All Wo-rk and No Play: An Abyssal's Trials in the Job Market (KC)

[PyrrhicSteel]

The office was as quiet as it could be, with the constant buzz of the fan keeping air flowing through the portable building. Thomas had left to grab lunch from a restaurant in Sammamish, leaving the three men alone in the building.

"So." Dan started, shooting Lee a pointed look. "Breaker Coolant?"

The electrician seemed to stiffen for a moment, before nodding.

"Yeah." He took a gulp from his water bottle, avoiding the foreman's stare without breaking his facade of confidence.

"I sent you a new hire for you to evaluate," Dan stated, keeping his voice flat, "and instead of actually watching her work, you sent her after headlight fluid, depriving yourself of labor and disrupting several other people's work, including mine?"

To be honest, Dan had forgotten about Elizabeth after siccing her on building two. Despite his experience, the Foreman was managing twice as many people as he used to, with roughly the same amount of equipment for everyone to share. It was proving to be a big job, and while he'd appreciate an additional worker if she proved to be actually useful, he didn't have the time to think about The Eccentric Woman. Even now, he could only dedicate five minutes to the meeting he'd scheduled with Lee and Austin, scraped in at the leading edge of their lunch break.

Dan had brought his lunch box out of the office's miniature fridge, the muted aroma of his sandwich filling the portable office. He'd initially wanted to keep it locked up so everyone's focus would be on their short meeting, but after hearing about Lee's antics The Forman was feeling a little petty. Taunting Austin with the aroma was a little rude, but he could handle it.

"I did." Lee replied defiantly. "Anyone would want her out of their hair, after the damage she did."

"Damage?" Austin echoed, seeming genuinely surprised. Whatever the problem was, it seemed to be confined to Lee.

"Yes! I tried to walk her through pushing wire, but she broke it!" Lee snapped. "Three times. You bet I wouldn't let her work on anything more expensive."

"How could that happen?" Dan asked, walking through the process in his head. Unless concrete had leaked into the conduit, but not enough to block it off, somehow, Elizabeth would have to be a special kind of fuckup to break something. That, or Lee was doing something incredibly wrong. You needed force on both ends of a wire to break it, after all, so unless it snagged on something…

Either way, he failed to see how something like that could be Elizabeth's fault. It was a weird issue, and he'd need to investigate Lee's work before another inspector made an unannounced visit. Still, it didn't speak all that well for the new hire, either. If Lee hadn't wasted so much of other people's time and money with his out-of-place prank, he wouldn't be all that inclined to keep the new girl on.

"You mean the wire breaking?" Lee asked.

"What else could I mean?" Dan questioned, fighting to keep his rising frustration out of his voice. This was the kind of lead around he'd expect from his son. His youngest son.

"Well." Lee took another swig of the water bottle, gathering his thoughts. "When she pulls the wire, she doesn't know when to stop, so she ends up trying to pull my hand through the conduit."

"And, why can't you let it slide?" Dan deadpanned, exasperated. The topic of a new employee suddenly sounded much less important.

"Well, we cut it first." Lee answered, and Dan almost drove his head into the table. Perhaps noticing the Foreman's expression, he continued before Dan could speak up. "It saves time, boss! We make all the cuts we need at the start of the day, so several teams can use the same spool at once when we start pushing wire."

"It also leads to taut wire." Dan added. He was no electrician, but he'd worked with enough in his day to know that was not how it was done. The last thing he needed was for one of his buildings to get condemned a year after he was finished.

"We give them plenty of slack!" Lee retorted. "Two feet of extra wire to make sure there's enough wiggle room."

"So you waste wire." Dan deadpanned.

"That's the price of faster work, boss." Lee recited. Clearly, that had been an answer he was prepared to give.

"Do it right, Lee." Dan countered. "Now I'm going to have to task someone to look over your work to make sure it's safe."

Lee's face flushed red, but Dan cut off any response. He only had a few minutes to address this bullshit, and if he couldn't nip this problem now it was going to cost him a lot more time.

"Shut up about speed. You know why we're behind schedule? Because we keep cutting corners." Dan sighed, looking to where their first building would be, if the office's walls didn't obscure the view. "If everyone on this site stopped trying to fuck with procedure and actually got their job done? Building One would be finished already." He leaned back in his chair, giving Lee an expectant look that was daring him to argue.

None came from the flustered electrician, so Dan turned his attention to the second man.

"So, how'd she do?"

"Uh… great, actually." Austin exclaimed, giving Lee a wary stare. "She just kept quiet and worked. Her team pulled ahead of everyone else, and when I checked her work everything seemed solid."

"Alright." Dan replied. He was running out of time for this meeting, and while going over time would only cut into their lunch break, that wasn't a precedent he wanted to set. He'd have to rely on Austin's judgement for now. "She's all yours. Enjoy your lunch." The man nodded, leaving Dan with the scorned Lee.

A moment passed.

"Do you need me for anything else?" Lee questioned.

"Hmm." Dan thought, looking back to his lunchbox contemplatively. "No. Have a nice day, Lee."

The Electrician nodded, beating a quiet but hasty retreat out of the portable office. He'd have to look over the job he'd done later, and seriously consider hiring a replacement, but that was a job for future Dan.

The Bostonian turned his attention back to the lunchbox. He could already smell a hardy sandwich with his name on it. Grabbing the item and removing the plastic bag it was protected in, the Foreman surveyed his meal. The tri-tip beef he'd roasted a few days prior had made a wonderful family dinner, and he'd managed to cut the leftover meat thin enough for perfect sandwich meat.

Dan took his first bite from the sandwich, savoring how the tender meat mixed with the wheat bread and horseradish sauce. It complemented the marinated meat perfectly. Now, was the provolone good enough, or would the sandwich be better with swiss?

- - -

Even though work had slowed, the worksite was still swarming with activity. From Trinitite's position just outside the office, she observed more humans than she could reliably count. The perimeter fence had been retracted, workers forming a pair of lines drifting from something outside Trinitite's view. The men who filtered back onto the worksite were carrying some kind of food, although the actual contents were obscured by protective wrapping. When a human sat close enough to the office exit for Trinitite to see, the Carrier watched him peel the wrapping back, enjoying a bread-like food the Wo-class only faintly recognized. So many different foods had been secured in her stores, she'd forgotten the names to most of it.

...Hold on, he was eating with his hands! Was she the victim of an odd prank on the Pacific Lilly, or were there some secret rules as to what you could eat with your hands and what you couldn't?

Looking around further, she noticed several other humans were eating from various containers she guessed they'd brought with them. One, holding a few slices of bread in his hands, took a bite with his gloveless hands. Another did have one of those tools she'd seen on the trawler, and was busy using it to scoop liquid from a white cup he'd brought.

So… it did look like her rules theory was true. By the deep, where was she going to learn those?

Either way, seeing all this food, no matter how alien it was, was starting to pique the Carrier's appetite. She didn't dare eat- she hadn't been given permission to eat yet, and although they probably didn't care if she nibbled on something if she waited, the off-chance they would kept her mouth shut. Whenever dealing with a new Princess, you had to be wary about that sort of thing. She'll ask if it was okay once she knew if she still had a job or not.

Several teams continued with their work, perhaps waiting for the lines to shorten. The Abyssal watched them to keep her mind off of the prospect of food, or whatever fate was being decided inside the office. She hoped it was good. Trinitite had already put so much effort into figuring out this place. Having to throw it all away and start the process all over again?

The thought was… disheartening.

"Hey, Elizabeth."

The abyssal jumped, wrenching her attention from a distant group of workers to the man who'd exited the office. She straightened, giving a salute.

"Yes?"

Right, she wasn't supposed to salute anymore. Deep, this was going to be hard. Luckly, Austin didn't seem to care about the Abyssal's slipup.

"You're hired." He deadpanned. "Get lunch and report back to me in thirty minutes, okay?"

Although only one was active, the Carrier felt all her boilers stirr at the amazing news. No more turbine-grinding stress, checking her inventory reports and knowing every meal was precious supplies she couldn't make back. No more drifting, pathetically washing up to various fleets to beg for a job. She was a part of something now. Part of…

What was this fleet called, again? Mc… something construction group. Would that make her new name MCS Trinitite?

Eh, it didn't roll off the tongue quite as well as CFS did, and many abyssal fleets didn't bother with giving their ships prefixes at all, but Trinitite hadn't felt right without one. No one might know her true name, now, but calling herself that felt like a good reminder that she finally belonged to something. Of course, helping these humans was a distant second priority to finding her mother, but until then MCS Trinitite would do her best to ensure her new fleet didn't regret recruiting her.

"Aye!" She replied earnestly. "Thank you!"

"Sure." Austin deadpanned, looking at a miniature chronometer. "Did you bring lunch?"

"Of course!" The Carrier replied. Austin's skeptical look was worrying, but he turned, giving the disguised abyssal an apathetic wave.

"Alright then. See you in thirty."

Left to her own devices, Trinitite found herself setting a course for building two. Best to get to her objective first, then worry about eating next. What were her food plans, though? Building something complex, like in the cookbooks she'd commandeered, wouldn't be possible. Thirty minutes just wasn't enough time, and it wasn't like the incomplete structure had an oven, anyways. Using her own would just arouse suspicion. How did those work, anyways? Her cooks had been just as inexperienced as the rest of her crew when she had first arrived, and that hadn't been something her princess had thought of when training her. She'd never paid attention to her kitchen, but she wouldn't be surprised if half of the stuff in there never got used.

That left her with plenty of other options, though. There was plenty of meat and fruit in her refrigerator, and both sounded like a great reward for securing her first job. She'd want something to drink, though, and while plenty of items in her regular hold weren't labeled as some kind of sauce, the thought of instigating repeat of the Tobasco debacle in front of her fleetmates made her want to sink. Best to source a drink from the refrigerator as well, then…

- - -

Alton sighed, enjoying the subtle mix of seasonings and textures as he worked the rice and a bite of his salmon patty around in his mouth. Even farm salmon was disconcertingly expensive these days, but a taste that reminded him of his lost home was well worth it. Normally, he could settle with a sandwich, but at the end of a long work week, he needed something more… homey to get through the day. The fact his meal was served at a dull ambient temperature didn't do much to dampen his spirits.

He was eating alone, Tirto and Sern having left to join the lines snaking away from the food trucks. Today the two had the choice between a blue-and-white Gyro Truck and a Vietnamiese-themed one, both far cries from the cuizine they were used to. The Americas had a diverse enough climate and a healthy enough trade network that many refugees who'd settled in the US could find food accommodating to their preferences, but those who chose to bunk here at the worksite often didn't have a choice beyond whatever food trucks Dan could schedule every noon. It wasn't uncommon for a new hire to spend a good portion of his first few days getting acquainted with the porta potties.

All the grease common with that kind of food probably didn't help.

Footsteps caught the man's attention, Alton looking up to see someone he'd been trying to forget about. Elizabeth approached, a plastic container clutched in her hand as she sat across from Alton.

So… apparently she was going to be working with them, now. He couldn't say he didn't appreciate the help- his body wasn't as young as it used to be, and he was feeling less sore than he normally did at lunchtime- he was honestly surprised. Why didn't the electricians grab her?

"So." He started, taking another bite of salmon. "You're working with us… huh?"

Across from him, the girl peeled the top off of a package of deli-style roast beef, setting a banana and some short carton in front of her.
"Hmm?" Elizabeth asked, a pinch of the meat stopping a few inches from her mouth. "Oh, yeah. Looks like I have a job."

She downed the pinch of meat, her face screwing up as she chewed it, before reaching for… was that whipping cream?

Alton stammered, his incredulity killing the congratulatory words in his mouth. Who just eats sandwich meat? Why the odd reaction after she ate it? Why was she still eating with her dark gloves on?

"C- Congratulations." Alton finally replied, watching his new coworker take a quick slug of the small carton- which definitely did say whipping cream, now that he'd double-checked. Alton could feel his arteries clogging sympathetically. A bit of the cream clung to her upper lip as Elizabeth reached down, peeling open the banana and grabbing a bite. At least that was normal.

Perplexed, Alton glanced around floor two for any hidden cameras or drones he hadn't noticed. Either he lived in a David Lynch film, or somebody had put Elizabeth up to a weird prank.

What was with this girl?

Spoiler: Author's notes

They say write what you know. I like food. Trinitite likes food. It's always nice when you can relate to your characters.

On a less sarcastic note, I hope the first part of the chapter wrapped up the loose ends of the Breaker Coolant adventure well enough. I don't really plan on expanding on Lee's ultimate fate, as at the moment that feels pretty irrelevant. Trinitite's officially hired now (although she's not legally employed), so that's cool.

I'm going to have more time over the college semester than I would have liked, due to technical issues, but I guess that's good news for all of you. Here's to a fun conversation next chapter! At least, it should be fun. It'll be good dialogue practice for me, at least.

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

By this point, she had no idea what to expect with human foods. Unlike the flaky texture of fish and the stringy nature of birds, roast beef had a smooth feel to it. The meat had been cut into flimsy sheets, though, so perhaps the even texture was more a product of how it had been packaged. The flavor was amazing, though. It had a fullness to it that Trinitite hadn't expected, although it could have done with less of the black stuff that had been added to its edges. The odd material created the familiar burning sensation that she dreaded, but it was minor enough for her to tolerate, and she had to admit the way it complemented the meat's savor made it bearable.

It was good, although she wouldn't have enjoyed it without the whipping cream to douse the burning. To be fair, she probably would have needed it anyways, as the roast beef was uncannily dry for a meat. She took another sip of the liquid, smothering the Roast Beef's lingering taste. It was thicker than the stuff on the Pacific Lilly, but beyond that it was fairly similar.

If she had the time, Trinitite would love to shift through the arsenal of foods the humans possessed, although alone she doubted she could keep track of everything. If her sisters were here, sneaking through human society would be impossible (Firestorm wouldn't have had the patience, for one), but it was too bad she didn't have anyone to discuss this new food with.

The feelings of loneliness she'd been ignoring until now returned to the forefront. It was kinda funny, in a twisted sort of way. She'd never been around so many people, but she didn't have anyone she could actually talk to. A fleet carrier needed a fleet, after all, but even if she hadn't been disguised she wasn't sure this new fleet could fill the role. Everyone was so… distant from each other. She caught laughter and other sincere conversation between some of the workers, but mostly everyone just… worked.

Of course, things weren't very social in the Crossroads Fleet after someone spotted a periscope, but few workers here seemed to care about each other when they weren't working. Again, great for someone like her, who didn't really know how human interaction worked, but it didn't seem like this new fleet was going to fill the hole left by her last one.

"So…" The human across from her started. "...what were the Marshalls like?"

"Hmm?" Trinitite murmured, refocusing her thoughts on the human across from her. Deep, she was a part of the problem, wasn't she?
"You know," He urged, "how was your home before the abyssals attacked?"
Before they… attacked?

She wasn't entirely sure how to answer that. There had been buildings, signs of human habitation when Trinitite had first emerged from the waves, but they hadn't been occupied. She'd joined the fleet only hours after Her Princess had taken residence in Bikini, and as far as she could remember, there hadn't been any signs of struggle. It had been her resting place after The Firebringers had arranged her death, so calling the occupation of Bikini an 'attack' didn't seem accurate… at all. For as long as the Crossroads Fleet had existed, it had been their home, and for years no one disputed that.

On the other hand, it had been attacked, costing Trinitite her home, her sisters, and possibly her Mother. Other princesses had gotten close to doing so several times before the humans did, but it didn't take a veteran carrier like herself to notice differences in how Abyssals and human fleets attacked an island. Of course, Trinitite couldn't say nothing, but it was going to be easy to slip up and give her fleetmate the truth: That she'd let a fire get out of control, and burned while her family was slaughtered.

"...You don't have to talk about it." Alton added, reading Trinitite's silence. The Abyssal nodded, wanting to take the excuse the human had offered, but if he was curious, Trinitite needed to satisfy him enough that he wouldn't have any lingering questions to cause problems later.

"No, I should." The abyssal started, her mind racing. What kind of information was he looking for?

"Mom had her own island." She gambled. There were plenty of islands in the pacific, with a not-insignificant number sporting only one or two human buildings. "Until the war, I… never left it." An idea was starting to form in her mind, an extension of the story she'd fed to her potential commanders when she'd been hunting for a job. Human society was clearly full of hundreds of little rules she wasn't privy to, so if she had an excuse not to have learned all these rules, she might have an easier time dodging the human's radar.

Metaphorically, of course. Her RDF equipment wasn't picking up anything that felt like search radar from the humans.

"For most of my life, my…" Deep, was 'sisters' a ship-specific term? She spent a second trying to think of another word, but it failed to materialize. Well, she couldn't end the sentence, could she? She cringed, forced to take another gamble. "…sisters, and myself."
Alton nodded solemnly. It looked like she'd dodged that torpedo. Confident, the abyssal continued.

"We didn't have much, but when they came, they hit us with everything."

Memories the Abyssal had tried to avoid returned as she spoke. A tall, stocky battleship, her four twin turrets focused solely on her defeated princess. A harsh sun, blazing unimpeded upon bikini for the first time in years and casting the disater's aftermath in harsh light. Hypocenter's unseeing eyes, staring through Trinitite as the mangled hulk lay empty on the beach. The fireball slowly expanding from an ammunition bunker, Trinitite's anger and sorrow wiping away the last vestiges of her home.

"I lost… everyone."

He didn't reply. Silence descended between the two, Trinitite's story forgotten as the Carrier dwelled on her old life. Deep, that had only been a few weeks ago, hadn't it? With everything that had happened since then, Trinitite had completely lost track of time.
Finally, after another moment of silence, the human finally spoke.

"You know… you've got cream on your lip."

Abruptly, Trinitite's thoughts were refocused on the present.

"Oh!" Once again hoping her unnaturally-colored brush didn't show through the foundation, Trinitite took a gloved hand and guided it to where Alton was pointing. With a swipe, she'd cleared the offending liquid with a finger, wiping it onto her jeans. Another job normally covered by her paint-and-chip detail, that she'd have to do herself. "Uh, thanks."

"Look." The human started, drawing The Carrier's attention. "Besides Austin, everyone in this crew has lost their home to the Abyssals. Tirto's family is somewhere in Java, possibly dead. I was stuck on Oahu for months before a nuke gave me a ride here. Sern had the sense to get out long before the Abyssals arrived, but he still lost a lot of friends when they took Kuala Lumpur."

"It's hard, and we know what it's like. I don't want to pressure you, but believe me: Talking about it helps. We don't exactly have the time for heart-to-hearts here, but Dan's got the contact information of all the local therapists posted in the office. There's a high demand, so they're a little pricey, but believe me: It's worth the money."

Trinitite tried to keep the bitterness out of her smile. It sounded like honest advice, which made the fact she couldn't actually take it infuriating. She didn't know what therapists were, obviously, but The Abyssal couldn't afford to be honest about anything. Not totally.
"Thanks, but I don't have enough money for that." She deflected.

The human tilted his head, acknowledging Trinitite's point.

"Fair enough." He took another bite from his meal, Seeming to savor the taste before continuing. "I guess the rent out here's pretty terrible."

"It is." Trinitite slowly nodded, pretending she knew what Alton was talking about. She'd have to change the subject to… something, if he pressed the manner.

"Luckly, we managed to avoid that. The wife's parents live around here, so she moved in with them while I was stuck on Oahu. Once I escaped, we'd managed to grab a house about an hour from here."

"...Okay." Trinitite started to peel the banana in front of her, hoping her interest in her food disguised the fact she couldn't follow the human at all. Wife? House? And again, more than one parent, as if that was normal for humans. It might be, Trinitite didn't put much weight into her assumptions on humans anymore, but she still didn't understand how that would work. Humans did have less endurance than she did, so maybe they worked in shifts, like her crew did.

"That's also why so many people live in the barracks, I suppose. Saves on costs." he commented, before giving Trinitite an apologetic look. "Obviously you can't, but…"

She couldn't?

"Yeah…" She agreed unknowingly, hoping she'd managed to keep her confusion off her face. Silence continued for a few seconds as Trinitite wrestled with Alton's words.

She'd kind of assumed joining a fleet meant being able to sleep with them, but since Alton (and a lot of other humans, considering how casual he was about it) didn't, and for some reason she obviously couldn't, it meant she'd have to find somewhere else to sleep. In hindsight, that was a good thing, as it would mean keeping her true nature secret would be easier, but why? This conversation had seemed like a good idea at first, but now Trinitite was starting to feel like she was drifting from a Typhoon.

She took a contemplative bite from the banana, trying to think of how to rite the conversation. For the moment, Alton seemed okay with the silence, so maybe letting it flounder was the best option. Still, she felt like she was missing an opportunity to probe a human for some more intelligence. What kind of question could she ask? Unlike the machine at the library, the human could get suspicious, but extracting usable intel out of him could be a lot easier, if she just knew what to ask.

The Wo's rangefinders bored into her roast beef, but it didn't provide any help to the frustrated abyssal. 'Did the Navy get any new carriers?' How would he know the answer to that? Why would Elizabeth be interested?

Maybe ask about abyssals? The page she'd read about her kind had been equal parts frustrating and relieving. Relieving, because it meant humans seemed just as clueless about Trinitite as she was about them, but frustrating because there was so much that was just wrong, and whatever happened to her Princess implied the humans knew something about abyssals she didn't. That wasn't the only question about her kind she'd been hoping for answers on, but there had been so much misinformation that, even if she found something useful, she probably wouldn't have been able to rely on the answer. Maybe she could give Alton a few probing questions to confirm humans were so uninformed?

None of these questions fit with the conversation at all! Deep, this was so frustrating!

Mercifully, another voice cut in from behind her, rescuing Trinitite from her frustration.

"How come I never heard of greek food before? This is amazing!"

The Abyssal turned to see her rescuer, recognizing the other two humans she'd met before getting to work on bending rebar. Tirto and… Sam? Which one had which name, again? Either way, it was good they were here. she'll have time to build an operation plan before she was forced into this situation again.

"You get those every time the truck's here." The other voice replied dryly. They must have avoided conversation until she was well within earshot, as they were only a few yards away.

"I mean back home, Tirto." The one with the smoother face clarified. "Back in Kuala Lumpur, most of the forigen food I had was… terrible…"

The human's statement trailed off as Trinitite's gaze met his. What was so surprising about her?

Had he seen through her disguise?

Alarms blared inside her as a jolt of terror coursed through her keel. Trinitite looked away, trying to scope out any potential avenues of escape. Being several floors above the ground severely limited her options, but if she gripped the scaffolding over there just right, maybe she could slide down?

"...uh, hi?"

When the human's warning didn't come, Trinitite's attention returned to him. Her crew was still scrambling to their action stations, and she'd keep them on alert for a while, but for now it seemed like there wasn't any threat from the human.

Yet.

"Hello." She replied, slowly returning to her lunch. That human hadn't said much in their first conversation, had he? Trinitite had assumed he had just been shy, like many abyssals, but seeing him start the conversation so easily, then suddenly clam up when he noticed she was there?

It could mean any number of things, especially with beings as enigmatic as humans, but Trinitite hadn't lived for two years by assuming the best of situations. The chance that the human was suspicious of her was far too large for her to ignore. Maybe he wasn't sure, and was waiting for Trinitite to slip up again to confirm his suspicions. Maybe he did know Trinitite's true nature, but didn't want Trinitite to know that he knew. Maybe there was some human reason Trinitite wasn't privy to, and she was in danger of destroying her cover by overreacting!

Either way, she'd have to tread carefully around him.

"Looks like Elizabeth will be working with us." Alton started, ignoring the tension between the two. "I guess Austin managed to pry her from the electricians."

Trinitite shrugged, unsure how to respond. If Hypocenter had made a dry joke like that, she would have responded in kind, but…

"Welcome aboard." The darker-skinned man nodded to Trinitite, and she returned it. "What brought you to construction?"
Finally, a question she could be honest about.

"First job I could find." Trinitite shrugged.

"Ah." The man nodded. "Good luck, then."

"Thank you!"

Trinitite gave him a small smile. She wasn't sure why he was wishing her that, but she certainly needed it.

Spoiler: Author's notes

As I predicted, this chapter really fought me. When I first finished this chapter, I hated it, as it took me forever to write and it seemed to be suffering from acute talking heads syndrome. After a reread it felt a lot better, and with some edits I think this is finally at a point where I can publish it. Let me know if I made a good call or if this needed a few more editing passes.

Probably going to do an hours long timeskip after the interlude, though. I'm looking forwards to writing the weekend, after all.

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

It was surreal.

JS Taiho thought she was used to the modern world. The young carrier had adapted to 2020's technology better than most, she thought, and she'd like to think she'd mostly recovered from the culture shock. The world's new geopolitics still didn't entirely sit right with her, but the fact that the joint Japanese-American Yokota AFB sat just west of Tokyo wasn't what she had trouble with.

It was the idea that the Kido Butai, The Emperor's bow and Japan's most prestigious fighting force, could be crammed aboard a single aircraft and flown across the pacific.

Calling the C-5 Galaxy a mere 'aircraft' felt… insufficient. The thing taxiing towards the passenger terminal dwarfed anything she could field, shadowing even the infamous superfortress. On top of that, the massive Galaxy didn't even register with the largest aircraft in the world, which was… difficult to visualize.

The fact that dozens of warships were tucked into its hold- a complete impossibility if it wasn't for their dual nature- added immensely to the strange nature of the scene in front of her.

As the C-5 decelerated, the carrier glanced to her left, giving the other occupants of the passenger terminal a quick inspection. The gaggle of officers, shipgirls, and press assembled to meet the returning fleet were a good representation of the JMSDF itself, with members from the Fleet Escort Force and each District waiting to receive their ships. The Kido Butai (officially named the Kaijo Ensei-gun by more politically-minded officers) was a temporary unit, formed with elite elements from each district, and with the fleet's return everyone was eager to restore their own commands back to full strength.

Minus the Kido Butai's steel hulls, of course, but unless they figured how to summon more anti ship missiles, Japan's defense wasn't very reliant on those.

Tiaho's attention shifted from the larger group to the two women closest to her.

If Admiral Hirano Ayame was a shipgirl, Taiho had a hard time picturing her as anything other than a battleship. The Admiral spent almost all her time off-duty in the gym, and it showed. Even if she hadn't been the highest-ranking officer there (most commanders were too busy to meet their returning ships in-person), she had an air of authority about her that dominated any room she entered, which was perhaps how she'd managed to save The JS Kaga as her executive officer during blood week.

After being assigned to the admiral, Taiho had dove into her record. After the Abyssals had proved they weren't just some polar anomaly, she'd done well leading the remnants of her escort flotilla back to their home port. Between the JMSDF's expansion to meet the abyssal threat and several casualties among flag officers in abyssal raids, Hirano skyrocketed through the ranks at a rate many people thought to be ridiculous. Now, she was the commander of Fleet Activities Maizuru, in charge of an impressive eight of Japan's aircraft carriers.

Much like Taiho herself, however, Hirano's fleet was only impressive on paper. Most were veterans of the Pacific War's twilight, when fighting had drained the IJN's carrier arm of the experienced pilots and sailors that had made it famous. Many, like Taiho herself, had been sent into the fight before they were ready, and had met their end without fully fulfilling their duty. Two of their fleet hadn't even been finished, returning with nothing but a collection of dock workers to run their machinery and fly their aircraft. Taiho couldn't fault their spirit, returning to defend the homeland they never were able to, but as they were, they were nothing but a drain on Japan's resources.

Like I am.

Like her, most of the fleet looked impressive on paper, sporting more modern aircraft, defenses, and propulsion systems then their earlywar counterparts, but without the proper knowledge to use it, they were leagues behind their elders. So, Japan was forced to rely on their smaller cadre of older carriers, while their most modern carrier fleet sat on their hands in the Sea of Japan, with nothing to do but try teaching themselves. The skilled carriers were far too busy defending Japan to assist in training, while The Nation was reluctant to let the fleet deploy for training overseas, just in case an emergency serious enough to warrant their desperate deployment appeared.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Taiho could tell Her Admiral's command grated on her. Admiral Hirano reminded Taiho of an infantryman or boxer, instead of a flag officer. Eager to hit the abyssals who'd attacked Japan and killed many of her comrades, Hirano had been forced to content herself with a handful of escorts she'd been given to patrol the Sea of Japan and keep an eye on the DPRK. In a way, Taiho and her fellow carriers were a subtle sign that, despite her achievements and promotions, many in the JMSDF still considered her underqualified for her rank. They'd given her an impressive fleet on paper, but anyone who knew the JMSDF knew she'd been given a dead-end assignment.

The cruiser next to her had helped with the situation, somewhat. Katori had done her best trying to whip Admiral Hirano's fleet into something combat capable. Thankfully, there'd been some success on that front. Over the year she'd had them, the Training Cruiser had drilled the fleet in gunnery, both of their secondary battery and of their anti-aircraft defenses. She'd walked them through modern anti-submarine doctrine, something other members of Hirano's fleet could assist with. She'd experimented with a new school of damage control she'd been developing, a mix of several nation's techniques to try and find the best way to keep Japan's fleet afloat.

Yet, they'd hit a wall. No matter how much seakeeping they practiced or target drones they shot down, Katori hadn't known enough to make them proper warships: Carriers posed unique damage control problems she hadn't anticipated. When reviewing After-Action Reports from other carriers, the Training Cruiser often got lost or unable to explain a point. They could launch and receive aircraft well enough, but questions like how to do so in extreme circumstances or when it was prudent to launch or receive aircraft were left unanswered. She hadn't grasped air-to-air combat tactics at all, leaving the fleet to mostly fend for themselves.

Hopefully, their new arrival could help with that.

The C-5 had taxied to a stop, its engines fading to an even whine as American Airmen scampered around the massive aircraft. A truck with its bed replaced with a large staircase rolled in, connecting with a hatch near the top of the aircraft. After about a minute, The hatch opened, Tahio's rangefinders focused as the first figure emerged from the aircraft's hull, eager to see either her new fleetmate or a returning hero from the Kido Butai.

Instead, the first one to disembark was another uniformed airman. If he'd had important business with the ground crew, of course one he would exit first, but she was sure the press would have liked to see someone more… glamorous exiting the Galaxy first.

Taiho didn't have to wait long. Zuikaku quickly followed the airman down, her eyes scanning the terminal as she descended. Apparently, carriers like her didn't have a problem with flying, but Taiho had a hard time imagining how a ship of her tonnage could ever get used to being airborne. After Zuikaku cleared the doorway, the green-clad carrier Souryuu disembarked, followed closely by her brightly-colored sister. After that, Taiho caught a shock of red hair, as a carrier she didn't immediately recognize disembarked from the ship.

Well, she didn't personally recognize her. Training from the Pacific War and Katori's refresher courses had honed Taiho's ability to spot a ship, but as far as carriers went, identifying a lexington class in these conditions was trivially simple. No one else had a funnel like that, after all.

There wasn't much mystery when it came to her identity. Taiho didn't know what kind of strings Admiral Hirano had pulled to get the JMSDF to launch this operation, but either the American or her must have been persuasive, and had managed to convince the Admiralty to assemble the Kido Butai and purify her. Ships had sunk, people had died, and the islands of Japan had been left exposed for several nerve-grinding weeks, just so Taiho and the rest of Admiral Hirano's fleet could have a new teacher.

She… still wasn't sure what to make of that.

On one hand, it was one of the most earnest acknowledgements of her abilities she'd ever gotten. Taiho knew, without any misplaced pride, that as a carrier she had few equals in the Pacific. Sure, the Essexes could carry more aircraft, but they couldn't take nearly as many hits as she could…

In theory.

Those words, perhaps, were why the feeling of anxiety crept up her keel when she'd first heard of the operation. Why she'd felt somewhat bitter bidding goodbye to the members of Fleet Activities Maizuru who were joining the Kido Butai. Why reading casualty reports from The Battle of Bikini had been so painful, and why, now, with the rewards of two nation's labor following Hiryuu towards the terminal, Taiho couldn't stop fidgeting.

It wasn't entirely fair, she knew. Seven other carriers, eight when Ibuki returned, were also going to be relying on Saratoga's training. For carriers who'd never even been completed, like Kasagi and the Akagi-class Amagi, she was their ticket to finally start serving their country. Eight japanese fleet carriers would,without a doubt, be a massive boon for humanity in the north pacific, something even traditional enemies like China and Russia were eager to see.

However, last time the hopes of the nation had been placed on her, she'd failed. Badly. After returning and gaining access to historical material from both sides of the Pacific War, she couldn't move past comparing her own story to that of Franklin. One had continued fighting, confronting the worst of odds and stubbornly refusing to yield to fate until both herself and her crew had returned to safety, while the other had turned into a fuel-air bomb after only one torpedo strike.

The prospect she might make such a mistake again was paralyzing. Shipgirls, no strangers to dark humor, had no problem teasing each other about their demise in their previous life, but no one had ever joked about her sinking more than once or twice. Maybe it was because, no matter how uncaring they acted, they knew how much Taiho had replayed those events in her head, cataloging every mistake she'd been too inexperienced to avoid then. No matter how much she dwelled on it, analysed her final moments, or thought about the catastrophic consequences of her demise, she'd never fully convinced herself she'd be able to avoid it again. Now, her comrades had put themselves in mortal danger, several taking serious damage or even sinking in the process, just so she could have another chance to let them down a second time.

"Alright." The American NCO in charge of their escort announced, raising his voice so it bounced off the ceiling and reverberated throughout the room. "I've just been told its safe to approach. Follow me, and we'll help your comrades." As the American spoke, the front of the C-5 rose, revealing the incomplete form of a helicopter. As the NCO exited, the group in the terminal burst into motion. A handful of press members darting forwards, only to be shoved aside by the more eager of the shipgirls. The reporters may have been intrigued by the sight of the new american carrier, but they didn't have friends aboard the aircraft, or the unpleasant memories of flight to really sympathize with the airsick shipgirls.

"Well." Admiral Hirano started, glancing at her two subordinates. Taiho hadn't known anyone in the Kido Butai that well, and the last thing she wanted to do was make a scene in front of her new teacher, so she'd stayed with her Admiral. Of course, Katori had remained at Hirano's side, her exemplary discipline showing as she waited on her Commander. "Shall we introduce ourselves to the fresh meat?"

Referring to the veteran that would be responsible for making Japan's reserve carriers combat-ready as 'fresh meat' didn't inspire much confidence, but unlike some shipgirls Taiho wasn't going to disrespect her superior by giving an unprofessional retort. A simple 'Hai' from both her and Katori were all the Admiral got as they followed her out of the building.

Taiho wasn't sure if she'd expected something more casual.

They found Saratoga at the base of the galaxy's ramp, offering Nagato a comforting arm as she sat next to the staircase's base. The flight had clearly gotten to the battleship, her face hidden as she focused on the tarmac below. Saratoga would occasionally glance up, giving Airmen, Officers, and shipgirls passing her a quick inspection before returning to her charge. As the trio approached, Saratoga's eyes met with Taiho's for a split second, before resting on Admiral Hirano. The Carrier said something Taiho couldn't quite hear to the distressed battleship, and Nagato nodded. The pair stood, Nagato swaying uneasily and walking away as the American Carrier set a course for her new Admiral.

"Saratoga?"

At the Admiral's query, Saratoga straightened, her hand almost touching her funnel as she gave the Admiral a sharp royal navy style salute.
"Reporting, Admiral." She started. After Hirano returned her salute, The Carrier relaxed slightly, giving Hirano a small smile as she continued in halting Japanese "Apologies, if I'd known you were here, Admiral, I wouldn't have waited here."

Taiho wasn't entirely sure, but the American's smile didn't seem to quite reach her eyes. It didn't seem like malaise or that she'd forced herself to be pleasant, just that she seemed… distracted.

"I appreciate your hustle, but I've got other girls on this airplane." Admiral Hirano replied. "I'll need to see to them before we can head out." The Admiral motioned to the two ships beside her. "Let me introduce my comrades here."

"I'm the training cruiser Katori." Taiho's fleetmate bowed. "I'm sure we have much to learn from each other."

Suddenly remembering her manners, Taiho hurriedly bowed. "Armored Carrier, Taiho. Please take good care of me, Saratoga-Sensei!"

Looking back up, she saw the American's distant expression was gone, her eyes widening for a moment before she bowed awkwardly in response.

"Ah, thank you." She replied. "You can just call me Sara, if you want."

If I want? Was that an order, wrapped in politeness, or did she truely want to be on informal terms with Taiho?

She didn't really know how to deal with Americans. Taiho didn't really blame them for her death, only one of Albicore's torpedoes had actually hit, after all, but to Taiho they'd killed her seniors and threatened the Japanese mainland just over a year ago. Assuming the best of them didn't come naturally to her. On the other hand, she also was aware of how close the nations had seemed to have grown, and given seventy years had passed she couldn't be surprised things had changed so much.

Because of that, Taiho had no clue if Saratoga was trying to snub Taiho by rejecting the respect meant in the honorific, or as The Casual American stereotype went, she was just shying away from the formality as a manner of instinct.

"I need to check up on the girls." Admiral Hirano grunted. "I'll pick you three up once they've recovered." With that, she left the three ships, setting course for a pack of destroyers nibbling on brown cookies an airman was handing out to them. The fact they were taking their time with the treats underlined just how poor of a condition they were in.

"It's alright if you're formal with me," Saratoga cut in, sharing a quick glance with Katori, "but I want to get to know everyone I'm teaching as soon as possible. I need to know what kind of tactics your specifications are best suited for."

"So, Langley and Midway should operate differently?" Katori asked, her arms crossed.

"Yes." Saratoga nodded. "Midway would have much better anti-aircraft defenses, so she could afford to take more risks with her combat air patrol. Langley doesn't have the AA or enough of an air wing to rely on it for defense, so assuming she had effective aircraft she'd have to act more aggressively against any force of carriers."

It was an obvious question, but from experience Taiho knew the Training Cruiser was more interested in how it was answered than what the answer was.

"Of course," Saratoga continued, a look of fondness crossing her face, "like Houshou, I know Langley sticks to anti submarine operations, as she doesn't have the strike aircraft to fight like that. If ships more advanced than the Midways were ever summoned, we'd have to move to the same niche."
A followup question creeped into Taiho's conscious, based on the research she'd been doing both on her future teacher and over the past year.

"You're longer than Charles De Gaulle, right? Couldn't you equip jets to keep up with them?"

Saratoga's eyes widened. As Saratoga remained quiet, tension developed in the Armored Carrier's keel. Had Taiho stepped out of line?
Then, finally, a giggle escaped Saratoga's lips, Taiho's teacher politely covering her mouth as she laughed.

"De Gaulle is one of France's modern carriers, I assume?"

"Yes." Taiho replied, still unsure if she was being laughed with or at.

"Me, launching super hornets…" She chuckled again, shaking her head. "While I love the mental image, I don't have a deck that could handle the heat of Jet Engines. I don't know the specifics about what materials they use, but if I was converted into an armored carrier I'd lose a lot of hangar space. Considering how massive modern carrier aircraft are, I don't think I could carry much of an air wing." She turned, scanning the tarmac for other aircraft. "I love my fighters and bombers, but it might be better to use me as a helicopter destroyer, like what your Navy-uh, Self Defense Force has."

"While that's interesting," Katori cut in, "it's not entirely relevant. What kind of air wing do you have now?"

"Prewar Aircraft, I'm afraid." Saratoga replied. "From what I've been told about how us shipgirls work, I'll need this training as much as you do. I'd want to fight the Abyssals with monoplanes, at least."

Taiho wasn't sure what had distracted her when she'd first left the aircraft and greeted them, but now her focus seemed to have returned to the present. Was the operation Admiral Hirano had helped organize to rescue her worth it? Taiho still wasn't sure, but now that she was here, some of the uneasiness she had about Saratoga started to fade. She didn't seem that bad.

Spoiler: Author's notes

So… I wrote my Author's notes while throwing this chapter together, instead of afterwards so it'll probably be even more rambly than normal.
I'm not a huge fan of ginger snaps, but they do help with car sickness. Protip, always bring some with you if you're going on a long bus trip though mountains or something. I imagine it helps with airsickness, too, but I haven't really had a problem with that so I wouldn't know. If this seems irrelevant to the chapter you just read, sorry? I don't want to draw too much attention to a throwaway line but my mind does wonder when I'm writing late.

On a more important note, writing as if I was translating everyone speaking in Japanese is an… interesting experience. I know just enough about the language to make even worse mistakes than I would if I knew nothing, so I tried to stick to as much English as possible. Of course, where the fact they were speaking Japanese would actually influence the trajectory of the conversation, I tried to leave it in. An example of that is the honorific Taiho gave Saratoga initially, which I felt I had to leave in because it wouldn't be normal outside of the circumstances they're in (I think?). A future example would be giving the Akagi-class Amagi and the Unryu-class Amagi different honorifics to distinguish them, but it won't be relevant for a while so I haven't put much thought into figuring that out.

Anyways, I really don't know much about the language, so if I got the rare Japanese I used wrong please let me know. Come to think of it, this whole virus situation means I don't have any excuses to not do my duolingo exercises… damn. I should get on that.

On another topic, focusing on canon characters that don't get used much has also been… interesting. The issue with relying on their quotes from the game is that you're only really getting a snapshot of them at a specific time, and I wanted to make sure Taiho had some room to grow as a character (and literally, as well. They make her look young because of her inexperience but she probably wouldn't stay that way).

Hope you enjoyed this interlude! Like I said, it felt kinda natural to fit one in here, as it makes for a good cover for the timeskip I've planned. Expect to see these characters more in the future, although only sparingly until Trinitite's story has progressed a lot.

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

"Welp, it's about time."

Trinitite looked up from the bender, her thoughts interrupted by her fleetmate's proclamation. Alton had pushed one of his sleeves up his arm, exposing what the Carrier guessed was a chronometer wrapped around his wrist. It seemed rather unprotected there, but Trinitite guessed it would work well enough, if you couldn't rely on an internal one.

"Time for what?" The Abyssal queried. Perhaps thinking they worked especially well together, her commander had assigned The Abyssal to work with Alton again once they'd finished eating. For the past several hours, they'd been making steady progress on floor two, completing several cages. As they'd bent and secured rebar, Austin had occasionally checked in on them, letting them know they were doing 'pretty good work.' Other than that, he hadn't given the two any timetable, except for when the work day would be over.

…

Ah, right.

"It's about time to clock out." Alton stated, confirming Trinitite's fears. She wasn't exactly sure what that phrase ment, but given the circumstances she could hazard a guess. "Did you lose track of time?"

"Yeah." She admitted. After they'd settled into another rhythm, Trinitite had started focusing on other matters to avoid drifting back to what she'd lost at Bikini. Most important was the damage she'd taken, and what she could do to fix it. With her rigging stowed, her damaged deck wasn't getting painfully jostled, but the dull ache from where the fire had been its hottest had never truly dissipated, and the rough patching in her deck was a numb reminder of her unlucky Helldivers and the 2000lb bombs they'd carried.

If that many bombs had been dropped on her, ploughing through her deck and detonating in her hangar, there was no doubt she would have died. That being said, the explosions had 'merely' destroyed a massive portion of her flight deck, spreading burning fuel onto her tower and into her hangar and starting a fire that should by any rights have been fatal. Only by dropping everything and focusing on firefighting had her crew been able to save her, and it had been a close thing.

Now, her engineers had concluded a damage assessment from that fire, and the news… wasn't good. The fire had burned hot and long enough to compromise some of the abyssal steel that composed her frame and hull. Some damage was obvious, several half-melted beams had been painfully cut away when they'd been building a patch for her flight deck, but some structural damage was much more serious. She hadn't noticed it then, but when an enemy destroyer's five-inch shell glanced off her starboard side during her dash for the shore, her plating there had cracked and partially shattered, instead of bending like it was supposed to. Now, after an inspection, it seemed like the structural damage didn't just extend to the plating on her starboard side, the hangar deck, or the bulkheads of her supply stores, but also included a sizable portion of her superstructure's frame. Her crew would practically have to rebuild her superstructure frame, and if she'd been designed like some of the armored carriers she'd seen they'd have to almost completely tear her apart to get her back to a combat-capable status.

This kind of damage wasn't going to get repaired without yard time.

All of this was just from her original fire damage. It didn't include the problems she now had to deal with from the dash ashore, including losing all her aircraft that hadn't been stored on her deck and the damage a light shell had done to her mess and machine shop.
Nothing else was getting serious repairs until that was sorted out. At the moment her crew assured her things didn't look unsalvageable there, but she was privately considering spending some of her future money to hurry the process along with human-made replacements.

"Huh." Alton replied, shaking his head. "Normally people doing this stuff can't wait for their shift to end. Do you find this fun?"

"It's boring," Trinitite replied truthfully. "I just started thinking about other stuff and lost track of time."

Trinitite wasn't sure how to read the look Alton gave her.

"Yeah." He replied. "I guess that's fair."

Abruptly, the human looked down, waving to the length of rebar Trinitite hadn't finished bending. "Lets get that secured, then we'll return what we haven't used yet and call it a day."

"Yeah." Trinitite replied, still thinking of the look he'd given her. It was a bit harder to read the more rugged faces of male humans, but she was fairly sure he'd bought her… truth, there. Had she said something wrong? Perhaps not, as Alton didn't seem any different when they secured the final length of rebar and returned what they had left to the much-diminished pallets. Perhaps all of this deception was starting to get to her, and she was overthinking things.

"Hey, newbie." The voice of Trinitite's new commander cut in, just after she'd finished stowing the rebar. Trinitite turned, looking at Austin.

"Yes?"

Her superior came to a stop, biting his lip as he surveyed his new subordinate. After a second's inspection, he smiled, slapping Trinitite on the shoulder.

"You did good work today. Know how to get paid?"

"What's-" Trinitite stopped herself when she realized how stupid the question she was going to ask was, starting over. "No, I don't."

"Ah. Just head back into the office. There's gonna be a hell of a line, but once you get to Dan he'll hand you your money." He pointed towards the squat structure, where even from here Trinitite could make out a couple dozen humans gathering near the exit. "Put that helmet and vest where you found it, and you'll be free to go."

"Got it." Trinitite acknowledged, snapping a casual salute. "Thank you."

"No problem." Austin smiled, nodding. "You kept Alton out of trouble, so you've already made yourself useful."

What?

Trinitite looked over to her chastised fleetmate, who was… smiling back?

"You see, I had my hands too full keeping this one under control," Alton replied, pointing with his thumb back at Trinitite. "I didn't have time to cause problems!"

Oh, this was just some good-natured teasing. She'd never seen subordinates feel this… safe talking to their commander, but it was a feeling she thought she could get used to. Trinitite didn't really know how to follow that up, however, so she just nodded, hoping her smile didn't feel too forced.

"Alright." Austin turned, walking away from the pair. "I'll see you in two days."

"Two days?" Trinitite murmured, unsure of what to make of that. If Austin wasn't going to be here tomorrow, who was supposed to command the group? Would someone like Tirto have to take charge for the day?

"Well, we're not going to be working Sunday, are we?" Trinitite's murmur must not have been soft enough, because Alton answered her question.

"Are we?" She echoed.

"Of course we aren't!" Alton replied. "Some of us have families they'd like to spend some time with, after all, and a lot of folks still have to attend their church tomorrow."

Once again, Trinitite wasn't sure how to reply to that. The reasons the human gave were nonsensical, but they clearly made sense to him. She supposed that, since this fleet wasn't exactly on the front lines of the war, that they could afford to allow everyone to rest at the same time, but that still felt… dangerous to her. Like someone disregarding basic safety around avgas.

"Okay." Trinitite acknowledged. The pair had started descending down the stairs, "Does that mean I shouldn't report here tomorrow?"
"I wouldn't recommend it." Alton shook his head, although with both of them bobbing down the scaffolding's stairs it was a little hard to tell. "Nobody would pay you."

"Oh…" Trinitite trailed off, looking over the worksite. This wasn't truly home for anyone, was it? It was odd, thinking of the fleet you worked for as something different from your family. Maybe that was why Austin had been such a nice commander. Sure, finding another job was difficult, but Trinitite could think of countless times when she'd wanted nothing more than to immediately set a course as far away from a Princess giving her unreasonable orders as soon as possible.

Not with Jelly, of course, but in human terms, it was perhaps more accurate to consider Bikini where she went on… sundays? Her job was out there, dealing with the best and worst of Abyssal Fleets along with the occasional aggressive human, while in Bikini she'd had time to train, relax, and relate to her fleetmates.

Suddenly, a lot of behavior around here made a lot more sense. It was a lot easier to think about the detached way these humans talked to each other to the loose coalitions Trinitite had been in, guarding convoys.
"Well, I'll see you monday, alright?"

They were at the base of the scaffolding, Alton making his way towards another building set into the perimeter.
"Isn't the office this way?" Trinitite called after him, but he just raised one of those slab-like portable radios above his head and kept walking. How was that supposed to help?
Whatever. It wasn't her money.

By the time Trinitite reached the line, its length rivaled those she'd seen during lunch, but fortunately this one moved rather quickly. Trinitite found herself making good progress, almost constantly shuffling as the humans kept moving. To spend the time in line, she checked the frequency she'd enjoyed a couple days ago, allowing the soothing… concert? Allowing the soothing noises to help her pass the time. She'd burned through the line quickly, and before really realizing it, Dan was handing her a paper package.

"You know where to store your PPE?" He asked.

Accepting the money, The Wo-Class gave a quick shake of her head.

"No."

"Just follow everyone else." He commented, already looking at the human behind her. "See you monday."
"Aye." Trinitite replied, hurrying away to keep the line moving.

As she followed the man ahead of her, Trinitite focused on the package she'd been given. A sheet of paper had been folded and glued in such a way it could hold more paper. Flipping the flap at the top open, Trinitite got a look at her first money.

It was more… intricate than she'd realized.

The green image of a human labeled 'JACKSON' stared back at her. Codes and stylized images of eagles she'd recognized from her Wikipedia exploration dominated the sheet of not-quite-paper, as the number '20' dominated each corner of the dollar. Removing the rest of the money from the paper, she counted six other twenties, as well as another bill labeled '10'.

One hundred and fifty dollars, as promised. It was nice it came in larger numbers, as handling 150 'federal reserve notes' labeled 'one' would be a bit annoying, but it would make the process of trading something of lower value a bit more complicated.
Less complicated than trying to trade something of equal value or having to hold favors, she admitted.

Placing the notes back in their paper package, Trinitite removed her safety vest and helmet, placing it with those the workers who'd passed in front of her. Now free of any obligations for the day, or tomorrow, she realized, Trinitite's thoughts turned elsewhere. What was she going to do with her first money? Perhaps stockpiling it would be the wisest option, waiting until circumstances arose to use it, but she did just achieve some major progress in her mission here.

Perhaps a bit of ice cream was in order?

After putting some good distance between the worksite and herself, Trinitite opened her coat to store her money. Looking down as she slipped the notes into her hold, a discolored splotch on her jeans caught her eye.

Huh. That hadn't been there when she put these on.

Keeping her coat open so she could see better, Trinitite leaned forwards to get a better look. Her stupid human clothes didn't compress her breasts, so the Abyssal was forced to awkwardly lean even further forwards to get a look, but she supposed her uniform's collar would have forced her to do the same thing. Something had been smeared onto her starboard pant leg, an issue she never would have had in her proper uniform, but she was having some trouble figuring out what it could have been. It was a sandy tan, a bit too light to be the grainy mud that clung to her boots. It was more of a… human… skin tone…

'You know… you've got cream on your lip.'

Oh.

Oh, deep!

- - -

The sedan's door closed with a pleasant thunk, leaving Alton a moment of peaceful silence. He sighed, allowing his seat to consume him for a moment. After the hour of fighting traffic that was ahead of him, the seat wouldn't feel all that comfortable, but for now Alton was going to enjoy the thirty seconds of rest it would give him.

As far as work days went, this one hadn't been that bad. Elizabeth had practically done all the hard labor for him, never asking to switch jobs or even slowing down, really, meaning his week had ended on a fairly easy note.

The old sedan rumbled to a start, and Alton turned his attention back to his phone. He needed to clock out real quick, then he could switch to finishing that podcast he'd been listening to.

His mood immediately soured. Right, there had been some kind of battle nearby, hadn't there? That didn't sound like the best way to end a day, but this was the kind of news he needed to stay on top of. The idea of the US mainland getting attacked was ridiculous, but so were many other things before the Abyssal war started.

Setting the timecode back a half-minute, Alton started the podcast again, before throwing the old car into reverse and leaving the parking lot.

"-ite the video, too. On September 13th, the youtube channel KalalochWitness was created, and uploaded one video: 'Battle.mp4.'"
And so, he drove and listened. Apparently, someone had uploaded a video about a naval battle that had been visible from Olympic National Park. That alone was disturbing, but it wasn't unheard of for escorts or aircraft to engage an Abyssal submarine this close to shore.

What made the video so strange were the ships involved. A gigantic smoke screen had been laid, obscuring what the show's hosts assumed to be the Navy from the camera. Near the end of the video, this is partially confirmed by the collection of ships that emerged from the smoke, a cruiser and several destroyers making their way towards shore.

What they were fighting, though, made the news infinitely worse.

"Has anyone confirmed that this was an Aircraft Carrier?"

"Well, we are talking about a distant video of a shipgirl, here, meaning it's almost impossible to tell anything besides a silhouette. Now, I'm not a ship expert, but it seems the internet folks who know what they're talking about are sure it's an aircraft carrier of some kind."

A carrier. Austin didn't know what kind of range those had, but if one was in the Olympic Peninsula he was definitely inside it.

"Do we even know if this is an abyssal?"

"No. First off, an Abyssal Carrier couldn't just sail this close to the coast without being interdicted by the Navy. They aren't that difficult to detect. That doesn't rule them out, however."

Of course it didn't. The East Coast was supposed to be untouchable. Hawaii was supposed to be untouchable. Then, they suddenly weren't. An abyssal ship managing to sail this close to shore shouldn't have surprised him.

"Right. Now, there are a lot of people who claim that there is some sort of connection between Abyssals and Shipgirls. There have been books, videos, and articles where people have drawn parallels between known Abyssal Warlords, or 'Princesses,' and the shipgirls many nations are relying to keep themselves safe. There are a few issues with this theory, such as the sheer number of abyssals out there, but for some people this video would be enough to confirm this theory with them."

He wasn't so sure about that. Alton had seen abyssals in person, and knew what they could do. Shipgirls, somehow being secret abyssals? Frankly, the idea was insulting. The two speakers seemed skeptical about this as well, fortunately.

"What if Abyssals and Shipgirls are two sides of the same coin, and under the proper circumstances, it's possible to 'flip' an abyssal, or shipgirl in this case, to their other state? What if Abyssal-ism is infective, and the carrier in this video was one of our defenders who'd succumbed to some sort of corruption?"

No matter, the why wasn't important to him. He needed to build a backup plan in case this turned out to be legitimate. Move further inland, maybe? Mable would hate to move again, but if survival was at state...

"Maybe we're looking at just a renegade shipgirl, which would be terrifying, but it would mean an Abyssal isn't loose in Washington."
"Remember that at this point, all we've been seeing is some wild speculation. This could be a live-fire training exercise, for all we know."

"Or, it could be a hoax."

Maybe. Alton knew what happened when you assumed the best of a situation. He was in the danger area, which meant he'd have to prepare for the worst. He'd have to check the property prices around Denver, when he got home.

"Right. Bottom line is, there's an interesting developing story over in Washington, that I haven't seen anyone else covering. If you live in the area, don't panic, let me emphasize that, but if you do see anything unusual or paranormal, please let us know."

Unusual or paranormal, huh?

A memory from earlier in the day returned to him unbidden, and his right hand started to ache. That had certainly been unusual, but-
No. That was stupid. impossible!

Elizabeth was strange, sure, but Alton knew what an Abyssal looked like. How they acted, and while she was strange, his excitable coworker didn't have any similarities with those monsters who'd conquered his home.

Did she?

Elizabeth was strong. Suspiciously so, and she didn't seem to tire out after hours of hard labor. She'd called it boring, which Alton guessed it technically was, but he couldn't think of any normal human who'd call it boring first, and not tiring, at least. Didn't she say she was from the Pacific, too?

Alton suddenly realized that the car ahead of him had stopped, and he hadn't noticed. In a moment of panic, he jammed his feet into the clutch and brake, the old car's tires squeaking a little as he jolted to a stop.

He- he needed to pull over for a bit.

Spoiler: Author's notes

Say whatever you like about Andrew Jackson, I find the idea that the Federal Reserve placed the face of one of its predecessor's greatest enemy on the 20 pretty funny. What a clever way to spite someone.

Back on topic, I feel pretty proud about getting this chapter out as fast as I did. I originally meant to stick another scene on the end, here, but decided against it given this chapter's length. In my plans Alton shouldn't have caught on to Trinitite this quickly, but several months of playing hide and seek with Ru-classes has turned him into a paranoid little bastard, and poor Trin hasn't been as inconspicuous as she probably would have liked, so here we are. After a few weekend chapters, the real cat-and-mouse game begins.

Hopefully I can figure out how I'm going to write that before I get to it...

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

Her boots had taken the worst of the damage.

Their soles had been worn down, their rugged tread ground down to a polished smoothness that made traction impossible. Scuffs and mud marred the toes from where she'd slipped and fallen, but thankfully the leather had held enough to keep the abyssal steel underneath concealed. The boots appeared to be coming apart at the seams near the back, several bits of leather jarred free and flopping behind her as she finally trudged into The Mill Creek Library.

That could have gone better.

Realizing her disguise had been compromised, Trinitite had needed to see a mirror as soon as possible. She'd seen one in the Library, and deciding she didn't have time to look for one elsewhere, Trinitite set a course there and ran as fast as she could.

Unfortunately, that hadn't been particularly fast.

Her shoes hadn't been designed to withstand the power when only one of her boilers had been lit, and in her foolishness Trinitite had activated all eight. Once they'd started contributing to her power, her run started to degrade fast. When her shoes did manage to find purchase, normally when she shifted from concrete to muddy grass, the very earth she'd run on failed. Mud and grass caked her coat, hat, and face, from where the ground had given out, a reminder that asking to light up all of her boilers was pure overkill.

It had been beyond frustrating. She knew how fast she could go, from her experience on the water, and had thought she might even be able to pile on more speed without having to deal with the drag from the ocean.

Unfortunately, she hadn't counted on how fragile everything was. She'd eventually settled into a kind of awkward jog, letting the terrain dictate her pace instead of constantly slipping and falling. Of course, when it started raining again, everything lost even more traction, and after a few more minutes of fumbling the desperate and frustrated carrier was forced to run at an even slower pace.

She had gotten fewer odd looks after that, though.

"Hello again!"

The Librarian spared Trinitite a quick smile as she looked up to see who'd come barging in, but as the day had been mostly dry she quickly returned to her work. Trinitite returned the polite smile, before adopting a swift walk to the restroom.

Once inside, she stopped, leaning against the door with a sigh. The run hadn't been physically exhausting, but since she'd been so desperate she needed a moment to regroup. She'd heard horror stories from Abyssals she'd talked to about fighting on land, how you had to run a physics problem through your head before performing any action in combat, but she hadn't realized how serious that problem was until just then. The traveling she'd done right after escaping to the shore had been across ground too rough for her to really try and move quickly, but this run had been across mostly unobstructed ground, and once she tried to use all her strength these hidden limits became painfully obvious.

Well, it was best that this happened now, and not with the enemy hot on her stern.

In the mirror, Trinitite got her first look at the damage to her disguise.
Her frequent falls had marred the makeup job Ineng had approved, smears of mud and grass staining her brow, nose and cheeks, so it was a bit difficult to tell where the light foundation had been rubbed off. That was probably a good thing, as her dirty face made the fact she was wearing a disguise at all a bit harder to distinguish, but it wasn't going to work everywhere. Trinitite leaned into the mirror, grasping the sides of the sink with both hands to steady herself, to focus on her upper lip. Yup, it looked like she'd wiped that clean hours ago, and now that she was looking it seemed blatantly obvious. Had no one noticed that?

Sern's odd expression drifted into Trinitite's memory, and she had to resist slamming her bow into the mirror. Of course they did.

That being said, no one had reacted that strongly, so perhaps there was a reason for a human to have white skin? Come to think of it, that State Trooper hadn't found her white skin that strange. That needed to go near the top of her research list. Until then, she needed to reapply her makeup. Her several hours' practice from yesterday was going to be put to the test, wasn't it? Really, if the Supply Princess was half as helpful as Ineng had been, the Abyssal fleets wouldn't be having so many logistics issues to begin with!

Despite herself, Trinitite had to smirk at that. Now that a few weeks had passed and the human forces didn't have to worry about real carriers guarding their precious transports, they were probably missing the Crossroads Fleet about now. Serves you right, you self-absorbed wastes of steel.

The final result probably wouldn't have gotten the human's approval, but it was leagues ahead of what her paint-and-chip detail had achieved. After washing her face with the sink, Trinitite had gone simple, with a layer or two of foundation, very few highlights, and another application of lipstick. If it wasn't for her eyes, she'd be sure the creature staring back at her in the mirror was a human.

Now, to quickly change her clothes into something without as much mud, and she was sure to blend in again!

A lot of these clothes were probably beyond repair. Her boots were the most obviously damaged, although the heat rising from Trinitite's feet told The Abyssal her socks were probably in much worse condition. The knees on her jeans had been rubbed white by her repeated encounters with concrete on the way here, while her coat had been torn in the front and her hat had been rendered useless. It always seemed to be carried away by the wind or folded and crunched when she fell. Maybe it could be repaired, but until then she'd have to seek an alternative. She hadn't seen anyone with a hat quite as large as what she'd been wearing, anyways, so perhaps something lighter was a better choice.

Instead of opting for another set of boots, Trinitite slipped on a pair of 'running shoes' over a new, less-destroyed pair of socks. She wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to help her with running (they were lighter and weaker, for one, which seemed like the exact opposite of what she needed), but it was easier to put them on, and Trinitite was only going to be wearing them until she found some proper steel-toed boots, anyways.

She hadn't gone wrong with the jeans and jacket, so she replaced those with the closest items she had, but her original hat hadn't done well when she'd had to run. It would have to be replaced. She'd found a smaller hat with a floppy brim and a strap to keep it secured to her head. It didn't feel quite the same, but neither had the first hat. She could probably get used to it.
The door abruptly opened. Trinitite jumped, looking away from the mirror in panic. Had they always been able to do that? Why hadn't she wedged the door shut?

A very small human, perhaps a destroyer analogue, was looking in. The two froze, staring at each other, before the human suddenly looked away.

"Oh, sorry!"

The door closed again.

A moment passed as Trinitite looked back at the mirror. She'd been disguised, thankfully, but that could have happened at any time, couldn't it?

Next time, she'll have to remember to jam the door shut, somehow. Her cane could work, but that would mean summoning her rigging, and she'd have to experiment summoning and dismissing her rigging to figure out what that would do to her disguise before she could rule on the idea.

For now, the issue was avoided, though, and she had several other objectives in mind, such as more intelligence gathering. She'd made time by running to the library, but that close time wasn't getting any farther away.

This time, she'd brainstormed with her officers what kind of topics to research, and compile them onto a list in her log. It had been a bit tricky, apparently, to record items in the log with no lights in her tower, and her crew wasn't going to read it without retreating into her lower decks or asking her to shine a light into her eye, but it should keep her from getting lost in hundreds of wikipedia tabs, this time.

What a waste that had been. She'd already forgotten most of what she'd read!

The small human who'd interrupted Trinitite was waiting at the door, nodding to her and rushing in without a word. The library was less busy then it had been yesterday, the sound of the occasional button press or page turn combining with the book's aroma to create an oddly soothing atmosphere. Ignoring the books, Trinitite quietly made her way to the same computer that she'd used yesterday. This time, she had a strategy to avoid getting sidetracked. If she found something she wanted to know more about, she'd add the term to the research list and keep reading where she was at the moment. Hopefully, this run in should be more productive.

She had over thirty topics to investigate, after all.

First, Aircraft Carriers. She still needed to discover the identity of her princess, and if they had information on hostile warships from over a hundred years ago, they had to have details on her mother.

List of aircraft carriers of the United States Navy.

Unfortunately, that was not easy. While skimming the information in the opening paragraphs, her list grew by four terms. That didn't exactly inspire confidence, but some of these sounded fascinating. 'Revolt of the Admirals?' Didn't the article on the Civil War state the United States only had to deal with one rebellion? And what, exactly, did 'nuclear' mean, and how was a nuclear-powered carrier different from herself? Of course, there was also the war her princess had fought in, which was either World War II or the Cold War. Speculation on those would have to wait, because after looking below the text and seeing the list of carriers, the Abyssal's rangefinders settled on the third photograph.

CV-3. Saratoga. Class: Lexington. Commissioned: 16 November 1927. Decommissioned: 26 July 1946.

The unmistakable smokestack. The vertical stripe. Maybe the Aircraft on the deck were primitive biplanes. Maybe her guns matched Firestorm's 8-inch battery, rather than the 5-inches Trinitite remembered her with. The paint scheme was entirely different to her princess's, but it was her. Opening the picture in another tab, Trinitite sighed, leaning back in her chair. She was getting a look into her mother's past more detailed, perhaps more personal, than anything she'd seen before.

USS Saratoga (CV-3) landing planes on 6 June 1935 (8o-G-651592).jpg

There was so much information in this photo Trinitite never knew. Biplanes? Her sister's guns? Mother had never talked about this!

Was it wise, going through her past like this? Jellyfish, or Saratoga, as the humans were calling her, must have spent months of cumulative time talking about her past, but Trinitite never heard about stuff like this. The Wo-class couldn't shake the feeling she'd kept it secret for a reason. Was she not supposed to know this stuff?

She shook her head, changing tabs back to the list of Carriers. She could apologize when she met her again. Right now, getting her mother back was the most important.

Status: Sunk in Operation Crossroads as a nuclear test target near Bikini Atoll.

That kind of matched up with what she'd heard. That word, 'nuclear,' cropped up again, and she was tempted to relate that to The Fire that Mother had warned of, but how could something like that power an aircraft carrier? Another thing to add to the list.

Unfortunately, that didn't tell her anything about where she was now. Looking above and below Saratoga on the table had dates for when other carriers had been 'summoned.' Since those accompanied the fates listed, and since the dates mentioned were all within a few years of the present, that must have related to their return to fight this war.

Why weren't they saying anything about Jellyfish? Had this computer just not updated? No, the news articles had been dated today.

Was The Navy hiding her princess?

The Abyssal bit her lip, her limbs stiffening in frustration. Deep, nothing was ever easy, was it? She clicked on the blue text that led to info on Her Princess and skimmed through the headings, but there didn't seem to be anything about her after the 1940s either. Nothing mentioning her being a princess, nothing mentioning any kind of battle at Bikini, and nothing mentioning her joining the Navy at all, really.

Maybe she didn't? Trinitite didn't dare hope. Nobody would go through the effort to defeat The Crossroads Fleet and then take 'no' for an answer.

Trinitite shook her head. The fleet that maintained Wikipedia probably didn't get too many updates from the Navy, and Trinitite knew how slow news could travel if the circumstances weren't correct. She'd check back later to see if anything changed, or see if that news section in every search had anything about her.

The fact she had a name already was good progress. First, she'd give this article a full read, then ask the computer about USS Saratoga and see what else she could find. The list was probably going to grow out of control fast, but if she had to be honest with herself, that prospect felt a little exciting.

Spoiler: Author's notes

Ever want to keep writing, but get to a point where the chapter just feels like it has ended on its own? That was this chapter. I'll probably do another library chapter, because I actually did write Trinitite's research list, and some of that stuff would be fun to watch her learn about. Still, there are over thirty topics, so I know I'll have to skip over most of them to keep the setup of 'abyssal vs search engine' interesting. I'll post the list here to see which items sound interesting to y'all and focus on those, I think. It'll keep growing, of course.

Anyways, when I went back trough the last several chapters to build the list I noticed I've missed a lot of spaces between paragraphs. I'll go back and deal with the old chapters myself, but if I made this mistake here please grill me on it.

Not sure if I should finish this library segment next, or build a Nashville-focused interlude. She's got a day of leave too, and a few unresolved issues to bring up with her sisters...

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

Nashville looked away from the screen, blinking to clear her head. She'd used computers before, as they had been a large part of her orientation after she'd been summoned, but this was the first time she'd worked on one. After hours of the monitor's light boring into her rangefinders, she was feeling pressure building in her bridge, of all places, and she often found her thoughts drifting to the waters of Puget Sound less than a mile outside.

Despite that, she thought she'd gotten a lot done. After hours of researching, brainstorming, and bouncing ideas off of Murray and the other Sailors in Nashville's new unit, she'd layed out a plan for the two little opportunities that were still stewing in her brig. The document before her was flooded with tactics, outlines, and contingencies for their future interrogation, as well as things to avoid that she'd learned from her research.

"You know," Nashville jumped at the sudden voice, her hand slipping off the mouse before she crushed it. "You're supposed to be off-duty right now."

The Cruiser sighed, checking her chronometer while she turned to look at her commander.

"I need to get this right." She defended, motioning back at her interrogation plan.

She'd stayed behind for what, an hour? Compared to the shifts her crew would run in poor circumstances, that was nothing! Hadn't Murray also been running himself ragged?

"You need a rest." He shook his head. "Nashville, you've been active since the battle for Bikini." He turned, motioning back to the now-empty office. "We've had little sleep and practically no off time, because it was urgent, but none of us are running on all cylinders anymore."

"That sounds like an average shakedown cruise, sir." Nashville retorted. The Lieutenant Commander was probably going to order her out no matter what she said, now, but if she could buy a little more time…

"You've been staring at the same paragraph for fifteen minutes." The Spook dryly noted. "We've scheduled the next interrogation for Tuesday afternoon. We'll review that with fresh eyes during Monday, but that's not going to happen without a day's leave. Just keep your phone close, in case she surfaces."

"You'll still be working?" Nashville asked, eyebrows raised. She wasn't exactly sure what she was going to do with a free day in Everett.

"For a few hours. Garcia and I have the first watch on the phones, but after that I'll be resting as well." Murray answered, sipping water from a paper cup he'd brought with him. "You're not going to be part of the rotation. Keep your phone close, but get some rest."

She sighed, looking back at the monitor. She was still making progress, but the amount she'd actually gotten done was starting to shrink. Sure, she was a Cruiser, and could stay alert for months, if needed, but the last off-time she'd had had been before she'd left San Diego for Bikini.

"Probably a good thing you stayed, though." Murray continued. "The Visitor Center just notified me that three people checked in, and are looking for you. It'll be easier for them to find you here, but I can't let them into the office."

The 'Office' Everett's Commander had set up for Murray's team wasn't much. Using a portion of a floor that hadn't seen much use since the Nimitz transferred out, they'd had to install some temporary partitions to separate the Lieutenant Commander's Operation from other offices on the floor. A fan and a few tarps allowed them some information security, as long as they didn't raise their voices, and they had a conference room and a few other empty rooms to themselves for true secure communication. It didn't quite match their hasty quarters at Lewis-McChord, but they weren't using any space dedicated to other purposes, so they could operate here indefinitely, if they had to.

"Who are they?" Nashville asked, her eyes still focused on her interrogation plan.

"They didn't want you to know." Murray replied.

A chuckle escaped the cruiser's lips. It didn't make any sense for them to be here, but stranger things had happened this week. Besides The Abyssal, she only knew one person who'd deliberately be so unhelpful.

"Alright, you've convinced me." She relented. "How do I, uh, store this?"

"Save it." Murray provided. "Click on the floppy disk."

"Ah, okay." Since she'd recognized the floppy, she'd been wondering what that icon was for. Closing the document and ordering the computer to shut down, Nashville stood, stretching her keel and shifting from foot to foot. "Well, I guess I'll leave things to you."

Those words hadn't come easy. An enemy carrier was still out there, lurking among the civilian population. Murray had convinced himself on the Saratoga theory, but Nashville wasn't so sure. The logic behind the idea relied on the Wo-class acting far too human for her liking. Nashville wasn't the expert here, but the idea that this abyssal, and only this one, was driven by curiosity instead of malevolence, didn't sit right with her.

Maybe trying to forget about everything for a day and taking a look at the problem with a fresh set of eyes was the trick, here. Part of her wanted to find a local bar and someone to spend a night with, but if this visitor was who she thought she was, Nashville's plans for the weekend were probably already decided for her.

After confirming that the computer had indeed shut down, the cruiser left, making her way to the exit of the mostly-empty office.

"Take care, Nashville." She stopped as her commander's words caught up with her. Nashville turned, nodding.

"You too, Lieutenant Commander." Then, she gave the spook a weak smile. "We'll get her next week, right?"

For the first time since she'd met the man, Murray smiled back.

"Of course."

- - -

As Nashville neared the base's visitor center, she became less confident in her guess of the visitors' identities. Even if they had been given leave for today as well as tomorrow, it would take hours to cruise from San Diego to here. A car would probably be worse, and a flight was out of the question, for obvious reasons…

Opening the entrance to the visitor center, Nashville got her first look at her visitors, and her doubt turned to confusion. The three sat next to each other in the reception area, huddled over a magazine as they quietly talked with each other. One of the three caught her eyes immediately, her bright-red hair bobbing as she stood abruptly.

"It's about time you showed up!"

"Honolulu?" Nashville asked, returning the gaze of her red-haired sister, before meeting the gaze of the two other cruisers. "Helena? Brooklyn? How?"

"You'd be surprised at how easy it is to charter an interstate flight, Nashville." Brooklyn replied, the nameship closing the magazine and striding towards her. Maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the tanned cruiser seemed a little more pale than normal.

"That… must have been rough." Nashville replied, remembering the nightmarish flight at the start of this whole ordeal.

"You'd know, wouldn't you?" Helena replied, the youngest cruiser passing Brooklyn to give Nashville a quick hug. "How was the osprey?" She probably got all she needed out of the change in Nashville's expression.

"Let's not talk about this." Honolulu interjected before she could reply. "Captain Newman gave you a room in the barracks over at Smokey Point, correct?"

Nashville frowned. She knew she'd been assigned quarters once she'd arrived at Naval Station Everett, but the team had been so busy Nashville hadn't investigated her new quarters. The fact they were in a separate complex from the offices and port facilities only increased their problems. Come to think of it, she didn't even have a driver's licence! Getting to the off-base housing was going to be a little complicated.

"I think so?" Nashville supplied, removing her phone from her hold. "I think I have more information on it here…"

"Don't bother." Brooklyn commanded, the lead ship taking charge of their group. She walked past the three, her sisters belatedly following her into the parking lot. "We'll rent a hotel room and stay there together. Should help with any noise problems, as well."

"Noise problems?" Nashville asked, ignoring the mild rain that met her outside. "What will we be doing?"

"You'll know in good time, Sister." Brooklyn answered cryptically, "You'll know."

Searching her other sister's faces didn't yield any answers.

"Don't look at me." Honolulu supplied, returning Nashville's gaze with a shrug. "She's been talking about this for days, now, but she's kept it secret."

"Since she's being coy about it, it's probably something we wouldn't agree to if we knew beforehand." Helena speculated, taking a sip from a thermos she'd must have been storing in her hold. "Perhaps it's some kind of training?"

Nashville didn't like the hopeful edge to Helena's voice. All the Brooklyns held themselves to a high standard, but the quiet cruiser applied herself to training more than most. Come to think of it, with all this abyssal business, she'd started to fall behind behind on practice. Given her performance in the battle with the enemy carrier, she certainly needed it.

"Is something wrong, Nashville?"

Brooklyn had stopped at a dark hatchback, its smooth exterior and thin lights another reminder of how much things had changed since her scrapping.

"Oh!" The cruiser shook her head, thoughts refocusing on the present. "I can't talk about it, sorry."

"Classified, huh?" The nameship said, her normally haughty voice softening for a second. It didn't last long, however, before her authoritative persona returned. "Nashville, I don't want you thinking about that stuff tonight, alright? The purpose of leave is to destress, not dwell on problems, understand?"

"Yeah, sis." Nashville accepted the scolding.

"Besides," Brooklyn continued, the car's thin flashing as Helena unlocked it, "after the activity I have planned for tonight, I'll need your help arranging a schedule for Sunday."

The four piled into the car, Nashville's sisters volunteering her for the shotgun seat. Since she was newer to being partially human, they argued, the drive would be easier for her if she sat in the front. For her, it also meant avoiding the argument unfolding behind her.

"The Ascended Hotel's close." Brooklyn mused.

"They're booked for tonight." Honolulu stated. "I'd rather go for the Marriott, anyways."

"The Indigo has a better rating, and is cheaper." The nameship pointed out.

"Do we need a four-star hotel?" Honolulu asked, folding her arms petulantly. That got a rise out of Brooklyn.

"Why would you want to pay more for a worse hotel?"

Allowing her sister's lighthearted bickering to fade into the background, Nashville tried to relax. Brooklyn was the type of person to care about such things, while Honolulu was just trying to wind her up. Nashville wasn't sure Honolulu really knew how to talk with people, even her sisters, but she did help keep the other's expectations in check.

"...and a reservation is booked!"

Still, nobody would be proud of Nashville's recent performance. Guess it was fortunate her less-than-stellar exploits were classified, then.

"You know where that is, Nash?"

The cruiser jumped at Helena's words, her mind suddenly returning to the present.

"Um… No." Nashville replied, shaking her head. What hotel had they agreed on? "I haven't had time to learn the town."

"Oho!" Nashville's keel stiffened as Brooklyn's chuckle suddenly filled the car. That laugh never happened before something good. "I guess you're going to learn two things, then!"

"What?" Nashville asked, giving Helena in the driver's seat a pleading glance. What's with that smirk?

"Do you know how to use Google Maps, Nashville? You are the copilot here."

...shit.

Wasn't she supposed to be relaxing?

- - -

En route to the hotel, Brooklyn announced that she'd need some time to make the room 'ready' for what they were going to do. Judging by Honolulu's off-colored comments and Helena's increasingly exasperated questions, Nashville wasn't the only one who was getting tired of being led along by their sister. Brooklyn took all the comments in stride, however, returning them with another smug promise.
"Oh, you three. Could you let your sister prepare a pleasant surprise?"

"Who's it going to be 'pleasant' for?" Honolulu asked, although the edge to her voice had dulled.

"All of you, I hope." Brooklyn replied, opening the car door. "Some of it definitely will be."

With that, the door closed again, the car now minus one cruiser.

"I understand wanting to arrange something special for our short reunion," Helena sighed, "but at this point there's no way she's going to meet my expectations."

"Yeah." Nashville agreed, before another thought occurred to her. "Although none of you told me you were coming… I guess Brooklyn just cut two more people out of the loop for this part."

"We didn't tease you about this beforehand, though." Honolulu pointed out. "God, what's with all the suspense?"

After figuring out the phone's mapping program's search function, the three returned to the hotel, food safely stored away in their holds. Like many things about her new existence, thinking about storing food in their hulls, only to remove them later and eat them, thus putting them back into their hulls, but differently somehow, made Nashville's bridge hurt a little, but there was no way they'd be able to fit this much food into their rental car, let alone carry it the several stories up to the room they'd reserved.

After Helena and Honolulu gave Nashville an idea of the portion sizes restaurants were used to serving, they eventually settled on 'raiding' two or three different restaurants in the local area. Some had catering options, which streamlined the process, but for others they'd had to resort to consulting with the owner, trying to figure out how much their restaurant could actually prepare for them by the time they could get there. Nashville hadn't really realized how much she normally ate until the three cruisers started paying for it themselves!

"Hold on." Nashville stated, looking up from her phone.

"Yeah?" Honolulu asked, stopping short of calling a local pizza place.

"That's how we get her." Nashville snapped her fingers, chuckling to herself. "Food!"

It wouldn't work immediately, of course, as Trinitite probably had plenty of supplies from her raid on the Shelton Fred Meyer, but that could only last for a while. Using the eating habits of one of their Essexes, it shouldn't be that hard to draw up an estimate for how long the Abyssal's stores would last. They were already looking for criminal activity similar to what had happened at Shelton, but if she somehow had the money, they might have to take an alternate strategy. It wouldn't be easy to track every large food purchase and look for patterns, but the idea was worth running by Murray and the rest of the spooks.

"I don't think I'm supposed to be hearing about this." Helena noted, drawing the cruiser's attention away from her epiphany.

"Right." Nashville nodded, swallowing as she nervously glanced at her sisters. "Uh, I didn't say anything, okay?"

"Sure thing, sis." Honolulu nodded, a thin smile playing across her features. "I'll forget all about that."

After almost an hour of collecting food between restaurants and spending several hundred dollars between them, the brooklyn sisters returned to the hotel. Brooklyn must have finished… whatever she'd been preparing, because she was in the lobby to greet them. The blonde cruiser hastily pocketed a phone she'd been communicating on, before greeting the three with a smile.

"Did they give you any trouble?"

"Two restaurants asked for a day's warning next time." Nashville reported. "We lost twenty minutes waiting for them to get everything prepared." They weren't capital ships, but food four four cruisers, even when split between three restaurants, ended up being a major disruption for them. It wasn't nearly as bad as back when she'd been a steel hull, but Nashville was starting to appreciate how much work the navy's cooks did to keep their ships fed.

"I see." Brooklyn admitted, biting her lip and looking towards Helena. "Apologies, it seems my planning wasn't quite what it should have been."

"Are you finally going to show us your whole plan, now?" Honolulu asked. "There's no surprises after this one, right?"

Their oldest sister nodded, producing three keycards and handing one to each of them.

"There might be, but I'm not sure what those are going to be either." Before anyone could reply, she turned, adding. "You'll understand when we get there. Follow me."

The three cruisers hurried after their sister. Hopefully, whatever was up there would be nice, but Nashville couldn't shake the feeling Brooklyn's 'surprise' was just an excuse to get everyone to do something they wouldn't agree to otherwise.

- - -

It was… both, actually.

Nashville stood in the suite's main room, staring at the massive television set into the room's wall. On the screen, the blown-up image of a blue-haired woman waved at her.

"Hey, Sister." She smiled, leaning back in her office chair. "We haven't been introduced, have we?"

"Saint Louis?" Nashville asked, frozen in the doorway. She'd never met her half-sister in her previous life, something she hadn't realized she had missed until she had returned. Last she checked, she was still in Zuoying as a part of the Seventh Fleet's current base. "What time is it over there?"

"It's Sunday afternoon. If an emergency crops up I'll have to go, but for now I can spend my afternoon with family!"

"Sadly, Philadelphia is deployed in The Atlantic," Brooklyn admitted, the tanned cruiser walking into the center of the room and adjusting a tiny camera mounted on a tripod, "but that shouldn't stop us trying this out! Think of it as a trial run for when all of us have returned."
Nashville's thoughts drifted to The Falklands for a moment, and the cruiser's mood sank. She wasn't quite ready to say anything about that yet, though. Not until she knew exactly how much they'd kept from her. Instead, she focused on the table Brooklyn had referred to.
The small camera was directed downwards, focused on a map of Europe sprawled across the coffee table. Judging by the way the land and sea was partitioned and how rough the borders were, as well as tokens representing pre-dreadnoughts and primitive artillery pieces arrayed on the colorful board, Nashville guessed this was some kind of risk-like game. She'd known some of her crew liked that kind of game, but she wasn't sure why Brooklyn was so keen on playing it until she got a look at the title on the game's box.

"Diplomacy." Nashville said aloud, picking up the box and looking over the art on it's glossy cover. In sharp contrast to the wargame set before her, the box depicted the image of a cozy study, shadowy men in clothing a few decades before her time discussing something over cigars and champagne. "Of course you'd have us play this."

"You've heard of it?" Brooklyn questioned, and Nashville shook her head. "Ah. It's been around since the fifties, so it wouldn't surprise me if you'd had."

"Isn't this some kind of friendship destroyer?" Helena asked, eying the map suspiciously. "I heard some English battleships tried this out a year ago, and only just started talking to each other again."

"You're exaggerating, dear." Brooklyn tempered. "That was only between two of them, and the fallout only lasted for a couple of weeks. As long as we understand that this game requires us to lie to and betray each other, I'm sure things will go well once we've gotten used to the rules."

"Okay…" Honolulu asked, her face uncharacteristically calculating. "...It just looks like a different version of risk to me, but if the real game comes from stabbing each other in the back, I'm up for it."

"You don't know how much work it was to get this setup figured out." Saint Louis added, her voice from the television's speakers filling the room. "I don't think it'll work perfectly, but we've already put so much effort into this. Let's at least give it a shot."

"Alright." Nashville announced, brushing some hair away from her brow as she studied the board. "Let's conquer… Europe, I guess. This is world war 1, right?"

- - -

The game was proceeding… decently. It was ten minutes into the discussion phase of the first turn, and Nashville was busy studying the board. As Russia, Nashville had a lot of land to expand into, and defend. Since the rules said no one should play as Germany with five players, she had to use her fleet to take as much of the country as possible before England (Helena) or France (Brooklyn) gained too much power, while at the same time protecting herself from whatever schemes Honolulu was concocting in Austria Hungary. At the same time, Saint Louis had that fleet she needed to move into the black sea, and if she sat in port while everyone else gobbled up Italy and Germany she was going to be in a bad position.

It didn't help that the Cruiser wasn't entirely sure how combat worked yet, either. Apparently, two ships couldn't sink each other unless one trapped the other in a bay somewhere, and even then they'd need 'support' to put them down for good. Imagining one of the old battlewagons taking hits until they were physically pushed onto land was amusing, but a bit hard to get used to.

Let's see… She needed to figure out something with Saint Louis to keep the balkans from killing her, but she was busy exchanging some kind of electronic messages with Honolulu, who'd pulled a laptop out of her hold and was quietly alternating between typing on it and looking over the screen at the board. Were they scheming against her, or was Honolulu trying to get support to take Italy from Brooklyn?
It was all the stress of command, with none of the reward or consequences. Why'd she agree to playing this, again?

"Hey, Nashville." Brooklyn's voice removed Nashville from her fretting, as she and Helena left the hotel room's bedroom. They'd been plotting in there for about five minutes, now, which didn't help with Nashville's stress. If they were also forming a power bloc, then Nashville's advantage in starting forces wasn't going to mean much. "Could I talk to you?"

"Yeah." She nodded, passing Helena as she made her way to the kitchen, where they'd filled the table with a mix of mediteranian and Italian food, as well as several Chicago-style pizzas. Even with the food's alluring smell filling the hotel suite, the game had her staring at the board instead of enjoying the meal. Hopefully the radiant heater they'd set up would keep everything warm for them as they schemed against each other.

Man, what a happy family reunion.

Brooklyn slid the door behind them, dulling the classical music they had been playing to suppress the sound of conversation. Now that they were alone, Nashville sighed, trying to picture the game board in her mind.

"So… about Germany." She started, but her older sister's look made her trail off. Brooklyn was leaning against the door, searching Nashville's face for something. Every second the dead air continued it felt more oppressive, before finally her sister seemed to deflate, sighing and slumping against the door.

"Nashville." She started, looking back up to meet the cruiser's gaze. "I got briefed on The Abyssal."

For a moment, Nashville thought one of her shafts had seized up. The cruiser stiffened, wondering why she hadn't thought about that before. They had said something about briefing every american flagship on the coast, hadn't they?

"So," Nashville started, her mind racing. Had she chosen Diplomacy because it sounded up the 'Diplomat Cruiser's alley, or was it a ploy to get some alone time with her? "you know, then."

"Not explicitly, but it wasn't hard to draw a parallel from you getting rushed out of the fleet on an osprey and the crisis ONI's dealing with." She stood, approaching Nashville and taking a seat next to her on the bed. "Seeing how you've been acting tonight was proof enough for me, but thank you for confirming that."

She knew. Nashville never really thought of hiding her failure from her sisters, but with her recent actions hidden from most of the Navy, she'd found a silver lining in knowing she hadn't disappointed the class. Now that at least some of them had been briefed, that bright side had been snuffed out like seawater sloshing into a boiler.

"Nash." A hand fell on her port shoulder. She looked up, forcing herself to meet Brooklyn's eyes. "I wasn't there, so I don't know how well you did."

Brooklyn suddenly pulled, drawing Nashville into a hug. "It's just one battle, alright? No matter what happens, and I know the team you're in is going to find this slippery bitch. Don't let it get to your head, alright? Nobody's faced something like this before."

"What, an unsupported aircraft carrier?" Nashville shot back, but she couldn't put any bitterness into her words. She wrapped her own hands around her sister, drawing the hug tighter. Her armored chest pressed against the loose clothing of her sister, reminding her of her desperate need of a refit. If Honolulu or Brooklyn, with their advanced radar, had gone on that osprey, instead of her, then the Abyssal's smoke screen wouldn't have been a problem.

"Stop that." Brooklyn commanded, her grip tightening. "You're a cruiser. You don't question orders, correct?"
Nashville gave a short nod. As a ship, that was true in general, but part of her reorientation had included images of the Nuremberg trials and current policies on the topic. "Not legal ones."

"Then that loss wasn't your fault." Brooklyn sighed again. "Look. We're here to forget about the week, alright? You can get back to being a spy cruiser on monday. Until then..." The hug broke and Brooklyn stood. The dignified cruiser had returned. "...how about Germany?"
Nashville paused, unsure how to bring up the next topic. The conversation had reminded her, and she needed to bring this up before the opportunity passed.

"Actually, one more thing. What do you know about the Falklands?"

She'd wanted to be accusatory, but after Brooklyn's sincere attempt to help, some of the anger behind keeping that secret from her had faded. She still needed to know the answer, though, even if it felt like taking Brooklyn's kindness and throwing it back in her face.
There was another painful pause as her older sister looked back at her, but Nashville was willing to wait for her to gather her words.
"We don't know anything." She finally asserted. "Nashville, almost all of Germany's East Asia Squadron was chased down and sunk near there during the first world war."

"Yes." Nashville replied. "But how many Armored Cruiser Abyssals have we seen? We don't have many reports on the Falklands, but when I had time I looked at reports from submarines passing through the area. That's an american fleet, Brooklyn." She hadn't convinced herself on the true identity of the Tyrant Cruiser Princess in the Falklands, especially since the name the abyssal transmissions used when they were warning away outsiders hadn't made much sense, but now that she was forcing her sister to see the truth she found herself coming to grips with the revelation herself.

It wasn't easy, and the look on Brooklyn's face confirmed that. She needed to change the topic.

"...When were you going to tell me the truth about their princesses?"

Brooklyn sat back down again. Neither of them looked at the other as the older sister spoke up.

"...How they're us? But twisted?"

"Yeah."

Brooklyn sighed again, falling back onto the bed with a thunk.

"I don't know. None of us talked about it, but I think we've all had suspicions that It, whatever it is, got to Phoenix. It was just- never the right time to talk about something so morbid. You've only been back for a couple of months, and with all the preparation for Bikini there we didn't have much alone time."

"Fair enough." Nashville admitted. Brooklyn gave a weak excuse, but if Boise or Savannah returned right now, Nashville wasn't sure she wouldn't do the same. A moment passed, but this time the silence didn't carry any tension.

"So…" Brooklyn finally started again, sitting up. "What are we going to do with Germany? You know Helena is looking to take either most of it or the nordic countries."

"Did she tell you that?"

"She didn't have to." Brooklyn replied with a smirk. "Isn't it obvious?"

"I don't know!" Nashville snapped back at her, but since it was over something so small, Brooklyn only laughed in response. "Have you played this game before?"

"No!" She chuckled. "How about this. You help me take Munich, I'll support you moving into Berlin next turn."
Nashville could feel the knife in her back already, but smiled anyways.

"Deal."

In the end, the short alliance between Brooklyn, Helena, and Nashville fell apart, leaving Brooklyn and Nashville against everyone else in the family. The two vs three war that ensued never concluded, however, as news of an abyssal strike force just northwest of the Philippines disrupted the game, forcing Saint Louis to drop out in case they went further north. Nashville knew she was doomed if it had continued, but she couldn't say she was opposed to giving the game another try.

Spoiler: Author's notes

The time is way too late where I am, but if I don't post this I won't be able to sleep. Thanks to Jesseetheswift's fanart on SB and my desperate attempts to preserve my mental health by avoiding any and all political news for this chapter getting out as soon as it did.

So... yeah. Here's a slice of life interlude I did. I guess the fic could have done without it, but I really wanted to write a segment of Nashville's family and develop her a little more, so here we go. For designs and personalities, I'm basing the rigging and clothing very loosely on Kancolle's Helena, which showed up after I already had a rough idea of what Nashville would look like, with Azure Lane being used as a basic template for appearance and personality for Nashville's sisters that appear in the game.

Funnily enough, I don't think Nashville is in anything.

For clothes, I'm trying to think of a combination of the AL and KC designs, using the excuse that Helena's only a half sister. How exactly does that look? No clue. I'm not an artist until I have to dust off my wacom again for when Trinitite, uh... nevermind. Let me know if I missed anything too bad in my last editing pass. This'll get cross-posted to FFN after I've had some sleep and am willing to deal with their publishing system.

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

Trinitite tried her best to keep her tears out of her eyes. She was almost alone in this library, sure, but she was certain saltwater would damage her disguise, not to mention the library's computer. At first, Saratoga's article had been full of pleasant surprises. For example, Trinitite hadn't known Mother was originally going to be a battlecruiser. It was probably lucky this 'Washington Naval Treaty' had cropped up, as the Ra-classes she'd seen could outrun enemy battleships just fine, but not bombers. From her experience, it was always better to have your own aircraft, to fight back!

She'd had a sister ship, too! One who'd been summoned, according to that list of Carriers. Trinitite would have to look into finding her, in case The Navy was still hiding Her Princess after several months. It was risky, but so was pretty much everything she'd done until this point. There were other names that cropped up regularly, too, such as Enterprise and Victorious. Those might be investigating later, as well.

Beyond that, Trinitite enjoyed reading her Princesses's story, despite the uninspired manner the article depicted it. Learning of how many 'Fleet Problems' she fought in gave Trinitite's mere two years on the water some perspective, and seeing other names in Jellyfish's story answered other questions she didn't think she'd get a chance to answer. Knowing that the Isolated Island Princess had been on Saratoga's side during the last major war gave her name new meaning, and Jellyfish's rivalry with the installation at Eniwetok suddenly made much more sense, given the one-sided battle the two had had back then.

Speaking of which, Trinitite hadn't known Mother had seen so many battles, even sinking an enemy Carrier during the last war! Between that, the islands she'd bombed, and her aggressive performance in fleet problems, Trinitite couldn't help but wonder if Mother had missed a major opportunity with her Wo-class daughters. Sure, Her Princess had taught her how to operate a CAP, direct fighters, and hunt submarines, but during her training methods of attacking enemy ships had been… skimmed over. They'd paid for that dearly during the defense of their Atoll. Had her princess… made a mistake?

She knew that Abyssal Princesses weren't infallible, and Jellyfish herself had said that she'd been wrong when she thought she could stand up to the fire, but this? It hurt for Trinitite to say this, but this must have been a serious blunder. Maybe good attack training wouldn't have saved their fleet- the human forces dedicated to eradicating them were far too numerous, but she wasn't sure they'd sunk any enemy carriers. A couple torpedo hits, sure, but if a handful of torpedo strikes was all it took to sink a carrier Trinitite would have lost Hypocenter well before The Battle of Bikini.

Damn submarines. The name of the submarine who'd hit her sister still eluded her, but whomever she was, she had escaped. It looked like Her Mother had suffered the same fate as well, taking hits from two of those pre-sunk lurkers in her previous life. At least in this case, the article gave names.

I-6, I-26: I'll remember you two.

It was all so brief, yet there was so much information here! Deep, Trinitite wished her mother had told her these things herself! She'd always get so… personal with her stories about her previous life, and she was always so emotional when she was thinking of her life before The Fire. Trinitite desperately wanted to ask not what happened in her fight with Ryujo, but how it had felt to have been there. Some text written by a human seventy years later wouldn't compare to what Jellyfish would have said, and on top of that Trinitite could have experienced the story with Firestorm and Hypocenter.

Yet, she hadn't. All her stories had either been about her old daughters- the Essex class, if Trinitite had to guess- or The Fire itself. Those… hadn't been so happy.

Operation Crossroads

Back before the emergence of the Central Princess, Hypocenter and Herself were escorting a convoy to resupply The Aircraft Carrier Princess's fleet. Considering the obvious offensive The Princess and her allies were planning, the Humans in Hawaii took special interest in ensuring Trinitite's charges didn't reach their destination. Even with help from another fleet, attacks on the convoy had been relentless, culminating with an attack by Firebringer Fighters she'd never forget.

Her CAP must have damaged the first fighter, the enemy aircraft dropping it's bombs prematurely as they wobbled home. Her aircraft got good hits on the second as well, the human machine's speed playing against it as it spun out of control. Trinitite had no idea what it's ultimate fate was, because like most jet-powered aircraft, the third fighter had no issue blowing through her defense, bearcats unable to bring their cannons to bear before the human fighter was among the convoy. The memory of watching the sleek grey aircraft dart through a maze of tracers and flak stayed with Trinitite, more than most, because she remembered frustration turning to horror as the jet's bombs tumbled away from its wings, connecting with perhaps the worst possible target the human could have chosen.

Unfortunately for Trinitite, her convoy, the human fighter and one of it's comrades, a few of the bombs met with the deck of a Wa-class loaded almost entirely with battleship ammunition. Trinitite had precious seconds to watch a wall of fire, steam, and shrapnel consume the unlucky human fighter and it's wingmate, before the shockwave had met her, blowing out her bridge windows and disabling a lot of her tower's equipment. After recovering from the ultimately superficial shock of the explosion, Trinitite remembered turning her attention back to where the unfortunate Wa had been, taking in the sight of a mushroom cloud hanging over the now-vulnerable convoy.

The image she saw at the end of Saratoga's article made that look like a depth charge. The surrounding destroyers and smaller ships were like driftwood compared to the pillar of water that filled the image. Her poor mother was partially obscured by the explosion, the blast visibly lifting her out of the water as spray obscured her hull. Trinitite couldn't help but click on it, spending minutes studying the image in morbid shock.

Was this… The Fire?

The rest of the article didn't make anything better. With the same matter-of-fact stoicism the report used with the rest of Her Princess's life, Saratoga's demise was described with far too much detail. Trinitite couldn't imagine what it would feel like to have your flight deck just… ignite, but as someone well acquainted with fires she knew that couldn't be described as 'minor damage.'

But that was only the first explosion. How many 'atomic bombs' did the humans have, if they were willing to use that many on a defenseless fleet?
It had been 400 yards distant, the safe zone from any sane weapon, but Trinitite knew The Fire was anything but sane. She sat back, covering her mouth with her hand as she focused on the last image.

Saratoga (center) sinking, 25 July 1946.

It was an image of despair.

It was… difficult to recognize her mother, with the gruesome damage to her superstructure, but it only got harder once Trinitite truly realized that the mangled hulk slowly slipping beneath the calm seas was Her Princess.

On the bright side, it didn't happen to her twice. Trinitite sniffed, looking down at her hands, now balled into fists in her lap. That wasn't much in the way of consolation. Mother had lived her entire second life in the position where she'd sunk, constantly reminded of her death at the hands of the fire, yet she'd only cared about the fates of her late daughters. Wouldn't it have been better for her to set up a base anywhere else? Had she been suffering all this time, and Trinitite never realized it?

How could the humans do that to her? How could Jellyfish stay in Bikini, instead of relocating anywhere else? How could Trinitite have been so content there, when her mother had been in such a terrible place?

She… she didn't know who to be angry at.

Her hull shook as she took in a shaky breath. Trinitite shook her head, wiping tears- and plenty of makeup probably, away from her eyes.
Trinitite stood, gently sliding the chair back under the… whatever the computer was mounted on. There was some major information she needed before she returned to the construction site, but right now she wasn't going to remember anything else she read.

The Wo-class… needed to be alone.

- - -

Anne Campos loved her job. It was a lot of work for not much pay, but maintaining the library during its late shift always kept her entertained. She loved watching someone get lost in a good book or discover something new, and with her normally taking the afternoon shift, Anne was perfectly situated to watch everyone who trickled in after work or school.

Of particular interest was a young woman who'd just discovered Mill Creek library yesterday. Anne tried not to pry into other people's business, but it was getting difficult not to with this new girl. Yesterday, she stumbled into the library soaked to the bone, perhaps on the edge of succumbing to hypothermia! Anne didn't have much of a choice but to try and help her, but with how disoriented the girl acted while Anne got her a towel to dry off and directed her to a heater, it had been a narrow thing.

Thankfully, it seemed like she mostly recovered from her cold episode, as she quickly got wrapped up in wikipedia. She'd had to snap the stranger out of her learning-induced feuge come closing time, although she'd been a bit worried if the strange girl with a cowboy hat would be okay overnight.

Those worries returned with a vengeance when the strange girl stumbled back in, covered in mud and with boots and a coat that looked like they'd been attacked by some rabid animal. This time, the girl made a beeline for the restroom, ignoring Anne's greeting and doing nothing for her concern.

The librarian returned to her work, trusting The Cowboy Hat Girl to take care of herself, but she hadn't expected her to emerge from the restroom wearing an entirely new set of clothes! The cowboy hat was gone, replaced by a drab boonie, while her new tennis shoes and jacket seemed brand new, and dry as well. Where'd she store an entirely new change of clothes? Anne wouldn't find a bunch of destroyed clothes in the restroom's trash, would she?

She checked, finding no evidence of destroyed boots, but beyond that didn't watch the girl any closer. Anne had her own work to do, after all, and didn't want to pry into Hat Girl's business.

That is, until she walked up to the front desk, on the verge of tears.

"How-" She sniffed, pinching her nose with a gloved hand. "When are you closing again?"

"Uh, we're open until six." Anne added, initially unsure of herself. She checked her computer's clock. There was about twenty minutes until then, but that was still a decent amount of time.

"I see." She nodded. "Guess I'll be going, then."

Before Anne could say anything else, the girl turned, disappearing through the library's entrance.

Huh. Did she just learn someone in her family died? Anne looked back to the computer she'd been working on. Could there be some kind of tragic news there she was missing out on? For a few seconds, Anne tried to get back to her work, but soon curiosity got the better of her. Abandoning the front desk and approaching the computer, Anne skimmed the still-active screen.

It was just some article about a ship.

A ship… That probably wasn't what made Hat Girl get so emotional, but if it was, then that might explain some things. Why didn't she seem all that bothered about being wet, and why was she able to produce a new change of clothes seemingly out of thin air?

It was like puzzle pieces were starting to slide into place. Mill Creek Library had been visited by a shipgirl! She shouldn't have been surprised by that, as Everett wasn't that far away, but shipgirls were always so plastered across the internet and media that Anne just guessed she'd recognize one if she ran into them.
Then again, she didn't pay that much attention to that kind of thing. It reminded her of the war, and worrying about that was stress she didn't need to deal with. She doubted she could name every american carrier, let alone the dozens of cruisers that The Navy had. Then, if you factored in forigen shipgirls, and those who'd recently been summoned but not announced yet, then it was no wonder Anne hadn't recognized Hat Girl.

She'd had a conversation with an honest-to-got shipgirl! Anne's wife was going to be so jealous when she told her over dinner tonight.

Anne sighed, closing the ship girl's browser session and logging her off. Hopefully she was doing okay.

- - -

The library was only a few yards away, but a thin line of trees obscuring the entrance made Trinitite feel like she'd retreated to an entirely new area. Sound from the road was muffled by a small hill, perhaps built by the Library as some sort of fortification. Besides the distant noise of rubber on asphalt, a thin rain pattered against the leaves of the trees sheltering the small field from the rest of the world. Whenever the wind picked up, the cable used to hoist the american flag would go taught, slamming against its flagpole with a series of clangs.

Trinitite wasn't alone here. Shouts and laughter echoed a couple human destroyer-analogues slithering around a strange structure of brightly-painted steel and plastic. Since they seemed to be giving the Wo-class no attention, she ignored them as well. Another normal-sized human was sitting, watching the others do… whatever they were doing, but again she seemed too preoccupied to focus on Trinitite.
In other words, she was functionally alone, sitting on a seat formed from wooden planks and watching rain water slowly dripping off her hat. With each drop that gathered on the rim of her hat and fell to the ground below, a single phrase repeated in her head.

Surplus to postwar requirements.

How could a fleet ever have so many carriers, it would designate some as 'surplus?' And was that good enough reason for the humans to not only subject her to a weapon as powerful as the fire, but hit her again after she managed to survive? Yet, the shipgirl who was once her mother seemed to easily join the Humans, even after that. Were the memories of shipgirls suppressed somehow, making them blind to the wrongs that humanity had committed against them?

Trinitite was sure many other Abyssal Princesses would respond with a wholehearted 'yes' at that statement, but that theory didn't sit right with her. Now that Trinitite had a change of scenery, she remembered more from Her Princess's stories, about how she hadn't been bothered that 'her time' had come. Jellyfish had known that she was doomed, one way or another, and freely accepted that fact. It was… an odd way to think, now that she considered it, but Mother never cared much for herself. She'd always been last in line for resources, unless the fleet insisted she resupply, and was always willing to take the time to comfort a distressed subordinate.

Were most ships who'd originally been steel-hulls normally so… apathetic to their own destruction? Was that something that was a part of their nature, and were most Abyssal Princesses an exception? She wouldn't know unless she'd met some, and for some reason they didn't try to kill her.
Trinitite's mind refocused on that awful explosion. If humans had ever used these 'atomic bombs' on abyssal forces, then horror stories of The Fire would have spread across the abyssal fleets like they had across her deck back at Bikini. They hadn't. The oblivion that Mother always fretted over hadn't come, yet, although Trinitite now had solid proof that it was a very real thing. She wouldn't get the chance to present it to the Princess that called the Crossroads Fleet a 'Doomsday cult,' but it was good to know her faith in Her Mother had been well-placed.

Why hadn't they, though? If any Princess besides her mother had access to a bomb that large, then the only reason they wouldn't use it would be if they wanted to save it for later. How rare was The Fire? She needed to research that, soon. Hopefully The Firebringers didn't keep that a secret. If so, then the destruction that Her Mother warned of was coming, but only during a decisive battle, like the one Midway was always trying to create. If not…

It had taken two bombs to sink Her Mother. Maybe they weren't as effective as Trinitite thought? She wasn't sure how an explosion like that could be ineffective, but while the explosive Wa-class had disabled almost all air search radars and a lot of other important equipment in the convoy, her demise hadn't sunk anyone. Mother always said that the firebringers proved that carriers like her and her daughters were obsolete, but what if that wasn't true? Contradicting her mother like that went against every rivet in Trinititie's body, but she had the clarity that came from not being in Operation Crossroads, while Jellyfish had experienced it from practically it's dead center.

Her mind went back to her own experiences at Bikini Atoll. Of Her Princess overcome by feelings, clinging to that enemy carrier.

Maybe… The Firebringers had actually failed, and her old daughters hadn't been lost, after all.

Where did that put her?

Trinitite shook her head, rubbing tears from her eyes once again. That was a stupid thought. Saratoga, as she'd been known, had clinged to the shipgirl so much because she thought that carrier was dead. She must think Trinitite was dead, as well. Maybe, just maybe, if she could prove to her that she was alive without giving herself away to the rest of the Navy…

She didn't want anything to do with the humans and whatever plans they had, but her Mother was a different story. Hopefully, this proved that Her Princess and whatever she'd become weren't that different. Trinitite just wanted to talk to her again.

She sighed, looking back up at the Library. She wanted a lot of things. She wanted to reenter the library and look up more questions from her still-growing list, but they were closing in a few minutes, so Trinitite wouldn't have the time to read anything. She wanted her sisters back, but even if they did eventually return, it would probably be under one of the many abusive idiots that she'd had the pleasure of refusing orders from. She wanted to get back on the ocean and be a Carrier again, but obviously that wasn't going to happen.

She stood, even more water rolling off her hat as she disturbed it. Like always, it was best to focus on small goals that she could achieve. She'd passed that 'Baskin Robbins' building again on the way here, and wanted to figure out what the deep that place was.

Time to deal with one of her wants, at least.

Spoiler: Author's notes

Nimu's a good girl, Trinitite! Put that depth charge down!

In other news, if you look up the Ra-class and don't find anything, then don't be alarmed. I decided to invent a new shipgirl class, because there isn't any good category to slide "Abyssal fodder battlecruiser." into. If you do find something, then I guess they added a Ra-class to the game, but I highly doubt it would be a battlecruiser, so, yeah. This is before that, and in this fic either Ra-classes are battlecruiers, or I've retconned abyssal battlecruisers to have another name, and this paragraph would look much different. More details on those later, but probably not in the story. They aren't particularly relevant, outside of my worldbuilding documents.

As for the chapter itself, this one came easier then I thought it would. The major delay here was a CS project, but that's done now. I don't make any garuntees or schedules, but expect a bit of a flurry of writing despite the new War Thunder update and Girls Frontline event. I think Trinitite only has to deal with one more tragic revelation, so if this fic's getting too melodramatic for you, don't worry.

Also, Mill Creek has better hours then my local library, I'm jealous...

 

[SimpsonFly]

Spoiler

The fucking writing bug bit me. I had to do this to make it go away. Lord help me.

-explosions fire screams running where was the bow listing running capsizing sinking surviving thirsty tired sharkssharksharks teethtee-


He opened his eyes with a start, breathing heavy. What happened? Did he die? Was he dead? Where were the others? Questions shot through his mind rapid-fire as he tried to get his breathing under control.

Slowly he began to actually look at what his eyes were telling him. Turns out they were telling him it was day, if the glaring sun was any indication. Strange that looking straight at the sun didn't seem to bother his eyes. Eyes? He blinked his eyes for what felt like the first time and then blinked them again, over and over. He felt his eyelids move and saw the sun disappear, over and over. Okay, he was feeling things, doing things. Was he not dead? Dead people don't blink, do they?

He decided to focus on his other senses: first hearing, next touch, he told himself. The first thing he heard was the waves lapping against the hull of the ship. Ship? Yes, ship, he was certain. That made sense. The navy must have rescued him! Wait... if that were the case why hadn't he been tended to? He was sure he'd been lying there for several hours at this point and he knew that a corpsman should have at least glanced his way by now, yet he didn't so much as hear a soul. In fact he didn't hear anything aside from the lapping waves and a light breeze. That wasn't right. That was not right at all. He'd signed up as a sailor the day after the japs had attacked Pearl and he'd been on his ship near-constantly for going on three years. He knew what an active ship sounded like, yet he couldn't hear a even hushed voice or the sound of the machinery he knew should be running or feel even a slight vibration.

This was wrong, this what bad, this was going to get him killed again! He tried to call out but he couldn't manage more than a rasp. Again and again he tried but all he could do was a faint moan. Giving up on talking for the moment he tried to move, unsurprisingly finding that just as difficult. Just what had happened to him? If he were this weak there would surely be someone attending to him, yet still there was nobody. In a fit of panic he tried to move his limbs (were they still there??) and found that he could, barely, twitch all but his right arm, which actually managed to move a little. Success! Slowly, surely, he raised his hand in front of his face and froze, staring the milky white appendage that supposedly was his hand. He stared. He stared some more. He curled his fingers, curled them again. Stared. whatthefuckthiswasn'thishandwhatisgoing- a seagull landed on his arm. It made a strange motion and-

"Gah, fuck! Goddamn sky rats!" he flailed, shouting curses at that damn bird who shat on him. This was the second time in as many months! Fuming, he looked down and realized that A) he was standing and B) he could, in fact, actually look down now. Elated, it took him a moment to notice something that had been hidden out of site before now: his chest. his was not his normal uniform or even any United States uniform he had ever seen. Sure, it was patterned the same but he had yet to see any sailor of any rank wearing a pure black uniform. Oh well, at least everything else seemed to be in order; he still had his two hands, his two feet and all three of his turrets.

Satisfied, he turned to survey the area and- "Wait, turrets?" He looked down again and, yep, those were turrets down there, two on his starboard and one on his port, sitting on what looked like little cruiser hulls, each with a little "35" on them. Well that was new. And weird. And also fucking bonkers if he was to be any judge. And he was. Those were his turrets and he'd judge them if he liked! A little further down he noticed the deck, or more accurately the distinct lack of a deck. Seems he was standing on water. And had turrets. Okay.

He felt a jolt, then another, then another and he new that those were boilers 4-6 coming online. He didn't know how he knew, but he certainly did. More weird shit to add to the pile that he had decided to mentally label "Do not think about until back in port, and maybe not even then." He somehow knew that he could move, now, so he looked around for somewhere to actually go. In the distance he saw an island and suddenly felt a call. He knew that island, he realized, but he sure as hell didn't know any fucking "call." He knew that was not the Lord calling him, that was for certain, and even if it was why the fuck would He call him towards Okinawa, of all places. Sure, the japs had supposedly been pacified by this point but he did not care, he just wanted to go home.

Mind made up, he turned away from the spooky island and steamed east, across the Pacific, slowly at first, then faster as more boilers came online. A few times he thought he caught a glimpse of someone running around on those little decks, but he couldn't seem to find them when he tried. Filing that away in The Pile he started whistling a song one of his fellows taught him as he made is way across the pacific.

Lt. Mathew Briggs, USN, was going to Seattle.

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

The first thing she noticed was the color. Outside, bright yellows and reds weren't exactly uncommon, but the general colors had been subdued, including both the natural greens and browns along with the human-made asphalt, steel, and concrete. The library had continued the trend, bathing dark carpet and brown-painted steel shelves with a somewhat comforting yellow glow. The 'Baskin-Robins' bucked that trend, the dark blue and polished silver acting as a contrast for the bright whites and pinks that filled the building. It reminded her a bit of the warehouse she'd raided, although the differences in scale had meant more attention had been put into every inch of the building.

The next thing Trinitite noticed was the noise. Like with Penang's Market and several other fleets she had attempted to join, noises similar to those playing over several radio frequencies filled the building, although here they seemed louder than normal. Whatever it was, the strange repetitions and not-quite-natural speaking was… off putting, like the whole building was putting up a front of cheeriness, but one that wasn't quite cheery enough.

It must have been a popular place. Besides the Fleet's uniformed workers, two of the tables were in use by humans, while several more patiently waited in a line behind the counter. Trinitite quietly took a position in the back of the line, peering around a particularly wide human to read the list of items Baskin-Robins was offering.

Let's see… 'Flavors.' Flavors of what? Skimming through the list didn't reveal much. What was a cake, let alone the difference between a 'Pumpkin Cheesecake' and a 'German Chocolate cake?' There were fruits, like Mango and Coconut, but they always came with some additional adjective that only confused the abyssal further.

How could something be Mango flavored three times? It either was a mango, or wasn't. Furthermore, what exactly was chocolate, and why were so many flavors some variant of it? She'd 'procured' some chocolate from the warehouse, but hadn't tried any yet. Maybe later tonight, when most of the humans had gone to sleep and-

"How can I help you?"

"Huh?" Startled out of her contemplation, Trinitite met the uniformed human's questioning gaze. Had they already gotten through the line in front of her? She'd hardly read through flavors list, let alone the other available items! Deep, she should have been paying attention to what the humans in front of her had been asking for!

"Ah…"

The Wo-class stalled, frantically searching the board of options behind the human. Baseball nut? Cotton Candy Crackle? Peanut Butter n' Chocolate?

"Uh…"

None of this made any sense! Trinitite would just have to bite the AP shell and ask.

"What do you sell, here?"

Whatever the human had been expecting, that hadn't been it. She visibly recoiled, giving Trinitite a look she knew she'd given to ships from other fleets, when they had asked her something exceptionally stupid. Trinitite could feel her cheeks darken in embarrassment, but to the human's credit, however, her smile returned almost immediately.

"We sell ice cream, miss."

Ice Cream?

Trinitite looked down at an array of metal canisters, their tops exposed to show a substance in all kinds of colors. That was ice cream? Maybe the curved glass that protected it made it difficult to tell. Trinitite only knew ice cream as the smooth white treat from Her Mother, and while one of the variants looked somewhat similar to what she was used to, it's texture was… different. Rougher, somehow.

"All of this is ice cream?" She asked. Maybe human ice cream was made using a different process then the machine her mother had used, and thus had a different texture. Still, there was so much…

Trinitite realized her mouth had been hanging open, hurriedly snapping it closed with a click. Her lips had probably hid her less-human looking teeth, but she had no doubt her grey tongue would draw attention, if someone had been watching her.

"Well, some of it's frozen yogurt." The human admitted, thankfully focused on the ice cream herself. She looked up, giving the abyssal an expectant smile. "Can I get you any?"

Trinitite swallowed. Now, she had the ability to claim ice cream back in that warehouse, but had refrained. Then, it had made sense to wait until she'd found Her Princess, but she'd underestimated how complicated of a process that would be, and probably still did now.

Besides, she'd gotten a lot done, so far! She'd survived a battle with four destroyers along with something larger. She'd successfully evade human attempts to find her, even raiding a major supply center in the process! She'd managed to disguise herself as a human, allowing her almost unrestricted access to their greater society, as well as ensuring she had established a steady stream of supplies, from the enemy's logistics network.

If Her Princess knew what she'd managed to accomplish for her, surely she'd reward her, right? On top of that, it was look supid, no, suspicious, if she walked in here, waited in line, asked a few questions, and just left, wouldn't it?

"What would you suggest?"

She had to buy ice cream. Her Princess would understand!

"Well…" The human nervously glanced behind Trinitite, and the Abyssal was suddenly aware of the line that was building up behind her. "Do you like Fruit? Chocolate?"

The answer obviously was fruit, but…

"I've never had anything chocolate."

"Alright then." The human turned her attention to the instruments in front of her. "How about one scoop chocolate, one scoop chocolate chip, one scoop german chocolate cake. That sound good?"

"Uh- yes." Trinitite asserted. She had no idea what any of those were, but considering the human's disposition she was probably taking too long here.

"Want it in a cup or a cone?" The human followed up.

"I'll take it in a cup." The Wo-class replied. Whatever cones were, Mother's Ice Cream always came in a cup, and she'd always take the possibility of some familiarity.

"Alright!" The human replied, imputing Trinitite's transaction into the machine. "That'll be Six-oh-seven."

Remembering the labels at the warehouse, Trinitite removed the fruits of her day's work and withdrew her '10' note. It was a waste of four dollars, though… Couldn't Dan have given her more… flexible money?

Resigned, she placed the ten dollar bill on the counter. Like many things, using her money to resupply was going to be more complicated then she'd expected.

"Anything I can do with the other four dollars?"

"Hmm?" The human asked, accepting the ten-dollar note. "I mean, I'd like a tip, but that'll be up to you." With a click, a compartment in the human's console slid open, revealing several other green notes. Slipping the ten in, she removed three others, placing them back on the counter with a collection of metal disks.

"Three ninety-three."

Oh. That was convenient. Good to know Dan hadn't hurt her supply situation by only giving high-value notes.

"Ah, uh, thank you." Trinitite accepted the money, pocketing the paper and scooping the disks up with another hand. Money came in two types? Come to think of it, with how much she was relying on this, why hadn't she added this topic to The Research List?

Hopefully, she'd eventually get around to that. It was starting to look like a process she'd never finish, as she'd only finished with one topic off so far, out of forty eight.

"Alright!" The human replied, handing Trinitite another piece of paper and nodding to the other uniformed human. "Here's your receipt! He'll get you your ice cream shortly." Trinitite nodded, scanning the paper while the uniformed human turned her attention to the person behind Trinitite. It looked like some kind of log, reading off how much she'd given the Baskin-Robins fleet and what for. Presumably, they'd made one for themselves, preventing Trinitite from modifying the deal then accusing them of betrayal. Another thing that would have been useful back in the abyssal fleets, although the Supply Depot Princess had invented such a system and it hadn't spread at all.

Once she found Her Princess, it might be neat to look at all these receipts she'd collected. Trinitite knew her supply officer was going to love these, at least.

"Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, German Chocolate Cake?"

Trinitite looked up at the tall, thin man who must have been referring to her. Hastily she gave the human a short nod, stowing her receipt. Trinitite watched as the human took a metal scoop of some kind, plunging it into a bin filled with earthy-colored ice cream, and carving a channel into the dark treat. Despite its color, the way it gave without much resistance confirmed for Trinitite that it was related to the ice cream she was used to, if not the exact consistency.

Again, she had to swallow as the human deftly filled a small cup with three scoops from each container. It wasn't much, especially compared to those gallon cups she'd get from Mother, but despite the fact that this building had so much of it, Trinitite wasn't surprised it was valuable. Six dollars, for three scoops… She'd have to remember that, when comparing it to other food she could get. Not that Ice Cream was that filling a food, but how efficiently food contributed to her general supplies wasn't the only factor she was concerned with, else she'd just dip steel in bunker oil and eat that. That didn't sound too bad, but it would get old quickly.

"Here you go." The human placed the cup on the glass counter, producing a plastic instrument and plunging it into one of the scoops. "...And your spoon. Enjoy!"

So that was what those were called. Trinitite would have to remember, although she didn't think it was worth putting on her list. Giving the human a smile as thanks, Trinitite took the ice cream and found the most isolated table she could.

There she sat, allowing herself a moment to examine the first thing she'd ever traded money for. The first scoop of ice cream was dark, but had the smooth simplicity Trinitite expected from ice cream. The second was light, similar to the color she was used to, but it's texture was interrupted by evenly-spaced fragments of… something that Trinitite didn't recognize. The third, at the bottom of the cup, seemed to be a variant of the first, but bands of dark and gold materials interrupted it's even sheen.

Well, she couldn't let it melt…

With a slight pang of guilt, Trinitite awkwardly gripped the spoon, plunging it into the simple dark scoop of ice cream and carving a section out. Emulating other humans in the room, The Abyssal slid the spoon into her mouth, closing her lips and started to withdraw the spoon. Meeting her teeth, the spoon's sweet payload slid off the utensil and fell to her tongue.

!

Trinitite froze, stunned. This was ice cream, no doubt about that, but the taste! Withdrawing the spoon, Trinitite shifted the ice cream around in her mouth, feeling it's texture as friction and her tongue broke it down. Instead of the traditional sweetness she was used to, this flavor was overwhelmingly sweet, with a tantalizing bitter undertone to keep it interesting. The room around the abyssal seemed to fade as she focused on the new sensation, the room's temperature transforming into a pleasant warmth as a second bite cooled her.

At the same time, she was overcome by the novel taste of this ice cream, and nostalgia from when she'd had her own. Once her current bite had been reduced to the base cream it had been, she'd quietly place another one in. It could have taken one or thirty minutes, but before she'd realized it, she was through the first scoop and digging into the second. Here, the taste loosely resembled the ice cream Trinitite used to know, but chunks of this 'chocolate' interrupted its texture. Whenever Trinitite chewed, an explosion of dark flavor would punctuate the familiar taste.

By the time she'd gotten to the third scoop, it was starting to melt, meaning she didn't have as much time to enjoy it. Unlike the firm chunks of chocolate, though, the bands in it fell apart with the rest of the ice cream, punctuating the flavor in new ways. One band had a more intense version of the same flavor, dissolving soon after it met her tongue, while the other had both a different flavor and texture, seeming to hold together more as she shifted the ice cream around in her mouth.

Soon, Trinitite found her spoon scraping against the bottom of the paper cup, scooping the melted ice cream from the bottom and into her mouth. At Bikini, she'd probably start eating the cup to get the last out, but it didn't seem like anyone else was doing it, and the abyssal couldn't afford to ruin her disguise. She'd just have to be thorough with the provided spoon, then.

Had it been worth it? Trinitite leaned back, idly sliding the now-empty cup from one hand to the other. Yes, absolutely. She hadn't had a chance to forget herself and focus on something truly trivial since the fall of Bikini. Learning in the library had been fun, sure, and work was relaxing in it's own way, but there she'd still been focused on a task. She'd needed this.

Trinitite sighed, looking back up at the list of flavors behind the human. The room seemed to cool as her hull slowly returned to ambient temperature. That chocolate had been amazing… but she was used to fruit. Why had she never thought of mixing a bit of mango with her mother's ice cream? Firestorm probably would have laughed at her for the idea, but she wouldn't have had any issues convincing her to try it once she had.

Trinitite snorted. That is, if mango ice cream was any good. She stood, dropping the cup in one of the storage boxes the humans had been discarding their cups and returning to the back of the now-smaller line. Sure, she needed to get that pair of steel-toed boots tomorrow, but they couldn't cost that much, right? She could afford to explore a few more of these.

Spoiler: Author's notes

Me, after finishing and rereading this chapter: Wait, it's all fluff?

Anyways, I guess Trinitite did deserve a bit of a break, although I feel a bit weary about posting something that, let's face it, doesn't advance the story at all. Let me know how you feel about this chapter. Because of that, there isn't much I can say about this, although I have relied mostly on store-bought ice cream or a local place a mile from home, so if I got any part of Baskin-Robins wrong, let me know. Unlike the last big battle scene, I probably won't rewrite anything, but I'm all for making minor corrections even in less important parts.

 

[PyrrhicSteel]

Much like the library, the Baskin-Robbins fleet ended up kicking her out after they closed, although here they gave her until 22:00. In that time, she'd experimented with ten other flavors, and although some had a bizarre flavor to them, she couldn't say she hated any of them. Overall, the experience had cost her around thirty-one dollars. Had she used too much, compromising her logistics capabilities, or was this an efficient use of her money? She probably wasn't going to know until she tried to procure more supplies, either to restock her hold or procure tools to aid in her repairs. Her engineers were insistent they didn't need any help from human tools, but Trinitite wasn't going to let a bit of pride hamper her repair efforts.

Either way, Trinitite was going to have to limit herself to six or seven different flavors, next time. Even if it wasn't costly, Trinitite was having a hard time keeping track of all the flavors she'd had over the last three hours. It would be better for her time, stockpiles, and knowledge if she didn't overwhelm herself like that.

Another drawback of spending so much time in that Baskin-Robins was how much of it she lost. When she was banished from the building, almost every other human fleet had shut down, powering its lights off. Oddly, none of these places seemed to have a guard, even though the only thing apparently protecting their supplies from the outside world was some brittle glass.

What was that Elizabeth had said back at the warehouse? Something about the 'poe-lease?' To her, she'd only said they'd call the Navy if Trinitite tripped some automatic alarm, but if humans bothered to set up their advanced technology to alert this fleet after someone entered their business uninvited, they had to have some deterrent ability. Maybe they alerted everyone else as to what had happened, removing the aggressor's ability to peacefully deal with others? Perhaps they dealt with aggressors via force, either by calling the Navy, such as in her case, or using their own fleet's firepower. Most human fleets she'd encountered hadn't seemed particularly combat-capable, but the 'uniformed services' certainly were, and they couldn't be the only exceptions.

Knowing the aggressors would use your valuable base of operations as a battlefield probably wasn't an ideal situation for a human fleet commander, especially since Trinitite had personal experience in how destructive human weapons could be, but she guessed the threat of facing a strong fleet no matter who you raided had its advantages. Not having to pay money for weapons yourself, for example.

Following her chart, Elizabeth ventured east, into an unlabeled portion of the map she assumed would provide cover. Sure, she didn't need to sleep right now, but with most human fleets closing their bases and leaving the streets, there wasn't much else for her to do. Maybe, with it being night, Trinitite would have an easier time scouting the nearby naval station, but that was still much more dangerous then just waiting for the library to open again, and Trinitite hadn't nearly explored that option enough yet. Better to figure out what she couldn't learn there, then take any more unnecessary risks.

Plus, she needed to eat. Ice cream was amazing, but not particularly filling, and the sparse lunch she'd had with the humans hadn't been enough for her even then, despite only having one boiler running. Perhaps that was another reason she'd gotten so lost in the Baskin-Robbins. In the future, she'd have to resupply before ice cream.

Passing a few buildings that still had their lights on, but not much labeling to give Trinitite a hint as to their purpose, Trinitite ducked under a tree and entered a small forest. What little light filtered in from the fixtures lining the roads faded away, leaving the uncanny glow that permeated the sky as Trinitite's only light source. It was saying something that even through the trees, this mysterious light was enough to help her navigate.

Was there just so many lights that it was reflecting off the clouds? That felt like a ridiculous idea! There must be some sort of princess around. Guess 'Human Princesses' needed to be investigated, especially if she planned on getting any closer to the installation at Everett.

After crossing a small creek and settling in a tight collection of trees, Trinitite disembarked a small contingent of marines to establish a loose perimeter. While her landbound scouts waddled into the underbrush, ready to report any threats they noticed, The abyssal allowed herself to slump against a tree, sighing. It had been a long day, and while not particularly dangerous, it had been a storm of emotion. Now that she was sitting, some rest didn't seem that bad.

Seems... clear.

The tepid reply from her away team didn't inspire that much confidence, but Trinitite couldn't give her marines too much flak for it. Beyond basic damage control, they'd never really been trained, after all. Even Wa's dedicated to amphibious assaults didn't use them much, as while they had a low profile, they weren't too stealthy, were quite fragile, and grew tired far too quickly to see much use. Better to stick to their armored fighting vehicles, as they were at least somewhat resistant to enemy fire.

Not that they felt like it. The horror stories she'd heard of combat inland made her very glad of Her Princess's stance on the war. Abyssals were meant for the sea, and Installations were a rare exception, rather than an example.

Choosing to trust in her scouts, Trinitite allowed light to return to her tower, eyes flickering to light and bathing the area in front of her in a faint blue-orange glow. The ambient light was good enough for her to navigate, but if she wanted to read the labels on food, she'd need a bit more illumination, even if it made her nature pretty obvious.
As she shuffled through her hold, The Abyssal's thoughts drifted back to Dan's meal this afternoon. He'd had some sort of meat shaped into a disc, surrounded by that white stuff she'd had on the Pacific Lilly. Judging by the color of the whole thing, there had been some dark sauce involved as well, giving the whole thing a bit of a flavor. Despite the Wo-Class's reservations about any sauce, if it worked for Alton…

First step was the white stuff. Trinitite ruffled through her supplies, eventually withdrawing with a fairly distinctive bag of labeled 'White Rice.' So far, so good. For a moment, the Abyssal pondered the clear bag, wishing she'd held onto one of the Baskin-Robbins cups. The bag was full enough that Trinitite would probably lose half of the rice if she tried to eat from it, meaning she needed to pour some out before she could eat from it. Biting her lip in frustration, glanced around the cluster of trees she was hiding in. Alton had had some kind of container to eat from, and Trinitite hadn't thought far enough ahead to prepare one. Would something else work?

Fetching a flimsy box from her storage, Trinitite held its label to her face. Her eye's dim glow became a firm light when it came this close, and Trinitite quietly read the label aloud.

"Oops, all Berries?"

Oops? As in, 'I made a mistake?' If you put the effort into writing that on the box, then why not fix your mistake in the first place? The bizarrely distorted image of a human in some kind of uniform didn't help either.

Well, Trinitite didn't really care what was in the box, she just needed the box to eat from. Finding a seam, Trinitite popped the box open, sliding a bag filled with colorful... somethings out. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't a good idea to throw this back into her hold unlabeled, so it was looking like the Abyssal was going to have to eat something before she could get to the meal she wanted to try.

Sighing, the abyssal hefted the bag, giving it a bit of a shake. It felt far too light to be filling, and at the moment that was all she really cared about. Opening the bag, Trinitite spared a look at what she was about to eat. Maybe the dry balls of food looked better in natural light, but under the blue-orange glow of her eyes their unnatural color was a little unnerving. These were supposed to be berries? Bracing herself, Trinitite tipped the bag back, pouring the 'berries' into her mouth.

Crunch.

It was sweet, like the ice cream she'd just had, but instead of the smooth, creamy sensation she loved, the pellets sucked up moistrue, retaining their shape until Trinitite's teeth broke them apart. Before she knew it, the 'berries' had been reduced to a fine powder that stuck to her teeth, tongue, and the inside of her mouth, and the abyssal found herself unable to swallow. The Wo-class tried to spit it out, lowering the box and bag to her side, but her attempts to spit out the dust was quickly reduced to a dry cough. Trinitite shifted to her knees, hacking and heaving, but the dust still stubbornly clung to Trinitite's throat. Some saliva finally returned, and the Wo-class was finally able to clear her cheeks, but not much else. It was still too dry to swallow.

Drink. She needed something to drink.

Her crew offered a plastic container of 'Orange Juice' from her fridge, and almost desperately she spun the top off and took a swig. Like she'd expected, the yellow liquid purged her mouth and throat of the annoying dust, allowing her to finally swallow.
Alright, that hadn't gone well, but perhaps that was her fault. Trinitite lifted the bag again, this time removing a pinch of the dry nuggets and eating that, instead of filling her mouth like she was drinking avgas. With only six or seven of these things in her mouth, Trinitite found she didn't necessarily need the orange juice to break them down, but nevertheless she still took another swig from the bottle. Then another, because while she was still undecided on these fake berries, the Orange Juice was pretty darn good.

She continued like that for about thirty minutes, growing increasingly frustrated as to how long it was taking to eat. Like she'd suspected, the 'berries' were roughly 80% air, and since Trinitite was trying to resupply it felt like she was putting a lot of work in for not much progress.

Eventually, finally, the bag had been emptied, Trinitite crumpling the useless plastic up and stuffing it into her hold. Dealing with that was an issue for tomorrow's Trinitite. Now, she had a nice cardboard box to eat from. Sitting so the opened top was facing her, Trinitite took the face of the box and tore it away, leaving a fairly decent tray if she made sure to rest it at a slight angle. Retrieving the bag of rice from a bush next to her, Trinitite tore a corner off, pouring a pile of the small grains into the box.

Placing the bag back next to her, Trinitite turned her attention back to the box of rice in her lap. Contemplatively, she gave it a few small shakes, studying the food as it was shuffled from a pile to an even layer of rice. Cautiously, she stuck a finger in, shifting the rice around a little more.

Deep, she'd had her suspicions, but it seemed like the consistency was all wrong. Instead of the tender filling she'd had aboard the Pacific Lilly, the rice was solid, like she was messing with a particularly fine gravel. She plucked one of the rice particles out of the box, popping it into her mouth and chewing speculatively. Crunchy, too, but the taste wasn't all that off from what she remembered. She wasn't doing this right, was she?
Well, it wasn't like she was going to be able to un-rip the bag of rice. She was committed, now.

What else had Alton eaten? Some kind of meat disk, but there were several of those in her freezer. Eventually, she settled on what she had the most of: Hamburgers. Removing the package and untying the wire keeping it closed, Trinitite removed three 'patties,' plunging them into the box of rice so they stood on their sides, partially submerged. It didn't quite look like the right color, but no doubt Alton's meat disk had been coated in some sauce, and given the light she wasn't going to be able to get an accurate read on it's color anyways.

She returned the rest of the patties to her hold, allowing for her crew to return it to the freezer. Now, for a sauce. Trinitite suppressed a shudder, especially as that would disturb the rice and precariously-balanced hamburger patties in her lap. It wasn't like all sauce was bad, just… strong. Trinitite just needed to find a sauce that would complement the taste of rice and hamburgers!

That got a chuckle out of her. Like she'd know any better. Better to go with that bottle of… war-chester-sher sauce, or whatever it was called, that she'd already opened. That didn't seem all that terrible, although Trinitite had an urge to bomb whomever had named the damn thing.

Fishing the bottle from her hold, Trinitite held it up to her face, trying to read it again.

"Work… No, Workest… uh… ter, shi, re?"

Scratch that, bombing was too impersonal a punishment. Trinitite needed the chance to ask them how to say this damn name.

Whatever this stuff was, Trinitite popped the lid open, upending the bottle and sloshing some onto the hamburgers and rice. She'd hoped adding liquid would soften the rice up, like with the loosely-defined 'berries,' but no such luck. It slid over the hamburgers and through the rice, only slightly staining it. Where she'd dripped too much sauce, it soaked through the cardboard and into her pants, leaving a spot or two on her legs noticeably wet.

Whatever. She'd done it wrong, obviously, but this was still a meal. The Abyssal took one of the hamburgers, stirring the rice a bit to mix the sauce in, before taking a bite herself.

Snap.

It tasted like ice. Only by furiously rubbing the bite with her tongue could Trinitite get a faint taste of the meat, and she was far too hungry to do that much work. Sighing, Trinitite reached into her box of rice, scooping out a handful of the white grains and pouring it into her mouth.

Crunch. Crunch.

Well, it tasted good, at least. Like she had guessed, the sauce added an interesting dimension to the rice, now that it was diluted by something. Still, Trinitite found she had to take another swig of Orange Juice, following it up with another bite of the frozen hamburger.

…

She really needed to read those cookbooks. It was becoming very clear that some human food was fine to just eat, out of the packaging, while others needed preparation of some kind before it was worth the time to eat it. She'd have to look into those after she'd finished the rice, hoping to figure out what she could use and what she couldn't, at least. Best case, only about 20% of her haul from the Warehouse raid was currently unusable, but Trinitite wasn't hoping for that.

She was still going to finish that bag of rice, though. This wasn't particularly good, but it wasn't all that bad, either. With a more content sigh, Trinitite scooped another handful of rice into her mouth, the sound of her chewing fading into the sparse rain pattering against the trees above her.

Spoiler: Author's notes

I'd say you shoulda cooked all of that, but since you're galley's trashed, I guess you were in a lose-lose situation, huh Trin?

Anyways, I didn't expect to write another Trinitite's food blog chapter, but when I was trying to timeskip the night I realized we had a unique opportunity of seeing an Abyssal attempt to reverse-engineer her coworker's cooking. Seemed interesting enough to write, and since it ballooned into chapter size here's some unplanned fluff.

I've never had the cereal I mentioned, but I imagine it probably isn't much to speak about when eaten dry.