foreman. "What now?"

"An abyssal got to the ship bringing it over from Germany." He reported, his voice grim. "It's on the bottom of the Atlantic, now."

Dan returned his stare, his mouth agape as his mind raced through the implications of that statement. It was already going to be 8 more days before the replacement got here, but now?

"Any survivors?" He asked, but Thomas shrugged.

"It doesn't say."

"...Well, fuck me." He whispered. Louder, he asked "La Palma, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and now this? Why do we even have a navy?"

"That's war, I guess." Thomas shrugged. "We did get it insured."

"Yeah," Dan tempered, "but insurance doesn't help the fellas spending another week on two's death trap!"

The 'Death trap' he was referring to was the jury-rigged pulley system Austin's team had thrown together in lieu of the crane. He initially wanted it torn down, for obvious reasons, but despite his trepidation he allowed its use.

The schedule didn't matter, at least when compared to the wellbeing of his employees. The bottom line was that, due to his tendency to hire about as many hands as he had immediate jobs for, there wasn't anywhere to put them if they got reassigned. Sending them home for a week or so would probably be fine for some of them, but…

The memory of Elizabeth's face, desperate as she pleaded for a job, returned to him. He didn't know her story, but he did know plenty of others operated on razor-thin margins. Therefore, it boiled down to potentially getting his workers hurt, or condemning them to starve, because their job didn't exist anymore.

He just couldn't do it.

The microwave beeped, and Dan removed his reheated meal. Finding his long-neglected office chair and settling into it, he fully opened the heated container of the homemade meatloaf and dug in. The pleasant mixture of well-marinated meat, spices, and sauces managed to distract him for a few moments, but another worry crept into the void it created.

Hopefully there weren't any surprise inspections until then. Normally it was a safe bet not to expect one for a couple of weeks, but given his current run of luck…

As if on some twisted cue, the office's door abruptly opened. Dan almost dropped his fork as he looked up to see the interloper. They weren't expecting visitors, right?

He didn't personally hate many inspectors. They were just doing their job, after all, and an important one at that, but at a glance he could tell this inspector was the worst kind.

If she'd ever worked in this industry, it had been a long time ago. Judging by the cut of her coat she wasn't particularly fat, but she certainly wasn't in peak shape. Still, she strutted in like she owned the place, a look of complete confidence plastered across her face. That was a dangerous combination in any situation.

The door remained open as she stormed in, another woman timidly following her. The attitude she was projecting was the polar opposite of her partner, her wide eyes darting around the office without ever meeting his gaze. A long, ragged scar broke her smooth, caramel-colored skin, stretching from just below an eye, crossing her nose, before fading away at her cheek. It could have been a car accident, but considering current events...

Was he wrong about the newcomers? He couldn't dare hope.

"Can I help you?" He asked, his tentative optimism carefully hidden.

"Yeah," the confident one replied, her frazzled hair bobbing as she nodded, "I think so."

"The name's Harmon." She spoke up. "Sorry to disturb your lunch, but we figured this was the best time."

"...and why is that?" He asked, a bit of frustration creeping into his voice. The newcomers probably weren't inspectors, which was good, but he only had thirty free minutes here!

"Right." The woman started, gesturing towards her scarred compatriot. "This is Hesti Tirto. She recently escaped from Indonesia, and hired me to help her find a relative that got out before she did."

"He works here?" Dan guessed, turning his attention back to his meatloaf.

"Exactly." She confirmed, "Do you know Tirto?"

Dan's brow furrowed, stealing another bite of meatloaf as he tried to match the name to the face. He'd hired over a hundred workers for this project alone, but the name was familiar. Something about not having a surname...

"Yeah..." He finally replied. "Older guy, a bit shorter than most? Good attitude, if I remember right."

"Does he look like this?" She asked, holding an image of the man up on her phone.

"Yeah." He confirmed, not paying the image much attention. Instead, he looked over to the second visitor and addressed her. "You here to see him?"

The young woman stared blankly back at Dan, perhaps unfamiliar with parsing his boston accent, before recognition dawned and she suddenly nodded.

"Yes… Yes!" She nodded emphatically. "It has been over a year! I wasn't sure he was alive!"

Come to think of it, this newcomer kind of reminded him of Elizabeth.

"Okay…" He tempered, nodding. He wasn't going to waste his lunch on some unannounced visitors, but he'd seen this kind of situation more than he'd like to think about. He couldn't imagine how he'd feel if he'd gotten separated from his boys during the La Palma attack. Surely, knowing his… daughter, he assumed, was safe would take a big weight off Tirto's shoulders.

Thankfully, he didn't have to choose between a good break and helping an employee.

"Hey, Thomas!" He clipped, interrupting his manager's work. He'd been ignoring the visitors, hiding in whatever work he was doing on his laptop, but he looked up now that Dan's call had dragged him into the situation. Once he'd gotten Thomas's attention, he continued. "You know Tirto, right? Top floor of building two?"

For a moment, a developing accusation formed in his features, but instead he nodded.

"Yeah, I can lead them there."

The responsibility successfully pawned off to someone else, Dan ignored the three as they collected the needed PPE. It didn't need to be his problem anymore. Thomas would keep them from doing anything dangerous, while he focused on his biggest priority:

Lunch.

- - -

The break couldn't have come soon enough. Feeling like she'd come ashore after weeks of beating attackers away from a convoy, the mentally exhausted carrier stumbled into the nearest line without checking what food truck it was connected to. While she waited, the majority of her crew combed throughout the hull, inspecting it for the damage caused by the day's work.

It wasn't good.

After enough time fighting with the concrete vibrator, a deep, low ache settled throughout her entire being. Damage was minor, but everywhere. Electricians were finding damaged wiring in every deck, which was bad because some of her firefighting systems had also gone down.

Her machine shop, hold, galley, or anywhere something was stored atop a table or shelf had been reduced to chaos as her crew focused on either securing everything they could or cleaning up where that had failed. Repairs on her deck had halted, of course,

Her delicate aircraft had been more-or-less destroyed by the shaking. Well, she assumed that, because investigating her air wing was near the bottom of her priorities. Anyone there was focused on dealing with a leaking fuel line. Thankfully, she wasn't storing any ordinance there, and what she did have had been secured enough in her magazines that catastrophe had been avoided.

The most worrying news had come from her boiler room. The loosening effect of the vibration had started a few steam leaks, killing an unlucky engineer and warning of what could happen if she continued using it. She wanted to start two more boilers (running them at lower pressure, if possible) and secure the current one, but it would be hours before the other boilers were properly inspected and could build up enough steam to replace the current one.

She needed to find some sort of excuse to avoid the vibrator tomorrow. How could you even do that?

Rejected title: Trin vs the Vibrator

Yeah, I strained my wrist and can't use my right arm for typing anymore, so this chapter came out a bit slowly. That isn't stopping me from writing, but it is slowing me down, so fingers crossed that I can wrap this arc up before I ship out.

AN's gonna be short because of that, hope you liked it!
 
48: Interrupted
She… wasn't sure what she was looking at.

She knew its name, of course, but she neither understood what 'spam' or 'musubi' was. The majority of the brick-shaped food was rice, prepared in such a way that it stuck together as a rectangular block. It accompanied a perfectly-rectangular slice of the smoothest meat she'd ever seen, it's edges charred black from the cooking process. It was secured to the rice by a long, dark band of… leaves? It was oddly familiar, reminding her of something she'd seen back on Bikini, but she couldn't quite resolve the memory.

"So, Sern." Tirto started, looking up from a food Trinitite didn't recognise. "You're looking for another job?"

Sern was busy chewing, but gave a loose nod.

Surprise halted the musubi in front of Trinitite's mouth, the carrier's eyes widening despite herself. Sure, she didn't feel particularly loyal to McAlley Construction Group, but she wasn't even human! The idea that an abyssal would even plan at leaving their fleet, let alone nonchalantly admitting it in conversation, was unthinkable!

"Need to get away from us, huh?" Alton asked, but his teasing tone took the edge out of the accusation.

Of course, if an abyssal had said she was leaving her fleet, the response also wouldn't have been so casual. Now that she was thinking about the issue, however, it made perfect sense that changing fleets like this wasn't a major event. Trinitite herself wasn't planning on staying in this fleet forever, so why would she expect the humans to?

Deep, she was confusing fleets and families again!

"Oh, not at all!" Sern denied, enthusiastically shaking his head. "My parents found a home in another state, so I'll be moving out with them to help them pay for it."

"Where are they going?" Alton asked. Trinitite's attention started to wane, as she took a bite of her meal. The important information was that Sern was leaving, which made things a bit easier for Trin. Of everyone she worked around, the Malasian had given her the most attention, so seeing him go was going to make life here a bit easier.

"Moscow." Sern replied, as the abyssal focused on her mouthful of lunch.

Like the jerky, this meat had been treated until it was unrecognizable from the original meat. The meat's salty savor complemented the rice nicely, but the chemicals left her thirsty despite the meal being not particularly dry.

"Moscow?" Alton echoed, the incredulity in his voice pulling Trinitite away from her food. Was it in Hawaii or somewhere equally dangerous?

"Uhh, in Idaho, not Russia." He clarified. "I'd prefer a town with a more original name, but I haven't been the one trying to get out of the refugee camp."

She recognized Idaho from her stolen charts, as one of many 'states' that formed the American Fleets. If the distance had been water, it wasn't that far away, but when it comes to practical land distances she had no idea.

"Looking forward to getting out of the barracks?" The third member of her work team spoke up. "Your internet friends will probably hear you better when you don't have to whisper everything."

Trinitite quietly took another bite of her meal, thinking about that new information. She wasn't surprised that you could use the internet like an open channel, but the how, again, eluded her. The focus given by her research list was useful, but perhaps she should spend some time just… exploring when she had the computer later today.

"I wasn't that loud," Sern asserted, "was I?"

"Your keyboard was." Tirto replied, but he was looking at Trinitite. "You can't imagine the clicking."

The abyssal hadn't seen a human blush before, but Sern's reddening face was probably one of those.

Seeing his target's flustered reaction, Tirto's tone shifted. "At least you don't snore, like-"

"Bapak!"

At the unknown woman's shout, Trinitite's rangefinders snapped towards her, along with everyone in her group.

There were two newcomers, their uniquely-colored helmets marking them as visitors. One wasn't moving, leaving the Wo-class's attention to focus on the second.

"Hesti?" Tirto breathed, his lunch forgotten as he stood. The other human had a similar skin tone as him, and an odd mark stretched across her face, but more importantly, she was staring back at Tirto as she approached.

The Wo-class had never had an easier time reading a human's expression.

She made the connection instantly. Part of the family Tirto had talked about, the one he'd thought he'd left in the south pacific, had escaped as well. He'd talked alot about his daughter, right? Was this her?

As her coworker rose, his daughter broke into a jog, arms outstretched. Tirto did the same, and the distance between the two rapidly shrunk until they were in a tearful embrace.

For several seconds, nothing was said, the two humans enjoying the comfort of each other's embrace. They'd been separated for… Trinitite wasn't sure how long, but Trinitite knew it would have been painful.

There was… love, here, something she hadn't seen in humans before. She'd known it had existed, but hadn't seen what it had looked like until now.

Pressure in her strained boiler rose slightly as she realised just how… similar it was. How often had Trinitite seen one of her sisters in this kind of embrace with her mother? How often had she buried her head in her princess's shoulder?

Tirto's daughter straightened, words pouring out as she started to speak. It was a language that The Abyssal had never known, but Trinitite knew what the human was probably saying anyways.

I wasn't sure I'd see you again.

You're alive! So much has happened since I last saw you!

Thank The Deep! We can go back to being a fleet again!


Ever since she'd left Bikini, she'd been thinking of what she'd say to Jellyfish, after all.

If she is still my princess.

The traitorous thought entered her mind like an unexpected torpedo, a wave of sudden terror ripped up her keel, causing several casualties in her boiler room as additional steam leaks opened up in her active boiler.

The scene before her was her goal, the planned culmination of everything she was doing here, but expecting it would be foolishly optimistic, wouldn't it? It was possible that the type of reunion she was watching wasn't in her future.

She sniffed, adjusting her safety glasses to wipe condensation from her rangefinders. Tirto's daughter… the Wo-class wouldn't say she was lucky, but she at least had the guarantee that her parent would still love her if they found each other. What if, after finally meeting her princess and calling out to her, she only found herself staring down her 8-inch guns?

She'd be sunk, defeated in more ways than one.

She couldn't bear to look anymore. The conversation between the two continued, but Trin wouldn't be listening even if she did understand their language. A part of her was happy for her coworker, knowing that a problem he'd had since long before Trinitite had met him had been solved, and another was busy processing the fact that human relationships were this deep, but as she stared down at her lunch...

She sniffed, her gaze settling on the odd, tan smear on her work gloves. Where had that come from?

A moment of panic shot through her as she recognized her foundation. She could feel another tear sliding down her cheek, and knowing her makeup...

Thankfully, everyone else seemed to be focused on the reunion. Trinitite hastily set her lunch aside, shooting up and quietly excusing herself. As long as she kept her head down, nobody should notice her slipping disguise, but she still needed to find somewhere private to correct her makeup.

She sniffed again, ignoring the other visitor as she slipped down the scaffolding. Somewhere quiet to get her feelings under control wouldn't hurt, either.

- - -

These moments were what she lived for.

It was a perfect story. Hesti, the woman who'd just barely dragged herself and her children from the tempestuous hell that had claimed her husband, had been desperate for news on a missing parent. In that desperation, she gambled what little wealth she could gather on Katie, the best private detective in the west. Weeks had passed, then months as the overworked sleuth had searched, determined to reunite the long lost relatives.

Eventually, she'd done it, tracking him down to here and confirming The Contact's information within a couple of hours. Hesti had wanted to come immediately, obviously, and while Katie had to cover the exorbitant cost of flying her and her kids over, she didn't mind.

With the stressful shitshow that was the other job she had here, she was more than happy to help with this one, and the feel-good blog posts about it would probably be much less… pointed then news coverage about a missing abyssal.

The father and daughter pair separated slightly, speaking to each other in what she assumed was Javanese. Right now, there was no doubt she wasn't in their thoughts, but Katie knew that those two would never forget the name of the woman who got them back together.

One of the construction workers Tirto had been eating with hurried past Katie, her face hidden by her helmet as she kept her head down. The detective only realized the worker was female when she sniffled, her form hidden by her bulky clothing as she hurried away. It was kind of nice to know the scene was touching others, as well, but the female coworker was a bit odd...

She shrugged. It was 2022, of course there'd be women working here.

Another mystery solved, Harmon turned her attention back to the pair. Things seemed to be slowing down between the two, so she started to walk forwards, eager to see what kind of person her quarry was.

It wasn't often the object of your search was grateful you found them, after all.

This chapter's a bit shorter, as I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a part of the last one or not. Still, I think it's just barely long enough to hold on it's own. There's enough going on here for a full chapter anyways, even if the wordcount is on the short side. Next chapter will be a bit longer anyways, and conclude Trinitite's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Thanks to Jessetheswift for betaing this one and a lot of the previous chapters, by the way.
 
Fencer - Terms of Surrender
Omake: Terms of Surrender

Trinitite glared down at her shaking right hand.

Three days. She had been stuck using the concrete vibrator, for three days. The damage had built up quickly, and now...

Her legs were stiff and slow after one of her shafts had been shaken nearly out of place. She had damaged pipes everywhere, and her right hand would not stop shaking! Never mind a battle, in her current state a squall would be enough to sink her.

Work tomorrow would be incredibly challenging. She was certain the damage would drastically reduce her work speed and accuracy. There was no doubt in her mind that if she was not useful she would be kicked from the McAlley Construction Group fleet. No matter how kind they had been in giving her a chance.

She could not continue to work effectively without supplies, and time to effect proper repairs. She could not acquire supplies with which to effect said repairs without putting in weeks or possibly months of work. She could in theory steal the supplies she needed to make proper repairs but in her current state and with the Navy no doubt alert for any clues to her whereabouts... The raid of the Fred and Myers fleet had been more luck than skill. She could admit that much to herself. And she was far closer to a Navy base now than she had been before. The chances of getting the supplies she needed and escaping were... not good.

She had nothing but bad options. Closing her eyes she slumped back against a tree. There was one option. She had stumbled across it while researching the war her mother had fought in for the humans.

Surrender. It was, an odd concept. For a conflict to end without sinking or fleeing. It was a bad idea. It wasn't safe. She was not human. Had in fact been taking part in a war against all of humanity. There was no way to know if she would be treated as prisoners are required to be treated. They might just sink her on principle. But she was tired, and damaged, and out of options that didn't end in a fight she had no way to win. Honestly, if she were to be involved in a battle now all she might be able manage would be to sink slowly.

She passed orders to her crew.

{}{}{}{} 7 AM next day

Traffic stopped and moved aside. People gawked, or ran, or hid. She ignored it all as she continued her slow painful march towards the local Navy base. At a distance of eight blocks she was met be a small fleet of ship girls destroyers and cruisers and even an outdated battleship. All standing near enough to two blocks away. All of which had their guns aimed right at her.

Her grip on the stick in her hands turned white knuckled as she came to a stop and waved it back and forth. The white t-shirt tied to the the end as good a message as she could send. Any imps not busy keeping her running stood on exposed bits of hull waving their own improvised white flags.

With a deep breath Trinitite began to broadcast on all frequencies.

"I am Wo-class carrier Trinitite. Last ship of the Cross-Roads Fleet. I," her voice caught but she pushed on, "I am here to offer my terms of surrender."

The ship girls exchanged nervous looks and one spoke rapidly into a cell phone before one of the ship girls broadcasted a response.

"What are your terms?"

Trinitite licked her lips and took a deep breath before forcing herself to speak.

"I offer to fully and freely disarm myself, under whatever supervision you deem necessary. I offer any and all information I have on other abyssal fleets. I will accept whatever form of imprisonment you deem necessary for the protection of the humans under your care."

There was a longer delay.

"And in exchange?"

"Two, two things." Her chest felt tight, her range finders where misting over in spite of the clear weather, and she could no stop shaking.

"If-" the words caught in her throat but she shook her head and forced herself to continue. If she was going to be sunk she would face it as her Mother had taught her. With her back straight and knowing she had done everything she could.

"If the humans you protect decide that isn't enough. If they decide I have to be, be sunk... Let it be anything but the Fire, the nukes. Mother... I don't think I could take it. To be sunk the way she was." I had read so much about the Fire now. I didn't want to feel it. The thought alone was terrifying.

"...And the second?"

"I, please. I just, even if it's only once. Even for just a few minutes. Even if it's only over the phone, and she tells me-" Her throat seized up again, and she had to dash the tears from her eyes. "Even if she hates me, please, let me talk to Mother. Even just once before I sink. Please let me talk to Mother."
 
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49: No-Bake Cookies
She was starting to miss real darkness.

As the sun set over Mill Creek, light from vehicles, lining the roads, and filtering out of buildings, reflected off the clouds above and air itself to create the unnatural glow that characterized human territory. Normally, having a rough idea of what the terrain around her looked like was a boon, especially when her island's lights were off, but right now she wanted nothing more than to crawl into somewhere small and dark and just… rest, for a few days.

That wasn't going to happen, of course, but she still felt like she needed it.

On the bright side, she probably wasn't going to be using the concrete vibrator tomorrow. They'd finished pouring the columns on that building, a speed that had surprised even her supervisor. Additionally, with the crane down it was going to take a while to get all the rebar, formwork, and other materials up to cast the next floor, meaning she had a good amount of time to come up with an excuse before the vibrator reappeared.

That's where the good news ended, however.

The light from her eyes illuminated the half-eaten hamburger in front of her, the meal feelingly oddly unreal in the dim, tinted glow. That was a shame, because she wanted to take a moment to admire the last hamburger she'd be making in a while. She'd run out, cooking the last ones in that bag for herself tonight. She'd done a pretty good job this time, the crisp burgers retaining their juices and mingling well with the sauces and cheeses she'd tried, but now she was nearly out of food to distract her, the other problem was starting to creep into her consciousness.

Tirto.

Eager to avoid thinking about the issue, she took another bite of her hamburger, musing on how the ketchup mixed with the blue cheese vinaigrette as she searched for a cookbook. When she went to sleep tonight, she would no doubt have to confront the issue, and the interruptions in her watch schedule caused by the vibrator meant she needed sleep tonight, but Trinitite didn't want to deal with that issue yet.

Opening to a random page in the notebook, she started to read through the recipe for a 'three cheese lasagna,' but it seemed like it needed an oven, which she didn't have on her. The abyssal flipped to another page in the book, but she didn't even bother reading the title. Trinitite did not have the mental energy to deal with an ingredients list that long.

Flipping through another set of pages, the Wo-class settled on one last recipe, at the end of the book.

No-Bake Cookies.

She already had a bunch of cookies in her hold, but she decided to give this a try anyways. Something this basic seemed like a good step up from hamburgers, after all, and skimming through the directions showed that she didn't need anything she didn't have.

Finishing her burger and licking the last sauce off her fingers, she brought the book closer to carefully review the directions. Thankfully, it was only a few sentences long, meaning it was fairly easy to memorize the whole thing. She'd have to guess what measurements like tablespoon and teaspoon were, but the pan she was planning to use had cup measurements on the inside, so she was guaranteed to get the recipe mostly right.

So… first she'd need sugar, milk, butter and cocoa. The butter packets were thankfully labeled with measurements, down to the tablespoon. The cocoa powder she poured atop the mix should roughly equal what the recipe wanted.

Opening the propane tank back up and lighting the grill, Trinitite started to stir the mixture with her finger. Now, she just had to wait for this mixture to boil.



She'd just discovered a problem with her plan.

As the sugar dissolved into the darkening milk and the cube of butter slowly grew softer and less defined, the abyssal's thoughts once again wandered to places she did not want it to. However, she was just busy enough stirring everything together that she didn't really have a way to find another distraction.

And so, despite her best efforts, the Wo-class's thoughts drifted back towards the events of today's lunch.

It was great news, really, which is why her attitude towards it made her feel even worse. She should be happy about what it meant for Tirto, his daughter, and her daughters, she guessed, but Trinitite instead couldn't help but think about what that meant for her, just like all those princesses she hated.

It wasn't even the thought that Saratoga might want her sunk that had her worried. Despite the initial burst of emotion she had grappling with that fact, it was a possibility she'd wondered about ever since she'd seen The Navy get to her princess. No, she could just… pretend that betrayal by Her Princess wasn't an option, because she already knew what she'd do if that was the case.

She sighed, watching the first bubble rise to the top of the warming mixture. Did that mean it was boiling? No… it wasn't constant yet. From the heat filtering into her hand through her stirring glove, it certainly was close though.

She would die, of course, and there wasn't any reason to dwell on that more than she needed to. Down that path lay more breakdowns like the one she'd had today.

No, what she'd been trying to avoid came from another thought she'd had, while carefully trying to reapply makeup in the low-quality mirror of the construction site's portable head.

Given that, somehow, everything from this point went exactly to plan, that she eventually tracked down Saratoga, confronted her without getting killed by the Navy, managed to get The Jellyfish Princess back, then miraculously escape from deep within the Navy base she'd slipped into, now with an abyssal princess in tow whose weather signature was very easy to track...

...Then what?

The mixture had started to boil happily, and The Abyssal removed her overheated finger, sliding her glove off and shaking her hand to help it cool.

If they went back to Bikini and started rebuilding the crossroads fleet, what the Wo-Class had originally considered the best outcome, they'd have a terrible supply shortage. What had survived Trinitite's spiteful sabotage had no doubt been picked clean by her deceitful neighbors. Deep, they might have recovered the corpses of her fleetmates before they'd deteriorated too much, breaking them down until they were just salvaged steel and machinery.

The shame of having to crawl back to those who'd betrayed her and beg for supplies would be bearable. Something like that wasn't too uncommon in the abyssal fleets, after all.

What was difficult to deal with was the realization of what helping other abyssals, even passive ones like the Supply Depot Princess, really meant.

It would mean more people like Alton or Sern, forced to flee their homes as punishment for just living in the wrong place. It meant more people like Tirto and his daughter, Fleets shattered like her own was. It ment many less lucky humans, sunk thanks in part to her efforts.

As a capital ship, she'd always been taught that at the end of the day, the most important ship to keep afloat was herself, but that didn't mean she wanted to help create more desperate situations like the one Tirto's daughter had been in.

She couldn't think of anyone she wanted to wish that kind of forceful separation on. The princesses who'd betrayed Jellyfish deserve something horrible, sure, but she doubted they'd care if they lost everyone around them. She wouldn't lose many tears over something like this happening to one of the ships of The Navy or one of the Firbringers who'd destroyed her fleet, but there were much more straightforward ways of getting back at them. For someone who hadn't, and probably wouldn't hurt her at all, like Alton, Sern, or Tirto?

Trinitite wouldn't blame herself for doing what she needed to to protect The Crossroads Fleet. Now? She wasn't so sure that was needed. She was surviving here, without hurting anyone else. It would be harder with Jellyfish's fog highlighting where they were...

Her chronometer marked that one and a half minutes had passed. Gladly taking the distraction, she shut the propane, allowing the stove's flames to die on their own. Shifting the pan so it was over a cold burner, Trinitite slid her glove back on, grabbing a few handfuls of peanut butter and dropping it in. After that and an equally-rough measurement of oats, Trinitite grabbed the vanilla extract, turning it over for half a second and hoping that equated to a teaspoon.

Compared to all her other problems, the lack of measuring equipment was a bit nice to have. At least this issue had an easy solution...

She started to stir the pot again, mixing the rapidly-solidifying ingredients together. Once the texture seemed to even out, she flipped the griddle she'd been using to cook hamburgers. Now with the clean side exposed, she took a pinch of the mix, plopping it down on the griddle. You were supposed to place it on wax paper, but she didn't have any, and didn't really know what it would look like anyways.

When she was done, the griddle supported a sloppy array of dark, uneven blobs, and her glove was coated with several layers of brittle, flakey cookie. That would be a pretty good place to start for a taste, right?

Sliding the food-encrusted glove off, The abyssal started at a thumb, grabbing it with her teeth and scraping the caked-on mix onto her tongue.

The taste was... surprisingly familiar.

Trinitite didn't immediately recognize it, considering it was still hot and the only other time she'd tasted the flavor it had been in cool and creamy food, but as the cookie material dissolved in her mouth, she finally pinned it down.

Chocolate!

Eagerly cleaning off another finger of her glove, Trinitite dove into the no-bake cookie's unique taste, comparing it to the ice cream she'd had earlier. That would always hold a special place in her heart, but this…

After the day she'd had, she'd needed this.

For some time, the Wo-class focused on her creation, the rest of the world fading into the night around her. Eventually, however, the exhausted carrier ran out of cookies. For a moment she debated trying the cookies she'd stolen from Fred Meyers, but eventually decided against it. What had made the no-bake cookies special was that she made them, after all, and she did need the sleep.

There was the issue of the pan and packing the materials she'd used back into her hold, however. The Pan itself was too caked in no-bake cookie to be used for anything else, and she wasn't nearly awake enough to scrape all the dried mix off. She didn't have issues putting away most of the materials, until she got to the opened bag of sugar, which didn't reseal for some reason? Unless she stationed someone in her crew to hold it together at all times, she couldn't really store it.

Hmm, those both sounded like problems for tomorrow's Trinitite. Content with what she'd accomplished, the abyssal leaned back, snuggling into the raincoat she'd bunched up under herself and starting to drift to some well-deserved sleep.

…Come to think of it, returning to Bikini and helping the fleets would also help drive humans towards using The Fire, wouldn't it?

No! She needed to rest, not worry about… anything! Couldn't she think of something safe while she tried to sleep?

Stupid, stupid Wo!

- - -

The man crept through the woods, enjoying the comfortable silence as he surveyed the trees around him. Despite avoiding any trail and being surrounded by thick, lush bushes, light from the town center allowed him to keep his flashlight off. Considering he just left the station, he wanted to give himself time to adjust to the darkness anyways.

Unlike most night shifts, Officer Martin Bevan was enjoying himself. Between the staffing issues they'd been having for the last couple of years and the influx of desperate refugees, he normally had plenty to do at night. However, there was still the occasional time where the world's chaos forgot about Mill Creek, like the sleepy Tuesday night he was currently enjoying.

Normally on nights like this, he'd grab a coffee and watch the traffic along a road, which was pretty dull work. Tonight, though, he had a refreshing change of pace in chance to spend some time outdoors.

It probably wouldn't take too long. Two days ago, they'd gotten a complaint from a resident on Third Drive, reporting lights in the woods between their neighborhood and the police station. Putting his hunting skills to work, he'd investigated yesterday afternoon, finding a bunch of broken branches, trampled leaves, and a cozy clearing where some small remnants of food packaging could be found, confirming his suspicions.

When it came to squatting on someone's private property, you could choose better locations than a quarter-mile from a police station, but he could see the reasoning behind it. Despite often arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs, the war's refugees had driven rent prices even higher than they already were, and Mill Creek was a lot more pleasant than the swelling camps that were further inland.

The sound of the trickling creek warned Martin of the unsteady ground ahead, and he activated his flashlight to watch his footing. The bubbling creek shimmered as he started to wade through, careful of his footing as water soaked into his boots.

If NOAA was right, it would be swollen with new rain in the morning, becoming completely impassable. That was another reason he was moving now. Wednesday night had been too busy for him to check up on the squatter, but now he had to get him under a roof before the serious rain moved in and hypothermia became a problem.

Whomever they were, they seemed to do a decent job cleaning up after themselves, so he doubted he was dealing with anyone dangerous. Just… unlucky. Because of that, Martin wasn't going to be too harsh on him. Wake him up, give him a warning, then take him back to the station and give him a ride to a homeless shelter. There was a church about fifteen minutes away who'd opened their doors for the storm, and they still had open space when he called, so as long as this guy was okay with getting preached at and sleeping on a few blankets, he should be fine.

Hell, if he was nice enough on the drive over, Martin might point him towards the police academy!

Wishful thinking, he knew, but they could use whomever they could get.

As he'd suspected, someone was in the clearing. Resting the flashlight on his shoulder, he toggled it on, squinting to avoid spoiling his night vision too much.

His breath caught in his throat as the flashlight danced over the squatter. He was a she, and a pretty great looking one at that. Martin was still pretty young, just past twenty nine, and if he had to guess this woman was only a few years younger than that. He gulped as his gaze traced over her shirt. Pretty... healthy, too.

He suddenly closed his eyes, shaking his head. He was on the job, damnit!

The woman was tall, wearing thick work boots and dirtied jeans. Her European features and very light skin gave less of a clue to her origin then Martin would have liked, although the rough white hair was pretty unique. Did she bleach it? Her skin was remarkably smooth, cleaner than he'd expected from someone in this small patch of wilderness. Overall, for a woman who lived in the elements, she'd kept herself remarkably clean.

She was sleeping on her coat, something she would desperately need when the rain picked up in a few hours. Around her, a portable stove sat, a griddle and pan resting atop the dead burners. That would explain the lights, he guessed. At her side, a paper bag of sugar lay next to her, opened for the ants or rain to find. It probably had to do with the dark substance that coated the inside of the pot, but the lack of other cooking materials was… puzzling. He'd have to ask about it on the hike back to the station.

Speaking of asking, he needed to stop gawking at the squatter and get her moving. The storm wasn't going to slow down for him, after all.

"Hey." He murmured, nudging the woman's shoulder with a boot. "You okay?"

"Mmph." She groaned, shifting in her coat.

Making sure to keep the flashlight off the woman's face, the police officer waited for a few moments before nudging her shoulder again.

"Are you alright, Lady?"

"Hmm?" She drowsily replied, shaking her head. "Yeah."

Placing a gloved hand over her face, she groaned, before lowering it and looking up at him with a pair of cold, glowing eyes.

Martin's heart stopped, his mind skipping a gear as it suddenly shifted into fight-or-flight.

He'd just woken up an abyssal!

A few chapters ago, I heard people... accuse Trinitite's marines of competence. Let this incident and their complete inability to alert Trin reassure you that they are, in fact, terrible.

Yeah, didn't expect to get this chapter out so quickly. It was just that this is one of those scenes that I've been really exited to write, you know? Hope you enjoyed.

Anyways, no-bake cookies are great! It's one of the few recipes I can actually do! I highly suggest you look a simple recipe up and give them a try, if you have the required ingredients.
 
50: Retreat
The man ran, stumbling as branches reached out from the darkness to pull at his legs and uniform. He'd dropped his flashlight, so he'd have to slow down if he wanted to properly navigate the small forest in the darkness, but that wasn't remotely an option.

Not with that thing behind him.

Questions like why that monster was in Mill Creek, how she'd gotten here, and what sort of disaster she was planning on causing were ignored, Martin's thoughts focused exclusively on survival. First, he needed to get to the police station. There wasn't much his coworkers could do but run as well, but perhaps the abyssal would be reluctant to-

A sudden drop sent Martin tumbling forwards, the man landing hard in the creek bed. While his vest took the brunt of the fall, a stone jammed into left shoulder, pain lancing down his arm. The creek's water, higher then it had been a few minutes ago, happily rolled over the prone policeman, but it's freezing temperature made it feel like an angry rapid.

The shock and pain was soon dulled by adrenaline, however, and the police officer scrambled to his feet, sloshing out of the creek. As he frantically blinked the water out of his eyes, he frantically flailed his hands forwards, catching a tree trunk he almost barreled into.

He wasn't far from the station. Light from downtown was starting to filter into the forest, allowing him to move with steadily-increasing confidence.

With his hands trembling, his heart thundering in his head, and with a fucking eldritch abomination hot on his heels, Martin didn't bother messing with the security mechanism on the back door. Instead, the soaked and muddy officer tore around to the front of the building, throwing the glass door open the best he could.

"Martin?" The man at the front desk asked, his hand snapping to his sidearm as he noticed his comrade's disheveled appearance.

"There's-" he paused, his muscles screaming as he heaved for breath. "John, there's a fucking Abyssal out there!"

The officer at the desk paused, his hand frozen over his holster. Instead of fear, however, confusion dominated his features.

He didn't believe him. With a sudden clarity, Martin just realized how ridiculous that sounded.

"L-l-look." He stuttered. He glanced towards the front doors, half expecting the abyssal to burst through the glass like a Terminator. His mind raced and he started patting down his soaked bulletproof vest, until his hand finally settled on a particular gadget latched onto it. "I have my bodycam."

His colleague didn't relax, instead looking wearily outside as well.

"I hope you're wrong, Martin."

His breathing was starting to get under control, his panic starting to give way to a deep, urgent dread.

"So do I, John." He agreed.

Rumors flooded the police station after he entered the station proper, trading his uniform for one of his spares. By the time they'd uploaded the footage and gotten to the encounter, almost everyone on duty in the station was watching over Martin's shoulder.

When the supposed hobo opened her eyes, looking up at the camera with an obvious, malignant glow, everyone was forced to admit that Martin wasn't wrong.

- - -

The clouds had thickened, the ever-present glow of human territory dimming as thick sheets of rain absorbed and reflected most of the light. Water came down in uneven waves, drawing flickering cones underneath the street's lights. It soaked into her boonie hat, running off the brim in steady rivulets to join the new river streaming next to the sidewalk.

This wasn't as thick as most squalls Trinitite had been in, but she'd take it. Anything that made her more difficult to identify was good, especially considering what had just happened.

What had just happened?

The abyssal wasn't very sure herself. She'd managed to drift off to sleep, her crew either focusing on recovering from the vibrator's damage or on getting rest themselves. For security, she'd relied on the usual marine detachment to patrol the area around her, which had been the worst mistake she'd made since… Trinitite wasn't sure she'd ever screwed up this badly before! Okay, there were misjudgments during the defense of convoys that led to charges or fleetmates sinking, which were probably worse, but it all depended on what that human back there did.

Thankfully, her marines hadn't been so incompetent to betray their presence to the intruder, so he'd barged into the abyssal's makeshift anchorage still thinking Trinitite was human. Why he was there, or what reason he had to wake her up in the first place was beyond her, because Trinitite's disguise cracked the moment she opened her eyes.

She wasn't just mad at her marines. There had been no reason for her to keep her island lit up when she drifted off, yet she'd done so anyway. She guessed she had assumed it wouldn't matter, which made the issue one she had run into before. It was the problem that Mother had warned of over and over again: Complacency.

Calling it a stupid mistake felt like an understatement.

The drowsy abyssal hadn't immediately realized her rangefinders were glowing, of course. She'd spent a few moments looking up at the speechless human, but thought his presence alone didn't mean disaster.

It took far too long for her to recognize the expression of shock on his poorly-lit face. Instead, she'd been trying to think of an excuse being there, sleeping in a forest instead of an… anchorage or barracks or something. She sat up in the process, however, and that broke the human out of his inaction.

Jumping a little, the human stumbled backwards. The sudden movement woke Trinitite up fully, the Wo-class finally realizing something was wrong, but before she could get to her feet, he was gone.

Things had been a bit of a blur after that. Afraid she didn't have much time, she picked her embarrassed marines up without investigating their failure, ditching her stove and utensils and running. That was over a day of work left to the humans, but with… someone out there, calling the Police or the Navy, the seconds it would have taken to slip them into her hold would be far too much time wasted.

That had been another mistake. If Trinitite had had the presence of mind to summon her rigging and deal with the interloper, she at least would have had time to load up all that expensive equipment, but no. The fancy propane stove was wasted money, now. Maybe it was because, as a carrier, chasing down the enemy to engage them in close combat was never an obvious choice to her, but that was just an empty excuse.

As plenty of abyssal princesses would say, Trinitite had fucked up.

Now that she'd put a few miles behind her and the disaster area, slowed down to what she hoped was a non-suspicious pace, her thoughts moving away from her recent mistakes.

What now?

Firstly, she was never sailing through Mill Creek again. That meant she'd have to find another library and source of ice cream.

…She could really use some ice cream. Passing on it in the Shelton raid had been another stupid mistake.

The Wo-class shook her head, the rivulet of water trailing off her hat drawing small arcs as she did so. Just like the mistake she'd just made and countless others, those were in the past. What mattered was what she could do now that The Navy knew she was near Everett.

She probably wouldn't have to flee her current fleet. The construction site was over 16 miles by air from Mill Creek, not much by nautical standards, but she was starting to realize just how hard it was just to travel over land, let alone search it. According to her charts, the 34-mile wide search area they'd need to locate her there would cover a heavily-forested mountain range, dense fields of towering apartment buildings, and the installation at Everett itself.

If they were putting that many resources into finding her, she'd already know about it.

It didn't feel right, just walking into work as if nothing had happened, and acting like nothing had happened would be pretty difficult, but Trinitite couldn't think of any better option.

The abyssal stopped at an intersection, focusing on the sidewalk as a human vehicle rolled by. Hopefully there weren't any ships in that car who'd be able to recognize her, but she was suddenly unsure if they would be able to if she was too covered in human clothing. The Wo-class sighed, darting across the road once the coast was clear. She should assume that they could recognize her through her mundane disguise and thoroughly-soaked makeup, so that meant she should be staying away from major roads whenever possible.

Maybe a return to normal at work could help her calm down. This had been a nasty surprise, but it probably wasn't fatal.

Probably.

I know some people wanted more of a... meaningful interaction between Trinitite and the Police officer, and might consider this a missed opportunity. I... understand where they're coming from, and hope they'll trust me when I say I'm blowing this setup so I can write a better one in the future.
 
Interlude: Evidence
Words could not describe how much Nashville hated Trinitite right now.

Not only had The Abyssal humiliated her off the coast of Washington, not only was she menacing the entire Pacific Northwest, and not only was she pulling her away from her duties as a Light Cruiser, but she also had just forced her to board another damn helicopter!

The Sea Hawk, courtesy of Captain Newman and one of the Burkes anchored at her station, barreled southwest. Thick rain met the aircraft as it threw itself forwards, the barrage of water audible even over the infernal whine of the engine.

A gust of wind caught the helicopter, and the ten-thousand ton cruiser suddenly felt weightless as the aircraft plummeted for an unending moment, before the rotors suddenly caught the air again and Nashville was slammed into her seat. Her teeth clacked together, and while her crew had been braced for rough seas for a while now, Nashville herself had to re-swallow a portion of her dinner.

She knew time was of the essence, but was it really safe to put four shipgirls on a helicopter in this weather? Even Shangri La was looking a little pale!

"Attention to all ships. We've got McCollum Park in sight." The pilot's voice filtered in from her borrowed headset. Despite the nightmarish weather, his voice was unnaturally flat. "Hang on, your tourture's almost over."

"We'll be the first on-scene." Murray spoke up, "Remember, we're not professional investigators, so if you see anything that looks like evidence, call one of the local law enforcement or one of The Feds when they arrive. Try not to disturb anything."

Nashville wasn't sure where any of the civilians were staying, but it hadn't been near Smokey Point. They'd be arriving later, cruising in lovely, stable cars.

"Aye," Shangri La acknowledged. The two other ships they'd brought with them had been given a bare-bones briefing on Trinitite back when they'd instituted the policy of having one informed ship with every leave party, but Nashville assumed they were in about the same state she was. "...but I'm not sure anyone else heard you, Lieutenant Commander."

As she spoke, the helicopter started to fall again, but this time there seemed like a modicum of control. On an intellectual level, she knew the conditions were fairly mild compared to, say, a stormy voyage through the north sea, but as she felt the pilots wrestle with wind and rain in their descent, she wasn't sure how anything could fly here.

If the crew chief slid the door open to reveal the colorful land of Oz, the Light Cruiser wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest. There was no way they were going to make a clean landing in this tempest!

Yet, as the clean, bluish beams of headlights started to poke through the seahawk's windows, the aircraft's wheels suddenly met dirt and the shaking came to a long-awaited end.

Despite wanting nothing more than to get something solid under her keel, Nashville took a second to let the world stop spinning. Her internals were still revolting, after all.

"Here."

Nashville looked up as the Murray voice filtered over the intercom, her rangefinders settling on his outstretched hand. In any other circumstance the light cruiser might have been embarrassed, but time was of the essence and she wasn't sure she could stand up on her own.

The spinning got worse and Nashville wretched as the Lieutenant Commander hoisted her up, draping her arm over his shoulders in a classic walk assist. Still, as her commanding officer led her off the helicopter and onto the soaked grass of McCollum Park, Nashville managed to hold her dinner in, and slowly the world started to make sense again. She nodded, accepting Murray's help, before straightening and moving her arm to stand on its own. She stumbled as she suddenly remembered another one of the Helicopter's erratic movements, but that was soon under control.

The police at the park were hidden by three pairs of headlights that illuminated the landing site, so Nashville turned around to see how the rest of their little task force was doing.

South Dakota, her colorful hair clinging to a dark rain jacket as she herself clung to the steady hull of Shangri La. She was only going to be here until the ports had finished unloading and reloading the Tokyo Express convoy, but if they managed to find Trinitite now her rigging's spear would be an invaluable asset. Behind the two capital ships, the lithe, powerful hull of Alaska leaned on the seahawk's Crew Chief. Much like the carrier she would be fighting, the Large Cruiser wasn't particularly durable, but she had the power to match the Abyssal Blow-For-Blow.

Seeing all this power made Nashville feel a little… underwhelming. Sure, in a gun battle she'd beat the Wo-class every time, but unless she felt like transferring to the Space Force Nashville wasn't going to be using her guns on land any time soon. Hopefully the MCMAP techniques she'd been occasionally studying would offset the power difference, but she wasn't too confident.

A figure stepped in front of one of the police car's lights, then a second. As they approached and Nashville recovered more from the light, the silhouettes resolved into a uniformed man and woman.

"Lieutenant Commander Murray, I presume?" The woman shouted as she approached, her voice masked by the helicopter behind them. In response, The Spook broke away from the group, Nashville belatedly trailing him.

"That would be me." Murray finally replied once they had put some distance between them and the still-running seahawk. He cocked his head towards the taller figure. "Is he Officer Bevan?"

Closer in, she could make out the faces of the two police officers. Both nodded, but the shorter officer spoke up first.

"Yes. I'm Sargent Kelsey Ho, and with me is the officer who'd made the… encounter." She turned her attention to the rest of the small fleet. "Are these the Feds who were also coming?"

Nashville wasn't sure how anyone could mistake South Dakota as anyone but a shipgirl, even in civilian clothing, and Alaska and Shangri La didn't exactly have average hair colors, but she guessed her hair was normal enough, and between the heavy rain, the darkness, and the civilian clothing the shipgirls were wearing it probably wasn't that easy to identify them.

"Unfortunately, they're still driving here." Murray reported, waving to Nashville. "My colleagues are shipgirls, in case we really are dealing with an abyssal."

"I've seen the bodycam footage, sir." The Sargent drylly reported. "The suspect couldn't have been much else."

Nashville tried to suppress her surprise. They caught Trinitite on camera? Just how many people knew about her now?

"Well, in that case, we should deploy there as soon as possible." Murray reported grimly. "I'll interview Officer Beven on the specifics in the drive over." The Spook's face was well-lit by the headlights, so Nashville managed to recognize the inspiration that suddenly crept into his expression. "Shangri La:"

"Sir?" The Carrier queried, caught off guard by the sudden attention. Murray motioned to the landed Helicopter.

"Think you can search for her from the air?"

What? How were you supposed to search for anything in this weather?

"Of course!" There was hardly any hesitation from the insane carrier. With a salute, she turned, jogging back towards the death trap. Nashville had to snap her slack jaw shut, forcing herself to put on a stoic front for the police.

"The rest of us will follow your lead, Sergeant."

"Right, follow me." The sergeant confidently pivoted and started walking back to the police vehicles, while the… survivor, she guessed, was a little more hesitant. "It took a while for him to convince us that he'd run into an abyssal, so I'll admit there was a delay before we established a cordon around the area. You warships will probably have a boring night, but I appreciate the gesture."

"If there's an abyssal in there," Murray started, continuing his false skepticism, "I'm sure we'll all be glad we brought them."

As the group distanced themselves from the helicopter more and it started to rise back into the storm above, the wind around the group dropped. A lot. Nashville noticed the trees surrounding the park were remarkably still, considering how terrible the flight had been.

Damn, this was hardly a storm at all, was it? Was the helicopter just exceptionally bad at flying in poor weather, or was Nashville far too sensitive when it came to flying?

How must it have looked to the police when their best hope against the abyssals stumbled out of their ride like a gaggle of hungover sorority girls?

- - -

"She was... right through here." Officer Bevan pointed through the underbrush. The policeman's voice shook as he stood to the side, allowing the shipgirls to go first in case the abyssal was lurking in the clearing, ready to pounce. A pretty silly thought, but Nashville guessed he was shaken enough to not realize that. Instead of one of the shipgirls taking point, however, Lieutenant Commander Murray passed the police officer, his generally unassuming figure feeling much more imposing as he passed the taller and younger officer.

Nashville followed him into the small clearing, and of course, there wasn't a pair of glowing lights looking back at her. Nashville frankly doubted that anyone else would see the skittish Wo today. In the morning darkness, their flashlights danced around the clearing, highlighting the partially-blocked rain and a collection of… cooking supplies?

"Looks like she left in a hurry." Murray commented, his flashlight settling on a strange, white object. Only by getting closer did she recognize it as a bag of sugar, the labels on the soggy paper blurred and the contents reduced to slowly spreading sludge. Why the abyssal was working with sugar in the first place was beyond her, but all the clues she needed were probably on the stove next to her.

Murray's attention turned to the stove at about the same time Nashville did, their flashlights snapping over to the camping gear in rough unison.

"Officer Bevan?" Murray asked, his flashlight reflecting off the thin layer of water lining the bottom of a dirty pot.

"Yeah?" He asked. He'd entered the clearing well after the shipgirls had, his flashlight's focus set as wide as possible to provide some ambient lighting.

"Think you can get a tarp to protect this stove? I don't want the rain to wash everything away before investigators get here."

"Of course!" He nodded, but hesitated at the edge of the clearing. When he did slip out, Nashville couldn't help but notice him turn his flashlight off as he left.

"Looks like it ran this way." Alaska spoke up, the pink-haired cruiser's flashlight dancing over the shattered remains of a bush. "She really was in a hurry."

"Alright, you two follow that." Murray concluded. "The trail's…" His flashlight swung to the other side of the clearing, where Officer Bevan had just been. "...Exactly opposite of your officer's exit point." Nodding at the shorter Police Sergeant that was with them, the Spook continued. "If it helps, I think our friend was just as scared of Martin as he was of her."

"He might find that funny," Sargent Ho admitted, "in a few weeks."

"It doesn't tell us where she ran, though…" He pondered, before taking his phone out. "Nashville, you think she'd run into the wilderness northwest, or the city south of here?"

The light cruiser exhaled, not happy the decision had been thrust upon her, but she guessed it was nice her commander valued her opinion on this.

"Well…" She was going to mention how much progress Trinitite had made in the Olympic peninsula, but remembering the civilian with them, decided against it. "...She might be a bit too shaken to stick around civilization…"

"Emphasis on 'might,' right?" Murray added, and Nashville nodded. If they knew as much about Trinitite as they did now when she hijacked the Pacific Lilly, then things might have gone differently, but there still were a million unknowns surrounding the enematic Abyssal. As he reached into a pocket in his uniform and fished out his phone. "Well, it would make sense. I'm going to order Shangri-La to direct the helo northeast, then swing south and search there."

Texting orders to someone felt… wrong, for some reason, but Nashville couldn't think of a solid objection. Could the company that managed those messages read them? Murray wasn't concerned, it seemed, as he pocketed his phone and returned his attention to the abandoned stove. The Police Sergeant joined them around the abandoned cookware, a second of silence hanging above them.

"Well..." Murray started, crouching to study the pot closer. "...she has a sweet tooth."

Nashville leaned in to study the mud-colored liquid at the bottom of the pot, before abruptly remembering the waterlogged bag of sugar a few feet away. "Know what that is?"

"No-bake cookies. It's a pretty simple dessert recipe." He recited, reaching for a dry crumb clinging to the side of the pot, before apparently thinking better of it and standing. "One of the first I learned, actually."

"You can cook?" Nashville asked. It was one of those things she'd wanted to get into, but hadn't found the time or energy for yet. It was a shame, because she doubted she'd be able to find any ceviche here in The States…

"I dabble." Her commander dismissed the question, looking to the police officer. "Now, do you think whatever forensics team we bring in will be able to figure out where she got this?"

"It should be possible." The Sergeant admitted. "Although it would require more detective work than forensics."

"I see." Murray nodded. "Either way, once we get the tarp over this, I don't want anyone else to get involved until the FBI arrives.

Sergeant Ho looked like she'd been hit, looking up at Murray with her jaw agape.

"Excuse me?"

"Ma'am, you deal with criminals, and I deal with combatants. This..." He motioned towards the discarded camping stove. "...is an espionage issue. My people are looking for her right now, but once the FBI gets here, they get control over who's involved and how this information spreads."

There was a pause as the Police Officer parsed Murray's rationale. Nashville knew that Murray's reasoning was hollow, especially since he was in charge of the investigation, but she guessed their normal way of suppressing knowledge of Trinitite wouldn't work here. The Mill Creek Police Department was probably less trustworthy than the 7th infantry division, but the bodycam footage ensured that they couldn't publically dismiss it as a case of mistaken identity. They could slap an NDAs in everyone's face, but again the department was too large for that method. Like with the video on the internet, it was better to downplay the damage instead of cracking down, she guessed.

"Look," Murray continued. In the harsh light from the flashlights, his face was obscured by shadow. "There's plenty of additional factors, such as the possibility of-"

"I understand, Lieutenant Commander." The Policewoman interrupted, acid creeping into her tone. "We'll stay quiet."

"That's good, Sergeant." Murray nodded. They probably wouldn't, Nashville knew Murray well enough to tell he was thinking the same thing, but as long as the video evidence didn't leak and things stayed as rumors, a panic would be avoided. "Nashville, I'll see if we can commandeer the FBI's car once they arrive. Maybe we can catch her along a road if we drive around for a bit."

"We've got plenty of interceptors." The Sargent interjected. "I'm not going to let you borrow one wholesale, but I can get you a driver, no issue."

"That'll work just as well." Murray Nodded. He suddenly shrugged, zipping his raincoat open and holding it over the stove to keep it dry. In the silence that followed, Nashville's thoughts drifted away from the incident.

Really, Murray cooked? The Light Cruiser was suddenly struck by the ridiculous mental image of the Spook huddled over this thing, dutifully stirring a pot of sweets with the same stoic expression he always wore.

She snorted. Maybe he could throw something together that would lure Trinitite out.

Alright, we're nearing the home stretch for this arc! Which is great, considering I don't have much time to wrap it up before I'm sent to boot camp, and obviously won't be able to work on this fic for a while.

One of the larger mistakes or missed opportunities I think I've made when writing this fic relates to Murray. He probably should be one of the most relatable characters in this fic, even as the primary antagonist (I guess?), but my decision to not have any segments from his point of view and using Nashville as his Watson might only have made him dethatched an uninteresting. Katie is one such attempt at making him a bit more interesting, but at the end of the day that's an external way to look at him, and definitely a terrible strategy if I rely on that on it's own. Since Murray's getting used to Nashville I think I'm trying to write him as more of a unique character, instead of being 'generic navy man' that I sometimes feel he's coming off as.

I think I have the groundwork for an interesting character, but have failed to show that so far. We'll see if I can without having him take up too much of the spotlight.
 
51: Lifting
"Right!" Alton shouted, ignoring the tension below his shoulders as he pointed down and twirled his finger. "Set 'er down!"

From his position inside the forklift, Sern nodded, and with a hydraulic hiss the palette loaded with rebar settled into the muddy sand below. Alton watched Sern's forks separate from the top of the palette, directing him to back away from the load. With a steady beeping that seemed to reverberate in his skull, the forklift slid away from the palette, and nodded to Elizabeth. His coworker nodded back and started hauling on a dangling chain, her black-gloved hands almost a blur as their pulley system's hook slowly rose above the palette.

To nobody's surprise, Tirto hadn't come in today, so the three were working together. Normally he'd be fine with that, especially considering the circumstances of Tirto's absence, but it would make executing his plan a little more awkward.

Alton deftly scooped up two fabric straps, sliding the reinforced fabric through the holes in the palette. The hook at the end of the chain, slowly rising thanks to The Abyssal's efforts, stopped for a moment, allowing Alton to slide the ends of both straps on.

Well, he still wasn't sure his coworker was an abyssal, but he was about as close to sure as he could be without solid evidence. Thankfully, he could feel the key to that could be found by the extra weight in a pocket, a promise- or perhaps a warning- that the moment of truth would come today.

Elizabeth started hauling on the pulley system's chain, her bottomless energy coming into play yet again. Slowly, but inexorably, the straps securing the loaded palette to the chain went taut, until finally a corner separated from the muddy soil, followed by another. Soon enough, over a thousand pounds of rebar and plywood were suspended in the air, rising towards the second floor.

It arrived last night, insulated in plastic and styrofoam. As far as FLIR cameras went, it was among the worst, a relatively cheap phone attachment that still seriously cut into his savings, but it was worth it.

Alton was still anxious as hell, but he had the best kind of plan: simple, safe, and inconspicuous. It was incredibly easy to take a picture, after all. He'd use the regular camera to grab an image of Elizabeth and her face, then switch over to the FLIR camera and get the final proof he needed. The toughest part would be acting normal until work was over, where he could rush home, upload the photos, and email a full report to Everett. He'd send them a phone call as well, to ensure that the email didn't get lost in the flood of information they got all the time.

From there, it would be up The Navy. Hopefully they'd track her down and pick her up in the evening, and Alton wouldn't know anything happened until she didn't show up for work one day. None of his coworkers would know how much danger they'd been in, Alton wouldn't have to confront the abyssal, and nobody got hurt.

Well, The Abyssal might. Alton wasn't sure how much of Elizabeth's personality was genuine, but a part of him felt like this was a betrayal, somehow. The thought was almost laughably dumb- she was an abyssal, for christ's sake, the same monsters who'd hunted him in Hawaii- so Alton was mostly able to ignore it, but it remained at the back of his mind, adding to the stress he'd been dealing with today.

Anyways, if she somehow was the only nice abyssal in existence, the Navy probably wouldn't have to kill her, meaning everybody won!

The palette was past the ground floor, now, some workers he recognized but couldn't match a name to watching patiently from the top of Building two. Alton looked over to Sern, who was busy poking at his phone from the cockpit of the forklift. It was probably safe to take a picture now, but if Sern did look up, he'd notice the strange lack of a case on Alton's phone, not to mention the weird, dark device attached to its bottom. Probably not that suspicious, but Alton wanted to take as little risk as possible here.

He checked his watch. 11:52 was a little early to start packing things up, but considering how long it was going to take to get that palette onto the second floor…

"Hey, Sern!" Alton shouted, and the young man looked up. "Why don't you go park that?" He asked, pointing towards his watch. Sern nodded, throwing the Forklift into reverse again and backing away.

Success! With his other coworker out of the picture and with Elizabeth focused on dragging the palette up, he'd gained a solid time window.

He stiffened, pantomiming receiving a message on his phone, before fishing it out and staring at the screen. Without the case, the phone felt oddly fragile in his gloved hands, so despite trying to act nonchalant he found himself handling the phone- along with the dark camera attached to the bottom- more gently than normal. Hopefully nobody else would notice.

Even if she did look this way, the abyssal probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Alton had never seen Elizabeth with a phone of his own, so he doubted the lack of a case would come off as weird to the tech-illiterate monster.

Holding it with both hands as if typing a text response, Alton unlocked the phone and opened the camera. A view of the ground below him met him. Slowly, and as inconspicuously as possible, he slowly panned the camera up, the abyssal slowly falling into the shot. He'd wanted to keep her in a corner of the picture so he wouldn't be obviously pointing a lens at her, but the damned autofocus kept shifting until he was forced to put Elizabeth's face squarely in the top-third of the frame.

So much for being inconspicuous. He took the shot as quickly as he could, then brought the camera down as he checked the picture. Looking up as she was, Alton didn't have the best photo of the abyssal's face, but that should be enough for the government to work with.

Step one, finished.

It took him half a minute to track down the FLIR camera's app, but thankfully, while the palette had completed its slow ascent, Elizabeth was focused on holding it until the folks at the top could wrestle it fully onto the top floor.

The infrared camera didn't have the same field of view the regular camera had, so Alton needed to hold it almost directly at her to get an image. He found his breath caught in his throat as he slowly pivoted it towards Elizabeth…

...Until the barest outline of a face could be seen, The Abyssal's clothing and skin the exact same color as the concrete behind her.

There wasn't any real surprise that his worst fears had been confirmed. The fear of being this close to an abyssal had never truly gone, but it hadn't gotten any worse now that he had proof. Alton didn't feel vindicated that his suspicions were correct, or relieved that the worst was over. There was just cold, grim, certainty.

Step two, done.

Alton sighed, saving the image, before making a show of lowering his phone and looking back up-

The calm abruptly shattered as Alton looked up. Terror coursed through his veins and his spine suddenly turned to lead as he stared into a pair of cold, grey eyes.

She knew that Alton knew!

- - -

Trinitite had desperately wanted a normal day, but so far things had failed to meet her expectations. She'd hoped that doing something new like hauling supplies to the top of building two would distract her from this morning's disaster, but pulling on a chain was far too monotonous a task to be distracting.

Even listening to the calm, expressive music on the radio wasn't enough to keep her mind off her failure. Trinitite was tempted to switch to one of the… louder frequencies to drown out her thoughts, but she still wanted to be able to hear her fleetmates, so she wasn't able to evade her worries.

Had that human contacted the Navy? When had he done so? How much distance had she managed to put between the site and herself before The Navy had started their search? Did they have some way to track her over land? If they did find her here, and were more than willing to sink the Pacific Lilly, what did that mean for everybody here?

"Hey, Sern! Why don't you go park that?"

Alton's shouted order pulled Trinitite's thoughts away from those questions, but only for a while. As the Wo-class continued to haul on the pulley system's chain, she focused on the sound of the forklift behind her, visualizing it pulling away as its tires crackled against the damp ground and it continued to report its position via strong, steady beeping.

However, as the sound of Sern's forklift faded into the general noise of the construction site, the Wo-Class's thoughts inevitably drifted to the same set of questions, creeping into her thoughts like an unwanted submarine despite the fact she knew she couldn't answer any of them.

Why hadn't she chased down the human and taken care of him? Why had she had her island's lights on in the first place? Why couldn't she be doing something a little more interesting, so she wouldn't be wasting energy thinking about all this?

The palette had reached the top of the little pulley system they'd made, and Trinitite stopped pulling once the worker above her started to wave. Instead, she held the chain steady, watching some coworkers she didn't know try to wrestle it onto the top floor. Here, at least, she could focus on watching their work, but they'd been repeating the process for a few hours now, so the vision above her was nothing… new…

Did she just hear a gasp?

The abyssal's attention drifted downwards, her curious rangefinders setting on Alton. His attention was focused on one of those devices she'd seen on the Pacific Lilly and in the hands of many of her workers, but while the screen was hidden, her attention was drawn to the set of clearly visible lenses visible on the back of the device.

Were those devices cameras as well as communication systems? Had he… taken a photograph of her? Pressure started to build in her active boilers as she noticed the grim expression on his face. Maybe she was a little too paranoid from her experience this morning, but she hadn't seen such a serious demeanor outside of truely dire situations. She could only think of one reason he'd be that disturbed.

Alton abruptly pocketed the device, looking up and meeting Trinitite's gaze. Her worst fears were confirmed as his eyes widened in terror, his mouth falling open as he instinctually leaned away from the abyssal.

No…

How had everything gone so wrong, so quickly? What did she do now? Trinitite held the human's gaze, hiding her own terror the best she could. Should she say something? Should she run?

Suddenly, the rain-coated chain in her hands slipped free of her gloves, tearing through her grip at an alarming speed.

The palette!

Suddenly remembering her current duties, Trinitite's hands clamped back down on the rushing chain with supernatural strength. Then, out from instinct born of stress and panic, the abyssal did perhaps the worst thing she could have done in that situation:

She yanked on the chain.

Of the materials Austin had procured to build the pulley system, the chain was perhaps the most reliable. Most of the potential accidents that had Dan worried had to do with where the pullies were mounted, a haphazard collection of steel and hardwood secured to the concrete floor with little more than several fabric straps and its own weight.

He hadn't counted on the chain being squeezed with the force of three warship-grade boilers, then abruptly jerked downward. The majority of that force went into lifting Trinitite off the ground, but the squished links were already doomed.

With a harsh snap, one of the links the Wo-class was holding onto disintegrated, and the chain above her whipped upwards. The abyssal almost hit herself as her end of the chain flew downwards, and she spent a precious moment in dazed confusion as her sleep-addled mind caught up with what just happened.

A distressed shout from above focused her attention, and Trinitite looked up to see the pallet, almost balanced at the edge of the floor.

The palette started to tip.

Then, it started to slide.

Panicking, the Wo-class traced the imminent trajectory of the rebar-laden palette, her eyes finally resting… on Alton.

Shit!

The fact that her coworker knew something was forgotten as the aircraft carrier realized that her fleet-mate was in danger. For her, such a load was nothing, but for a human?

Without any more thought, The Abyssal lept.

- - -

Alton wasn't sure if the chain breaking was an accident or a tactic to create a distraction, because as soon as he looked up to see the falling palette, the abyss made her move. Before he could react, the warship was upon him. The monster slammed into him, her cold arms wrapping around him as he fell back.

Was she going to kill him, right here? If she just squeezed a little, he'd be just as broken as the chain was!

He was about to struggle, but as he hit the ground and the wind was knocked out of him, he noticed The Abyssal didn't seem to be doing anything else. Her body was ridgid, legs and arms now firmly braced against the ground instead of tearing him apart, like he'd seen before on Oahu. Beyond that, the monster didn't seem to be doing-

The palette struck the ground corner first, narrowly missing the pair as it slammed against the mud. There was a crack as the wood gave way in the impact, and a rain of sand and splinters flew into the pair as the second corner followed a split second later.

The palette had fallen edge first, slightly spinning from tipped off the roof. Thus, when it finally hit the ground next to the pair, the part of Alton's vision that wasn't consumed by Elizabeth's hair and helmet could see a rapidly-growing wall of rebar falling onto them. The strike with the ground had consumed a portion of its energy, but the weight of all that steel came bearing down on them as the palette flopped down, load-first.

Elizabeth grunted as the mass fell on her, the abyssal's cold cheek rubbing against Alton's as the mass of metal and wood slammed against the pair. A calamitous rattle filled Alton's senses for a tense, terrible moment…

...but once the noise died down, Alton was still there, the only sound he heard being the pounding of his heart.

The Abyssal was still there as well, her elbows and knees forming small craters on either side of Alton, and the rows upon rows of rebar were still hovering just above her, but as far as he could tell, he was in one piece.

Elizabeth, who'd until that point been as rigid as steel herself, finally started to breathe, breath far too cold for any human washing over his face. Alton, his muscles still frozen together, didn't do anything but breathe back, failing even to notice her chest pressing against his.

With another sigh, the abyssal straightened, the remains of wood and steel above her creaking as she rose to her hands and knees. The makeup on her cheek had been scraped off by his own, revealing a smear of her true form on her visage.

The way she looked at Alton, her features slack and her steel-grey eyes betraying a certain tiredness… was that resignation?

"So…" she started, her face dour. "...you know, then."

There was no point in denying it. Some of Alton's muscles finally responded, and with his heart still pounding at the walls of his ribcage, he nodded.

The Abyssal's eyes suddenly focused on him, and his panic returned for a moment, until her gloved hand rose and rested on her undisguised cheek.

"Dios mio!" A voice Alton didn't recognize shouted, abruptly drawing 'Elizabeth's' attention away from Alton and herself. "Are you two alive?"

Without another word, she rested her hand on the rebar above her, shoving it aside like cardboard and standing. As it hit the mud away from Alton with a loud thud, the abyssal pivoted on a muddy boot, then broke into a run.

The sprint immediately drew the attention of those who were gathering around the accident, several people shouting after her, but as Alton sat up, he remained silent. Adrenaline was still coursing through his body, and soon one of his knees started to uncontrollably shake.

"Are you alright, man?"

"I don't know." Alton mumbled, but his focus was still on the running girl. Elizabeth was heading directly for a chain link fence, stopping for a moment as she seemed to bounce off, but she quickly snapped back into action and scaled it with inhuman speed. From there, she vaulted over, disappearing from Alton's life.

"Let's get you into the office, take a look at you." The bystander said, kneeling down and hauling Alton up by the armpits. As he stood, he couldn't help but notice the top of the damaged palette, the bound rebar clearly bent in a shallow, human-shaped depression.

"Yeah." He agreed dumbly. He didn't feel injured, but of course that didn't guarantee anything. Still, as he stumbled back towards the office and some more serious medical supplies, he wasn't thinking about the present.

Later today, he'd be going home and seeing Mable… because an abyssal, the monsters who'd destroyed his home, killed many of his friends, and threatened humanity itself, had chosen to save his life.

He needed a little bit of time to think about that.

...and there you go! The effective end of the construction arc! I actually got this done sooner then I expected, so an interlude might drop before I ship out, but I won't make any promises.

On that note, once I'm able to write and post again (and while I probably won't be able to overstate how much Nuke School will cut into my writing time, I hope to get my signature one sentence a day done during that period of time), expect a fairly large string of interludes as Trinitite's whereabouts remain unknown. Should be good to sum the story up after a months-long hiatus, anyways.

On the topic of the chapter itself, I think a lot of you saw these events coming from about the time I first introduced Alton as a PoV character, but hopefully it was still a satisfying conclusion. Trinitite's relative inability to human at the start of this arc really hampered her relationships in this one, which is why I'm pretty glad to see her out of the construction site and on to new... career opportunities. Me being so exited to write these is why I'm so confident this hiatus won't be indefinite.
 
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