Anchovy Peaches L - Reply, Riposte and Recalcitrants
The Admiral looked up from the report and looked at Callahan. "Five hundred meters?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," the nervous Marine answered. "Ten for ten in the bull ring, and no problems with fire discipline. They are snipers with their breath weapons and energy beams. They picked up areas they are and are not allowed very quickly. How their formation disperses is a sight to behold. I could have 200 meters of clear ground, say 'dismissed' and suddenly I'm by myself with no one traversing the empty space, just gone."
The admiral nodded at that. Closed and even locked doors were not slowing down those looking after various people, or performing their duties. "Problems? They sound like ideal soldiers."
"The idea of uniforms being uniform seems to be a bit of a sticking point. Some wear the modern kit. Some are wearing kit from the Meiji Period, and everything in between. Some are army, some navy. Predictably, the division between Japanese and American uniforms falls along where the movie came out, although a couple of the Zillas wear the Foreign Legion's battle dress. Gorgo insists on something Nelson would have recognized," Callahan explained, "And don't get me started on Rank insignia."
"Yes, one of the nurses looking out for my house wears 6-star rank on her nurse's uniform," Crawford noted then saw Callahan couldn't manage a chuckle for that. "But that's not what's bothering you Major."
The marine sighed. "This morning, I woke late, because someone turned off my alarm. I woke to the smell of blueberry pancakes. I rushed downstairs to look around, and Carlos was making them. It was all I could do not to grab the fire extinguisher. I mean I can burn soup, and Carlos had even less interest in cooking. If our meals don't come from the mess, they come out of the microwave. I'd never seen him at such ease as he was making the pancakes and unlike the stereotype, there was no huge mess to clean up. He was just pouring, flipping and stacking, and he looked happy. And watching both of us was The Silver Mare."
The Admiral sighed. "Neither you nor Carlos are betraying your wife by getting along with your lives. She likely would have wanted that. These `Smols` as Admiral Richardson called them are very much like ship-girls. They fiercely want to be useful, they want to do well for the people they care about. They're advancing theories that the Abyssals are ship-girls who've lost touch with their humans, either their crews, their nation or the human race as a whole. If The Silver Mare was created from a template that Godzilla provided, he probably used the ship-girls as a basis. She isn't trying to supplant Maria, she's just trying to look after you two."
"So, Northampton and you had a talk about this kind of thing?" Callahan said.
"Many long and sometimes frustrating to terrifying talks," the Admiral said, "There are a lot of things that we gloss over because we see things one way and assume that if it looks like us, it thinks like us. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. You've done training of new recruits, a soldier and a civilian can seem two different beasts, but we're all people. Ship-girls don't quite fit as humans, but they're close. The only danger is letting her boss you around. Wanting what's best for you isn't the same as doing what's necessary, and many are still technically civilians."
"I have to wonder what possessed him," Callahan said.
"Beyond what he said that night? Ask him, he isn't shy," Crawford said, then looked at the tray of coffee, sliced fruit and crackers with cheese that had appeared beside them. Crawford knew who was beneath it and that it would be politely insisted on by the largest of the Smols, "Probably looked at who Carlos was interested in, to ease acceptance of a more motherly figure."
"Hasbro(TM) is going to sue us if this gets out," Callahan said as he took the black coffee nearest him and a couple of apple slices.
"I'm more worried about requests to make more of them," Crawford said.
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Victory and Constitution hadn't been expecting a squad of marines blocking their plane, nor an angry Admiral Crawford leading them.
"Open up the suitcases," the Admiral said, his usual humor gone.
"You'd look at a lady's underthings?" Victory asked coquettishly.
"Either you do it, or I'll have John Ericsson do it," he said, not a smile, not a glimmer.
The two tall ships headed towards the table that had been prepared for just such a need.
The pair opened the suitcases and looked anywhere else as Corporal Wilcox and a female nurse uncovered the Abyssal destroyer hidden within each of the pair of cases.
Crawford handed the tall ships each a clipboard, while Wilcox handed a clipboard to each captain of the destroyers.
"There are rules," Crawford said, "And don't put 'he just followed me home' or you'll be thinking up a better explanation in the brig," Crawford said, he looked at the destroyer captains, "That goes for you two as well."
Sheepishly, the two tall ships filled out the pages of paperwork. The ships' captain's paperwork was simpler, basically verifying they were going of their own free will and that they'd have to be vetted properly upon reaching their destination.
He surveyed the paperwork, then Crawford saluted. "Have a pleasant day, and remember they aren't cleared yet."
Victory and Constitution saluted, then they and their charges boarded their plane.
"How'd you know," Wilcox asked as they watched the plane taxi.
"Ship-girls get predictable after a while," Crawford said and glanced at the Corporal who looked at him as if from a nightmare.
"I don't think I want to be able to predict that, sir," she said.
"They first teach it in Sergeant school," Crawford said as the plane took off.
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Mutsu lay face down in the water, her legs languidly waving in the air. Godzilla knew full well the snorkeling battleship was teasing him, but the instant he would withdraw his hands, she'd utterly panic. Nagato hadn't teased as seductively, but her panic at being face down in water unsupported with only a snorkel providing air had been very real. For both, they would panic despite the water being only waist deep or less for all three of them.
That Gordon was having similar issues, as were the entire Swedish Squadron, did little to alleviate the dissonance of ships being afraid of the water. Swimming came easily for the Humans and the Abyssals, but ships seemed terrified with the possibility of more than standing slightly above the water.
The subs being there in force as lifeguards helped both with the ships' concerns, and the acceptability of the closeness of the sub-girls. Even the most sub-phobic was still immensely grateful that someone else was there if the water suddenly ignored the laws of physics and tried to spontaneously drown someone.
He lifted Mutsu up and pointed to where Nagato sat in the lagoon, with a dozen other ship-girls completely submerged save for their snorkels. "Yes," he told her before she had a chance to voice her objections. She swam over, keeping her head above the water the whole time.
Godzilla looked over at Kirishima. The Kongo-sisters were even more nervous than the Nagato-class had been. They all knew that the prank war in Yokosuka and Kongo's private war at Nishinoshima had not ended well for them, and they all expected payback. Putting your life in the hands of someone ready, willing and eager to prank you filled none of the battlecruisers with hope.
But Gordon and Godzilla had told all the trainers: one, NO ONE was to prank anyone during this training. Anyone who broke that rule would pay as dearly as The Joker and Godzilla could think of. And two, the terrors the Kongos would create and embellish in their heads would be worse then anything any of them could come up with, and the growing paranoia of the Yokosuka master pranksters delighted everyone. Gordon had added the Biblical quote from Romans 12:20 'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.' Everyone loved the idea that they could completely prank the pranksters by just being an exemplar of polite professionalism.
"You look quite fetching in your suit. Are you ready to begin?" Godzilla said and smiled.
Kirishima could barely nod.
"Just think about Tennryu, and asking if she's scared," Godzilla said.
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Gordon looked around the empty shoreline. "I'm not going to say this is nuts, because that's so obvious." They'd been airdropped near the Supply Princess' base, and swam in underwater to avoid detection. Kushi had dropped off a short company of Smols and skedaddled. Ecchi-Nein was providing the same service to Godzilla's group further north.
Gotengo smiled. "That's why it'll work," she said and walked ashore. She'd gone for the 6" with 12" stinger outfit. It reduced her torpedo armament to three quintuples a side, but she felt better about her fighting power. Sharlin, John Ericsson, G'Quan and Omega headed onto the shore with Gordon bringing up the rear. Everyone launched their scout planes as soon as they were on dry ground.
"We should be in the palace at first light, that oughta shake things up," Gotengo said, "Just gotta do the paperwork."
Gordon was not happy about the way this inevitably had to go. No moonlight and radar receivers at maximum helped. They started hiking over the mix of crushed coral and basaltic rock. Patrols were sparse and easily avoided. That spoke to serious issues with planning, or manpower. If they could do it, then others could do it.
Part of it could be that the former Abyssals still sort of seemed Abyssal from a distance, he thought, And that in most militaries, once you're on base and not trying to go where you shouldn't, no one cares.
The first hitch came from their glimpse of a lone warehouse, well-separated from all others with more guards than there should have been, and these guards were not standard Abyssal classes.
"I don't remember any reports of something requiring that kind of security," Gotengo said.
John Ericsson piped up, "There are people raiding the warehouses, they're not acting like the disciplined locals. Their behavior is more like raiders."
"I haven't seen any battle damage," Sharlin said of her scouting. The other two nodded.
"You don't think," Gotengo pointed towards the lone warehouse, "Of course you do, because I'm thinking the same. The Princess currently known as Shark Dentures sold the secret to Supply Princess."
"Change of plans," John Ericsson said, "Unless you have a silencer for battleship caliber guns?"
"They're supersonic, so it wouldn't help," Gordon said, "Everyone got their knives or equivalent?"
They nodded and knelt down. Nearly a brigade of fairies quickly assembled from the ship-girls, joined up with the Smols and disappeared into the night. Their ship-girls now had to wait and count the minutes between now and sunrise.
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Godzilla surfaced slightly. He set Nagato, Mutsu and their scuba gear ashore, then they helped the man ashore when he'd dismissed his rigging.
"If that's so useful," Mutsu asked, "Why don't you use it more often?"
"The form affects my mind," Godzilla said, "I didn't do that with the Smols, but it affects me. And to be honest, that one is a bit creepy."
Nagoto and Mutsu exchanged confused looks, then Nagato blushed.
"What?" Mutsu asked and noted the shy nod to Godzilla the man who was staring at them with a wistful smile.
"What, gray gray is a good look for you," Godzilla said.
"You're just a dirty old man," Mutsu said.
"First time I've heard you complain about it," Godzilla said. Behind them, Ecchi-Nein surfaced and climbed ashore, then released her cargo of Smols who fanned out to cover the perimeter.
"Apparently it was not as big a surprise as we had hoped for," Ecchi-Nein said as the Smols led a man in working clothes towards them.
"Uh, we appreciate the rescue, but other than getting a few things in the stores, we really don't need rescuing," the man said, "Unless all the other Abyssals have gone away."
"No, there's several Princess' fleets heading this way," Godzilla said.
The man blanched and turned around and began jogging away. "Follow me," he called as he moved over the rocks.
"This is not turning out like I expected," Nagato said and began following him. Mutsu, Ecchi-Nein followed and Godzilla brought up the rear, the Smols had vanished. Godzilla wasn't worried, you always wanted your kids to surpass you in some way.
Anchovy Peaches LI - Diplomacy and Where to Find It
Anchovy Peaches LI - Diplomacy and Where to Find It
It had been a LONG time since Godzilla was amid a parade of humans. Yet that was what was happening. He'd been around humans long enough to know that they were not leading him into a trap, intentionally. While they could control their expressions, they had so many tells they were unaware of and couldn't control, that deceiving him was nearly impossible.
"Don't you want to be free?" Nagato asked.
"We pay less taxes and have fewer restrictions," one fisherman said, "I can pay my taxes for a month by one Saturday working the warehouse and another Saturday making cookies. Why would I go back to paying 40% to people who won't protect me?"
Nagato shuddered at that. Godzilla had heard the stories of massacres, but he'd also heard the stories of places that just went silent, but activity continued. Like here.
But just because they believe, Godzilla reminded himself as they approached the installation where more Abyssals than humans were present. The Abyssals looked nervous at the almost festival atmosphere of the small crowd surrounding Godzilla and the trio of ship-girls.
The Abyssals guarding the gates seemed bemused at the approach.
"You want to worry about something," Godzilla quietly told Nagato, "Worry that if our intel was so bad, what have Gordon's group walked into."
Mutsu and Nagato nodded as they approached the gate guards.
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The blinker light from the top of the warehouse signaled 'V' in Morse.
"Let's go," Gordon said and the small force moved through the darkness. The eight guards came into sight, and the impression of walking into Medusa's courtyard couldn't be shaken. The guards were reaching, yelling, or fleeing, yet were immobile and their wounds were small.
"What did they do?" John Ericsson asked.
"Caught them unawares and snuffed their crews and their boilers," Gordon said, "Abyssals still have both and while they can swim underwater, they can't operate normally without surface rig."
"Poison gas is illegal," Gotengo said as she passed through the horrified statues. She touched one. It was still warm.
"There are other ways," Gordon said.
Several of the Smiths stood on the door latch, awaiting the ship-girls' approach. Then they cut the mechanism and rappeled to the ground. Once they were clear, Gordon opened the door and saw the small figure in the handlights of the Smols.
She looked at him and blenched even more than her Abyssal pale. "You're Captain Douglas Gordon. You're here to kill my mother." She bowed her head. "Kill me instead, then my mother can fight back."
Gordon touched her chin and raised the girl's face to look at him. "Since you know who I am." He let the girl nod. "You know I have to fight someone." The girl gulped and nodded again. "Why don't you help us fight these invaders, then we can talk to your mom? After all, my plan was to beat up these attackers anyway, I just figured the talking would be first."
The little girl nodded.
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Harried was the word Nagato would have used to describe the command staff. They barely spared a glance at the trio escorted by a couple of Abyssals and a few humans. Adorable was the second. The Northern Princess looked so much like Angie trying to act like an adult it nearly set off the most stereotypical Nagamon.
The Seaport Hime who was also here seemed the junior partner in this.
"Go away," the Northern Princess said, again almost a stereotype, "We have three enemy fleets bearing down on us. If you're here to evacuate the humans, take them. They have done nothing to deserve what is coming."
"There's five, and while we appreciate the offer, I think they would prefer to stand and fight," Godzilla said. The staff and the Princesses looked around nervously while the humans with them grumbled their agreement. "Humans can get very attached to things they care about. What I offer is this, diplomatic relations with your nation, and we can have a fleet here to support you, all we need is landing rights for our wounded and a means to coordinate with your forces."
"And afterward, endless interference," the Northern Princess said, "I will not be a vassal state." She looked pointedly at Nagato and Mutsu.
"Your fleets would preclude that," Godzilla said, and laid down the secret Moth-mission which had been revealed to him and a few others. He smiled, but the Princesses seemed inordinately suspicious of this interaction. "I understand you like Reppus," he said, intensifying her suspicions as he pulled out what the Mothras and Battras had been making, "But to understand the Reppu, you must be the Reppu."
The onesie he held before him had the appropriate markings, proportions and even a bubble canopy that functioned as a backpack. He felt a little like a snake charmer as the little Abyssal's eyes never left the garment as he turned it to let her see all of it.
The Northern Princess shook her head. "Trinkets. Silk, burns," she said warily.
"That silk wouldn't burn if you laid it on the surface of the sun," Godzilla said, to forestall an angry reaction from the Mothras who'd made the gift, scouted the place out, but remained hidden. "There's something else you aren't saying."
The little Abyssal sighed. "We predicted you'd approach the `reasonable` Abyssals, well your fleets will be headed to the Supply Princess, not here. Her forces fell or were subverted and she's vastly more valuable than I."
Nagato froze. They had expected a fight here, and negotiations with the Supply Princess. Now it looked like they would have a fight in both places, perhaps even the Deepest Princess would be under attack.
Godzilla had carried the costume over and the Seaport Princess looked at the Northern, who nodded, then nodded to Godzilla. He unzipped it and Nagato stepped up to help her into it. The little girl hugged herself as she settled into it.
"Thank you, for your attempt at least," the Northern Princess said.
He knelt so he was eye-to-eye with her. "Listen kid, there's two things you don't know about the Earth, one is me, the other is Captain Douglas Gordon."
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The barracks where most of the Abyssal force was sleeping off a night of excesses vanished as 24 High Cap shells arrived. Time on Target barrages were an automatic thing with broadside salvos, but Gordon had to adjust trajectory and powder charge to allow two guns per turret to achieve the same. But he had achieved it. While the entire force wasn't immolated in the explosion, most were and the remainder were heavily damaged. A 12-inch round took out the blockhouse near the harbor, and precise 8-inch fire picked off the cruisers and destroyers who were desultorily guarding their portions of the spoils. Those who stumbled out of the wreckage got precise 16-inch superheavies in vital areas.
As fast as it had started, in moments it was over. No radio signal had gone out, no warning. Gordon's force moved to take government house and secure the Princess. Smols, the ship-girls' scout planes and a few of the Dalek Marines had raced ahead. The native Abyssals were starting to realize the occupation was over, but worse had arrived. Then they saw the little princess and the potential baying mob forming up behind Gordon and his `pirates` were cautious allies.
The halls of the government house, even this early, had Abyssal clerks aplenty. They were dithering until they saw Gordon and the Princess. Some ran ahead to get doors open and others to break out hidden weapons. The force that stormed into the main conference room was united in one idea. They halted as they saw their beloved princess under the guns of two Re-class.
"You will - " the port side Re-class said, until she realized that Gordon had his pitch fork out and wasn't slowing down from the dead run he'd entered at. The starboard Re-class saw Gotengo also charging. The moment of indecision was ended as they forgot that they were in arms reach of an installation they had cowed by threatening her daughter and her subjects, both of whom had charged in unhurt to rescue her.
The Supply Depot Princess grabbed both by the throat and slammed them together so hard their heads were mashed flat. She laid the stunned aviation battleships on the floor and put a foot on each and ripped their spines from their bodies.
Gordon and Gotengo halted, just out of reach. "Ma'am, we've secured your daughter, destroyed most of their forces, though I suppose your security troops will police up the others," Gordon said as the Princess seated herself and by glance commanded the removal of the corpses, "I have been empowered to offer a mutual defense pact against the Red Princess and have been asked to open formal diplomatic relations."
"No, the Red Princess is no longer my concern," the Supply Depot Princess said, "As for diplomacy, what could you offer that we do not have already? Save meddling, which we do not want. You will be granted safe passage to return to such destination as is your choice." She glanced up at the silent crowd. "You want your territory back, it was never yours to begin with. You want free passage through my waters, no, they are ours through the last argument of kings. In six months, send an envoy, not a diplomat, who can present a case where we benefit from trade." She glanced to one of the clerks. "As recompense, we will provide you copies of all our intelligence on the Red Princess, her base on Bikini," she paused to stare at Gordon, "And her network of human allies. You may go."
Gordon nodded and collected his troops with a glance.
"You can't -" Sharlin began.
"She can, and has," Gordon said, "We are rewarded and we have another chance in six months." He led the fuming cruisers out past many more Abyssals than he'd ever seen before, most ashamed at the dismissive treatment the ship-girls had gotten. The force assembled at the docks to await the intelligence package that they'd been promised.
It arrived in a few minutes, and the force departed.
"Now that they can't hear us," Gotengo said while motioning the others closer, "Do you want to tell us what that was all about?"
"I thought you knew me," Gordon replied.
"Nothing you do surprises me," Gotengo said, "That's not the same as being able to predict you."
He opened the packet and handed a page over to her. "We have to turn the fleet around. We got the overall view right, but missed the details," he said, "Now we have a bigger problem. Worse, we're infiltrated from top to bottom, assuming this isn't a list of targets we're supposed to destroy to make the Abyssals' job easier."
Gotengo let out a sigh and handed the papers back. They disappeared within Captain Gordon where they'd be transferred to the High Command. "I do note that you left all four Gameras behind. Spies?"
"This Princess' force will be our allies once we prove ourselves, and the kid is the leverage the Abyssals used," Gordon replied, "When we guard her from their next attempt, that's the tipping point. The infiltrator is there, and Gameras will be hidden until they roast the bastard alive."
"Ah," John Ericsson realized, "Not just spies or bodyguards, Ninjas."
Nagato walked up the slope at Yokosuka, the figure she saw made her boilers stutter. She and Tenryu had encountered a ship-boy, really a ship-man, running across the water. Tenryu had been going through an extremely chunni phase and had actually threatened him with her drawn sword, he'd rather meekly accompanied her and Tenryu back to Yokosuka.
There he'd learned about summoning his rigging, which was weird in and of itself, no nation used 30 centimeter guns, even the French used 305 millimeters. So with fast battleship speed and armor, and a turret layout like Tone-class seaplane cruisers, no one quite knew what to make of him. Well, that's not true, Nagato thought as she schooled her near leer, Every ship-girl on the base knew what they'd like to make of him.
She frowned as she realized he'd looked right at her as she'd been leering at him. If a ship-girl caught an officer looking at her that way, there'd be words, maybe a fist, and definitely a report. But generally his shy smile just vanished and he'd look ashamed. Although today, he just chuckled.
"What are you doing so far out here, Number 26?" she asked, his refusal to take a name or even a nickname was another troublesome thing about him. The rocky terrain had no buildings anywhere near it, no trees, it only had a view of the sea. She knew he preferred to be alone. A month ago on Valentine's Day, someship, and everyone had guessed whom, had given him a work order to clean the grease traps at the three, large mess halls. A job that had him in a Tyvec suit stinking of slightly rotten food from 0200 on Valentine's Day to almost 0900 the next day. He hadn't complained, the traps practically gleamed like they were new, but the literal metric ton of chocolate that had been destined for him from every hand went undelivered. When asked why he didn't question the order he simply said 'the job obviously needed doing'.
"Thinking on the order the Admiral gave, that I 'need to participate in more group activities'. The implication that I need to act more like a native," he said, "Strange, considering I've always attended classes, have performed adequately on sorties and I've never been told there were complaints about my performance, teamwork or support of others. Unless you are here to tell me there were."
"There aren't," Nagato said, she had enjoyed his almost puppylike eagerness at first, he'd seemed like a destroyer for the first few months, then things had slowly changed. His performance was and remained exemplary, he rarely if ever rose to the teasing he got, taking it with stolidity. Yet, the nonwork separation between him and the others had grown. He took on extra work rather than going on fun trips, he'd avoided every party no matter how great the victory. Even when he'd personally dragged victory from the jaws of defeat, he'd avoided the celebration.
His almost monkish behavior had been a growing concern. Especially after the hot springs incident, when the Kongo sisters had tricked him into 'bathing native', i.e., naked, while all of them wore bathing suits. Despite correct use of a tenugui towel to preserve some little modesty, they'd clearly humiliated him, but he'd said nothing at the time. Although that had been the last outing he'd accompanied them on, or even participating in an activity any of the Kongo-class were involved in.
Lately, even the destroyers whom he doted on couldn't drag him out to any leisure activities on either holidays or on leave. His dealing with Tenryu couldn't have been colder. She'd `ordered` him to perform some demeaning task, he'd done it, did it superbly, hadn't reported the breech in protocol and when questioned later had not acknowledged it was an `order` merely a suggestion about something that needed doing, in an eerie precursor to 'The Valentine's Day Incident'.
"I am curious about one thing, and since we're alone I'll ask," he said, "What did I do to make you hate me so much?"
Nagato could only stare in utter confusion.
"You've got a smile that lights up the whole room, but as soon as you realize I'm looking, you instantly scowl, like you're doing right now," he said, "I can only assume you hate me seeing you happy, so I just wonder what I'd done to you to make you that way."
"Wha?" Nagato could only say.
"Well, I guess the commandant of the camp can't be seen as having weaknesses," he said and shrugged, "I guess Tenryu has weaknesses enough for everybody else. I mean the only thing missing from her performance as the sadistic, Japanese prison guard stereotype from Allied propaganda films is the buck teeth and the Coke bottle glasses."
Nagato shuddered at his interpretation of the chunni cruiser's behavior. "Why didn't you tell Admiral Goto about this?"
As he stared at her as the words 'commandant' and 'camp' bubbled up in her mind. Too many pieces fell together in her mind. "You think this is a prison camp?"
"Oh, it's a very nice one, better the Village than Harbin. But the whizbang Buck Rogers stuff, with handheld televisions, the tiny computers, radar ranges and the like you went overboard with all of that. I half-expected to see flying cars too," he said.
"But you were free to go wherever you wish, we didn't hold you anywhere, you sortied into combat with your rigging deployed," Nagato said, "How were ordinary soldiers going to stop someone with twelve 30cm guns?"
"Let's take the rigging as fact for a bit," he said, "It was never the soldiers. Every time I looked around, there was another battleship or several. Like right now. Twelve 11.8 inch guns, and there behind me was you or your sister with 16.1 inch guns, or a pair or more of Kongo-class with 14 inch guns, all of them watching and ready to react the instant I stepped out of line. Especially when we sortied. I was up near the front and behind, like a political officer, was a battleship with bigger guns than mine."
Nagato was horrified that the near universal captivation by the ship-boy could be interpreted so negatively by him.
"As for the sorties, I entered a building, and I woke up in the water in the baths without a mark on me, and usually had someone screaming at me for being a pervert, despite every time I returned I was publicly ordered to the baths," he said, "It was a clever bit of staging. You never let me wake up in my own bed and go to the baths later. So were those real, some drug-induced illusion you'd primed me for, some of each?"
"But you fought so bravely, how could you think they weren't real?" Nagato asked.
"Because I felt the injuries, saw the pain on the other faces, even if it was a hallucination, maybe death was real and the pain seemed real. And there was always a gun to my head from the armed leash you'd sent along," he said, "Funny how we never brought any evidence back, no pieces of the Abyssals, just from an intelligence standpoint that makes no sense, unless their remains didn't matter, unless it wasn't real."
Nagato shook her head, How did he reason it out this way after everything he's been through? She was still reeling and couldn't ask, I can see the thread, but its base is insanity.
"You've talked with the other ship-girls, from half-a-dozen nations," Nagato said, "You've talked with Admiral Richardson!"
"Yes, figuring out who are the prisoners and who are the warders has been a difficult task," he said, "I've only worked out a few warders, but convincing an Allied prisoner to play along." He looked at her and added darkly, "There were many ways the Axis had of motivating people. He has a daughter he mentioned."
Nagato felt fury. "You think we'd hurt a child?"
"The Rape of Nanking, Comfort Women, the Bataan Death March, the Prison Camp at Tenko, cannibalism, Unit 731," he said, meeting her anger with cold indifference, "Even giving you the benefit of the doubt, you don't have to harm the child, you just have to convince him you will." The change to a wide smile stunned Nagato and she braced herself.
"But, you have nothing to worry about," he said, "After all, your puppet the Admiral ordered I socialize more, acclimatize myself to your culture." The smile vanished. "So I'll give you both a very Japanese answer." He gave an odd salute. "Be seeing you."
Nagato saw the fairy crew scrambling out of Number 26 and running away.
She never had a chance to scream as flames began shooting out of his ears, nose and mouth, then burning through his eyes as she scrambled back from the intense heat.
Only one thing aboard a ship burned that hot, the propellant for the guns. She ran, not wanting to be caught in a magazine explosion, but more not wanting to see a ship explode and sink as had befallen her sister as she'd sailed in to harbor for a happy reunion.
When she looked back, she realized to her horror there'd be no explosion. His crew had distributed the propellant throughout the hull and were melting him down. She watched in revulsion as the armor plates fell away as red hot scales and the hull began melting, internal framing weakened and he began collapsing in on himself.
"No," she said, knowing she could do nothing, "NO!"
Nagato was sitting up in darkness. She looked around the room and saw her sister sleeping fitfully. Godzilla who'd been sleeping between them was missing.
It was just a dream, she told herself, Just a nightmare.
Mutsu's blood curdling scream as she threw off the covers made Nagato think her sister had suffered another magazine explosion. Mutsu rolled off her futon and came to a stop clutching her belly with her legs folded tight against her, crying like a wounded child.
Godzilla entered carrying a tray of mugs of tea and marched straight to Mutsu, setting the tray down before kneeling to hug the sobbing battleship.
"I could feel her inside me, so active, I wanted to be a mother. Then something - and she just exploded inside me," Mutsu said, she looked at Godzilla, "Is there something wrong with us, that we'll pass on to our daughters?"
Nagato cringed at that, that her class had some failure that would doom their progeny.
Godzilla just kissed Mutsu's forehead and gently rubbed her belly. "When the Repair Princess was working, she would have found anything like that," Godzilla said, "And more importantly, she would have told you. It was just a nightmare, a bad one, but just a nightmare. When you're ready, we'll have enough battlewagons to reenact Jutland. Go hug your sister, you both need it."
Mutsu sniffled a little and stood to sit down beside Nagato and hug her. Nagato hugged her back. Godzilla brought the mugs of tea within reach as he enclosed both of them in a hug. "It's just the Abyss hitting us where it can reach us. Or maybe this is normal for Abyssals," he said, "For me, it was my first clutch of eggs infested with a parasite. Never be ashamed of inventing surgery. If we'd had that, we wouldn't have lost so many who just faded away. But they never infected eggs. So we watched them crack the shells, and die within minutes and the parasite burst out." Godzilla kissed both battleships. "Even knowing it wasn't real, it still hurt."
Mutsu chuckled. "I'm not laughing at your pain," she said, "But Godzilla King of the Monsters as the angry dad."
"Yes," Nagato said and smiled as she snuggled against the man, "I am going to ask Tenryu why she acts like someone who'd be thrown out of the kempeitai for Human Rights violations. She and the rest of us drove a wonderful young man to suicide because he thought he was in a prison camp. Maybe I should separate 'being on duty' person from who I really am."
"I hate to tell you," Mutsu said, "Everyone already knows about Nagamon."
The Seaport Princess tearing into the room, without opening the door had them all go to alert. When she grabbed all three and began sobbing they relaxed a bit. "It's horrible! A nightmare!" she wailed, then devolved into incoherent blubbering.
The Reppu kamikazied into Godzilla and she wrapped her arms around him as far as they could go. He set her on his shoulder as he stood up.
"You can lower your landing gear through the slits in the wings," Godzilla said and shifted to keep the girl on his shoulder as she struggled for a moment, then stuck her arms out of the costume. She pulled them in with a whirring sound, then back out with another. The battleships began to make a high, whistling sound. He felt Hoppou squirming, so he set her down on the tarmac to let her race away.
"Dakka! Dakka! Dakka!" she shouted as she ran past them.
"Well, we've got air cover, I say we advance to the briefing room," Godzilla said. He looked over at Ecchi-Nein who seemed unaffected, "No nightmares?"
"I haven't slept," the sub mentioned, "She and I were talking all night," The sub suddenly blushed.
"You were mothering her and she was eating it up," Godzilla said, and watched the sub turn bright pink, "If she avoided the nightmares the rest of us had, you did her a favor."
"But my nightmare is still there, and I'm awake!" the Seaport Princess whined.
"One disaster at a time, and yours is next," Nagato assured the huge Abyssal and was practically absorbed by the resultant hug.
The conference room was almost too normal. The third princess who awaited them looked like a more extreme version of Shark Dentures.
"The Greatest Depth Princess I presume," Godzilla said.
The woman nodded. "They've changed direction." She indicated the fleet markers on the map that had been heading for the island. From the time stamps, sometime during the night they'd turned west. "And it isn't the five you thought. It's eight. The advanced force of the three aimed at the Supply Depot Princess found and lost a quick method to overcome her. Gordon's force is now available."
"They aren't coming here anymore," the Seaport Princess moaned, "It would have been so fun!"
Nagato nudged Godzilla and showed him the screen of her smartphone, the location of the relief fleet headed towards the Supply Depot Princess' base and the other forces distributed across the Western Pacific.
The Greatest Depth Princess put a small Godzilla toy approximately where the fleet was. Godzilla moved it to its correct position, then put a quarter where the American force who were heading west towards Dutch Harbor to support the defense of the Northern Princess' lands, and a 100-yen coin where Goto's force were positioned to move in support of either force. And a loonie where the 108 were transiting between Taiwan and the Philippines.
Godzilla looked at the Greatest Depth and Northern Princesses, both nodded. The Greatest Depth Princess set several small metal nuts in various locations in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. The Northern Princess set several magnets at Attu and north of it in the Bering Sea.
"She can't think she can run the strait between Hokkaido and Honshu," Mutsu said.
"No, she won't run the Kurils then the gap between Sakhalin and Hokkaido," the Northern Princess said and made several more marks on the map, "She won't risk Vladivostok, when Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky opens the way to Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Khabarovsk. Why hit a major naval base when other plums are on the table? The Trans-Siberian railway only matters if they send ship-girls east. Otherwise, it's just Gangut and Tashkent."
"And what the Americans and Japan send," Nagato said as she studied the map.
"They're, we're out of position," Mutsu said as she studied the map, "Maybe Godzilla can do 90 knots, but the rest of us can't. The Standards at Sendai aren't any more help."
"So much for letting the ship-girls deal with this treacherous bitch," the Greatest Depth Princess said.
The Seaport Princess drove a metal tipped finger through the massed fleets of the Red Princess. "No, this time we join the fight."
------------------------------
Fleets turned and units went on high alert. The ship-girl Iowas, several fast cruisers and destroyers detached from the other 'fast' battleships and with three ship-only Nimitz-class carrier groups, raced for the Russian coast.
Farther south, Captain Douglas Gordon and Joshamee Gibbs tried the dangerous experiment of putting the entire rest of their fleet onboard their manifested hulls, and raced north at best sustainable speed. The race was on. They knew where the Red Princess' allied fleets were, and they were not running faster than their cruising speed and sheltering under cloud cover which disguised their actual position but clearly marked their general direction, and everyone was watching the storms' borders for ships surreptitiously slipping away.
The Russians sent Gangut and Tashkent north by air, while the Canadians linked up with air transports on the ice and ferried several squadrons of lighter warships south.
Admiral Richardson's forces were tasked with guarding that all of this was not a massive feint for an attack on Japan or other Pacific island bases.
The Greatest Depth Princess had taken Godzilla aside, and taught him how to summon his hull. The massive, yet weightless thing he'd been using was in stark contrast to being back in a physical body. He'd selected the rigging, then transformed into the hull. Forces from the three Princesses, the Nagatos and Ecchi-Nein had boarded as he set off.
Ecchi-Nein had the northern Princess asleep and cuddled against her as the child had exhausted herself being the grown-up, the Seaport Princess had Ecchi-Nein cuddled in her lap, and seemed content to remain that way. An interesting change from let's fight, to let's cuddle. Nagato and Mutsu were standing on his head, and their antics had the rest of the passengers in stitches. Godzilla could feel the Abyssals the way he could feel other monsters, the way his rigging couldn't. He was also well aware that now he was facing naval rifles. Tanks, anti-tank missiles, machineguns, and such he could ignore. Fourteen-, sixteen-inch and larger naval guns he couldn't. But he knew he had one advantage, he could move and fire, ship-girls, even Abyssals, couldn't do that on dry land. So if they landed, he had the advantage.
But time and distance was still against them. Even at his best speed, the Red Princess' fleet would make landfall on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky before any heavy forces could make it, if the heavy forces weren't headed for Komsomolsk-on-Amur and Khabarovsk instead.
------------------------------
Tashkent wasn't sure where he'd dismissed his rigging, intentionally before the explosion that sent him cartwheeling through the air, accidently while he was doing a frisbee imitation, or reflexively before cratering into the earth. He suspected that the Ukranian judge would take off a lot of points since he hadn't really stuck the landing.
Standing up and shaking off a lot of dirt, he made out the columns of smoke that marked the last company of tanks that had tried to hold up the Abyssal's advance. T-55's with the best modern ammo might have still been serviceable against other tanks, but were toys against warships or ship-girls. The Abyssal forces were rapidly proving that anti-ship weapons were needed against ships.
What he saw approaching was the worst nightmare for a lone destroyer without torpedoes or a spotting for a heavy airstrike. The woman would have been attractive, without the cancerous tentacles coming out of places that most women got nervous about tentacles. It was like you gave an octopus directions to draw an attractive female, and only what had to be there for a human, and didn't tell it to stop there.
"Poor little destroyer, sent out to die," the creature cooed, "Who's to save you now?"
Tashkent summoned his rigging, although even at this range he doubted he could damage her much. He wasn't going down without a fight. "You will see how a Russian dies," he said.
She gestured back towards the burning tanks. "Like everyone else," she said, "Weeping, crying for their mother or God. Demanding mercy. If they wanted mercy, they should have killed each other when they heard we were coming."
"There will be others," Tashkent said, his salvo bouncing off her armor, even the star shells not setting the fires he expected.
"Then," she said and raised her guns, "They -"
The blue beam smashed the creature away, sending her rattling over the cratered ground as the beam stayed on her. Tashkent heard the radiation alarm, but he was sealed and there were decontam methods. Standing next to his rescuer for one. The roar sounded over the plains. Tashkent grinned as he headed toward the leviathan whose very footsteps shook the earth.
I might have a word to say about American only arriving in the nick of time, Tashkent said as he headed towards the giant reptile.
------------------------------
Radar had painted many targets, and he carried with him three installation level Abyssals. He found the strange experience of talking by radio from `inside` while he was also `driving` this huge creature disconcerting. Targets were plentiful. While the Red Princess had split her forces, she was with this force.
"Blackjack 286, we repay the debt," Godzilla sent over the open frequency, "Open fire."
The answer from The Northern, Seaport and Greatest Depth Princesses was a hail of gun fire exceeding any battleline in history. Any Abyssal in open ground within 20 miles came under murderous fire.
Behind him, spreading out and taking smaller targets of opportunity were the Nagatos and the Princesses' fleets. A number of Smols with medical training and Ecchi-Nein found Tashkent.
"Your timing was not the best," Tashkent said as the screams of the Abyssals and the sound of maritime strike aircraft filled the air.
"Oh you know how operas love drama," Ecchi-Nein said as she stood guard, the Smols had patched up the destroyer enough that he wouldn't simply fall apart if he stood up.
"I prefer ballet, especially the American variety," Tashkent said.
" 'American ballet'?" Ecchi-Nein asked.
"Pro wrestling," the Russian ship replied.
Godzilla looked at the force on the run. The fear was they'd be slightly outnumbered, but the Red Princess had split her forces and commanded the smaller, more out of the way target. Godzilla couldn't help thinking she was disposing of her other allies but sending them into the meat grinder the American, Japanese and Russian forces would create. The Abyssals wouldn't be able to run away without running the gauntlet of arriving additional forces, until they dove too deep for the maritime aircraft to affect them.
It would leave their territory weakly defended, he thought as he fired on a small squadron of Abyssals who'd only now realized the earthquake wasn't due to geology.
------------------------------
The force was running across Russian territory. Unlike the battle that had raged for two days on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, substantial ground forces were available for defense of the Amur River line. Those ground forces had been pummeled mercilessly as tanks and mobile artillery discovered that battleships and cruisers considered a battery of heavy artillery as one or two gun turrets of a light cruiser, not enough to seriously hurt them and they hit back harder.
Ironically, the methods of the partisans had been more effective. Mines, traps, blown bridges, strikes against logistics and special forces with the odd laser designator had been more effective. But that required trading space for time, and space available was steadily shrinking.
The 6th Motor Rifle Division was reportedly trying to link up with the remains of the 23rd Shock Army.
Captain Gordon was ahead of most of the Nishinoshima force and TF India was farther south setting up to defend Khabarovsk proper. The Swedish Squadron were some of the few ships able to keep pace with the fast battleship overland.
"You do realize we'll be running into the battered remains of two or three Motor Rifle or Armored Divisions," John Ericsson said as she jogged alongside Gotengo and Captain Gordon, "And none of us speaks any Russian."
"Don't look at me," Vasa said, "I've been too busy learning Swedish."
"I'm worried that Gangut was supposed to break off and meet up with us," Gordon said, "To make this look more like a rescue and less like a second invasion."
"There's always one thing we could do," Thule suggested, and then sang it.
"You must be Swedish-American," Oden said, "Only an American would be crazy enough to think that might work."
"It's better than nothing," Gordon said as he ordered his orchestras and other bands to their new battle station, where they could broadcast the music.
"You're all crazy," Oden said.
Anchovy Peaches LIV - Copyright Infringement Can't Save the World
Anchovy Peaches LIV - Copyright Infringement Can't Save the World
The clumps of Abyssals withstood the point-blank fire of heavy artillery, then they'd dispatch the guns and crews with a single shot of their own weapons. SU-25s tried to deliver the harder hitting weapons by eye, and survived most of the light AA, but they often limped away, trailing smoke, unable to continue the fight. Here and there an Abyssal destroyer or light cruiser had fallen to a tank company or maritime strike aircraft, but the heavy core of the force ground on.
No one was using seismic sensors, the explosions and tracked vehicles would have reported too many false positives. So the running footsteps of dozens of ship-girls went unnoticed. But the tankers and gunners perhaps could not tell ship-girl from Abyssal, and especially hostile Abyssal from reformed Abyssal in the moments they had to decide to fire or not. So another IFF was required.
The powerful female voices from contralto to soprano sent a message to all who could hear, "Nash Sovetskij Soyuz pokoryaet, ves' mir ot Evropy k Neve na vosto-ok. Nad zemlyoj vezde budut pet': Stolitsa, vodka, Sovetskij medved'!"
"Nash Sovetskij Soyuz pokoryaet, ves' mir ot Evropy k Neve na vosto-ok. Nad zemlyoj vezde budut pet': Stolitsa, vodka, Sovetskij medved'!"
That and precisely destroying the lone Abyssals they'd encountered. Gordon hoped like Hell it would be enough.
------------------------------
The 6th Motor Rifle should have been a spent force, the General's last order had been to pull back the remains of each battalion and reform platoons and companies. They had done that and soon would die to a man, they were surrounded and the Colonel had declared it Death Ground. They all knew that each hour, each minute the Abyssals wasted destroying the 6th was an hour or minute the 23rd could strengthen their defensive lines and the Abyss could not move on to Komsomolsk where the Canadian ship-girls were dug in, or Khabarovsk where the final stand would be fought.
"Not like the video games you love so much, eh Piotr?" his colonel, the ranking officer of the defense asked as he rested a bit from his endless transmissions, exhortations and screaming at those who hadn't moved fast enough. The enemy were bringing battleships and heavy cruisers to the fore. Their carriers close behind. Here and there the machineguns rattled and the Abyssal aircraft fell from the sky. Some were scouting the position, some might have been attack planes, but the air defense units were earning their pay.
"It seems I shall be one," he replied, "A prelude to the cauldron battle, the weeks of bleeding the fascist outside of Stalingrad, before the drive on the city."
"I hope my family enjoys the posthumous medals," the colonel said, his eye drawn to explosions on the coastward perimeter, "What the devil are they playing at?"
"Maybe killing each other? They seem to - what is that?" Piotr asked as he took off his headphones and cupped his ear to listen. The explosions among the Abyssals were one thing, the song was another.
"To all those around us, it's not worth your while if we were to turn you to ashes. We thank you profoundly, and bow to you deeply, from the mightiest nation in all the world.
"To all those around us, it's not worth your while if we were to turn you to ashes. We thank you profoundly, and bow to you deeply, from the mightiest nation in all the world."
Piotr, the BMP driver heard the song, and knew his commander needed more information. "Comrade Colonel, I think they are on our side."
"Yes," his colonel said, lowered his binoculars and sighed, "They are Americans."
"How do you know that Comrade Colonel?" the driver asked.
"Because only Americans would be crazy enough to try something so stupid, and only Americans would have the Devil's own luck that it would actually work. It seems we might live to see tomorrow." The colonel headed back to get the radio operators to get the ship-girls on the line.
The approaching formation halted, and ripple fired their heavy guns. Where artillery and the newest tank rounds had been but a nuisance, this fire tore into the Abyssals' lines. Two cruisers simply came apart, a battleship clutched her head and reeled around drunkenly. The gymnast with the ridiculous hat was screaming as loud as her hat was as fire consumed it.
The force advanced using good infantry tactics. Establishing a base of fire and leapfrogging one section forward to move the base of fire, them moving the second section forward. Everywhere they looked the Abyssals died.
Piotr was glad he would just be a living footnote, rather than a dead main character.
------------------------------
Gangut's arm itched like fury. Which was vastly preferable to his last memory of having that arm blown clear off.
"Stay still," the voice told him in English, "I'll have it fully attached in a moment and it won't feel so strange."
The figure telling him, while working on his arm, was reminiscent of the Northern Princess, and would have merited a blast from the Russian battleship's other weapons, except for the U.S. Marine standing by watching the whole thing. "How are you feeling, sir," the marine asked in passable Russian, "She is on our side, and as soon as she's through you can check on Tashkent."
"I'm more worried about the 11th Shock Army," the battleship said, "I was supposed to be supporting them, but I was ambushed instead."
"They were handled roughly, but the Kongos were able to engage and drive off the Abyssals," the marine said.
"So they escape again," Gangut growled.
"No, sir, they ran straight into the American Standards and the Ise- and Fuso- class," the marine said, "They aren't in condition to do much of anything."
"The Red Princess?" Gangut asked.
"She escaped Godzilla, but not with any of her fleet, and only two of her limbs," the marine explained, "Which considering the number of tentacles she had is worse than it would be for you and me, sir."
Gangut wanted to nod, but remembered the admonition to remain still.
------------------------------
The rounds went in, and though a few came back out, everyone knew things were essentially over. The Allies had 40 ship-girls in the area, the Red Princess' last holdouts numbered five. No one was sure why they refused to surrender, they kept up a slight harassment so they were still there and still alive, but the result was inevitable.
Gordon had hand-picked a number of battleships to storm their redoubt from three directions, and the hidden cruisers to blast the escapees once they'd broken and ran through the `gap` in the encirclement. In the meantime, Russian bombers dropped more and more conventional ordinance and FAE bombs on the holdouts' location, using the situation as a training exercise.
Gordon watched as the fireball covered the area, hoping this new weapon would get them. But a few low-caliber shells fired out of the redoubt.
"Have we got definite sightings of what's in there?" Godzilla asked, back in human form and denied the right to charge in.
"Two Ru-class, a Re-class, Battleship Princess and Isolated Island Princess," Gordon reported, the Zillas of the Foreign Legion had been able to slip close enough to get telephoto images of the hold outs, "And no idea why they're holding out. None have any heavy guns or ammunition for them, so they aren't exactly going to be taking us with them. They've replied with very colorful language in Russian, English and Japanese, so they know we've been trying to talk to them. And we aren't likely to get bored and let them wander off, the Russians will nuke the place first."
"That's not something ships can survive?" Godzilla asked, "I thought Nagato and Prinz Eugen survived the air burst."
"The air burst yes, not one that enters their dugout," Gordon said.
"At the least they'll be buried alive," Ericsson said as she approached, "We're ready."
"Then let's get this over with," Gordon said as he and the others charged in.
There were no minefields, the terrain was cratered and the fighting would be close up and hand-to-hand. So they could just detonate their main magazines, Gordon thought as he saw the other two forces closing in. It felt wrong sending in the Standards, Ise- and Fuso-classes, but the fast battleships were more valuable.
Besides, he thought, At close range, even their older 14- and 16-inch will punch through. He had his pitch fork out and jumped down into the twisting trench works and ran before colliding with the Battleship Princess. The pitchfork penetrated her armor. Ericsson took advantage of her focus on Gordon to shoot her in the head. Her coordination failed and Gordon put a pair of superheavies in her guts. Then he was past, the Re-class' tail was missing the attached girl as it tried to crawl away inchworm style. He pinned it to the ground and gave it all 24 barrels eight at a time.
The lack of gunfire made him yell, "Report!"
"Both Ru!" he recognized Arizona's voice.
"Girl part of the Re," came from Hyuga.
"I got the tail and Battleship Princess," Ericsson called.
An almost simultaneous double shot rang out. "Second Princess," Colorado called.
"Search the place," Penny ordered.
Gordon nodded and began using his eyes, sonar and Special Detachment to look for any trick, traps or hidden Abyssals.
------------------------------
"Seems not a thing to die for," General Chuikov said, recently promoted and happy in his growly bear way at seeing his old comrades from Okinawa.
The piece of equipment seemed like a brick of black ash more than anything else, but it was heavier than a similar block of steel and was immune to anything that could be brought to bear against it.
"Much as I like my enemies being insane as well as stupid," Admiral Richardson said, "I hate it when they make absolutely no sense."
"They should have slipped this to a destroyer and slipped it out in the night," Chuikov said, "Unless it was something left on purpose. There's already a row over who gets to analyze it."
"My official position is let the Russians investigate it, you paid for it in blood, and you'll have to deal with the risk if it does something insane," Richardson said, earning a laugh from the Russian.
"Floyd," the small coral-like Abyssal said as it waved a crystal topped cricket bat at the Admiral.
"You're sure?" Richardson asked and glanced to the Repair Princess, the Chief Engineer and one of the Mothras.
The trio agreed.
"Well, what we have here is a Operation Mincemeat macguffin, everybody wants it, but nobody knows what it does, and when you do figure it out, it's misinformation," Richardson said, "My advice is stick it in a museum somewhere and let people look at a piece of the Abyssal homeland."
Chuikov frowned. "It does have some strange properties," the engineer-general said.
"So do ship-girls," Richardson said as he headed off to brief his superiors.
Mutsu woke suddenly at someone touching her rather inappropriately, unless you were her lover. She woke snuggled against Godzilla, his arm around her and him grinning at her.
"I still say you're a dirty, old man," Mutsu said as she snuggled against Godzilla and held her sister's hand across Godzilla's lap while she snuggled on the other side.
"And yet you stay," Godzilla said quietly, nudging Nagato to wakefulness, "Sorry we're descending for landing. I can see why you hate flying."
"I like this way," Nagato said, "Poor Naka is still traumatized." Both battleships smirking at the memory of Naka trying to snap an embarrassing picture of the trio, only for Godzilla to march over, eat the idol's smartphone and tell her 'You can fight without fingers, it may even make you a bigger star.' No one had troubled them again for the rest of the flight.
"So what are you going to do, the Los Angeles Conference starts tomorrow?" Nagato asked.
"A group called Hunt of a Lifetime asked if I could be Godzilla and go fishing with a kid," Godzilla said, "Considering I know nothing about actually rod and reel fishing, but on a boat I can manifest my rigging, maybe I'm supposed to grab the fish and put it on the deck. It's a charity, so I stay out of your hair and let you coordinate the set up."
Nagato and Mutsu nodded. The sheer number of delegates and Abyssal Princesses was going to make the conference a nightmare. The diplomats thought they'd run things, without understanding that Mad Jack Churchill rather than Eisenhower would be the best diplomat towards Abyssals.
------------------------------
Carlos stared at Jane Richardson. A few months ago he would have pricked at her 'I'm in charge attitude', now he had the simplest answer. "Fine, you do that," he said, "I'm going to the airport."
The kid looked like she'd been poleaxed. "But we're here and we may never get another chance to see the fortifications of San Pedro," Jane exclaimed.
"So you should see them," Carlos said, "I'm going to the airport."
"Why?"
"Because," Carlos said, "Same as going to the museum yesterday, and the various restaurants last night." He didn't add aloud, I'm here to help with the Abyssals and a bunch of them want to watch the planes take off, so you do you, I do me.
"What about you?" Jane asked Angie.
"I have to meet up with Admiral Beale and her party," Angie said and grinned.
Jane looked like she'd drunk sour milk. "I thought we could see them like we went to the museum yesterday."
"I made a promise," Angie said.
Jane threw up her hands and stared at them.
"Enjoy," Carlos told her as he headed off to collect the group who wanted to have a picnic outside the airport and watch the planes take off.
He was surprised that Angie fell in with him. "I thought you wanted to see the forts," he said.
"I want to see them at my pace, not her's. She dragged me out of the galleries I wanted to see and wasted my time on stuff I didn't care about," Angie said.
One too many queen bees, Carlos thought but wisely said nothing. Really, he liked the Abyssals who were like lots of the Marines, eager to fight, to be ready to fight, but just as eager to just watch the world go by. The relentless need to DO bothered him.
"I thought you hated Admiral Beale," Carlos said.
"I can tolerate the Admiral, and she's got actual rank. I can also tell her my take on how the Abyssals have been progressing," Angie said, "I may not be a human to her, but I am a useful intel source. To Jane, I'm just an audience."
Carlos kept his mouth shut but his thoughts swirled around as he considered the picnic basket and what The Silver Mare had helped him pack. He glanced around and wondered where she'd taken off to.
------------------------------
Godzilla knew a disaster was in the offing when the woman in the life jacket was already seasick and they hadn't left the dock. Godzilla had changed to a button front shirt, slacks, deck shoes and his kepi. The small girl with the oxygen tank seemed to be the focus of attention.
"Brandon Cabe," the large man with the 'Hunt of a Lifetime' shirt greeted him, "We're glad you could come."
"I hope you can actually fish, my way is more like a baleen whale, and what I catch really isn't what most people think of as fish," Godzilla admitted as he shook the man's hand, firm but not the contest too many Marines turned it into, and subsequently lost. He smiled at the girl. "You must be Sam."
The seasick woman bustled over, and rather than stop near the girl, turned very green and proceeded to the rail and would have gone over if Godzilla hadn't caught her by the life jacket straps. He held the severely vomiting woman over the side.
Sam made a series of hand gestures Godzilla quickly assembled to 'I am Sam.'
So you didn't stint on other languages, Godzilla thought, I wonder if I could be a computer hacker.
'I am -' he signed back, and had to finger spell, 'Godzilla.'
The girl stared with her mouth open. Godzilla looked at the equally stunned Brandon and the seasick woman. "Oh, you didn't ask me here because I could sign?" He signed it, while setting the woman firmly on the deck, and Sam laughed.
------------------------------
Nagato was glad the Abyssals weren't here in the conference center yet. The controlled chaos of a military campaign would have impressed them, the cloud of people all with too high of an opinion of themselves and looking for a reason to be offended would have convinced the Abyss that not only was continuing the war to victory a possibility, it would have convinced the allied Abyssals it was exactly what their human friends needed.
"But Belgium is a heart of the EU, Brussels must -" the delegate yammered at Nagato.
"Keep its word?" Nagato asked, "I'd be happy to make the changes to the agreement you solemnly signed, but I was ordered not to make the stereotype of Belgium not honoring its commitments so blatant, especially to the French and the British. But I can make the changes immediately."
The vapid functionary shook her head and wandered away. She glanced over to Mutsu who was similarly besieged by the Chinese delegation who demanded this, that, or the other thing, and Mutsu had to avoid reminding them that every Chinese ship-girl was based out of the Republic of China, or San Francisco's Chinatown. The PRC had summoned precisely none, and their mighty surface fleet had been completely destroyed in the first week. North Korea's had lasted longer. Therefore the PRC were there merely as a courtesy.
Gordon was having an easier time of it as he was flying the 4-turret Jolly Roger from a yardarm, and the rumor was that he was really here just to sniff out postwar targets.
Everything was supposed to have been worked out, agreed to and all but finalized before the conference began. This was just a massive photo-op, and to get the Abyssals on board with what had been hammered out. Nagato already knew that half the Abyssals would tell the diplomats to stuff it and walk out. She was worried about the cleverer Abyssals reigniting all the factionalism that simmered under the surface, then making individual deals rather than one with The World. Like Hoppo demanding the UN be specifically excluded due to their troops rampant child-molesting, then mentioning she was the spirit of all children lost at sea, including those drown in litoral waters to prevent their stories from being reported or testified about. Suddenly the UN dropped all objections to their exclusion.
The only thing that had brought a smile to her face was the supposedly dopey Seaport Princess asking `innocent` questions about various nations' worst practices of the last two or three centuries. Then asking a compare and contrast to the double-standards of the current day.
Nagato wished she had the guts to do that. Instead, she thought, I have to be a good representative of my nation. Frankly, slicing a few heads off would garner more support from actual people than being a mamby-pamby.
------------------------------
"Here's Admiral Beale's plane," Carlos said as the Lear taxied towards the military end of the field. The Abyssals who'd just enjoyed watching the huge machines lumber into the air all relaxed, then began canting their heads, a sure sign they were communicating by tight-beam radio. He hadn't mentioned that the side lobes and backscatter could easily be picked up by anyone caring to spy on them. He wondered if that was the point. He was glad that getting them inside the airport, especially the military section had been so easy. None would run out on the tarmac, but they enjoyed watching the dance around the planes before they took off.
"I could never fly," the Repair Princess said.
"It isn't so bad," Shark Dentures said.
"Hoppo wants to fly the Reppu," the Northern Princess said.
"I'm not sure there are any," Angie said.
"I have money, I can have one built," Hoppo said, clearly understanding how the world worked.
Before he could point out it wouldn't be the actual Reppu, Angie approached the chocked plane. The guards were Army but they formed a guard of honor as Admiral Beale walked down the short ladder and saluted the flag. As he walked forward with the two Princesses, Carlos could see Delaware in the plane, and the two cruisers who'd disappeared off Nishinoshima so fast months ago.
Then it all went to Hell. The guards leveled their weapons at Beale, Angie and himself. The limo which had been waiting suddenly sped forward as well as a Brinks truck, several more men got out of both.
This is insane, Carlos thought as two of the men from the truck herded Angie and him towards the truck, Hoppo walked sheepishly with them as if she'd been captured as well.
The last Carlos saw before the doors closed was the Admiral being hustled towards the limousine, a gun to her head preventing Delaware from turning the kidnappers into a thin, red mist. Then another Admiral Beale got out of the front passenger side of the limo and the armored truck's door closed, blocking out the sight.
------------------------------
Beale had hand signaled Delaware to stay calm, until she'd looked at her mirror image getting out of the limousine.
"Behave, and we'll all get out of this," the man, she refused to acknowledge him as an officer, told everyone.
The Abyssals just stared numbly at the scene, either uncertain or apathetic.
Once the door closed behind her, the car sped off, a few escorting humvees, motorcycles and the Brink's truck. Beale kept her cool, she hadn't been simply shot, so they likely needed her.
And Delaware will raise a stink if Shark Dentures or the Repair Princess haven't already, she thought. As her eyes adjusted to the dim interior of the car, she saw someone she'd thought never to see again.
"Admiral Colbert," she said, "Then who have we buried at Arlington?"
Anchovy Peaches LVI - Yo YoYo Yo Whiney YoRa Growf
Anchovy Peaches LVI - Yo YoYo Yo Whiney YoRa Growf
The Captain Gordon's Captain grabbed The Silver Mare's ears and yanked her head to face him. "Yo yo yo," he decried her acting like a panicked mother instead of an experienced battlefield commander of her nation.
He had been glad to get back into the field, although he'd expected it would be a diplomatic rather than a combat mission.
He reminded the chagrined winged-unicorn that he had both 30 Dalek Marines, and 30 flight capable Smols. Giving them an under strength air mobile company, including her.
"Yo," the Dark Lord of the Sick reminded her that the Nurse Godzilla had slipped aboard the Brink's truck, and the Luchador Anguirus was in the undercarriage of the limo.
"Yo Yo, yo," the Captain reminded her they had a fricken' Installation looking out for them, the spirit of children who died at sea.
The Silver Mare nodded. The Captain looked over to where Jet Jaguar and MechaGodzilla had removed the brain from the Beale-drone, and were interrogating it. The prospect of eternal sensory depravation and actually being utterly alone with only itself for a few minutes was more than sufficient to crush the entity's will to resist.
"Yo Yo Yo, Yoyo," the Captain asked and got a thumbs up from the two technical experts.
The Captain looked at the eager Floyd. "Yo, YoYoyo, Yo Yo Yo," he told him, this was going to be a military operation, they weren't going to 'make this up' as they went along.
------------------------------
Admiral Beale noted the insanity of her kidnappers trying to escape, by car, through Los Angeles. Thank you for proving you aren't Admiral Colbert, she thought, That means this will work.
"So was my duplicate supposed to make an obvious hash of the conference, or was she, I guess she, supposed to appear to make everything work smoothly, but throw in a few discreet poison pills to make the Abyssals walk out in disgust?" she asked.
"How did -?" the gunman in the captain's uniform asked.
"Because you don't get to be an admiral without thinking strategically," the faux Colbert said, "Yes, you'll be the hero, doing everything you can to keep things afloat, and those nasty Abyssals won't budge on a few trivial points, in fact get incensed. The war will continue. You've increased your power in the Pacific, so the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean will ramp up. Since we've mastered creating destructive storms, we'll use those against Europe and the Eastern Seaboard, the ultimate stand-off weapon."
Except you can't control them, she thought, Unless you start getting help from other powers. So what is this really, revolt of the forgotten gods?
"Then you'll eliminate me? So why capture me alive?" she asked.
"Oh, you weren't the target," faux Colbert said, "Richardson and Crawford will recognize your replacement immediately, but with their kids in our hands, they won't dare do anything. And after a while, you'll retire, Mugbwe will get your spot, and he'll antagonize the alliances so we won't have to send in massive reinforcements, each region and nation will be fighting on their own. We can smash one with our coordinated force, then leave them to rest and recover, while we hit another. The war will go on and on and on, and the failure of this conference will highlight that coexistence isn't possible."
Beale wondered what protections Jane had, since she suspected that Hoppo had Carlos and Angie well protected.
"As for Delaware, when you retire, you can live out your life peacefully," faux Colbert said, "Don't think that you can do something just because we need you alive, the guns were just a symbol, we can damage you just as easily without them."
"Isn't immortality with a constant war going on risky?" Beale asked, "You can be killed, I've seen it."
"Not close to a coast you aren't," faux Colbert said, "Leading from the front is passe, radios take care of that and all those brave souls can show what it means to be American, Russian, French, etc. and die out there, leaving the cowards and sheep to be passively ruled by us. It really is the ultimate step forward, those without illusions rule, those with them and the will to fight die, those too frightened to fight will bow to their protectors."
"Until you need more sacrificial wolves than the sheep can provide," Beale said.
"Then the Abyssals will turn on each other, ecosystems of prey and predator always go through equilibrium shifts. Such is the way of things that don't think past their next meal or next fight," faux Colbert said.
Says the immortal who thinks the other immortals will accept their slice of the pie, Beale thought, When they know you have more.
------------------------------
Hoppo's companion hiding in the Reppu's `cockpit` backpack warned her that her brethren were coming. The MothraNet was working and the Mothra Larva who had been sent as a spy was now giving her the information. Hoppo stood up, and sneezed. "Sorry," she said, and sneezed again.
The guards took little note of the `little girl` standing there sneezing. Angie and Carlos were sitting opposite her in the truck, and both were reaching for tissues or a handkerchief.
She waited for both to extend their hands. She grabbed both, pulled them out of their seats as she knelt rapidly, pulling them to the floor. As fast as her shipbuilding teams could, they assembled a set of external turtle back armor over the four of them.
The Mothra Larva chittered a complaint.
"Yes we're getting a bit squished, but it's what my imps could deploy quickly," Hoppo said.
The inches-thick plating bounced a pistol round from the suddenly frustrated guards. Hoppo would have shaken her head if she'd had the room to do so.
I'm an Installation, she thought, What I'd do to my troops if they forgot a prisoner was that . . .
"Jane," Carlos said, "I know you're here for us, but Jane's unprotected."
Hoppo frowned at that. Without radios, she couldn't coordinate even with the troops currently landing on the truck, and the Mothra Larva had confirmed that the other Mothra had left the Abyssals behind. So despite being invulnerable here, we're still on a clock, she thought as she let Captain Gordon and Godzilla's forces `rescue` them.
------------------------------
Floyd sat astride The Silver Mare, they would be the hardest to spot against the cloudless, bright sky, until it was too late for the escorts to do anything.
The horn blast carved a hole through the passenger-side window of the truck and they were inside.
ZORCH!
And the passenger was down, and what The Silver Mare's horn and hooves were doing to the android driver was too much even for Floyd to watch. Floyd hung from the bottom of the steering wheel and at max extension could just barely reach the pedals. It hoped it was driving in a straight line as it couldn't see out the windscreen. Floyd was sure it was missing something important in regards this 'driving' stuff.
WHAM!
"FLOYD!" it yelled for someone to help it drive.
------------------------------
The limo fishtailed after the impact from the truck, and they watched the truck race ahead, the escort in pursuit. The passenger-side guard went sailing out the broken window. Beale saw at least two cars run over the broken figure and then they were past. Pieces of the driver sailed out the same window as the truck raced on.
Several of the Smols were clustered atop the truck and awaited a chance to board the cab, pinned by fire from the escort who were trying to get into position to fire into the open window. A moment later the driver's side door opened and they entered the truck. The truck's jerky motions smoothed out. FauxColbert's expression changed to fury.
"She's an Installation, and held off the combined US and Japanese fleets, as well as several more aggressive princesses," Beale said, "Just because you could bribe her with ice cream, model kits and cookies to get her to hear you out, you assumed she was a child, instead of an alien. Thank you for confirming you're not Admiral Colbert."
FauxColbert frowned at her, then looked up at the ring of Dalek Marines surrounding the limo's sun roof.
------------------------------
The Captain and the Dark Lord of the Sick had taken advantage of the truck ramming the limo to transfer there, along with most of the marines. The Smols would deal with the truck and the escorts. They were going to neutralize the admiral's kidnappers.
The Captain's plan was still moving forward, although he pitied the escorts and hoped they were more androids and not regular soldiers, because his troops would not show mercy to armed opponents.
The truck swerved suddenly and sent the lead humvee into the guard rail. The Captain had no idea why they weren't being swarmed with police cars and helicopters, as the humvees had fired automatic weapons at the truck in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded freeway.
One of the motorcycle outriders got too close and was nearly hit by the truck as it swerved again. Then the truck began switching lanes heading for an off ramp. The limo abandoned the escort as they pursued the truck.
The Captain verified the Daleks had moved into position and were ready. He gave the execute order.
------------------------------
"They're cutting their way in," the droid said as the beams of the Dalek marines touched the edges of the sunroof and the limo's doors.
No you idiot, Beale thought, They're welding the doors shut so you can't escape.
The droid pulled his gun and aimed it at Beale. "Call them off." The tapping on the sunroof caused him to look up. At least twenty marines stood there, some holding huge to them buckets of popcorn, some waving wads of cash.
"They don't like me very much," Beale said, "But they definitely want to take you alive."
"Put the gun away," FauxColbert said, "She has us trapped, but you've trapped yourself as well." He smiled. "You really don't think your forces can overcome what we have? We're everywhere. And you've rescued one admiral's child. Richardson is senior and holding Jane will keep Crawford in line as well."
Beale simply stared at him, wondering what Godzilla or Gordon, or God-forbid Gotengo would do to these people when they found them.
------------------------------
The humvees had massed on the driver's side, as if they could force the truck away from the off ramp. Floyd had the driver's side pistol port open and the cricket bat at the ready. At Mothra Leo's signal, Floyd and the Smols fired on the escorts.
The humvee Floyd aimed at became a fireball, the figures inside writhing and screaming as the truck held them in place so they slammed into the end of a guard rail. The next humvee slammed into the first. The third was in two pieces, each separately rolling down the freeway. He couldn't see the motorcycles, but doubted that they had fared better.
The Legionnaire Zillas and Megalon brought the truck smoothly off the freeway and pulled into a police station. Floyd and The Silver Mare had their orders and the next step of the plan. She got Floyd aboard and the pair raced through the skies after the limo. Floyd would have liked to watch the fate of the two guards but locked into a small space with an angry Mothra and a pissed off Installation, it knew what their fate was.
Anchovy Peaches LVII - Do Not Call Up What You Yourself Cannot Put Down
Anchovy Peaches LVII - Do Not Call Up What You Yourself Cannot Put Down
The Captain grinned as The Silver Mare and Floyd landed on the hood of the car. Everything was proceeding apace with Carlos and Angie safe and in police custody, and since they were outside the range of whatever radio and celphone jammers the limo had, they were warning not only Fort MacArthur in San Pedro but the conference itself.
The Silver Mare trotted to the front of the speeding car. Attempts to dislodge the crew fairies had run into several problems: the Daleks could fly and magnetically affix themselves to the steel, and The Dark Lord of the Sick could sense the driver's intent before the maneuver and compensate with his powers.
And the Captain had decided to quit hiding what he could really do. So as The Silver Mare began her interpretation of a Rolls-Royce hood ornament, her horn glowing and her wings flapping furiously. The limo slowly lifted off the ground. The driver was slow to pick up that whatever he did had no effect on the car anymore. The Silver Mare steeled herself and the climb became more apparent.
Meanwhile, the Captain decided to quit messing around. As the passengers realized that no matter how the driver turned the wheel had no effect on the car, the windows and doors were welded shut, none of the fairies apparently cared about the fate of their last hostage, the Captain and the Dark Lord of the Sick moved to the passenger side window to deal with the kidnappers.
------------------------------
Jane watched the other tourists help the docent shove the magazine's blast door shut while the marines recovered then fitted the multiple metal pins into the matching holes in the door and the floor. The ones for the sides and top were too heavy to lift without the elderly mechanism that normally would seal the door. Said mechanism lay in the corner after being removed as part of the forts' refurbishment.
"What were those things?" the old docent asked, finally able to rest after leading the small group to where she knew they'd be temporarily safe.
"Something new from the Abyss I'd bet," Jane admitted, since she knew the marines were forbidden, but a kid was allowed to guess.
The door was designed to resist being pushed out by the magazine detonating, no one knew how well it would resist force from the other direction, and the hydraulics that could help hold the door hadn't been reinstalled yet.
The jolt on the door brought everyone around.
"They aren't going to try to break through are they?" a tourist asked, her six-year-old handling the problem better than the mother.
"They'll have a difficult time of it, this was a magazine for the main guns, that door would keep the accidental deflagration of the powder from affecting the rest of the fort," the docent said, more comfortable lecturing than acknowledging that things immune to an M4 carbine burst to the face were trying to break in.
Jane looked at the hardware holding the steel door to the concrete walls. "You just reused the original hardware here?" she asked.
The older woman nodded. "It was well preserved when they sealed up the forts, so they reused it."
The hardware might still be good, Jane thought as she saw dust floating out around the bolts, But the century-old concrete won't hold up.
------------------------------
Admiral Beale watched the dark-clad fairy with the lightsaber carve through the thick armored window of the shotgun seat. He kicked the shard of glass in as the driver pulled his pistol. A panicked shot from the driver as the Captain Gordon's captain jumped through the hole and down into the foot well and out of sight of the passengers.
Something made Beale's skin crawl, but the driver got it worse. Beale had seen people with actual phobias react less violently than the driver was acting now. He tried to crawl up on the back of the seat, screaming all the time. Eschewing firing the gun, he threw it into the foot well as he tried to crush himself into the farthest corner of the forward station. He didn't even lower the glass barrier to the passenger compartment.
Beale wasn't sure if he was too frightened to remember or he was trying to keep whatever it was contained. When the driver began clawing his own eyes out and ate them, Beale remembered that despite their human appearance, the Captain and the command staff of the Captain Gordon were modeled on Nyarlathotep: The Crawling Chaos whose thousand forms could induce madness just by looking on them.
Something knocked her hat down so it covered her face. She reached up to reset it, and fauxColbert and the droid began screaming like scalded banshees. She put her hand up, to hold her hat in place over her face while the screaming continued, ending in one disturbingly liquid gurgle and a multitude of little sounds. She considered that if all of Nyarlathotep's forms would cause madness, what would gouge their eyes out on looking at an elegant but saturnine man that was the Captain's and the senior command staffs' normal appearance.
Silence, other than the wind against the car's hull, told Beale it was over. Someone tugged on her hat, and she replaced it on her head. The Captain Gordon's second from communications stood on her shoulder, Gordon's deputation to give her the watcher she sometimes needed. He was back to his normal appearance, a 1940's Lieutenant Commander, albeit a bit over an inch tall. FauxColbert was staring at nothing and drooling. The other droid was curled up in a little ball and making the faintest whimpers.
"Good work," she said, "Where was Jane Richardson?"
The fairy jumped down, and opened the panel to disable the jammer.
------------------------------
Beale knew she would be endlessly scolded by Delaware and their daughter, but she stepped out of the landed limo at Fort MacArthur and let the guard of Daleks and The Silver Mare form up before she headed into the fort complex that was being renovated to again provide defense for the Long Beach and San Pedro harbors.
They stopped as they saw the crater in the concrete. The flooring had been reinforced to allow transit of shells and powder for the 14-inch railway guns that would be mounted. Bits and pieces they recognized as coming from a droid littered the area, but the bulk of the creature couldn't immediately be seen.
Beale and her escort advanced.
"Floyd!" the little coral-like fairy scolded the Captain as he took point. The chagrined officer fell back to walk ahead of Admiral Beale. Floyd in its ridiculous costume took the point, cricket bat and lightsaber out. Several Smols stepped out of the shadows, nearly scaring the Admiral. They scouted ahead of the formation. Although how a flying squirrel dressed like Horatio Nelson, or an Anguiras in a luchador's mask expected to be stealthy escaped her, but they had been, so she accepted.
"Side effects of command, Captain," Beale said to cover steadying her nerves, "You become less dispensable, and if your command likes you, they will not tolerate you going into danger they could face for you."
"Yo," the fairy said despondently.
The Smols had evidently scouted the place previously and led them through the corridors. More craters in the floors, a few in the walls, one matching pair in the floor and ceiling caused Beale some concern, but the lack of blood or human remains told a story too.
They heard some singing, female adult and some kids. Beale relaxed. She couldn't imagine the droids singing Disney tunes.
"They're here," came a small voice, "I'm the Repair Princess, I'm coming out." The small Abyssal approached. "We're glad you arrived, they kind of destroyed all the cars."
"How did you get here?" Beale asked.
"Delaware herded us all back into the plane, flew in low and some of us jumped out," the Repair Princess said.
Beale closed her eyes and shook her head. Of course beings for whom a hit by an 8-inch shell was an irritation would consider jumping out a low-flying plane with no parachute an adventure.
'Growf', and a nudge on her side had Beale open her eyes and look down at a tray of coffee cups, fruit slices and other fixings. "Thank you," she selected a cup and her usual additions. "That certainly explains what I found on the walk in."
"Oh, yeah the craters and all the pieces," the Seaport Princess said as she stood and collected the entire tray to take to the docent and the kids, "They were there when we got here, we just sort of policed up the pieces."
She followed the Abyssal. "Wait, you didn't - " she stopped as she looked into the magazine at the skittish kids and the even more worried adults, "Defeat all those people?"
"They were pretty much defeated when we walked through the corridors," the Repair Princess said, "We started singing to keep up our morale and to tell them help was coming. We just followed what the help was."
The squat Godzilla form had gotten a new tray, and was offering ice cream sandwiches to the kids. It added a bowl of what looked like alfalfa and Beale saw The Silver Mare appear beside her, and two images raced away, one red-shifted towards the bowl, the other blue-shifted back towards the limo. Beale didn't know the speed of light in an atmosphere, but decided to chalk up the performance to SMSGBS.
"So if you didn't, and Jane didn't," Beale said and glanced down at the force she'd arrived with, "And you didn't." She paused as she saw the line of droid heads carefully placed in the corridor, all clearly still alive, all clearly trying to scream, speak, shout, threaten, or whatever, but without the rest of their bodies unable to. "Who did?"
"We can tell you what we heard," Jane said as she sat beside the Abyssal Installation, the Seaport Princess.
The rhythmic thuds against the door told everyone that the Abyssals were getting more serious trying to break in. Jane helped drag several pieces of lighter equipment to give cover if they made a hole and fired into the concrete room. All the pins that could be installed had been installed but the door could still be forced at the top. No one knew how well these creatures could climb, or if they reshape themselves.
The roar of a jet close overhead had one of the kids agitated. "They're coming to rescue us!"
A fighter wouldn't fly that low, Jane thought to herself, And a fighter plane can't get into the corridors. She looked up at the door as the pounding had stopped. Or, I could be wrong, she thought.
------------------------------
" 'Lets get down to business to defeat, the Huns,'" the Seaport Princess sang as she marched through the collection of burning vehicles, " 'Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons?"
"I hope so," the Repair Princess said as she stayed near the much larger Abyssal, she watched their `six` to prevent an ambush. Several of the Smols who'd jumped from the plane with them spread out to investigate the rest of the complex.
" 'You're the saddest bunch I ever met, but you can bet, before we're through,'" the Seaport Princess sang as they advanced, waiting to sight the enemy.
------------------------------
'Mister, I'll make a man,' Jane heard then the sound of steel on concrete, multiple times in rapid succession. Wham, wham, wham. Whoever had been pounding on the door had given up.
"Is someone singing Disney songs?" one of the marines asked.
"Same as singing the Russian March on the outskirts of Khaba," Jane said, "IFF is IFF."
"So Abyssals are as crazy as any other ship-girl," the marine said.
------------------------------
" 'Tranquil as a forest, but a fire within,'" The Seaport Princess' singing faltered a bit as they encountered the crater, and the pieces of a droid, none bigger than the Repair Princess' fist.
"Somebody was very angry," the Repair Princess located the head and looked into the thousand yard stare on the disembodied head, "Somebody very scary."
" 'Once you find your center you are sure to win,'" the Seaport Princess sang as much to keep up their morale as to alert others they were friendly to humans, " 'You're a spineless, pale, pathetic lot and you haven't got a clue.'"
"About what's doing this," the Repair Princess said, "You're right about that." She launched several scout planes.
The Seaport Princess grimaced and launched a squadron herself. " 'Somehow I'll make a man out of you.'"
The scream that suddenly cut off told them they were going in the correct, or absolutely worst direction.
It had led them to an elevator shaft, and neither knew how deep they'd have to go, or even if the elevators were still working.
" 'I'm never gonna catch my breath,'" the Seaport Princess sang as she set the Repair Princess on her shoulder, " 'Boy was I a fool in school for cutting gym.'" She used her long arms and massive hands to grip the edges of the floor and lower herself down the shaft.
The scream from one corridor told them to head that way. " 'This guy's got'em scared to death,'" the Repair Princess sang as she smiled at the Seaport Princess, "'Hope he doesn't see right through me.'"
" 'Now I really wish I knew how to swim,'" the Seaport Princess sang back as they encountered another crater in the concrete, and the head of another droid, the rest of it scattered pieces. When they found a second head nearby, they realized the crater was from two droids, not one.
The Abyssal Princesses looked at each other, deployed a portion of their rigging's armament, and continued their advance.
" 'Be a man,'" the Repair Princess sang, trying to keep a tremor from her voice as she wondered about what could be doing this.
" 'You must be swift as a coursing river," the other princess sang as she marched steadily forward.
" 'Be a man,'" the Repair Princess' voice nearly broke, as she looked at the two heads and the large number of shell casings surrounding them. No crater, no body parts, and no guns.
" 'With all the force of a great typhoon,'" the Seaport Princess whispered as she looked around.
" 'Be a man,'" the Repair Princess sang, then glanced at the larger Abyssal, " 'With all the strength of a raging fire.'"
" 'Mysterious as the dark side of the moon,'" they sang together and moved ahead.
------------------------------
'Time is racing toward us,' Jane and the others heard, then WHAM, WHAM, WHAM! Then the terrified shouts of the droids outside the door.
"What is it?"
"Get it in a crossfire!"
"Where did it go?!"
" 'And you might survive,'" came from a female voice.
The rattle of automatic weapons rang out.
Then a scream from farther way.
" 'You must be swift as a coursing river,'" came from a young girl's voice.
" 'Be a man!'" came from the first female voice.
"Fire at it! Fire at it!"
"I'm shooting it! I'm shooting it!"
WHAMWHAM, WHAMWHAM, WHAMWHAM.
"I hit it, I know I hit it!"
"We've got two Allied Abyssal Princesses coming," Jane told the others, "The ones you need battleship guns to stop." She noted the relaxation on the others.
We just have to hope they know when to stop, she thought.
"Where's it gone? Alfa Squad report. Report!"
"Alfa squad's down, pull back Charlie or -" came the shouts from just outside the door.
A bloodcurdling scream from farther away interrupted what would happen to Charlie, or perhaps was happening.
"There it is! Shoot it shoot it!"
Gunfire erupted outside the door.
"It's me you idiots!"
"Sorry, suppression fire. Hey! Wait!"
"Behind you!"
Something slammed into the wall, hard enough to spall the aging concrete off the inner surface. Gunfire erupted again and there were screams now, then silence.
Jane almost felt sorry for the idiots facing the two Princesses. Angie is going to be so smug about rescuing us, she thought.
" 'Mysterious as the Dark side of the Moon!'" came from right outside the door, "Jane Richardson, daughter of Admiral Richardson, are you alive and well?"
"Yes," Jane yelled back.
"Well done I must say," the voice said, "Worthy of an Installation yourself. Let us police up the pieces and we'll work on the door. Please remain inside while we verify we have all of them."
Jane relaxed.
"What do they mean 'well done'?" one of the marines who'd accompanied Jane asked, "I didn't think running and hiding was their style."
"Maybe they think it was a good plan," Jane replied.
------------------------------
Admiral Beale glanced around. Then looked at the Abyssals. "So if you two didn't, and the Marines with Jane didn't," she said and looked at the fairies and Smols, "And you didn't. Who did?" She reflexively took the offered cup of tea, then looked at the 18-inch tall Godzilla who looked back as if to say 'who me?' Admiral Beale remembered that Olympic and he had defeated the droid who'd tried to attack Admiral Crawford.
Now you act the cute domestic. Like a wolf that ate a bear then rolls on his back and whines for tummy scratches, Beale thought, Was it droids, or was it them going after kids? Or avenging the attack on Angie?
"Does sanity even visit your world, or does it see your house, turn around and run away screaming?" the docent asked.
"Sometimes I wonder," Beale admitted, "A British Admiral told me that every flag officer needs a batman. I suppose every batman needs an Alfred." She let the abstraction of Earth Godzilla add a dollop of milk to the tea.
------------------------------
The ride to the police station to pick up the rest of the force was crowded, Beale was glad she was the only one in the group with a driver's license, so she, the Repair Princess and Richardson's Bat-zilla were in front, while all the Smols, Jane, the Seaport Princess and others were in back. The heads were individually bagged, placed in several large trunks and put in the trunk of the limo.
"Aren't you supposed to be asking 'are we there yet?' endlessly," Beale said.
"I'm more worried about explaining your condition to Delaware," the Repair Princess said, "She demanded we return you in as-was condition."
"I can intercede on your behalf," Beale assured her.
"I doubt Mugbwe is an Abyssal plant," the Repair Princess said, "Although telling him he would have been perfect for the Abyssal's master plan might curb his Admiral King/Billy Mitchell attitude. Even Abyssals understand that while ship-girls with air cover can take any ground, it takes boots on the ground to hold it. That means Abyssals or ship-girls patrol, or allied foot-soldiers or police do."
"In the former case you can't use them for anything else, in the latter you have to have trusted allies. It's why most Princesses don't conquer huge swathes of territory, they can't hold it once they've taken it. Even at one riot, one ranger, you need the rangers."
"Rotate through your wounded or use garrison-duty for recovery," Beale said.
"You saw the Seaport Princess, she'd want to keep fighting until she would be of no use in a fight. Most aren't able to handle garrison duty," the Repair Princess said, "Would you be swayed by the offer of Abyssal immortality?"
"If I'd have to become like those idiots? No," Beale answered, "It would be like a low-grade dementia, and a clear mind has always been my pride, seeing what must be, rather than what I'd hope it to be."
"I wasn't offering, I doubt I could duplicate the process," the Repair Princess said, "But others might be foolish enough to accept it."
"I'd be more interested in a fool-proof way to detect those droids," Beale said, "If they can look like anyone, they could be anyone."
"Simplest test, give them a plan an eight-year-old would know wouldn't work, but make it `cool` enough and they'd jump at it."
"Maybe Tenryuu's already been replaced," Beale said.
------------------------------
Godzilla was aware of the woman, Sam's mother, accidentally chumming the water, again. Godzilla's rigging was deployed, a Zilla as these were the fastest underwater and while not as deep-diving, they had an affinity for fish.
Sam and Brandon were reeling in a truly large tuna. They hadn't seen any of the more exciting sport fish. Brandon had also pointed out that the reason they'd asked Godzilla along was not only the celebrity aspect, but while the fishing fleets had military escorts, small charters were forbidden because of the possibility of lurking Abyssals. Godzilla provided the needed escort to various governmental bodies' satisfaction.
Godzilla had been initially, internally dismissive of the idea, then he'd spotted an Abyssal about two hours into the trip, one who was not approaching as a defector, but preparing for an attack. So while Brandon and Sam had been searching for a good fishing spot, Godzilla had been hunting the Abyssal. Unlike a surface ship whose motors provided plenty of noise to track, his rigging was very quiet.
He also had passive receivers, but also knew enough about using existing noise sources to scope out his target, he also had eyes. So did the Abyssal, but his didn't glow in the depths. He could also mimic the echo location and songs of other marine animals as well as detect the electrical activity of the Abyssal. So if she were aware of him, she likely thought he was an overly curious whale, something she could kill at any time.
Her arrogance in approaching the charter, and setting up her attack was almost comical. She could have overwhelmed it with gunfire, but like a too arrogant swordsman, she was setting up for the `perfect` torpedo attack. The charter's only defense and the source of her frustrated noises was the boat's rapid and unpredictable course and speed changes as Brandon and his crew had tried to set up their own attack on the targets spotted by their fishfinder. Now with a fish on the line they had reduced speed and were traveling in a mostly straight line. Thus, so was the Abyssal sub. Both were mistakes, but Godzilla was less of a perfectionist.
He had a moment to see her shocked face as his jaws snapped down on her. He normally would have roared to stun the prey, but he didn't want to stun Sam's prey at the same time. He hadn't sheered clean through her, unlike an animal she had guns and torpedoes, severe trauma would not instantly incapacitate her. Instead, he broached, raising her over a hundred feet over the water's surface, before flinging her broached form off away from the boat.
Then he was under again and heading in her direction. While being wounded would not throw her off her game, sinking and flooding would, and considering the large number of holes he'd punched in her, she was probably flooding uncontrollably.
He heard her motors race, a huge rush of air as she tried to blow her ballast tanks, anything and everything to forestall her descent. All that deafened her and couldn't have made her more obvious. This time, he grabbed her in his hands, twisted and squeezed. What little air left in her hull erupted out of the myriad holes, and he dropped her to race away as she screamed her defiance, but it was a foregone conclusion that she had lost.
What amused him was the number of similar sounds as at least six other subs raced away from his vicinity. He suspected they had been a wolfpack who were leaving the `artistic` kill to their best or worst torpedist. He avoided the urge to pursue them as his instincts demanded. While the Zilla could get farther from the boat and remain in existence than some of his other rigging choices, he was still the escort and reforming a rigging was a pain.
He turned his head to watch Sam, with Brandon's help, draw aboard a tuna that likely weighed as much as she did. Sam's mom decided to commemorate the moment by throwing up over the side again. Godzilla decided a celphone picture was a better course of action.
He also heard from the crew they had a wonderful picture of 'the one he threw back'.
"Of course I threw her back," Godzilla said and signed, "I don't have a fishing license."
Sam and the crew had a good chuckle about that.
------------------------------
The arrival of a convoy escorting a limousine was hardly unexpected at the convention center where the conference was being held, but who got out had the paparazzi and reporters buzzing. Two of the `Allied` Abyssal Princesses whom the reporters had heard had taken part in a bold rescue of a handful of tourists from some unknown force.
The first reporter who shoved a microphone in the face of the Seaport Princess, as she exited curb side, watched the Princess lean in, and bite the end off.
She munched on it for a bit, then swallowed. "Our ice cream cones taste a lot better than that," she said, "Maybe if you all surrender, we'll teach you how we make them. And you'll be a lot happier." She looked around at the stunned expressions. "You did get the aluminum right, that's a nice touch."
The Repair Princess had no such tactic to force the reporters to give her some maneuvering room, instead she jumped up, walked along the roof of the car until she'd joined the Seaport Princess and her exclusion zone. The Army guards had gotten their act together well enough that Admiral Beale wasn't swarmed over when she and Delaware, the reformed Ri- and Tsu-class, and a girl about the Repair Princess' apparent age, and two babes in arms exited the far side of the car. That group ignored the howling mob, they were going in to debrief the conference's human leaders on a very important development most were unaware of.
The Seaport Princess ignored all questions as she removed several trunks from the trunk of the limousine. It wasn't all of them, and it especially wasn't any of the imposters, but the two Princesses set the trunk on top of the limousine's trunk and got ready to open it. Cameras move to the forefront, nearly starting a few fistfights and several sexual harassment claims. The Seaport Princess let the seething mass percolate for a bit as she seemingly waited patiently. When a polite quiet did not descend, she blew her fog horn.
The only sound was the distant screaming from deafened soundmen in their support vans. "I was assured help to prepare for integration into the world community, I asked to see the absolute dregs of humanity, thank you all for coming."
The reporters and cameramen looked at each other. The two Princesses opened the trunk and the Seaport Princess held up one of the disembodied heads. "I thought Futurama was supposed to be a comedy, and a fanciful one at that," the Seaport Princess said and showed the still-living head, "We haven't found Walt Disney. The Repair Princess cried a little about that."
------------------------------
For the first time since she achieved flag rank, Admiral Beale felt real fear. Even Blood Week hadn't frightened her. She was too busy trying to counter the Abyssals to be afraid. She would either succeed or die in harness. Her fellow Admirals from all over the world had adopted her restrictions in part because the punishments were severe. Those in higher ranks 'capitulated' because Sophia was not the only one, just the only one to an officer of flag rank.
Kongo, drama queen that she was, had already fainted. Most of the other secretary ships had the blank look of too much hope and too much fear warring for supremacy.
Richardson stared at the daughter of Delaware and Admiral Beale and just shook his head.
"How?" Crawford asked.
"When an admiral and a ship-girl love each other very much," Delaware said.
"Basically, all it required is serious, mutual intent," Beale added, "If you had been a civilian when you and Northampton traveled together and had been over the death of your wife and children, you might have done this too." She ignored the underlying question of her loving or trusting another of any type to actually want to have children with them.
Goto looked at Kongo propped up against the wall surrounded by her sister-ships. "This yields an interesting dimension to the idea of the Abyss simply out-producing us. It takes it away," he glanced at the two formerly Abyssal cruisers, "And it puts it right back on the table."
"You cannot simply will it into existence," Gotengo said, "They were what you'd call an item even when they were full Abyssals. It wasn't love as you think of it, but they trusted each other, when no one else trusted either of them."
Kutnezov stood. "So, those who must live in challenge and conflict," he said, "When do we begin sending them to the Moon, the asteroids and Mars?"
"Huh?" Beale said, before he restated it, Beale added, "I understand what you said, I just don't get the leap in logic."
"They need challenges, such were many soldier after the Great Patriotic War. As long as they do not deploy their rigging they need not breathe. They are more resistant to radiation, this make nuclear propulsion units more feasible. The Repair Princess can adapt system to let them extract organic/hydrocarbons while their efforts extract minerals for their life support. Or we support them. Bunker fuel is easier to ship than astronauts and food. The challenge to build structures to house other ship-girl colonists and eventually humans in places. They have place of pride, they have the daily life-threatening challenges they require, they serve us and still do not have to intermingle. They get Honor, Pride, some aloneness and purpose. If they can reproduce in vacuum, they can colonize all places and with long lifespan, even travel to other stars."
Beale had to sit down in the face of the admiral's audacity. It was one of the reasons she rather liked these meetings, brilliant ideas that would terrify the politicians.
------------------------------
Sam posed proudly beside the two yellowtails and the sea bass she'd caught. They were huge fish and they also made for good eating. Godzilla had learned enough from Ecchi-Nein and Kushi how to prepare them deliciously. He would not be able to eat his catch.
Sam moved over to stand for a photo hugging Godzilla as he displayed his catch of a So-class flagship and two Ka-class, one roasted and the other extra-crispy. The New Submarine Princess was out of sight under guard. He'd destroyed the rest of her squadron and then bullied and battered her into submission. A cute, little girl even if she was an Abyssal who was all bruises, soft cries and sniffles didn't make a photogenic end to a good hunt.
The Last Day of the Conference, as the media was reporting it, had come and gone. The media was also lamenting that no vast concrete plan was revealed to them to broadcast to the world. Not counting security concerns, they had forgotten that all ship-girls and all Abyssals had both fairies and blinker lights. A lot more had been accomplished sub rosa while the politicians posed and pontificated to attract the camera.
Arguably the most insidious plan had been hatched in secret, altered and argued in the ward rooms, secret messages exchanged by fairy couriers, and shared with none of the Admirals or politicians. The ship-girls of every stripe had conspired to carry out their master plan against the Abyssals. After the After the End party, the five Abyssal Princesses would be most vulnerable. The Battlecruiser Princess back on Nishinoshima would likewise be dealt with. A clean sweep of all, before a strike against Bikini which was the ostensive accomplishment of the conference.
La Princesa del Golfo had seen the currents and taken a charter plane from Brownsville to Long Beach to offer protection to the Gulf of Mexico, she would be targeted no less than the other four who'd acted earlier.
They had different plans for the New Submarine Princess, torturous plans to bring her to her knees, wailing and gnashing her teeth. She would likely survive, as none could get at her through her guards, but the strike would be total.
Haida pelted full tilt after the fleeting Northern Princess. "Give that back!" she shouted as the Princess tried to keep Haida's officer cap on her head. Inwardly, Haida grinned as the Princess was headed exactly where she needed her to go. Even the Mothra Larva poking its head out of the `Reppu's` cockpit didn't help much. She'd webbed Maggie and Bonnie, but Haida was a different breed.
------------------------------
The Seaport Princess walked through the corridors, whistling, badly, but aware that she was being pursued. She'd spotted Gotengo grinning, and following her discretely. She was also aware of the IJN and USN destroyer groups paralleling her on both sides.
While vaguely concerning, she'd dealt with many reporters and politicians talking to her chest and figured this was no different.
------------------------------
The U-boats rolled their eyes at the forced overwatch move and cover drill their UK counterparts were doing. A glance from the Greatest Depth Princess towards U-505 and the latter replied with a shrug.
Inwardly the U-boats knew that the rear echelon was a distraction, they'd already secured the Princess' quarters, and what needed to happen would happen there. So if the Ham and Cheese Boats acted like Woody Allen in Casino Royale, the mission would continue.
U-3008 briefly considered her friends among the IJN and USN and lamented they couldn't control themselves enough to be professional about this.
------------------------------
La Princesa del Golfo had collected all the ingredients she needed from the local stores. Spanish doubloons rescued from the sea floor had provided her all the money she'd needed. She'd been tempted to purchase prepared food from one of the shops or moving vehicles that she had smelled as she passed, but she was a Princess who did, not one who demanded things would be done for. Several of her rivals had already been betrayed by trusted allies, and she'd stepped into the resulting power vacuums, going from Elite Flagship to Princess to Installation Princess and master of the entire gulf and Caribbean from Texas to Florida, from Panama to the outskirts of Brasil.
Likewise she was aware of the small force sheepdogging her, but the local muggers and other wildlife could be brushed aside without much trouble. She was more concerned if the Carolina Reapers would be as disappointing as the Ghost Peppers had been.
------------------------------
Admiral Beale knew something was amiss. Given a few hours with no responsibilities, Delaware had wanted to head back to the hotel. Considering they were sharing a suite with Sophia, it wouldn't be for the obvious purpose that Beale would have been looking forward to. She still wondered what Delaware had planned.
"No poker games," Beale said, "The Seaport Princess might fool everyone else into thinking she's the dumb, bosomy, platinum blonde, but I didn't forget that Heddy Lamar was an inventor, and Dolph Lundren had a degree in Chemical Engineering. I don't want to stress my brain that hard for a while. What she dropped on Mugbwe was more devastating than if she'd shot at him."
"I can guarantee that it - " Delaware frowned as she realized she'd given it away, "It's not a poker game, just something all ship-girls do, and that you were a likely candidate."
"For what? Tsu- and Ri- are going to be with their kids, and we agreed that while Sophia is aware of the mechanics, practical demonstrations are out."
"We're thinking about a weapon to use against those disembodied heads," Delaware said, "Maybe to post online and destroy them the instant they see it."
"So I'm supposed to draw The Yellow Sign?" Beale asked.
"Something like that," Delaware answered as they entered the hotel.
------------------------------
Powerful arms picked the Northern Princess off the ground. She frowned as she realized it was Godzilla. She'd sensed Nagato and Mutsu close by, but could avoid them, or Mothra could deal with them. But Godzilla just appeared to be another human, and Mothra would not move against him.
"No fair," she said as Haida caught up. She frowned as Haida reached for her hat, only for Godzilla to yank Hoppo away keeping the hat out of reach. Hoppo started giggling as Godzilla kept offering Hoppo and the hat to Haida, only to yank it out of reach at the last moment, forcing the destroyer to hop and jump and grab wildly as the target came in and out of her range.
When she stuck out her tongue at the Canadian destroyer, Mothra chided her to be nice. She kept both hands on her head when they passed through a door into the room where Nagato and Mutsu waited. It didn't help, Mutsu got the hat off anyway, but Nagato stole Haida's other cap. Hoppo grew a bit concerned.
------------------------------
The Seaport Princess was growing inquisitive. She'd sensed several of her own Abyssal destroyers in her room, along with several more ship-girl destroyers. She understood that Abyssal destroyers were barely personalities, more like pets than people, but something about it all clawed at her curiosity. She knew that from her appearance and apparent attitude, she was the big dummy, a living blow-up doll, but the Russian Admiral's plan to colonize other worlds, to move out into space fascinated her. She already knew that the Mothras and some of the Smols were space-capable, and while lifting her might be beyond their capabilities, they could lift a smaller princess like Hoppo, or the Seaport Princess could create others specifically for the colonization of these other places.
She had plans to use the Abyssal droid process as well to create people who could survive on much less and if she could figure out Godzilla's radiation absorption, then survival would be assured. They could be the aggressive, danger-seeking colonizers/trailblazers and the dangers of microgravity would be eliminated. Biological humans could move from gravity well to gravity well perhaps putting on and taking off micro-g versions of themselves as needed.
All that briefly distracted her from the very large number of destroyers closing in. She had forces available if the battle became physical, she put them on alert. Her own weapons came to General Quarters, but without the ability to use torpedoes, the destroyers would have to close to melee range, and while she didn't know the human martial arts, her massive claws could tear through a squadron of destroyers at a swipe.
A mystery with a bit of danger made things more intriguing.
------------------------------
The Greatest Depth Princess knew she had inconvenienced the hotel, but the idea of sleeping on dry land rubbed all her sensibilities the wrong way. The indoor pool was small, barely the size of a hotel room itself, but it could be heated and with the jets practically made into a warm torrent like a storm current. That was something she was looking forward to again. As hot as she could stand and as violent a current as she could induce, like a hot maelstrom or a hydrothermal vent. In that she could sleep insensate and forget she was not where she belonged.
The group so obviously following her, while their stealth was generally excellent they gave themselves away just often enough to mark their presence were not enough of a distraction to those ahead and to her flanks that were as stealthy as the Ohio-class, Triomphant-class and Vanguard-class who she stalked for fun, scratching on their hulls to remind everyone who the master was and who were merely guests. She had a number of weapons that functioned above ground, but they had only torpedoes.
So what is your game? She wanted to ask, but not enough to spoil the game.
------------------------------
The Battlecruiser Princess was feeling very strange. Nagato and Mutsu had given her some of their beauty before they'd left. She was pretty now, even with her deep issues with her appearance, she admitted that. You could say she was exotic, but human programming to avoid inbreeding made the exotic attractive. She'd not wanted to participate in the Princess' summit. She had no fleet nor territory to bring to the table, she was fully in the human's control, and in debt to their ship-girls and their allied Abyssal Princess. She had nothing else to offer, and besides, Bikini was still out there, and in a fight all the Battlecruiser Princess could do was die bravely, she could cost the Red Princess a dear toll to take her down.
So with the base mainly crewed by the long-range patrol planes and their crews, the semi-Abyssal was idle, waiting for the call that if she'd done her job in the Russian Federation properly, would never come. The infiltrators were a concern, but Major Andre was working with others to create a detection system. From what the Battlecruiser Princess had heard, a narrow-necked jar with a cookie in it would be sufficient. You'd look for the idiot with a jar on its hand walking around.
The sub pens having lights was odd, and worthy of investigation. No ships were supposed to be back from patrol, and if any had been hurt, the alarms would have sounded. She sent a message to the command post that she was checking, and received acknowledgment from the ship-girl on duty.
Almost belatedly, the ship-girl added that reinforcements could be sent. That troubled the Battlecruiser Princess, boredom could be as dangerous as any other complacency.
Hoppo was half-asleep, Nagato gently washing her hair and back had the Abyssal relaxing from the stresses of the last few weeks. She smirked at Haida getting the same from Mutsu, and likewise being reduced to a happy puddle by the strong, gentle fingers rubbing away the dirt, oils and tensions that had built up over the battles and the conference. Although considering Mutsu's expression, Hoppo wondered whether she or Nagato was enjoying their experience more.
She knew inwardly this was seduction, not sexual, but emotional manipulation. At the same time, it was an affirmation that she was understood. She could be autonomous yet allied. She felt her eyelids getting heavier, and remembered the line 'Make a table for me among my enemies'.
Except they aren't enemies, she thought muzzily, Our nations may be rivals but we don't have to be enemies. She turned and settled into Nagato's lap, fading off to sleep, and aware of the embarrassed flush from the battleship.
------------------------------
The Seaport Princess petted the lap full of destroyers and noted Gordon and his squadron had similar coverings as they sat in her room. The tray of snacks Gordon's team had brought within easy reach of all.
"You would say that to a subatomic particle, a planetary mass is essentially an immovable object?" she asked, waited for the others to nod, "Yet most neutrinos pass through without problem, an irresistible force. So what happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force? They don't interact." She smiled as Gotengo and the three, former Abyssal cruisers goggled at that. "My turn, what have I got in my pocket?"
"That one's easy, a sleepy destroyer," Gordon said, "Okay, I am large and purple, I graze on grass at night, and eat the dreams of children during the day, who am I?"
The Seaport Princess leaned against the wall to think as she idly stroked the destroyers. "Who, not what," she said, "So your Federal Agencies in a Barney suit is out."
------------------------------
A Zilla in a French Foreign Legion uniform stepped out of the shadows. It approached one of the disembodied heads of the droids they'd recovered from the kidnaping attempt.
It selected one more isolated from the others and displayed the scene of Godzilla with an intertwined Haida and Hoppo laying on his chest, while Nagato and Mutsu lay on his shoulders, their free arms hugging the pair of smaller ship-girls.
The head tried to turn its eyes away and even closed them, but the Zilla held the live image where it would have to look, and whenever any of those featured made a little noise, the head would look again briefly, before trying to shut out the image.
Finally, the head began rattling, shaking more violently until black ichor ran out its ears and it lay still. The Zilla withdrew from the murdered 'immortal' and sent the data up the chain for analysis. Both the movie provided by Nagato's fairies of the cuddlepile, but also the film of the head's response. The Zilla surveyed the terrified heads, grinned at them, but withdrew back into the shadows.
------------------------------
The soft lighting wasn't candles, falling asleep with multiple flame sources nearby sounded more like a suicide attempt than a romantic setting. Taking a bath with a plugged in toaster wouldn't burn the house down around you. The Greatest Depth Princess still could see the numerous subs clustered around the tub. One or two of her servants were there too.
Disturbingly, her servants wore the same odd expression as the sub-girls, worried but hopeful.
"What is this about?" she asked, "I can survive an unlimited time underwater, you are not true submarines, merely submersibles."
"Maybe," Ecchi-Nein said, "Or maybe the Repair Princess has skills you haven't considered. We may not have the endurance of nukes, but one night, easy enough."
Kushi took the Princess' hand as one of the So-class took her other. "Perhaps you should think this more about touch and safety than sleep."
"You need not fear, Highness," the So-class said, "We will watch and guard. You will not need be alone."
She wanted to tell them she preferred aloneness, but the question that raised was did she prefer to be alone or did she prefer not having to constantly worry about the actions of those around her. "A privilege that your human masters can take away," she said, "Accept our rules or we take the touch of others away from you."
"Or when their need for us lessens and their yoke grows heavy even for us," Kushi said, "Would we be welcome among yours?"
The Princess didn't answer as they led her into the water.
------------------------------
The Battlecruiser Princess moved through the variegated shadow/light pattern from the single source in the distance. She couldn't see what the source shown down on, but she smelled grilling fish, cheese fondue and a few other treats. It was simple fare for most ship-girls but she remembered sharing them with a couple of people, so they were always treasures to her.
She approached and saw that H41 was there preparing the food at a low table. An empty chair sat beside the chair the sub-girl sat in. She turned and smiled at the Abyssal.
"Waiting, for me?" she asked.
"Sort of," H41 said, "I was wondering, if you'd - "
The Abyssal sat down beside her. "What?"
"I want to resign, I've never been comfortable with most ship-girls," H41 said and smiled at the Abyssal, "A few understood why, most just bulldozed past. But I never." She stopped took a deep breath. "This was supposed to sound sophisticated and highbrow, but I can't manage that. I want your babies. I don't want to fight anymore. I want to be a mother, maybe train up little ones, but I don't want to be packed in like sardines with warships any more."
The Battlecruiser Princess hugged the sub, felt her mold herself to her, in a way most others would not. "First, you know how the war movies say you'll be killed in your next fight. But have you talked to the Admiral?"
"I talked with Admiral Beale, and there'll be places for ship-girls to train others, Abyssals will need to be trained to get on with human officers and vice versa. One ship and one princess aren't going to make a difference in the war. The Allies would pull their experienced troops back to train the next group, the Axis kept theirs on station until they died. Admiral Beale understands."
H41 pulled away and the Battlecruiser Princess saw she was crying. "Not all who serve fight, and if the rumblings I've heard are right, there may be astronaut training for some in the future. Just stay alive, the movie isn't over and I don't want to lose you."
H41 laughed at that and hugged the Princess tight.
------------------------------
The New Submarine Princess screamed at the Smols holding monitors showing the happy Princesses feeling safe and loved so openly and enthusiastically.
"It was my job!" she screamed at the images, "You can't hold that against me! I wasn't even very good at it!" Before she dissolved in sobs on the floor of her cell.
------------------------------
La Princesa del Golfo froze at the collection within the suite of rooms she'd been deeded for her stay. The collection of ship-girls was one part of the onslaught, but the laughter, the smells of oils, spices and meats was the heaviest blow.
She had dreaded a `challenge` from those who favored spice over taste. She owed a nice meal to the officer who'd suggested and provided a few canisters of military-grade pepper spray to use on food when those challengers had come forth. Evidently memes could be used as threat displays.
But that wasn't what assaulted her nostrils. The smells were strong, peppers, onion, ginger, even horseradish, but they were muted among the other scents. Texas smiled at her, "I thought you might like to try some of the other cuisine on the places that border your territory."
La Princesa del Golfo knew this was as much a show of force as a gentle message of 'no better friend, no worse enemy' it also would give evidence to the more warlike of her brood that the various states could crush her nascent kingdom whenever they wished, and playing nice would get them both more freedom of action, and less chance of bloody, violent death.
"Maybe," she said and pulled a standing rib roast from the bags she carried, "But this is hard enough to cook underwater, that's the real trick."
"That's no trick that's just the latest style," USS Savannah said as she prepared a plastic bag and a pot of scalding water.
------------------------------
Delaware walked along the riprap at the shore. 'Shark Dentures' waited for her in the shallows. Sophia was in the water playing with the Ri- and Tsu-class and their children. The older former Abyssal acting as lifeguard. The Repair Princess and Admiral Beale were up the slope looking at the ports of San Pedro and Long Beach. What they were discussing was not her immediate concern.
"You took a serious risk," Shark Dentures said.
"I was the pioneer," Delaware said, "I had a feeling that the Abyss' offer was as false as pyrite. The difference was, I knew that not all humans can be trusted was a human watchword as well. They aren't saints, but keep them safe and their bellies full, and they can be surprisingly stormproof to be around. What was the line, 'I treat every man the same, just as another future customer.'"
"That was an undertaker if I recall correctly," Shark Dentures said, "Not someone who has to deal with all of humanity's quirks and foibles."
"He has to deal with the families," Delaware said, "People who are not at their best."
"Point taken," Shark Dentures said as the `kids` splashed in water too cold and dirty to be attractive to humans, but ship-girls had no problems with it. "I guess we simply came at the problem from different directions."
"You have every right to be proud of her," Delaware said, "Don't you think she was worth the risk?"
"Captain Gordon is going to find out about the songs and the posters," Shark Dentures said, "And about my hand in ordering and delivering them."
"I think the good Captain is partially aware, and I think as long as we don't use someone he cares about for an Operation Mincemeat, he'll let it roll off his back," Delaware said, "That's why he acts like a man, stoicism and results-oriented are a big part of what he does, that someone made his offering the olive branch more effective, by implying he's a magic monster, I think he not only won't do anything, I think he knows already."
"Ship-girls are all crazy," Delaware said, "That's the mantra of all admirals. Plausible Deniability is very useful. If it failed, she knew nothing about it, and I would be appropriately scolded. If it worked, then she assisted with my crazy idea."
"This was her idea?!" Shark Dentures hissed to keep from shouting.
"This was our idea," Delaware said, "Now with a dutiful lifeguard on duty, I'm going for a swim."
Delaware stepped into the shallow water, submerging all but her head and circling the small group of ship-girls.
Shark Dentures shook her head and considered the fleet moving out for Nishinoshima by way of Pearl. Additional forces would join them there, and then to Nishinoshima while they prepared for the final assault. She spotted Godzilla on one of the steel ships while most of the ship-girls sailed in flotillas and squadrons. It was a gaggle of battlegroups. But politics and inexperience would keep it that way for a while as the most adventurous and trusting started working together as practice squadrons.
It'll be a long way to Nishinoshima, Shark Dentures thought, Maybe that's the point.
She returned her attention to the kids playing in the waves.
------------------------------
"Well I charged in towards the Midway Princess, dodging her torpedoes, and parrying shells with my sword," Tenryuu said. Then basked in the oohing and ahing of the Allied Abyssal fleet accompanying the Allied Command force sailing towards Nishinoshima. "And I plunged if straight into her heart." She drew the blade and stabbed the air with it.
"What have you done?" The Seaport Princess asked Godzilla as he stood on deck of the fast transport/repair ship accompanying them.
"That hotel we stayed at in Hawaii," Godzilla said, "I tore the tag off a pillow."
Suddenly there was no Abyssal within half a mile of the human-form kaiju as they regarded him with terror from a distance.
------------------------------
I'm crawling out the busted side window of the Nash onto about an inch of water covering what must be concrete. I look back and the Nash is sinking 'by the stern' as the navy would say. Damn, the head wound I got on the perimeter must really be acting up, because the only way a car could be sinking like that, and I'm staying up, is it broke through the ice on a lake or some such, but the hard surface under me isn't cold.
So what is going on?
I manage to get to a sitting position, my whole body aches and my head is spinning worse than from the artillery blast that got me evaced to Tokyo, and then sent home on a medical discharge. I was warned there'd be side effects, but they never described this. I'm almost ready to call it a hallucination, since breaking your car through the ice on a frozen lake without understanding how you got there is bad. Doing so when you remember the month is July is a serious problem.
Then comes the next blow to sanity. If this broad was trying to duplicate the Imperial Japanese Prison Camp Guard stereotype from Allied propaganda films, she'd only need the coke-bottle glasses and the buck teeth to be pitch perfect, although she'd have to be a guy and what I see is clearly no guy. The shark-like grin doesn't detract from the fact she's stacked like nobody's business. So I guess they couldn't decide between Dragon Lady and Prison Camp Guard so they went with both.
She's waving her drawn sword at me and telling me to get up, in Japanese. Yeah, I picked up a bit of Japanese in the six months' convalescence I had before they sent me home. Normally, I could take her easily. A sword isn't much worse than a rifle with a bayonet, and I dealt with those a few times on the retreat to Pusan. Some from our own guys who panicked. Those I didn't kill, the Commies I did.
Problem is, she isn't alone, there's another one wearing the weirdest gear I've ever seen. She looks like she's wearing a rig with a bunch of naval guns on it. If she fired them, she'd wind up on her ass from the recoil, so they're obviously fake, unless there's a Sten gun or Grease gun mounted in a couple of them, that would be a serious threat. So I raise my hands and put them on my head before trying to stand up. I say trying because I face plant as I pass out when I'm halfway up.
------------------------------
"I guess he was scared," Tenryuu chuckled, "At least this one wasn't the trouble the others have been."
"This one is male," Nagato said of the figure lying on the water. She looked down through the water at the sunken car. "We should retrieve that. He may want it, as battered as it is."
"Maybe you should wipe away the nose bleed," Tenryuu said and chuckled as Nagato reached for her face. She held her smile at Nagato's frown. "Maybe we'll find out what's happening. The other 23 haven't been useful. He seems reasonable, at least he didn't summon his rigging and start shooting at everything."
"The others were terrified. I am concerned that even the Russians' whose ships are male, summon ship-girls, yet he is male, as was the other who simply laid down and died."
"Too many pretty girls," Tenryuu said, "Probably couldn't make up his mind."
Nagato frowned at that, but held her tongue as she and Tenryuu dragged the man off the water and to the ambulance that had arrived after it was deemed safe. "Take him to Akashi I want to know what's going on."
The attendants nodded and closed the door after they had the patient secured. Nagato wondered if this was some new kind of Abyssal attack, or if something was happening to the citizens of Japan that boded ill for the future. That was the other reason she wanted the car salvaged. She didn't recognize it, but he'd clearly been the driver, so it would provide answers even if he couldn't yet.
------------------------------
Mutsu sat in the chair in the admiral's office. "That's 31 to date," she said, "Six men in their early 20's, and the rest girls to older women." She sighed. "All the men seem to have entered some kind of hibernation, or mothballing. All the women completely freaked out when they arrived. Maybe two or three of them could be coaxed into sortieing with us, but that's going to take a lot of training and a fair amount of keeping them calm. Every single one of them is still panicked about becoming a ship-girl."
Admiral Goto nodded. "What about the men? You said they'd been mothballed," Goto said, "What does that mean, and what does it mean for their crews?"
Mutsu glanced over to Akashi.
"It's rather strange," the repair ship explained.
------------------------------
The fairy carefully closed the door behind her. She'd watched as the previous explorer had failed to dog down a hatch she'd opened. The crew had stopped being the immobile statues braced against the walls as if holding them up, and had surged together as a group and thrown her out of the ship. Then they'd returned to their resting places like vampires returning to their crypts.
She stopped and caught her breath as several of them were clustered unmoving near the door she'd just come through. Surrounded by so many hunky male fairies was not the only reason her heart went pitter-patter. They were there to protect their ship, and she knew what she'd do to an invader. She slipped through the mass and continued towards the fuel tanks. There she had to be very careful, and return absolutely everything back to the way it was, and that was going to be difficult. As the mass at the door had indicated, the crew were becoming more proactive as someone approached the ship's vital areas.
She lifted the lid on the hatch that accessed the fuel bunkers and extended her stick to poke at the fuel. As she had suspected, the bunker fuel was solid. Not like the tarry substance it was in most ship-girls, but hard as a rock.
She didn't panic as she looked up and found herself surrounded by immobile members of the crew. She knew the `ritual` that would keep them just being disturbing. She closed the hatch, returning the latches to exactly the same position as they'd been in. She collected everything she'd brought, and retreated, opening and reclosing the doors as she retreated from the ship. She briefly considered what might happen if she `disturbed` the Captain's cabin, then remembered the crew would just throw her off the ship, rather than give her a chance to `negotiate her release`. She sighed, it was like being in a candy store with no money. She ran a finger down a particularly exquisite specimen, and got no reaction whatsoever. She decided to continue on the path out without any further provocation, but it was hard.
She thought inwardly that her ship-girl was going to owe her several times her weight in ice cream as she made her way out.
------------------------------
"The ship, other than doors which weren't in the process of being opened or closed, is essentially one solid mass. Even the crew seems fused to the structure. Unless something is disturbed, then they can move with great speed and total stealth. We can't just put some fresh fuel in the system, fire up the boilers and see what happens. First, the crew who tried would be attacked, second, I don't think the turbines would even move, let alone the valves needed to feed the fresh fuel to the burners, and third, and this is just a hunch, I think this hibernation is the mens' reaction to becoming ship-boys. Most of the women have had a psychological breakdown, this catatonia might be their coping mechanism. I recommend we wait until they wake up. Forcing it will have more deleterious than beneficial effects," Akashi said.
"We asked for your opinion," Admiral Goto said, "I just wish we could talk to them, find out why they showed up. What the new ship-girls have told us doesn't make any sense. If it was a pattern, it's eluding me."
"The good news is the man we thought died just entered this state before we understood it," Nagato said, "The jokes about Sleeping Beauty are already making the rounds, and a few girls have referenced the original legend where the birth of her children woke her."
Goto's head came up. "That's not going to happen unless we suddenly become desperate for ships," Goto said, "Despite everything the Abyss has done, that's still a war crime, and they are allied soldiers, not enemy."
"We've posted guards," Nagato said, "Mostly younger destroyers, but I'm not sure if them snuggling up to the immobile ships is edging into dangerous territory. They aren't talking love's first kiss, or pregnancy, but they're convinced the men's minds have run away and they can be lured back once they think it's safe."
"Well, as delusions go, that one is one of the least dangerous I can imagine," Goto said, "Don't encourage it, but monitor things closely. This is either a great boon to us, or a deadly trap. Have we narrowed down the designs on the girls who can summon their rigging?"
"Yes," Mutsu said, "They are without exception designs canceled by the Washington Naval Treaty: cruisers and battleships. Three of the women might be carriers, but they seemed the most psychotic when they interacted with our ship-girls."
"I didn't think that any carriers were canceled by the treaty," Goto said.
"Amagi sort of was," Nagato said, "And as Kaga could be converted to a carrier, then other Tosa class could as well. As could additional Lexington-class battlecruisers. But we're speculating."
Goto nodded. "Keep me informed."
------------------------------
Nagato looked at the current centerpiece of Akashi's secondary work shop. The car seems such a trivial thing, she thought as she knelt beside it and looked at her reflection in the metal, A keepsake from a different time. Yet it became as great a puzzle as The Thirty-One.
"Thinking about our new arrivals?" Akashi asked as she stood over the disassembled engine, the block alone remaining on the engine stand from her dissection and analysis.
"The Thirty-One, such a chunni name," Nagato said, "But it is catching on."
"Oh?" the smaller repair ship said, "I thought The Unsummoned was the current name for the men and women. It seems there's a contest for the most ridiculous or pretentious name for the ship-girls/ship-boys from unknown parts."
"They need a name," Nagato said as she walked around the car. "It plunged through 30 meters of water to the bottom, " Nagato said, "But the damage doesn't equate the damage the plunge should inflict on it."
"It doesn't wholly equate," Akashi said, "The blown out driver's side window it arrived with, blown out because no broken glass was inside the car. The drop was stern-first, so the lack of damage to the hood is understandable."
"The damage to both sides while the roof remained untouched?" Nagato asked.
"That's a concern for everyone," Akashi said and waved Nagato over, "The engine is the truly curious anomaly. Yes it's been underwater, but it wasn't running at the time, so missing all the connecting rods and the cam shaft seems inexplicable." She gestured to the pieces of metal like a half-finished puzzle. "The bearing surfaces where the crankshaft attached to the missing connecting rods - "
"That being missing is odd?" Nagato asked.
"Not half as odd as the car's frame being gone too," Akashi said.
Nagato looked at the car. "So the axles remained attached to the car through other fittings."
Akashi nodded. "The differential and transmission gears were wrecked without the casings being destroyed as well," the repair ship said and shivered.
Nagato was disturbed by the very selective destruction. "If it were steel, the car's body is all steel why did that remain? For that matter, why not the pistons and the block itself," Nagato said and sighed, "The concept of a monster that eats selective types of metals would not be so frightening to a human."
"You fear for your armor plate?" Akashi asked, not teasingly, but seeking information.
Nagato nodded.
"I don't think it was a strange monster, just a weird effect," Akashi said, "Add the crushed radiator and the total lack of lubricants in the oil pan, transmission and differential."
"Seems like an after thought," Nagato said as she ran a finger over the dry metal, the pieces of the crankshaft that remained.
"It suggests that the lubricants and metal were absorbed during the man's transformation into a ship-boy as structural members and bunker fuel," Akashi said, "Don't look at me like that. It makes as much sense as anything else about these people."
"The females remain traumatized by the transformation," Nagato said, and frowned, "Gratingly so, they lament the loss of their humanity, how they were now things instead of people. Watching them is now a disciplinary posting, especially for fighting or serious arguments with other nations' or other squadrons' ship-girls."
Akashi snorted with laughter at that. "So the catatonia of the ship-boys is a comparative relief?"
"Few ship-girls enjoy watching over them either," Nagato admitted, "They were all gorgeous in a primal way difficult to explain, like a mix of Admiral and powerful battleship, but that hardly encapsulates it fully."
Akashi dried her hand with a rag and walked over to the car to examine her and Nagato's reflections. "When they wake, there will be problems."
Nagato nodded and walked over to examine the block closer.
------------------------------
Nagato was still going over the disassembled engine when she got the word. The Nash driver was breathing. The first of the ship-boys to recommence that activity. She mentally ordered herself to be calm while she sent alerts and sent additional forces to reinforce the guards. Considering the largest women had been battleships, the men were all larger than her, no one knew what their reactions would be, or what kind of ship type they'd become.
------------------------------
Mutsu sat in charge, in a chair at the far end of the room and forced herself not to fidget. Ushio and Hamakaze had been tasked with close in watching. The admiral hadn't quite told the trio to 'lie back and think of Nihon' depending on the pattern of violence when the Nash driver awoke, but the implication was there.
You can't exactly rape the willing Mutsu thought of her own reaction, Better let Nagato and I meet him in those circumstances.
Everyone knew that the destroyer guards had been cuddling with the ship-boys, but until the Nash driver's breathing started, it was the same as a dakimakura, not a person.
Ushio nearly screamed as the man sat up, he quickly adjusted the covers to preserve his modesty, or protect the destroyer's innocence, Mutsu didn't know. Then he seemed to be trying to take in the entire room. His head and eyes darted to every fixture and object. That he didn't linger over the three, frankly gorgeous women in it rankled the battleship, but she'd let that slide as anything that didn't result in exchanges of naval gunfire was a net positive.
"You're safe," Hamakaze said, in Japanese, then repeated in English.
The man didn't even respond, he seemed more interested in the moldings and baseboards where the floor met the walls. Then he stood up out of the bed, keeping the bedsheet with him to cover up, and marched across the room. Ushio squeaked and dove out of the way as he headed towards the bathroom, passing her without regard. He collected the small pile of clothes beside the bathroom door, dropped the sheet as he closed the door behind him.
The sound of liquid going into the toilet sounded as the trio silently exchanged glances. The noise stopped, Hamakaze crept forward to listen at the door. Before she could reach it, the door swung open and the clothed man marched out, neatly sidestepping the retreating destroyer and approached Mutsu, who unconsciously stood to meet him. She was slightly taller, but she could see the evidence in his stance and attitude that he was a soldier, possibly a veteran.
"Chief Warrant Officer Amos Canby, social security number 545-06-3398," he said, as if reporting to a superior officer, although he did not salute.
Mutsu nodded and awaited the slew of questions that had to be surging through his mind.
And she waited, and waited.
------------------------------
Mutsu stared into her tea cup as she sat in the admiral's conference room. Nagato hadn't seen her sister so rattled even at getting shot at.
"He never asked any questions?" Kongo asked as she leaned against the admiral.
"Not a one," Mutsu said, "He just stood there and I swear he was staring at the part of my hair. I finally had the destroyers take him to the room over the furnace in the battleship dorms." She sipped her tea. "Intimidating doesn't cover it. It was as if he didn't care, and was completely hostile, both at the same time."
"Hostile, how do you mean?" the admiral asked, "He didn't do anything, correct?"
"Like any senior noncom, he can radiate disapproval, without being insubordinate," Mutsu said, "He clearly didn't want to be there, but he wasn't going to say anything. I've never felt like a child facing an angry father, but I think that's the best equivalent."
"So we should hold off teaching him to deploy his rigging?" Nagato asked.
Now the admiral looked uncomfortable. "I think we need to get him incorporated into the formations and sorties as q1uickly as possible. It could be that this is his expression of the histrionics that we've seen from all the others. Fortunately, he wasn't shooting this time."
Mutsu shivered. "I'd prefer him shooting," she admitted.
------------------------------
Amos looked around the barracks room he'd been sent to. The five-high bunk beds was interesting. The room was small, barely enough room for a desk beside the door to the small bathroom. At least that was private. He'd seen no men anywhere on the trip over to these quarters, that alone was a huge warning that this was not what he should take at face value.
I can believe I crashed the Rambler, but encountering those two tall Japanese women really threw a wrench into things, he thought, But I recognize the chrysanthemum crest they wore. It's Imperial Japanese Navy. But the last of their ships were nuked or turned over to the Soviets, so why wear that icon?
He examined the very Japanese style bathroom facilities and tried to remember how you had to use them.
So where am I? Japan? Not likely, their economy was on the bones of its ass, and the occupation army would be all over a camp like this. Korea? Did I really get evaced? No I can understand Japanese, so that's real, but did they recapture me, last I heard the Chinese had counterattacked. China, he realized, That's why all the Japanese stereotypes, they hate the Japanese more than we did after Pearl Harbor, and that girl with the sword, if you wanted someone more stereotypical, you'd have to go a long way.
So what do they want? He thought as he examined the room, looking for spyholes or anything out of the ordinary besides everything. I was working on hardening telephone exchanges against EMP, he thought, That's got to be it. If an atom bomb can take out their telephones without hitting the target then we've got them. The changes to ours are so simple, if they find out.
The old electromechanical telephone exchanges were EMP hardened by connecting a neon tube between the input and the output, if the voltage across got too high the neon light would light and provide a conductive path so the exchange would escape damage. Yes, this technique was Top Secret in the early 1950's
He smiled. So, an interrogation camp, he thought, Disorienting the subject is the first thing, well they've accomplished that. What was that Dahl story in Harper's? Beware the Dog that's what this is. Convince me the war's over, that the Japanese are our allies in some new war and pump me for information that our allies obviously need.
He let out a breath, feeling the tension drain out of him. Well, I never expected to have to use the training I got in the Signal Corps, but I've been captured, and as long as I don't 'know' I'm a prisoner, they'll keep up the charade. Telephones, he thought as he looked around and realized that was something else he hadn't seen since he'd woken up.
So first, figure out where I really am. Second, figure out how to get to somewhere they can't get me back. Third, avoid setting off the prison camp guards, he thought, then it hit him, How do I tell the guards from the other inmates? Are those little girls guards or inmates? Or are they all props and there's only a few of us actually in here. This is going to be a problem. Whom do I trust, no one? Do I try to rescue anyone else? I can't trust that anyone else is an inmate. They may have broken some others they captured. Didn't one of the girls mention some women who'd overreacted on arriving here? Okay, we concentrate on getting me out of here, and not tipping my hand that I'm on to them.
I really should be looking forward to the weird crap they throw at me. If that woman's 'I'm a cruiser' costume is part of the game, Amos thought, I wonder if they'll fit me out for that stuff?
------------------------------
Kashima was more nervous than she'd ever been, even when in combat, even when she'd been under fire. She'd been present when two of the new ship-girls had manifested their rigging, and she'd subsequently sent not only time in the repair pools, but time in Akashi's hands as a result.
So here I am trying to teach another of them to manifest his rigging, and even with all four Kongos and both Nagatos present, I can't run away fast enough, she thought and her hand had raised, almost of its own accord to rub the man before her. She quickly dropped her hand at Nagato's glare, then admitted, It isn't that I'm afraid he'll overpower me, it's that I want him to, and the shooting, not with his rigging. He's just so - so - so - Fifty Shades of Gray, so yummy and intimidating.
They stood at the launch dock. Any ship-girl could summon her rigging anywhere, but it just felt easier, if felt right to do it here, and she hoped he would feel the same.
She glanced at the very thick concrete walls, floor and ceiling. It will also contain any outburst, she thought, And some of the smaller girls can escape quicker if we need to.
She tried to get her boilers and turbine under control as she explained. "You rigging is a manifestation of your actual armament, sensors and weapons, the measure tha makes a ship-girl a ship-girl." She realized how she was mangling it and blushed furiously.
I know I carry a riding crop, but I'm not that kind of girl, she thought desperately, At least I'm not drooling.
------------------------------
Amos had been ignoring the elephant in the room or rather the rhino in the sub pen, and looked at the poor kid who seemed to be hyperventilating as she explained the latest insanity.
The rhinoceros was the four naughty nuns, and the camp commandant with her first officer. They look like they're ready to jump me if I step one foot out of line, he thought, I guess there are real weapons in the ridiculous cruiser get ups. So all of them have four twin turrets and a few other distinguishing bits, he thought, I guess that saves money: only one set of molds or dies if they're metal. Shit boss, what did I do to piss you off? I haven't seen that kind of look since Basic. You don't do it as well as the sergeants there, they were offended we even existed, you just hate. Your shorthaired buddy's doing it wrong too, snitch-in-chief doesn't work with the boss standing right there, no points for you for ratting me out when the boss saw it first.
"So what is the process to 'summon my rigging'?" I asked the poor kid who's stammering now. Most of the guns were pointing in his general direction, and the busty teenager who was trying hard not to burst into tears.
Shit kid, I'm not gonna hit you, Amos thought, I know what I'd like to do, but that'll have to wait until you've grown up. Until then, just let's get through this.
"Can I summon just part or do I have to summon the whole thing?" he asked.
I can't believe I'm going along with this bullshit, he thought, But if it keeps me away from what I've heard the Chinese do to uncooperative prisoners, I'll play along.
"You can summon just part," the kids said.
"Let's do that, keep everybody stabled, they seem a little trigger happy," he told her loud enough to set the rhinos muttering amongst themselves.
Okay, that's why the building and why she's so freaked out, Amos thought as a gun turret grew out of his hand, Who knows what she's seeing, this place must be packed with peyote dust or something. No way this is real. Looks real, feels real, but it's like the DTs, it isn't real.
He couldn't place where he'd seen that turret style, it was like a destroyer's but the barrels were way too long. He concentrated again, and it was gone. Now that's weird, he thought, and concentrated on bringing out all his guns. If they start shooting, he thought I can dive down the ramp to safety. Hey, you want me to do this, I'm just going along with it.
Six triple turrets formed from a structure somehow attached to him but behind him. They seemed to aim where he wanted, and he was very careful not to aim them at anybody.
"So commandant, I get three cause I'm a boy, and you all get two because you're girls?" he asked, "Kinda phallic isn't it? Mine isn't as long as my leg, I just make it seem like that."
So I can get away with cracks like that, he thought of the stunned, bright, pink rhinoceros, As long as I'm playing along. Got it. This beats any peyote trip Wolf Creek ever talked about. But we gotta use this stuff for something. Won't that be a trip and a half?
------------------------------
" 'I get three cause I'm a boy'," Mutsu said and laughed again. Kongo and Nagato seemed to be contesting who could blush more as they debriefed in the admiral's conference room. "I can't wait to tell Musashi that one." She laughed again.
Kashima was torn between laughing and blushing so hard she burst all her steam lines. "He, passed all the tests," she managed.
"Not all of them," Mutsu said.
Kashima heard the overpressure safeties open and wanted nothing more than to vent all that to her turbines and run until she collapsed.
"The armament array is very strange," Kirishima said and blushed at remembering his 'It's the outside diameter that matters' comment on her measuring his rigging. "Even the French and ourselves never used a 30-centimeter armament, it was 305 millimeter, not 300. The forward array doesn't even match the HMS Rodney or Tone-class, one superfiring over two flush mounted, the rear is the Brooklyn or Mogami-class forward array of flush, superfiring, flush."
"Are they triple or three gun turrets?" Admiral Goto asked then looked up at the ensuing silence. All the ship-girls were blushing and looking at each other as if to say 'you tell him'. "It's that difficult a question?"
Kirishima then buried her face in her hands as she remembered him elevating the center gun of each turret while she was checking the bore diameter then asking 'don't you want to check the length?' "Three guns, high-angle, 65 caliber!" she blurted out and covered her face again. Haruna patted her shoulder.
Goto looked from blushing face to blushing face.
Kashima knew he was wondering what exactly had happened both to his ship-girls and with the newcomer. I can't explain it, she thought as she stared down at her clenched her hands on her thighs, And how would we explain it?
------------------------------
The hallucinogens from 'the dock' hadn't worn off, because standing about a foot from my head as I lay in bed, was a little me, in a naval captain's uniform.
While it said 'yo', it gave me a status report and a report on supplies aboard, what would be needed and what 'we' could absolutely not do without. As a lark I wrote it down and decided if they wanted to play this crazy game, I'd play along. I'd talked to an Australian who had talked about the Dreamtime, and that lots of people had similar, I call them hallucinations, he called them visions. This seemed to be the same: a shared or at least formatted hallucination. Those under the influence would visualize similar stuff.
I wonder if when I was supposedly unconscious if they were hypnotizing me so I'd fit in with the program, I thought, Is that kind of mind control possible, or is it so bizarre that we all cling to the similarities and gloss over the differences.
It also answered why several of the women they'd talked about had flipped out. Nothing against girls, but the Pusan Perimeter hardened you against things no civilian would understand. Maybe someone at Stalingrad, Guadalcanal or Anzio might understand, but no civilian ever would. The guys had just gone catatonic.
So they said, I reminded myself, Like the rigging, wait to see the first sortie in a few days.
With the little guy disappearing back into my head, both figuratively and literally, I took the list to Akashi to get it filled, and expected either a horse laugh or instant compliance. Either reaction would be telling.
------------------------------
Amos was taking notes like a good little boy. The others in the class, all destroyers, were divided between paying attention to the teacher, and stealing looks at him.
Okay, I've finally seen a couple of guys on this base, but they were janitors or garbagemen, so . . . he thought as another girl sighed as she'd glanced back at him then returned her attention to the teacher.
He'd learned that he was supposed to be in 2020, and that had shattered any doubts that this was all a fake. He remembered thinking 'if this is 2020 why am I 25 not 90?', he also noted there were no flying cars, and buildings, trucks and food showed little difference other than styling from what he'd seen in Japan in 1950.
He glanced at one of the girls showing another girl one of the radios they all seemed to carry. They called them phones, but they acted like radios. More accurately, they acted like neither, being somehow movie projector, microfiche reader, television, record collection and a host of other things. Phones he knew, he'd worked at Bell Labs before the war, and nothing even hinted at a transceiver that small, let alone one that did all the things this one did. A wire photo took hours to minutes to transmit.
The info she was providing on the long-range torpedoes was vaguely interesting and sounded like great secrets were being provided. Until Amos realized that none of this would be unknown to any military after 1946. The diagrams of the 'Abyssals' he was to fight were more interesting.
Looks like a pin-up display, Amos thought, The girls on my side are gorgeous, even the underage ones, I guess they need them for pedophile captives, or from what I've heard about Mao, they're too old for him anymore. The enemy are also attractive even statuesque, just with weird shit added. Oh, the war crimes I'd be tempted with. Maybe that's another way to drag prisoners down. You hurt some pretty girl almost to death, and if no one but the spies are watching? So she doesn't die from gunfire, it's all a win and no one the wiser, except they've been filming the whole thing. Pretty slick guys, pretty slick. Not going to play that game, Amos thought, If they are the enemy, I shoot them and go about my business. I was pretty good with a rifle before I went to my A-school and got my Warrant, so 18 of them will be very effective.
The bell sounded and the level of chatter rose as the girls headed out. Without exception, all the girls looked at him and looked away only wistfully.
Okay, I got the message, Amos thought, You're over doing it. And here comes the main event.
The teacher, Miss Ashigara, sat on the edge of his desk, not so accidentally making her skirt ride up on one side almost to her hip, dragging the rest of it with it.
Amos didn't bother to even look. Instead he put on his vacuous smile and looked at her forehead. "Ma'am," he said.
Her hands seemed to be playing with her skirt, but he kept focusing on her forehead. Ashigara was definitely like Tenryuu, one of the guards. "Since you're sortieing tomorrow, maybe you need a little cram school," she said and smiled.
I ain't cramming it anywhere near you, Amos thought, but kept smiling.
"I just got my library card, and so I need to go to the library," he told her, noting her faint disappointment, "My plan is to look up stuff and then switch topics as needed. It would probably be very frustrating to anyone trying to cover a subject, but that's what I need to do."
And I've already seen and overheard what you're frustrated about, he thought, Are there any cruisers who aren't crazy? Or is that how it works, underage - destroyer, crazy - cruiser, waspish - battleship? I can't wait to see what psychosis the carriers have.
"Oh," she said, "Are you really sure?" She ran a hand down his arm. "I'm sure I could help."
"Well, one of the things I need to study is the Geneva Convention and how it applies to the Abyssals. I'm not sure you can help with that," he said, and stepped out of the chair pushing the stunned woman aside and walked out. No fire or guards descended on him.
Well, it seems the Chinese haven't forgiven the IJN and IJA, Amos thought, But I have to be careful or they'll just make something up to get me a beating or worse. I've got to keep my temper under control. Pissing them off is fun, but it's going to cause problems if I indulge it. This is all interconnected traps, if I don't tread carefully, I'll lose a foot. 'Man who walk too quickly sometimes step in bear trap.'
Arriving at his locker, he found someone had supplied his 'outside' shoes with something that smelled like rotted beans. He stowed his 'inside' shoes and socks in his pack and carried the outside shoes to a spigot where he could rinse them out, hung them from his pack to let them drain/dry and walked barefoot to the library.
Yeah, wear my inside shoes outside, then wear them inside again, he thought, That would be the thing that got me in trouble wouldn't it? I'll put on the inside socks and shoes when I get to the library, I'll bet they have a 'no shoes no service' policy.
------------------------------
Disgust was the premier emotion he was feeling. The kids had gone in, but like the commissars of legend, the battleships had stayed back to ensure their little ones didn't retreat without orders. On both sides. Amos could understand why the Abyssals would do this, but not the ship-girls.
He skated in an out, chasing splashes and dodging fire. The 30-centimeter barking away as he swung from side to side to bring them to bear. The enemy cruisers chasing the destroyers and light cruisers looked up in horror as this leviathan bore down on them.
The 11.8-inch doesn't have the punch of fourteens and sixteens, Amos thought, But enough of them . . .
He paused to fire a concerted salvo at the heavy cruiser facing down Tenryuu and Tatsuta. No, he thought, I can't just let them die, one it would tip my hand, two, I might get somebody worse.
The Ne-class cruiser became pieces flying down range, and Amos was gone, closing on where the destroyers were trying to run from a Ta-class fast battleship. Unlike the cruiser, a full salvo just pissed off the battleship, but Amos was already 'egressing aggressively' as the destroyers ran in another exit direction, but were no longer under the fire of the battleship or its escorts.
It was hard to shoot accurately as he dodged, and the ship-girl battleline was conspicuously silent on returning the fire from the Ta-class. He suffered a minor hit or two, but nothing made it through his armor.
Now, he thought as he made a harder turn after the Ta had unloaded, now he returned all his 11.8s and watched the Ta vanish in columns of water and fire. He turned back to present a smaller target and kept zigzagging. Then the pursuing cruisers ran headlong into the torpedo attack the destroyers had set up.
So that's the long-lance in action, Amos thought as he swung around to reengage the battered battleship.
So what is really happening here? he wondered as the battleship seemed to wake up to the possibility of round two where it lacked one gun turret, a forward fire director and had a half dozen fires raging. Are we skating around the lagoon? Are we further out to sea, or are we standing there with someone giving us clues to what the battle is actually doing?
She held her fire, taking careful aim, as he closed in, waiting for the moment when he'd have to turn away and expose a predicable path for her fire. He closed she tightened her eyes and braced herself to fire.
He saw the long-lances before she did. He fired as she flailed at the strikes. He hadn't fired at her, the follow ups meant she was already dead, he fired at the cruisers and the Ru-class who were lumbering forward to reinforce her. As they took evasive action, his guns spoke and the Ru-class exploded, one of his shells had found her magazines. He was turning away, the combination of smoke and shock from the explosion preventing any return fire until he was headed away and relatively safe.
Destroyers he'd rescued then helped set up their ambush were racing over and clustering around him, they're childlike excitement and exuberance openly manifest. Hugs were exchanged, but over his shoulder he still saw Nagato scowling at him as if he'd taken this camaraderie to an inappropriate level, and Mutsu with her smirk.
Yes, you found the chink in my armor, he thought, I like kids. I like their enthusiasm, and I like that unlike the cruisers and battleships the destroyers aren't morose narcissists, just excitable and earnest.
He sailed with them back to the rally point as the formation to engage the princess shook out and positions for the battle line were assigned.
"Maybe you should stay back with the kids," Tenryuu said, for once without her trade mark scowl and attitude.
"Very well, we'll be ready to rush in and rescue you," Amos told her, making Tatsuta laugh, and ironically, even Tenryuu didn't scowl at that.
Nagato, I've eaten umeboshi who weren't as sour as you, Amos thought and didn't stare at the glowering battleship, Maybe she is playing the role and just hates Americans, after all we nuked her after we tore her country down around her ears. Well, she's the commandant of the camp, so if she hates me that much, and hasn't acted either she's the only ship-girl who practices restraint, or someone higher up is holding her leash.
------------------------------
So why didn't we collect either 'intelligence' or trophies? Amos wanted to ask as they sailed back to base. The sun was setting, and the stars were similar enough to what he'd seen over Korea that he knew he was in Pacific Asia. The immense area of lights dwarfed his memories of Tokyo, they exceeded London, New York or Paris, all of which he'd seen as a kid before the war. Because physical objects would be proof, he told himself, And if we took them back and they disappeared it would break the illusion.
The dock loomed out of the darkness. All Amos wanted was rest and a chance to think about the events of the ground assault. Why not close? He asked, I guess I was trained as infantry not as a ship, so I see an infantry answer.
He'd driven rounds into the Princess at closer range than even the destroyers had risked, as cover to try to collect a piece to take back. Of course she sank into the sea before I could collect anything. But if they sortie as often as the kids say, then I'll have another chance, he thought as he finally glimpsed the Admiral who supposedly ran the place. Considering the man, he looked like a typical Japanese, except he was unbelievably tall for a Japanese. The man looked him over, focusing a moment on the bruises Amos had suffered during the fight.
"Repair bathes," the man said and seemed to have dismissed Amos.
"Yes, sir," Amos said, not willing to argue that what he really wanted was sleep, not a bath.
Japanese bathes, Amos thought, Terrific, well I'm not going naked no matter what they tell me.
He followed the others who'd received similar orders. He watched as Nagato actually smiled at Mutsu, then, as if she realized he'd seen her, she scowled without ever looking at him. He turned back and mentally shook his head.
------------------------------
My eyes are closed, although I'm still wearing my pants and a T-shirt, I'm submerged in the weird-smelling piss water of the repair pools. I have no idea whether this will have any serious effect, or it's a set up for something else.
"You know in Japanese bathes, we aren't ashamed of our bodies," comes a voice nearby, and the sound of cloth hitting the floor. I don't open my eyes, because I recognize the voice of Miss Bongo, a.k.a., the Admiral's demimondaine, and no way was I going to look at her when she was naked. The fact I could hear the murmurs of the entire pack of the naughty nuns doesn't affect my decision, instead I throw a counter without looking at them.
"You Japanese have a real problem with blood and internal bits and pieces," I told them, "So if I've got broaches in my armored shell and you can look at me and see the insides, you'll puke all over the nice, shiny tiles and otherwise embarrass yourselves."
The sudden quiet except for bodies entering the other tubs is very relaxing. One or the other of them try to hail me, but I feign sleep as I really do not want anything other than to get out of here. Soaking yourself in piss after fighting on and off, breathing gun smoke, and racing around does not seem an effective solution to the situation.
Orders are orders and bucking such an order is more trouble than it's worth, I thought as I lay there, half-listening. Mainly listening for one of the naughty nuns trying the hilarious practical jokes they are famous for. One of them having smeared the bean paste in my shoes, another having stolen my razor and toothbrush.
The other advantage of simulating Japan, the yen has gone up and down in value so much relative to the dollar, they can set the prices at anything they want and it's monopoly money as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately, I've found enough dropped change, bottles and cans to recycle, etc. I had a small amount of money to purchase replacements. So again, everything I have I keep close at hand and don't let it out of my sight or my grip. If one of the naughty nuns decides to break into my stuff again, while I'm in here, then four-to-one odds or not, there's going to be consequences.
------------------------------
The timer went off, meaning I could leave. The naughty nuns had given up on being naked so had bath robes in. I collected my pack, and someone began screaming from the sixth bath.
"Pervert! Lolicon! How'd a shit-faced dog like you get in here?" came from the figure clinging to the edge of her bath and screaming at the top of her lungs. My first instinct was to hose her down with the fire extinguisher, but common sense made that a bad move. I settled, "I was ordered in here by the Admiral, not that I wanted to go either," I told her, and ignored the string of imprecations about the admiral, and the angry growls from the Kongo sisters.
I firmly reminded myself, Not Your problem.
Sleep and then getting up to date on my next assignment, were on the list. There weren't supposed to be any sorties today, but there might be alerts after the battle as stragglers threw themselves hopelessly against the defenses.
The admiral's office was empty, and appeared to have been evacuated in some haste. The only one left was a destroyer sitting beside the phone, consumed by her attention towards it. Presumably she'd been ordered to await phone calls, and in typical destroyer single-mindedness was doing so. No notices on the board discussed sorties and so I headed back to the dorms.
I ignored the sounds of angry cats coming from the baths as I entered the dorms and loped up the stairs to my quarters. The absolutely stentorian snore coming from behind the door told me others were in the room, and a quick peek showed only the penultimate bunk was unoccupied. As the room was generally too warm for most ship-girls the occupants were not only not covered but were sweating enough their nightgowns might as well have been a coat of paint. Rather than stare as should be expected at the buxom interlopers, I realized my room never was mine, it had been deeded to those four, I was not going co-ed, especially after the bath experience, and there was a little used shed on the roof. This late in the morning it would be warm enough to provide an alternative.
Unfortunately, only my former quarters had a linen closet, so if I slept, it would be in my clothes and with my pack as a pillow. I'd had much worse at Taejon, they weren't shooting at me for one, so the roof it was.
------------------------------
The mess hall, breakfast and the time to eat it was a major improvement. A book on naval tactics held in one hand while shoveling food in with the other. The polite clearing of a throat brought my attention away from Beatty's laconia at Jutland and back to the current world.
There's six women standing beside the table, each one carrying a massively loaded tray. "Do you mind?" the first asked leaning over, leaning close, not incidently letting me look down her cleavage if I chose the option. Which I won't, the experience in the bath showed that my experience with the current prudery of Japanese runs contrary to my previous experience with Japan of the 1950's.
From the numbering on their lingerie-like uniform identifies them as Iowa, New Jersey, South Dakota, Ranger, Lexington and Saratoga. I stood. "Of course." I note that while I picked the table because it was in the far corner and quiet, there is no other eight-seat table other than the one occupied by the naughty-nuns, all the other tables are two and four-seat. I drop the book in my pack, then walk around to pull out the chairs and get all six of them seated.
Then I pick up my tray and pack to relocate to a two-seat table in the far corner. It'll be a bit louder but not inordinately so. The quiet that sweeps over the mess hall seems a bit confusing, but I need to complete the reading before the next class with Ashigara.
I glanced up and realized almost every ship-girl was staring at me. I accepted this and continued finishing my breakfast and reading before class. I'm more afraid of Ashigara than the mess hall's opinion.
------------------------------
Iowa stared into the mirror, looking this way and that.
"You won't find anything," Lexington told her as she stood at the door to the bathroom. The heat of the place was beginning to bug her.
"Then why did he leave?" the battleship asked, "Most guys enjoy hanging around just me, he had all six of us, and he left like we'd ordered him away."
"Considering who else he has chasing him, we probably did," Saratoga added.
"I just wanted to apologize for taking the other bunks in his room," Iowa said as she looked around the room, "It was empty so we all thought nobody was using it when it was assigned to us. Why didn't Kongo tell us it was occupied?"
"Try taking the entire room," South Dakota said, "He slept on the roof."
"Wha?" Iowa asked as she stared at the treaty Battleship.
"Yep, another practical joke by the IJN Bongo, she told us we could use the room, and didn't tell him it was in use," South Dakota said, "He was supposed to wander in, and hilarity would ensue."
Iowa bowed her head. "Except instead, he bugged out." She raised her head. "So why didn't he let us apologize?"
" 'Let'?" New Jersey said as she looked into the room, "You had plenty of time while he was seating us, and you didn't say anything. He's probably pissed that half the base is treating him like a live grenade with the pin pulled. The other half want to get pinned."
"That's disgusting," Iowa said as she and Lexington left the bathroom. New Jersey rushed in and closed the door.
"Don't tell me you aren't reacting like every other ship-girl, Nagato looks at him and gets that Nagamon expression, until he looks at her and she gets embarrassed, Mutsu follows him around hiding just to watch him. Heck, only the destroyers aren't acting like they're back in high-school and he's the captain of the football team," South Dakota accused.
"Why don't you text him?" Ranger asked.
"I don't know his number," Iowa said.
"Ask one of the destroyers," Ranger told her.
Iowa nodded and texted Hibiki. The response confused her. "He doesn't have a phone."
"Why not?" Saratoga asked, she waved a hand in front of her face, "I'm going to see Nagato about giving him back his quarters and getting something cooler."
"Give him back his quarters," Lexington said, she looked around, "Why didn't he have anything in here?"
"If Kongo is pranking him, probably he's carrying it with him," New Jersey called from the bathroom, "She put natto in his shoes, like she did us. Also he was on a deployment, he probably had everything stashed aboard."
Iowa nodded as she left to talk to Nagato.
------------------------------
This is unbelievable, he thought as he 'clicked on a link', The number of microfiche machines necessary for this simulation is incredible. At least I know they put in the effort so this is a major installation. That means it has to be near a major coastal city, so escaping means finding a boat and charts that get me to Korea or Japan, or the US fleet.
He'd wondered how to synchronize the pointer to his selection, then realized someone would be sitting behind the television and directing the microfiche units. He glanced at the noisy box sitting beside his feet. Yeah, that's a computer. Right! Maybe with the state of the art they could fit one into a garage, but the heat and power would be the problem. Or maybe these unobtainium 'integrated circuits' would do it, they seem to be able to do anything. Why not call then inertron and complete the Buck Rodgers motif of mighty Asian technical supremacy? You're still after something, and considering how you've hammered into my head how phones are so advanced, I know what questions will eventually be coming. Got to hand it to them, either I'm constantly on drugs, or they really went into details about this.
He logged off and considered the people he worked with. The drug angle is probably right, he thought, Is there a cruiser on this base who isn't slightly or completely mental? The destroyers play along cause it's a grand adventure to them. Only the battleships are in on it, and none of them are happy. Even those blondes they had playing the American ships, talk about nasty stereotypes. I guess that's what the ChiComs think of us, talk about fetishizing what you can't have.
He shook his head as he left the library. He'd gotten all the information for the paper due tomorrow and had even checked out a few books on the history they wanted him to believe. Of course uncle Joe Kennedy's kid became president, nobody's going to remember he and King Edward were Nazi admirers? Eisenhower was an easy guess to replace Truman considering Grant and Washington, but Nixon opening up China? The HUAC guy? They set things up to sound reasonable, then go off into bad science fiction. I'm still waiting for the flying cars.
He spotted a crowd of destroyers charging towards him, and ever in the background, watching for something he could be punished for, was Mutsu.
You want to hide, lady, he thought, Do something about the red hair. A Nihon-jin with red hair, onis are legends in Japan, not real.
He soon had the girls excitedly shouting at once, something about curry.
"Okay, before all the how do you cook it," he told them, "Who's the judge? Cabbage can be coleslaw or kimchi."
------------------------------
Musashi had heard the 'three guns means I'm a boy' and the romantic troubles everyone was having. She'd talked to the destroyers who had absolutely no problem talking to him, asking help, even if there were lots of confused blushes from them while they were around him. She had a perfect plan and as one of the mightiest ships of The Fleet, she wouldn't fail, as even three of the Iowa-class had.
The first shoals her plan hit was laying eyes on him, walking alone, a couple of destroyers trailing him practically leaving a stream of hearts to vanish like smoke in the wind, and in the distance equally smitten was Nagato. She really is pretty when she smiles, but he's gorgeous. The second was discovering how tongue-tied she was, despite practicing the line and the action. She reminded herself she didn't have to talk much, just keep a little composure.
She took out the Pokey and put the end in her mouth, then took it out to call, "Mr. Canby?" She replaced it as she approached him.
She would admit she was proud of her figure, and that he stared at her forehead, not even looking at her eyes, bugged her a bit. The muttering of the destroyers told Musashi they knew what was going on.
She leaned forward a bit, extending the end of the Pokey towards him with her eyes closed and lips puckered around it.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said. He sounded so cute while flustered.
There was a metallic clink and he told her, "There you go, see you later."
Musashi opened her eyes to the amused to stunned expressions of the destroyers. And the end of the Pokey burning merrily.
The sound of Nagato killing herself to not laugh highlighted the situation.
He thought I wanted my cigarette lit, Musashi realized as the destroyers all broke into laughter and rolled on the ground at the absurdity and no doubt Musashi's expression at being blown off so completely.
She extinguished the Pokey and looked at his retreating back. She sighed and realized all the hard-learned tricks of modern dating were all lost on him, he didn't even see the same signals.
------------------------------
The maintenance order was nearly expected. " 'Words, words words, clean the grease traps, words words words'," he read and looked at the date, "So Kongo, on Valentine's Day I'm going to be cleaning grease traps for the mess halls." He shrugged. "So is this disciplinary or a practical joke? Does it matter? It's got the Admiral's stamp, so it's official. I'll drop off a copy, wait Ashigara canceled classes tomorrow, so, I'd have tomorrow off anyway. I wish I were a ship, steam hoses would take care of that in a couple hours. Guess I do it the old-fashioned way. I'm still going to get some boiling water and a set of coveralls, one's I can throw away or burn afterwards."
------------------------------
Hibiki clutched the chocolates tight against her as she encountered Akizuki.
"Have you seen him?" the Ducky asked.
"No, and we've got squadrons combing the base," Hibiki admitted. Half the destroyers were carrying chocolate for him, and a few of the bolder ones were looking forward to helping him make chocolates for White Day.
"Tenryuu and Ashigara have cruisers on the bay looking," Akizuki said and leaned close to whisper, "Tatsuta isn't even teasing them about it."
Akizuki nodded gravely at Hibiki's expression.
Hibiki raised a fist. "We must redouble our efforts! Victory shall be achieved!"
Akizuki nodded and spotted Shimakaze racing around carrying chocolates of her own.
------------------------------
Mutsu collapsed into a chair in the conference room. She set the box of chocolates on the table and stared at Nagato. Behind her, the moon was rising, and the rabbit on the moon seemed to be mocking the frantic search and pursuit. "The destroyers are all in bed, so are the cruisers," she told Nagato, "No one's seen him all day."
"We could sound the emergency sortie signal," Kongo offered, nervous about something she'd no doubt had a hand in.
"That's for emergencies only," Nagato said, "This isn't an emergency, yet, there's a planned sortie day after tomorrow. If he doesn't show up, then we turn over every stone."
"Somebody needs to talk to him," Mutsu said while looking at Goto, "He's been acting more weird lately. I stopped by his quarters while he was in class, there's still nothing there, not even a toothbrush."
Kongo suddenly looked even more nervous.
"He changes his shoes into his pack, not the cubby provided," Nagato added, "It's almost like he's afraid to leave things out where others can get at them." Every eye turned to Kongo, who chuckled nervously.
The knock on the door startled everyone. "Enter," Goto ordered.
"With all due respect, not the way I smell," came a familiar voice, "All the grease traps are clean, the bunny suit is disposed of, I'll leave the work order on Ooyodo-san's desk, and I'm going to take a long, hot shower. Tyvec was not as impervious as I thought. Good night."
Nagato felt her eye twitching as she looked at Kongo. "Grease traps in a head-to-toe suit, on Valentine's Day?"
Kongo smiled weakly as she glanced around, then looked at the window.
------------------------------
He pulled the small jar of dishwashing soap out of his pack. He was well aware of how Japanese reacted to the smell of rot, and he smelled of rotten food, grease and everything in between. He knew this stuff was terrible for your skin, but he needed to get rid of the stench as rapidly as possible.
The shower was as hot as he could stand, and so began the laborious job of trying to return to polite society. Using the shower to dampen himself, working the soap in then rinsing it off with the scalding water.
After he'd completed the task, he looked in the mirror at the reddened skin, the spiky hair and his own dead eyes.
He'd been willing to go along with all of this in hopes of getting more information before escaping. Now escape would be the main focus.
If I really was a ship, on the next mission, once I can break line of sight with the battleships, I run for it. Problem is, I don't know if they're real. So we could just be writhing on the ground in the dock until they wake us up on our return. So it'll have to be some other time, when I'm in control, when I can slip away and if not disappear, then reach Japan or a Navy vessel. It'll be fun watching the Navy shell the hell out of this place once they discover what's going on here. I don't know if anyone can be rescued. It'll be sad about the kids, they actually believe all this, but the rest of them . . . well, they set this up, it'll hardly be a surprise. Haven't all the others gone completely mental? Why should I be the exception?
------------------------------
The next day I attended classes, and everyone looked at me worriedly. I realized the mild rash had partially faded, but even Ashigara seemed put off by my condition. My joke about getting rid of the smell fell completely flat with the destroyers who normally could laugh at anything.
Later that day it culminated in a call to the Admiral's office. I fully expected one of two possibilities: one, a forced, feigned apology from whomever had sent the work order, or two, a lecture on disturbing the other students, checking with the admiral on receiving such orders, or some other message to suffer in silence and that what happened was actually my fault somehow.
Surprise, surprise, it was Kongo who played the prank, never assumed I'd take it seriously, that I'd give up, a whole host of semi-excuses, leavened with actual apology that stripped the actual apology of any meaning as it assumed I had any right to refuse a properly formatted order.
I'd arrived, stood at attention until ordered to sit, then ordered at ease when they realized I was sitting at attention. Listened to the line of drivel while staring unceasingly at a point a foot over the Admiral's head, never even looking at Kongo, while wearing the most neutral expression I could manage.
How I seethed to say something cutting, to insult them, their leader, but with all four naughty nuns, and both Nagatos in the Admiral's office, and half-a-dozen 'heavy cruisers' in the outer office, I knew the fate I would suffer for showing the least resistance. A beating or solitary confinement at best, any of a number of inventive punishments as a distant possibility, and execution as the ultimate disciplinary action.
When Kongo finished, I didn't respond, I didn't feel I needed to, I sat, staring, waiting for the order from the Admiral. Kongo and several of the others made various noises, expecting me to fill the void in the conversation. Problem is, I had nothing to say. Between my anger and the fact I'd be addressing the admiral's bagnio, there was nothing to say, not if I was smart. I desperately wanted to say 'I never expected better of you' to Kongo, but that would be a death sentence from the Admiral or the battlecruiser's sisters. So I didn't say anything.
Finally, when the Admiral couldn't even find the words, I did take initiative. "May I return to my duties?"
The Admiral only nodded. I stood, briefly saluted, turned smartly and left.
Yes, leaving was now a high priority.
------------------------------
Outside were a bunch of destroyers. I wasn't angry with them, but I really didn't want to be around any of these surrogates for Imperial Japan.
"We were going for ice cream," Hibiki said, "Would you like to come with?"
"I'd love to," I told them, "But I can't afford it." Then I nodded to where Mutsu had come crashing out of the headquarters, and crash stopped to stare at us. "And I don't want to get you in trouble," I told them, "So enjoy."
Depressed, the girls went away chattering among themselves. I continued my walk to the apartment, and to survey what had been stolen or defaced since I couldn't exactly keep my pack with me in the Admiral's office.
------------------------------
Hibiki was thinking, and she didn't like the conclusions she was drawing. "Have any of you seen his room?" Hibiki asked.
Ushio nodded. "I helped Iowa move their stuff out when they headed back to Washington," she said, "It was pretty bare once their stuff was gone."
"So if he's not spending his salary on furnishings, and he doesn't leave the base to go drinking, gambling or - " she stopped herself as some of the girls didn't understand what their crews had done on shore leave, "Why can't he afford some ice cream? We didn't ask him to treat us."
"Have you seen him go into the Post Exchange, or shopping off base?" Hamakaze asked.
"I don't think he's left the base, except on sorties," Akizuki said.
Hibiki knew she might get in trouble, but a call to Admiral Richardson was in order. Something wasn't connecting between the ship-boy and the situation at Yokosuka.
And considering how crazy the Thirty-One are, there's a bomb waiting to go off here, Hibiki thought.
------------------------------
The battle among the fuel tanks and spherical compressed gas tanks limited the ship-girls as they fought the mostly destroyer Abyssal force and the Destroyer Princess. The high power of the battleships' guns meant destruction of the tanks and frankly, the resources here were rather a part of the entire attack.
Per the briefing, 'If we didn't care about the tanks, the BUFFs could do it.'
Every time they almost have me roped into believing that this is real, they screw up in such a simple way, I thought as I and several destroyers stalked the Destroyer Princess, We started the war with B-17's, and the B-36's were on their way when the war ended. The B-47's were just rolling out when I was in Korea, and seventy years later, we're only at B-52? Not B-152, B-52. Rubbish.
I'd had a chance to snipe the Destroyer Princess for minimum collateral damage, but there were other necessities now. My doubts mainly. "Does anyone have a Type 93 left?" I asked the destroyers.
"We can't fire them in here, and they won't make a good club," Hibiki said. She'd been following me around more, I'd wondered about that until I'd overheard her say 'Horrorshow' which was how Russians said good, an interesting commentary on Uncle Joe's realm if I had ever heard one. I would have liked to congratulate her on her promotion to full guard, but she was the obvious ferret who'd been assigned to me since both the Commandant and her second couldn't conceal themselves worth shit. She could partially blend in with the destroyer swarm.
"I don't want the warhead, I want the propeller and engine," I told her. It takes a moment for her to understand and neither she nor her friends are happy about it.
Akizuki hands over a billyclub-sized object. "The warhead's not armed my torpedomen pulled the igniter, but it's still explosives." She gulped and told me, "The motor will start with that." She points to a red area on the torpedo. It smells like paint, so the marking is new.
I nodded and sprinted forward as the Princess' evasions have become predictable and I've been getting intermittent radar contacts. Finding her was no problem, and the smirk on her face faded as I charged. She hadn't been nervous about using her guns in this tank farm, but she wasn't eager to be tricked into blowing herself up.
She pointed a weapon-laden arm at me, but I was already too close and too determined. And she had revealed one of her weakpoints. It had taken time for me to understand that ship-girls, and thus Abyssals weren't built like people. The belly below the ribcage was vulnerable on a human, but on a ship-girl, that's where their strongest belt armor was. So the solar plexus was not a weak point, and you couldn't aim for the heart by stabbing up under the breastbone. The armpit was a weak point on humans and ship-girls, but it was comparatively, substantially weaker on ship-girls, and thus Abyssals.
So when I knocked her arm up and out of the way and activated the torpedo's motor, the Abyssal had only seconds to understand her danger and react.
While my guns were inferior to many other battleships, my upper body strength was not. The Destroyer Princess tried to bring her arm down and just lifted herself off the ground. The torpedo, the steering appanage gone, cut into her light armor and then tore into her. I continued to drive forward into the open spaces around the tank farm.
She screamed as who knows what horrific damage it was causing to biologic or light mechanical. It spun out of my hand as it hit something solid inside her. Flame spewed out of every orifice as I sprinted away.
The blast threw me a short additional distance, but I had a couple of fingers from her. Proof that this was either real or a drug-induced hallucination. The area around me faded to black as I noted that her deflagration was not setting the tanks on fire, so I'd accomplished the purpose of the mission.
------------------------------
I wake in a hospital bed, a slightly futurized version, but the beige walls and other comforting touches are typical of what I'm familiar with having spent time in Japanese hospitals before. Of course the sample I collected is gone. Next time I have to remain conscious to get it all the way back to the dock. They likely would have gotten rid of it at some point so the experiment had to be logged as inconclusive.
The dreams of supervising dozens of tiny mes who had even more extreme dwarfism compared to the dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves were troubling. Not that I don't like the Navy, but something about getting filthy dirty and having to show up for dinner in a spotless, white uniform seemed buggy to me. According to the little guys, I hadn't suffered serious damage and they were confused why I passed out and why it took so long to wake up.
Simple, I'm not a ship, you can't patch the holes and just sail out again. I didn't tell them that. I figured out why I like the destroyers so much, same reason I like these guys, they're so earnest about their jobs. The cruisers care about a whole bunch of trivialities that run back to the teenage 'I want to be myself, just like all of my friends'. The battleships are in on the game so don't count. But the destroyers want to do well and be seen doing well.
The little guys want to know they're proud of their ship, me, and proud of the job they're doing. It almost makes me wish they were real. With a couple hundred guys, we could steal the info I'm after, build a boat and be away before anyone was the wiser.
I do wonder what part of my psyche is creating these little guys to keep me up to date on things while I'm unconscious.
The guard, male in a suit and tie, notes I'm awake and goes off, presumably to report. Another almost identical man takes his place, sits in the vacated chair and continues to stare at me.
Do they suspect? Is it that unusual for their charges to bring home souvenirs, or proof as I'd like to think about it? Is there some bullshit contamination theory they'll tell me about not trying to collect parts and pieces? I also wonder how much of my gear will have been vandalized or confiscated by the time I return. The little guys told me that I have ship's stores available for sheets and blankets, etc. for the next time some joker strips all five bunks to the wooden frames and the linen closet. More useful if they were real. Short sheeting is almost expected now, but the complete lack of bedding was a serious escalation. I check for and ignore it, I know who did it, who's protecting her, so why make a fuss. It's not like the ChiComs even give lip service to the Geneva Convention to 'anti-progressive elements'. Wearing clear Red Cross markings didn't prevent a bunch of medics from being massacred, so I shouldn't expect better here and now.
The man who enters is a tall. black man wearing the uniform of a two-star admiral. If they were trying to shock me, it doesn't work. The Army had black generals in 1940, and if the yardgoods I recognize on his chest are any indication, he wasn't promoted because he had a political in. You don't get the Silver Star and Navy Cross for playing croquette. Heck crawling around under fire to fix broken field phone lines only got me a Bronze Star despite being wounded.
I salute, he quickly returns it and uncovers. "Mr. Canby you've had an interesting time," he says as he sits beside my bedside. The man in the suit watches all, the poised tiger.
"Doing as ordered, sir," I reply. I'm respectful, acting otherwise would show I'm on to them, and this guy hasn't done anything to deserve disrespect. Maybe he's brainwashed enough to actually believe he is who they've told him he is.
"How are you settling in?" he asks.
"Aside from all the Buck Rodgers whiz-bangs, I'm squared away." I tell him, "I knew some Japanese from the Korean Police Action, so I'm not out of touch with that. But joining the Navy was a bit jarring. I was in the Army during Korea, got there by plane."
Admiral Robinson nods. "I meant on a personal level."
"I'm not sure what you mean, sir," I answer.
"Not getting involved with the other ship-girls, either in their off time activities or any trips off base," he says.
I realize either he was a general officer, or a trained interrogator, circling the question rather than stating it outright, so the target may also meander. Fortunately, I was trained how to deal with such, a simple cogent answer. No one stands up under torture, they'll break you eventually, the important part is to give as little as possible. "Those would require time and money, things in short supply with me."
"Maybe you should start from the beginning," he says.
"Admiral, let's cut to the chase. An admiral doesn't visit a Warrant Officer, he sends an aide or has the Warrant delivered, and an Admiral from another command doesn't visit a Warrant unless it is something very big, politically damaging, or extremely cultural. How did I screw up, and what did I do wrong?" I ask, which puts him on the defense for a bit.
"You were part of thirty one people who popped up out of nowhere as unbuilt ships. Most of the women were designs canceled by the Washington Naval Treaty and they are at best unstable, some are near catatonic. The most stable can do office work without breaking down. All the men, save you, are completely catatonic. We want to know what you went through that has you up and around instead of stiff as a board and ten times as inert."
"I was driving my new, well new to me, Nash towards Fullerton's Lake to look at some property. Then like an eclipse, everything goes dark. Next thing I know I'm on a plane, flat, can't see anything to the horizon. I couldn't get the door open as the end on the car began to drop, so I smashed out the window and crawled out. I'm lying on a surface I thought was concrete, watching the car sink, when the commandant and a guard order me to surrender and follow them to the camp. I tried and collapsed, out cold."
------------------------------
Admiral Robinson accepted the coffee from Ooyodo and stared at Admirals Goto and Richardson. "Long time since I did an interrogation like that," the man said as he sat down at the briefing table in Admiral Goto's conference room. "And you've got a huge problem."
"How crazy is he?" Goto asked.
"For what he's been subjected to, he's starkly reasonable. I was talking about your attitude and discipline problem," Robinson said, "On arrival, he encountered the Commandant and a guard, who brought him to the camp. Army might refer to a temporary base as a camp, but there's usually only one type of permanent camp."
"A prison camp," Richardson said and shifted in his chair, "This would be a base or a fort otherwise."
"You can congratulate Tenryuu, she convinced someone who's met ChiCom troops that she's the Chinese stereotype of an Imperial Japanese prison camp guard," Robinson said, and looked at Nagato, "And you're the Commandant of the Camp."
"The Admiral commands," Nagato countered.
"He only sees the Admiral at the beginning and end of sorties, and it's obvious no one pays attention to his orders, as Mr. Canby has been berated by other ship-girls for following those orders to the letter," Robinson said as he went through his notes, "He kept it hidden but he's convinced that all this is set in mainland China in the 1950's. All the 'whiz-bang Buck Rodgers stuff' is a careful fabrication."
"But he's used it," Goto said.
"He's used official versions of it, since he isn't getting paid for risking his neck," Robinson said and stared accusingly at Goto, then at Richardson.
"He has over $40,000 in his account," Ooyodo said as she looked up from her computer, "If he hasn't taken any out."
"And who would tell him about the credit card or ATM card that he wouldn't recognize?" Robinson asked, "People, most of the women came from the 1980's or later, they'd have an inkling about modern tech, the basis was at least available to deal with this. Satellite phones, ATM cards and the personal computers with modems are things they had at least heard of. He's pre-Sputnik, satellites are almost a decade ahead for him. The reason the last four digits of phone numbers exist is because there was a device called a telephone exchange that had 10,000 positions, hence 4-digits, that was the most you could compact the electromechanical assembly and one would still shake a building. A radio-telephone is backpack mounted and even then it's short ranged, you can't call across the ocean with them. Electronics are tubes, not even transistors. A personal computer would take up your entire garage and would be programed with punch cards. All you ship-girls had to spend weeks getting used to the difference, and like him many of you were cutting edge technology when you last tuned in. Instead, he was thrown into this world and expected to sink or swim. It's no wonder he thinks this is a prison camp, the first rule of interrogation is to disorient the prisoner, and he's pretty disoriented. Add the treatment he's received and any sense of safety is gone as well, another trick for interrogation. And remember, he was part of the Signal Corps, they were dealing with cutting edge technology, so disorienting him, threatening his safety, and telling him all the cutting edge stuff is outdated and outmoded, and the only framework he has left is that he's being setup to be interrogated, to spill his secrets to an enemy of the United States."
"How do we fix that?" Richardson asked.
"You can't, the only constant he has is the delusion that this is all set up to extract valuable information from captured people. Every one of your failures of policy, commonsense or basic decency he chalks up to that mental structure. It's all you've left him," Robinson said, "And when I asked him why he didn't report any of the harassment he's taken, he looked at me the way the instructors did at my first weeks at Annapolis, that I was terminally stupid and I had no idea what was going on. But he did say 'since the prankster is the admiral's geisha, why waste everyone's time?'"
Robinson stared at Goto. "Pilferage and vandalism of his limited, personal property, even to breaking into locked containers to do so; short sheeting most of the bunks, when they didn't simply steal all the linens in the room, including in the linen closet; placing others in his room without informing him or them; assigning tasks that are normally held for disciplinary action on a regular basis. The list goes on, and when asked about it, he responded that 'the level of surveillance I was under, it could hardly have escaped the Commandant's attention'. I find it interesting that your secretary ship never mentioned this to you, because I'm dearly hoping you were ignorant of this intense and relentless campaign."
Goto was red-faced, and could only nod as he began to understand the magnitude of the events.
"Why didn't he say anything?" Nagato said.
"Because if he's in a prison camp, to be interrogated, to whom would he complain? A joker like that in a real base would be missing his teeth after a few weeks. But he's aware that there was always a battleship or several watching him, so any reprisal would bring instant punishment," Robinson said, "I have to admit, if I couldn't turn around without having one of the battleships staring at me, and I was getting subjected to this, I'd think it was not only acceptable, but ordered."
"It was not," Goto ground out, holding his temper by main force, "And it is going to stop."
"How do we deprogram him?" Richardson asked.
"That's beyond my experience," Robinson admitted, "I can put you in charge of people who deprogram cultmembers, but the simplest and most dangerous is let him escape."
"He's outside one of the largest cities on Earth," Goto countered.
"All you see are the lights at night, that can be simulated. Or it could be a city in China. Without money, maps, and under perpetual surveillance, he's trapped in the camp unless he can steal or make something, likely a boat," Robinson said.
"But he's sortied," Nagato said, "Why wouldn't he escape then?"
"First, it's a hallucination. Second, he's in the company of others, either other battleships or a pack of destroyers? Ships with either more firepower or more speed," Robinson said, "I'm projecting here, I suspect he's already mentally relabeled me as either a guard or a brainwashed inmate. So he can't outrun pursuit, unless he kills all the destroyers which he won't, or fights his way out and he's always outgunned. And I said escape." Robinson ran a hand through his hair, as he gathered himself. "My uncle was a firefighter, one town over was a house, in it were kids, and they were kept for - well, let your imaginations run wild. In order to prevent them from seeking help they were brutalized by men and women wearing police and fire uniforms. So when someone finally got the Feds involved, they set the house ablaze. My uncle was called in, and after breaking through the roof, he saw a young boy standing there, in the fire. My uncle reached out his hand, and all the kid had to do was take two steps towards him and my uncle could have pulled him to safety. Instead, the kid looked at my uncle, and no change of expression, turned around, and walked into the heart of the fire." Robinson sat back and stared at the cup in his hands. "That's what I meant by escape, if he gets the idea the combat is real, that the injuries aren't being inflicted by the staff while the sortie force are hallucinating it all, he'll simply walk into the fire. Or there may be ways a ship can scuttle itself on dry land, that's the other possibility. Has he talked about his fairies?"
"Not that I'm aware of," Nagato said, "Why not have a team of commandoes slip him out of here and just take him to Bremerton? Or San Diego? You can see the city from there?"
"Might work, but you forget the political end, all of the others have flipped out," Robinson said, "No one wants an insane battleship near their voters."
Amos was part of the 24th Inf and arrived just before the Battle of Taejon, lightly wounded and retreated to Pusan where he was transferred to HQ of 8th Army and assisted setting telephones up for the Army and other forces in the perimeter. Wounded again at Ka-San, he was evaced to Tokyo for surgery and rehabilitation. He won the Bronze Star with V for Taejon, and added a cluster for Ka-San.
No, I'm not picking on Kongo, this is Nagato's nightmare, everyone is a bit out of character.
"I've seen bigger numbers," Godzilla said as he looked over the Nishinoshima base from the watchtower, "But that was back when ships were small and made of wood."
Crawford looked up from the barracks' maps and wondered where they'd all go. "In terms of firepower, Jutland and Leyte Gulf are dwarfed by the massive number of ship-girls, Allied Abyssal forces, maritime strike aircraft assigned," he said, "We've had to move the planes to Yokosuka and Sasebo, we needed the hangers for housing and briefing rooms."
"They'll be back when the fleet heads out?" Godzilla asked, spotting a pair of ship-girls who looked like they were ready to fight, then remembered that what was a threat display among ship-girls, was essentially flirting from Abyssal to ship-girl, and vice versa.
Crawford glanced over to the pair Godzilla was watching. "Anything not resulting in a complaint and requiring less than six hours in the repair pool for either party to recover from is put down as a `training exercise result`," Crawford explained, "The squadron commanders are back for the planning meetings. The planes will return here when the fleet sets out, as well as us being an emergency landing site for forces from Vladivostok and Kadena."
Godzilla nodded. The tower was a back up to the radar and other sensors that didn't work too well on Abyssals.
"Trouble?" Crawford asked as Godzilla's gaze lingered on the two ship-girls who looked like they were roosters sizing each other up, but might be nothing.
"Captain Gordon and I are technically independent," Godzilla said as the pair wandered away together, "And for some unknown reason, everyone is afraid of us." He ignored Crawford's snort of laughter. "So we keep the entire base from becoming a powderkeg." He nodded to the departing pair. "Although a lot of the `scuffles` between ship-girls and some Abyssals don't involve hand-to-hand combat, although they were vigorously physical."
Crawford laughed. "Officially, it doesn't happen," he said, "Unofficially, the ship-girls were briefed on the rather odd Abyssal mind-set regarding such interactions, numerous ship-girls can and have shed the preconceptions about who they were and how they `should` act in this regard, which has some people very confused."
"Oh?" Godzilla asked, "That's got to have some people very confused."
------------------------------
Angie watched 'motherly' Hosho teaching basic Home Economics: meal prep, better ways of cleaning, etc. to a number of somewhat cringing Abyssal heavy cruisers and fast battleships. Angie took notes, she was glad for the opportunity to pick up different ways to cook.
With granddad and Northampton so busy, I can at least help the war effort through service and support, she thought, Granddad's Bat-Zilla can feed him vegetable slices and coffee, and simple breakfasts, but evening meals are coming from me.
Megalon, Gigan and Luchador Anguirus were sitting back with her. Nurse-Zilla was closer to the front and taking her own notes. The six-star nurse took Angie's health and well-being as seriously as Angie took her grandfather's.
Angie spotted Missouri and Ise with a number of Wo-class. Unlike New Jersey's and Iowa's brash personalities, the two battleships had mellowed out considerably. No longer doing the Iowa-class thing of getting in people's faces and having to prove everything to everybody. The battleships were holding hands with a pair of Wo-class each, and a couple of others were walking along chatting. Angie had seen Zen Gardens that didn't project the feeling of peace coming from that squadron.
"I hope it lasts," she told the luchador-masked Anguirus. She watched Carlos fly by, The Silver Mare carrying him beneath her in a Mothra-woven seat. He was reading off a list.
"Probably a list of supplies for the trip up the mountain," Angie said. Gigan and Megalon nodded. That nobody more than glanced at the boy flying by reminded her of how often this happened since they'd gotten back. Admittedly, he was only a few feet over people's heads, but this crowd simply adjusted so quickly to weirdness. "I guess that's why ship-girls need humans," Angie said, "They need a baseline." Then she realized she was talking to three miniaturized kaiju, and quietly discarded the theory as she saw the laughter in their eyes. "Okay, maybe that's why we're all out here, because we were already out there."
The nods from the others told her she hadn't quite made a brilliant save, but they hadn't been offended.
"Truth is, I miss my mom and dad, granddad is great and all, but he's got a war to fight, and I miss being able to just run around without having to worry about someone targeting me to get at him. I know, I know, you stopped the last one and how many others beyond that, but I just want it to stop altogether."
The three Smols nodded. They'd never complain about saving her, but they couldn't understand how she resented needing to be saved.
------------------------------
The logistics meeting about allocation of ship-girl foodstuffs broke up and Northampton braced for the inevitable Bongo Kongo moment when she made her presence known to her Admiral.
"I still think 'The Objective' is too respectful, the Abyss should be 'The Objective', she should just be bug-smear," New Jersey said as she wove through the mass leaving the meeting room, to enter for the bombardment meeting.
We need more meeting rooms, Northampton thought.
"If you aren't willing to say her name," Haruna countered, "Why not call her Voldemort and be done with it?"
The battlecruiser was with the Battlecruiser Princess, and if rumor was right, she was with the Battlecruiser Princess and H41 and a bunch of Ta-class. Or as some had labeled Haruna's group the Tata-class.
That explains Kongo's subdued expression, Northampton thought as she spotted the trio of Kongo-class all closing on Goto through the press. She doesn't like that with Haruna chasing someone else, the perceived value of Goto has diminished. You getting a clearer shot is no fun? Northampton wondered how she'd feel having to fight off other girls after Admiral Crawford, Wouldn't like it, but I'm not a Kongo-class either, just a workhorse.
For the Red Princess' code name she preferred 'splat' since that would happen to her when the armada landed on her.
"Ready for the Intelligence meeting?" the Greatest Depth Princess asked as she appeared out of the crowd.
"That got moved up didn't it?" Northampton lamented, "I was hoping to get something to eat."
"Luncheon will be provided," the Abyssal said, "Hosho's cooking class can't throw away their efforts. But even Hosho won't serve us the real problems, so it'll go from Hosho's best student to outrageously bland," the Abyssal said, "Just don't ask what it's supposed to be."
Northampton nodded at that.
------------------------------
The Greatest Depth Princess set the new photographs and charts on the table before the Combined Staff along with numerous other photos of Bikini Atoll and the outlying defenses. Abyssals, ship-girls and humans looked at the bunkers, minefields and offshore obstacles being assembled in force at Bikini. The curious part was the large building that lacked gunports, or even an above ground door.
"You stirred up quite a mess," Admiral Goto said, "So did Major Andre, she's been reinstated with full rank and privileges."
Crawford nodded, and the marines let the former Abyssal enter the room.
Goto handed over a folder with several sigils on it. Other packets went to Ryuujou and Northampton, "I've received a `request` from the Pentagon to return her to her station."
"Why not receive that through official channels?" Northampton asked.
"They're compromised," Crawford said, "On both ends. If they've broken our SigInt, we're in trouble."
"Doubtful they'd mastered that, but it does put the extensive infiltration and the Supply Depot Princess' refusal to help in a different light," Goto said, "That has been pushed up the chain and the ripples are not pleasant. The infiltrators don't like being labeled as The Abyss' auxiliary."
"If the shoe fits," Northampton said, "We'll have your team at the site tomorrow just after first light. The radiation levels have dropped to dangerously low levels. People need radiation, who knew."
Ryuujou nodded and extracted a few pictures from the packet before her. "Were any of these edited?" she asked.
"No," Northampton said, "And we've had a guard on the site since it was decontaminated."
The Greatest Depth Princess looked at some of the sigils on the cave walls that had shown up with polarized filters. She searched through the pictures she'd brought until she found one with the large building bearing similar sigils in paint. "So you do think that was a summoning? Then so might this be?" she asked and glanced around, "Otherwise, why build a sub pen like structure?"
"It looks like one, cruder, more brute force, but they'd have the force," Ryuujou said, "The question of why will remain, I'm not sure about your analysis that it's for possession. From what I've gathered, the Abyss is rather vain, I doubt he'd tolerate looking like `just` an Abyssal, whether male or female that's another question."
"That was quite a jump," Crawford said, "You really think the Abyss is going to step out of the shadows and try and engage us?"
"It'll have to," Ryuujou said as the Greatest Depth Princess and Repair Princess nodded, "It's take out the rebels or lose the game."
"The idea that the Abyssals would cease needing the Abyss is the telling part," the Repair Princess said, "It's also that many Abyssals do not want to be expended in an eternal war. Getting killed and resummoned hurts, and unlike your method, which is less sure and less specific, you get the entire girl. Which might explain their mental state. The Abyssal method is more dragging someone out of a group and if they lose a bit here and there around the edges, just slather some spackle on and it's all good."
"After a few cycles of that you begin to notice losing who you are. The gestalt begins to unravel as there's not the time nor inclination to incorporate the pieces. You feel more and more a patchwork, and if the patchwork is relatively homogenous, then it feels the intrusive other," the Greatest Depth Princess said.
Goto glanced to Shark Dentures who numbly nodded. "So why is Captain Gordon not like that? He sprang into existence pretty much in one piece."
"He sprang into existence several weeks before Hibiki and Willie D met him," the Repair Princess said, "And he was near catatonic that entire time, but he also moved occasionally, like a dreaming person. That was why those ships were in cylinders, not because they couldn't fight, but because they weren't one person yet."
"That's almost more frightening," Richardson said, "But is that a feature or a bug? Does the Abyss want the Abyssals to feel they are rotting from the inside out, or do they not care about the effect?"
The Abyssals shivered at the thought of it being intentional. The propaganda arm noted that and would prepare accordingly. Incompetence framed as malevolence would separate those on the fence from the fanatics.
"What about the thing summoned from the cave?" Richardson asked, "Was it the Red Princess? Or an earlier attempt to summon the Abyss itself? We've fought something that former Abyssal Princesses and crew identified as the Abyss."
"If it is the same creature, we may have fought it off," Crawford said, "It used very sophisticated tactics. The building may be constructing the empty husk it needs. And it might be immune to the flares and star-shells we used before."
"Or The Red Princess' summoning was a cat's paw of something else," Goto said, "It may be empty, and some wandering demon basically found an installation it can command, becoming the Red Princess."
"That would be Guadalcanal," Northampton said, "But in any case, shouldn't we be wondering about the infiltrators sniffing around our investigation of the thing? Whatever happened before, it might be actually happening now. If Red Princess-Abyss' support network is in at Bikini, a bigger alliance might be in the offing."
Ryuujou shook her head. "Considering the Abyss' thoughts on `lesser beasts`, us, even a Molotov-Ribbentrop pact would fall apart," the carrier said, "To form a pact, you need a diplomat, not just 'I will reward my followers'." She smiled. "Even if they both lie their asses off."
"You're assuming that the Abyss reached out to Bikini, rather than the other way around," Crawford said, "Even if she can't host, maybe she has an alternative." He tapped the building. "Maybe we should put a couple of Tarzons through it and settle what's ever in there before they can use it. Whatever it is."
The ship-girls exchanged glances and sighed as they helped themselves to the tea and snacks.
Nagato woke out of the nightmare and into being held by her sister and Godzilla. She felt the tears on the back of her neck and realized Mutsu was crying while holding her.
"Same nightmare, or a different one?" Godzilla asked as he held Nagato and stroked Mutsu's hair.
"Same one, you'd think it wouldn't hit so hard the second time, or the third," Nagato said as she put one arm around each of her companions.
"Not as long as you have the same insecurities," Godzilla said, "The only thing you can control is yourself. I conjured up Gordon's Chief Medical Officer and had him do `surgery` on the parasites in the egg. The nightmare hasn't returned."
"I'm not sure I can do that," Nagato said. She'd confided the entire dream to these two, and only these two, and she didn't see a way out. "Also, I can't control my dreams."
"There are ways. Part of the training I got directly from the boss. If you can't control your dreams, someone else can. I was just out of practice," Godzilla said, "But the nightmares means that the Abyss is pressing down on this place. Others will be affected as well."
"I hope not," Mutsu said, "I hate that dream."
"Considering all we've gone through in the past weeks, almost everyone else will just put it down to stress and anxiety," Godzilla said, "Next time I get a batch of Caesium, I need to remember to create another superhorse."
Mutsu and Nagato laughed at that possibility.
------------------------------
Admiral Crawford's Bat-zilla, the representation of Godzilla Earth, woke and stared into the face of Johnston. He could feel another destroyer cuddled against him, and suspected it was Hoel or Heermann. He wasn't exactly irritated, any senior or just formidable officer and every capital ship who laid down to sleep accumulated a couple of destroyers or subs either in or under their bed. He smiled remembering Kongo flipping out at seeing an entire mixed flotilla of Abyssal and ship-girl destroyers and subs asleep under Goto's bed.
He disentangled himself without disturbing them, tribute to their heavy sleeping or his stealth he didn't want to think about. Morning coffee, breakfast, the Admiral's uniform, checking that the laundry had been done properly. Luchador Anguirus had washed Angie underwear with her jeans on his first attempt. Fortunately, they hadn't gone into the drier together.
Unlike the other Smols, he was worried about events. He suspected that Godzilla would try to get home when the Abyss attempted to breach the barrier between worlds, and while he didn't reject the impulse, he wanted to stay with the Admiral's family after all, he wondered if he and the other Smols would survive long after their creator left. Would they retain their abilities and worse, their intellect? Or would they revert to clever animals?
He was also worried about Johnston, who despite his appearance seemed quite smitten with him. Had he been human, he would almost have called her behavior towards him as attempts at courtship, he didn't mind her company, but thought growing up and finding a human suitor would be better for her.
Dishwasher unloading in absolute silence, so as not to wake the household.
Unless, he thought, She realizes she'll be an underage girl for the rest of her long life and wants someone who is as long-lived as a ship-girl or an Abyssal. He didn't want to think on that either. Was immortality his fate, long-lived, or did he have the short span that humans had?
Bacon on the stove. Peanut butter with chopped walnuts for Nurse-Zilla and mint tea. Navy coffee and plenty of it. He surveyed breakfast and headed off to set the table.
He knew that these were trivial worries compared to arguably the greatest sea battle in human history, but he would not participate directly in that. His job was to maintain the Admiral and his immediate staff and associates in fighting trim.
Need to order more cocoa, he thought as he checked the pantry, And someone's been pilfering the garbanzo beans.
He had already decided he would serve as long as he was able and as long as he was wanted. He'd quietly dispatched another infiltrator a week ago and wondered how anyone, even the humans, couldn't simply see them for what they were. Said droid had forgotten that even less than half-a-meter tall, he was still King of the Monsters, and arguably his mightiest incarnation. He vaguely wondered what the attraction of immortality was to the droids. Most of those who'd signed up could be bored sitting in the middle of an amusement park and couldn't be bothered to actually climb a mountain, swim deep seas or use their durability to actually risk their safety, and thus entertain themselves. Half the aggressive Abyssals were actually looking forward to the Mars colonization plan. They wanted to do, not just be.
As opposed to the droids who attacked humans because they thought they were invisible and invincible. Once they were detected and damaged, they collapsed like a house of cards. The waste of it infuriated him. But he'd answered his own question: the humans offered danger and gratitude and more Abyssals flocked to their banner. The Abyss offered ennui and anger, and they recruited the people the universe would be better off without.
He heard the others stirring and quickly got the coffee, muffins and bacon on the table along with the selection of cereals. Putting aside the darker thoughts for the day.
------------------------------
Crawford, Richardson and Goto were enjoying a morning walk together, getting out of the offices and `officially` overseeing the training. Really they wanted to stretch their legs and talk. Callahan and several of the Swedish officers had suggested using marching and the parade grounds to practice the more intricate maneuvers such as battle turns and going from cruising to battle line formations. Since none of the Abyssals had operated at above the squadron level, trying to maneuver entire fleets was new to them. Later they would get into firing at the turn and so forth.
A Mixed Swedish and Northern Princess force approached at a jog singing a marching cadence to keep everyone in step.
"And we're banned from Tokyo, every one. Banned from Tokyo just for having a little fun. We spent a jolly shore leave there for just three days or four, but Goto doesn't want us anymore." They saluted as they passed the Admirals, it was crisper than a band of raw recruits, but hardly up to parade ground standards.
"Abyssal squadrons landed, and nobody seemed to care. They stamped into the nearest bar to announced that they were there. Admiral Beale was busy inside, and invited them to play, but the Abyssals only looked at her, and turned and ran away," they sang as they marched away.
"And we're banned from Tokyo, every one. Banned from Tokyo just for having a little fun. We spent a jolly shore leave there for just three days or four, but Goto doesn't want us anymore."
"I somehow think that Admiral Beale wouldn't be offended by that," Richardson said.
"I'm curious how they learned it," Goto replied.
"Delaware taught them," Crawford replied, "That's the frightening thing, more than the war and the nature of the Abyss."
"What?" Richardson said.
"That Admiral Beale is actually a human being and not carved out of primeval, igneous rock," Crawford said.
The other two shrugged.
------------------------------
Gordon glanced back at the group of four Abyssals jogging behind him. He turned as directed, and managed to hook up to the end of the line which had been on his left to form a longer battle line. He had officers watching behind to verify the five ship group to his right executed their turn and hooked up to the end of the battle line, all without breaking cadence or having to take evasive action. If the last two joined up, they would have done it right twice, out of the five times they'd attempted it.
"In the morning there were drills, then drills, a bit more drill, and finally, lunch," complained the Abyssal ahead of him who'd been the tailend of the previous line.
"Don't forget the outbrief on the morning drills, then drill, a little more drill, dinner and an outbrief of the afternoon and evening drills, then lights out," he reminded her.
The cruising formation managed to get into a battleline without too many obvious evasive actions all at a jog to keep a relatively consistent speed. They all waited to see if the officers running the drill were willing to accept it as a success.
Once the fleet could sail together without collisions, Gordon thought, Mixed Abyssal and Ship-girl air strikes could be mounted. Once we start firing our guns together all this will make more sense. The Abyssals and the Ship-girls have always operated as a gaggle instead of a formation. When it's at most a dozen on each side, that works.
He looked back and forward at the line of fifty battleships and battlecruisers. When it gets this numerous, he thought, We have to exercise more and better control.
"All right now we ramp it up," the Swedish officer said, "You've practiced it as squadrons. Battle turn, stand by." The man raised a set of flags on a stick, similar to the flag hoists every ship had. Throughout the battle line, fairies and imps scrambled to raise a similar hoist on their ship's rigging. The officer's flags came down. "Now."
The flags dipped on all the ships, but every ship was turning, jogging in a standard rate turn. Thank God we standardized communication protocols, Gordon thought as his own fairies ran down their flags, They weren't that uniform among Princesses that's one way we'll be better. Everyone at least knows what to do.
Then he saw the officer's face. "It seems we have a few Seymours. Break formation, get back to the start points and we'll try again."
Gordon was sure it wasn't any in his battle squadron. They'd executed perfectly.
"Gordon, Warspite, out of line," the officer ordered.
What, me? Gordon thought as he critiqued his action, then saw he and the British veteran were being led to about six in a mixed ship-girl/Abyssal group the Swedes had cut out of various battle squadrons.
My people were good, so I teach the screw-ups, Gordon thought, Thanks guys.
Elsewhere, the officers were reassigning flagships and reorganizing the squadrons. Everybody has to be able to work with everybody, Gordon thought as a fast battleship or two were assigned to squadrons of eight that were standards or Ise-class, fast with slow.
"You want the van or the rear?" Gordon called to Warspite as she hobbled into position.
"You can be the shiny officer," Warspite said, "I'll play the crusty, old sergeant."
She then let off a string of invective that managed to humiliate the slackers without using a single curse word. It also told him that two of the Seymours hadn't raised their hoists, and hadn't called out the order, simulating radio talk between ships, or blinker light as an alternate; one had failed to haul down the flags, signaling execution; two had followed their leader's flawed orders instead of the voice/radio call from the flag; and the last the leader had started her turn the wrong way.
Then drill, a little more drill, dinner and an outbrief of the afternoon and evening drills, he remembered he'd been joking then.
There wasn't a lot of space in the cavern and he'd done the thorough decontamination needed, so Godzilla stayed outside and let Ryuujou, The Silver Mare, the Mothra clan and the Seaport Princess debate and discuss what they'd found in the summoning cave. He'd already puzzled out that they agreed, the lava tube looking cavern hadn't been the intended summoning spot. The odd carvings into the stone were made, likely by Bikini herself before she grew powerful enough to burn her way out of the mountain.
"Sounds like they think she ate through the stone, then summoned her power," Nagato said of the discussion among the mystical set, "Ryuujou seems to agree."
Godzilla nodded. He noted that Hoppou was still a Reppu, and seemed content to remain that way. The guards getting `buzzed` took it in stride.
First she's still an installation, and second she is a cute kid, Godzilla thought, And third it's diplomacy.
"Dakka, dakka, dakka!" Carlos told Hoppou when she tried to strafe him. Hoppou clutched her chest and staggered away drunkenly.
"What is Bikini like?" Nagato asked, "From the radiation and the feelings you got from it."
"From guesses and half-felt impressions, a very clever fool who is vicious, arrogant and stupid," Godzilla said as Nagato caught Hoppou on her next pass and hugged the girl.
"Don't negotiate, just kill on sight," Hoppou said as she snuggled against Nagato
"Got it," Godzilla said, "If she thinks she has the advantage, don't let her talk. Sounds like Ghidorah. Three heads, no brains, flies over the countryside destroying things."
"Sounds like a Senate Select Committee," Crawford said as he approached, "Who were you talking about?"
"Ghidorah." "Bikini." "Tom Riddle."
"Ah, then why is Ghidorah one of your Smolzillas?" Crawford asked.
"This one has a brain," Godzilla said, "Three actually. That's why one is Cyber King Ghidorah. Also I kept the behavioral template strictly as Mothra or Hasbro Horse, and gave similar treatment to the GMK Ghidorah. Even drunk I'm not that stupid."
Nagato and Crawford chuckled at that. The backpack `canopy` of Hoppou's Reppu suit opened and a Mothra larva poked a head out and chirped.
"How can you be airsick?" Godzilla asked, "She's stayed on the ground."
The outraged chirp and the follow up squeaks had Godzilla frowning. "You can always walk back on your own," he replied.
The larva gave one more chirp and settled back into the canopy.
------------------------------
Ryuujou really needed a drink, but she'd burned through her stock just being on the island, the cave was the clincher. She'd never be able to put it in words, but the place was wrong in so many fundamental ways.
"That they'd tried so foul a summoning on an accursed island," she said and realized she'd said it aloud.
The Seaport Princess only nodded. "Idiots," the Abyssal whispered as she examined the wall and the sigils on it, "This wasn't the summoning circle, and it wasn't The Red Princess' birthplace. This was the pact with something, scribed on the walls and promised in blood for fulfillment, but the path out was cut later," the Seaport Princess said, "But what? I can't understand half of what I recognize and most of the part I can read is word-salad like taking Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto throwing them into a blender and making one book out of the pieces. The one thing I can guarentee is something very angry and not too coherent wrote this. I don't know if the parts I can't read would make this clearer or more obscure."
"A stable gateway to the depth of the Abyss?" Ryuujou asked, "Similar to what Godzilla had come through but permanent?"
"They couldn't have controlled what they released," The Seaport Princess said, The Silver Mare whickered softly. "Too true, 'Never call up what you yourself cannot put down,' even a nonmagical, horror writer knew that much about magic," the Seaport Princess said.
"Send a detail up the hill," Ryuujou said to the team at the mouth of the lava tube that wasn't.
"We have to warn Supply Depot Princess, and the Admirals," The Seaport Princess said, "If it could be done here, there are other dark places it could be done."
"By dark you don't mean exclusively out of the sun," Ryuujou said.
"There are places it could be done in broad daylight, but the Abyss would not exit through them," The Seaport Princess said, backed up by a nodding Silver Mare.
------------------------------
Godzilla and Nagato had climbed to the top of the volcano's crater and looked across the island and the sea. They were checking for where the summoning could have been performed, on the rim, or within the crater.
"A lot going on," he said quietly, "You seem happy."
"Despite Kongo and Hoppou's teasing, I am content with my life," Nagato said, "Although I do wish the Emperor could meet you."
"You make me sounds like a hero out of a story," Godzilla said, "Frankly though, I think you need to teach him to shoot. Hokey religions and short-ranged weapons are no replacement for a good hogleg on your hip."
Nagato frowned. "That is the worst John Wayne I've ever heard," Nagato said and smiled.
"Considering I was trying for Lee Van Cleef, it's really bad," Godzilla said and froze, "This is the summoning spot. Come over, see if you feel something."
Nagato walked up beside him and frantically glanced around. "It's like we're not here," she said, "I know that sound trite, but I almost feel we're elsewhere, looking in on our world."
A dark-cloaked figure appeared before them. "I think we've been found," Godzilla said as the figure aimed a gnarled stick of metal and flesh twisted together at Nagato. Godzilla stepped in front of her.
"Well, the noble knight stands before the lady," the figure said, "It shan't help."
Nagato considered the crumbling stone and held off summoning her full rigging, she also grimaced at the cacophony that filled her radios. She compromised as a single secondary appeared in her hand.
The figure made a sound like leaden plates clashing. The bolt from the rod struck Godzilla and the flare of light nearly blinded her and her look outs. She didn't scream as the man's suit combusted, she'd seen the effects of an atomic blast, she knew what was coming.
A brute of a man advancing in a Tinkerbellesque-dress was not what she'd expected. From his slack posture, neither had the figure. The figure was also not expecting Godzilla to move that fast. The fairy-dressed kaiju closed with the figure and broke the creature's wand with one hand, while he shoved the forearm-long, star-tipped wand into the cloak's cowl until it bowed from resistance. The pink, purple and yellow ribbons that had hung from the wand dove in and wrapped around whatever the cowl concealed.
"Dream magic, here, against me? I have two, very powerful gods, both experts in that field, who want me alive and intact," Godzilla said, the blond ringlets dancing in the sun as he shook his head, "Both of whom think they are screamingly funny, their defense against your spell a clear example. So even though the button under my thumb says 'fairy dust' I'd think long and hard before you convince me to press it."
The figure raised it's head to throw back the hood and expected the bear of a man to stare in horror at what he saw. Nagato couldn't see it, and was glad of Godzilla's bulk as he loomed over the figure.
"Where have they taken Hoppou?" Godzilla asked.
Nagato's smirk at the situation died and she considered taking a hand herself.
"Bikini, and the Admiral's child," the figure said, "You can't stop my ascension."
"You really should watch more human movies if you think there's anything I 'can't'," Godzilla growled. For an instant an image filled the air around them. Huge, reptilian, and angry. The figure fell limp and vanished, only the broken rod hanging from Godzilla's hand remained.
"What do you mean, where did they take Hoppou?" she asked, wanted to shake the information from the man in the ridiculous costume.
"I'll bet they are asleep and if that thing is this powerful, has their dreams trapped," Godzilla said, then grinned, "Too bad it's an idiot. It thinks 'They have an Abyssal to treat with', and assumes what better sacrifice than another?" Godzilla said as he examined the broken wand, "They played me, my apologies, I never considered they'd do this. I thought we were getting ahead of them. It seems that someone is a step ahead of us."
"What?" Nagato shouted.
"They tricked us into getting you here, and your allies, then they snatched Hoppou and are likely keeping her under wraps by threatening your safety." He looked back over his shoulder as he marched back along the path they'd taken. "I've seen she won't let even Mutsu carry her, just you and me. With the radio silence she can't simply call you to verify you aren't in danger, and the jamming isn't magical, it's radiation based, I can taste it," Godzilla said as he started back down the path they'd used to climb to the rim. "That's good and bad, if Bikini is running the show, then we have a clever foe who plays the angles, so they'll need Hoppou alive. The bad is that Hoppou will serve as the Abyss' new body, and disrupt the Alliance with the Allied Abyssals. Too bad they have given us all the weapons we need."
"How? If the gateway to the Abyss is back there, why aren't we storming in there?" Nagato pointed back the way they came.
"Because that was an avatar, not the whole Abyss," Godzilla said, "Remember, dreams are something I'm trained in. I bet neither of us saw exactly the same thing. If you'd looked into it's face you might have seen death, rusting away and other horrors of being sunk and fading away. You know what I saw?"
"A place to take a nap," Nagato said, and smirked, "So what are we going to do?"
"Use your nightmare to face another nightmare, and it's all set up perfectly, and if that idiot took Mothra with Hoppou, our job is so much easier. Let's just hope Amos will be willing to help us. And if what you told us is true, she's the last person the Abyssal want to meet Amos."
Nagato came to a dead halt and stared at him. "And you thought this all up in a moment?" Nagato said as she followed his jog down the volcano. "Do you normally take mental turns on two wheels like that?"
"I have never needed two wheels," Godzilla said, "And consider who my old boss is, do you think that all my foes could be fought while I was awake? All those movies where they found me asleep, I wasn't sleeping off a Cesium binge in a lot of them. I'm just lucky I never had a foe who was primarily in dreams that also had powerful waking forces as well. The Abyss doesn't count, it's a dabbler in dreams. I may not be the master, but I am the experienced soldier."
"So who goes after her?" Nagato said.
"It's your nightmare, not mine," Godzilla said turned back and smiled, "Who do you think?"
Fairies and Imps were drilled on damage control, fire fighting and with Smols keeping the peace, small arms fire and forward observation. The Smiths and Daleks in reporting in had noted there was now an edge to the Imps and the Abyssals that hadn't been there before. Like the ship-girl-sized Abyssals who'd been vaguely dismissive of the endless drills, eager to do them right only so they'd be over, were suddenly performing with a will.
"It's pretty clear Hoppou is more popular than anyone thought," Gordon said as he, Gotengo and Haida walked among the Imp teams who were undergoing training.
"You have no idea. She was the refuge, the safety valve for when some Abyssals had gone further than they could. You could be `traded` for one of her more aggressive ships, the ones who wanted to get back in the fight," Gotengo said, "For some it was retirement, for others it was a spa. You didn't have control over whom you were traded to if you wanted to leave Hoppou's service, but if you had to escape, it was to there. Even if you just fantasized about slipping away and surrendering." Gotengo looked around.
"Trouble?" Haida asked the pensive, former Abyssal.
"Just, I never thought about it this way before. I knew about it, I just hadn't really put it all together before. How much we crutched the system of the Abyssal war machine," Gotengo said, "Like we knew it wouldn't work, and we had to make all these work arounds, mentally, administratively, and sometimes physically. I think that's why so many of the Abyssals are reacting to the news about Hoppou the way they are. Her place was a safety valve. I'd never considered how critical hope was in fighting a war. There had to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Victory or permanent death, but it would be over. If we won the ultimate victory, it would be like Hoppou's realm, a few humans doing human things, but the rest of us free to be ourselves. Now the Abyss and The Red Princess promise only eternal war. Against whom, if all the humans are killed or subjugated? Hoppou offered what the Russian Mars colony offered, a place away from most humans, but also away from the war. How much did she intend in how she acted, and how much did she discover?"
"Did she have a plan, or was it an accident?" Haida said, "Or did it start falling into place and they just ran with it?"
"I don't know. With my former Princess, it would have been an accident, with Seaport and Hoppou working together, and Supply adding in her twopence? It had to at least been planned after it started happening. So is Bikini that insightful, or did she just accidentally fall into a working plan?"
"Or if she is falling in, does she have smarter help?" Gordon said and nodded as the drills continued around them, the Abyssals working with a determination that matched the most driven Ship-girls.
"Do you know why Mutsu asked for Fairies that knew sign language?" Gordon asked, "I had a few, she borrowed a couple and sent ten times that number in to be trained. I thought the Marines trained in their own hand signaling techniques."
Gotengo shrugged.
The teams still getting in a last bit of training before lunch were miming firing at the turn and other more intricate maneuvers that would be practiced after lunch and into the evening. The expectation of calling down fire from even part of the massive battle line was practically exuding from all the big-gun ships. Gordon knew most ship's gunnery was superb, the difference between them wasn't a big enough difference to make a difference.
But all the ships would glance to the mountain where the next major battle would be fought, and tasks were performed to ensure there would be a reckoning.
------------------------------
Hoppou looked at the two overconfident figures as she laid a hand on the frightened kid with her. She kept the slightly confused expression on her face, but her fairies were in constant communication with Mothra, and she in turn with others of her Smol-class.
"So if Hoppou doesn't hurt you, you won't hurt momma?" she asked, trying to appear as the stereotype of more cute than effective.
"You have our word," the elder of the pair said as both faded away. Once she was sure they were gone, she took the child's hand and headed not into the open freight container, but into the jungle where they would have the advantage.
Then I know you're a liar, she thought as she glanced around as the stars began appearing through gaps in the canopy. Then they ran out of cover and had to risk transit in the open. It took little time to work out where they were supposed to be.
Except we're really asleep on Nishinoshima, Hoppou thought, Not on The Red Princess' island. So all of this is a distraction. What do they want? That's what I can find out, depending on what they've chosen to duplicate in this dream. Their precious building isn't too far and it will be less guarded here than in reality.
Despite the radio jamming, all she saw was sent out to the others. I should be looking forward to the show, she thought, Why not use the Seaport Princess as the threatened hostage, I've always been close to her, but they've seen me spending time with Nagato and Godzilla? So their eyes and ears are still on Nishinoshima. That's bad. I was so looking forward to the Abyssals and the ship-girls further cementing our friendship in the blood of our mutual enemies.
------------------------------
"Admiral," Crawford heard as Godzilla and Nagato approached, Godzilla carrying two, partially dismantled droids. "These two may have something to tell us, but we should put them under guard immediately." He dropped them in front of the Marines. Mutsu stepped up to cover the captives while grinning at Nagato and Godzilla. Nagato blushed furiously under that grin.
Crawford nodded to the marines and led the pair off to where Goto and the others were in communication. Two Mothras were chirping to Northampton and Ryuujou.
"Who kicked the droid into a wood louse?" The Seaport Princess asked as she stood from Hoppou's and Carlo's sleeping forms. The Mothra larva was hanging limp out of Hoppou's Reppu-cockpit and The Silver Mare was asleep on Carlos' head.
Nagato blushed. "He surprised me."
"Not as much as you surprised him a second later," Godzilla said, and looked over the scene. "So, they didn't hit the base. Figures they couldn't tell one human from another," Godzilla commented.
"`Major` Andre more than made up for her earlier subterfuge," Crawford said, "Although getting to the base is a priority. Even launched planes can't get past the jamming. We've got a few old diesels that are on their way but that'll take hours. Geared, steam turbines and diesel turbo-electrics are unaffected. Admiral Richardson and Shark Dentures have been going crazy trying to keep every ship-girl and Abyssal in the western Pacific from charging in, there've been offers of help from a dozen, previously unallied Abyssals. Someone made a broadcast after our receivers went down, and delivered an ultimatum. Seems The Seaport Princess' and Supply Princess' laissez faire rule is more popular than Bikini's proposed despotism. And of course the JASDF, RAAF and USAF are going crazy about strike packages. Now that they don't have to worry about where they overfly or where they land in an emergency."
"Why?" Nagato asked, "Wouldn't Bikini's forces be unclear to their sensors?"
"Carpet bomb the entire atoll, and the Abyssals' cloak wouldn't matter," Godzilla said, "I'm glad you can pivot. They blind-sided me."
"With due respect to the IJN, they fell into the same complexity trap, expecting us to react as they wanted," Crawford said, "And forgetting about the cable to the mainland, they should have hit Andre while we were up here. As soon as the EMP went up, she had a set up and was back in touch with command, and through the mothranet with us. Nagato, Hoppou is fine, she's in coordination with us and feeding us intel. I think they forgot she was an installation/princess and thought she was just a kid."
"Your granddaughter?" Nagato asked.
Crawford sighed. "She's safe. My Bat-zilla and her guards took out another droid. They've got to be running out of those things. Message through the mothranet to Callahan was 'do what you must', brave kids, Hoppou will do her best, but . . . I have to be an admiral first, and a grandfather second. I already buried my sons and daughters, I have to act so no one else has to go through that."
Nagato nodded.
"Okay," Godzilla said, "Let's start fixing things then getting you all back to the base. We had a recurrence of nightmares caused by the Abyss. We need Hoppou to break off when it's safe, and we can get her and Carlos free of this."
"How?" Callahan said, glanced down at his son then back at Godzilla.
"Nagato's nightmare. Amos Canby was a hero twice already, let's give him a chance to be a hero again," Godzilla said and smiled. It was quickly answered.
As Nagato settled in near the kids, Godzilla walked a bit away from the encampment while singing.
The ship-girls and Abyssals froze on seeing the leviathan, even knowing their hulls were just as big and they were allies, they still stepped back in fear.
------------------------------
The seatainer had no lights, and darkness enclosed the group as soon as the doors were sealed. Normally used for containerized cargo, this one served as a temporary jail. The horse's horn lit up as it nuzzled Carlos. But Hoppou was grinning at their enemies and their secrets coming where Hoppou could reach them. She and Carlos had been caught, but her imps were already out from their excursion into the jungle and more of them were making their exits from the seatainer. While ships would have crews of hundreds to thousands, she had a bit over ten thousand and could spare entire battalions on away missions without loss of combat efficiency.
The door to the seatainer opened. The miasma surrounding the humanoid shape entering sickened Hoppou and sent the others scrambling back. The miasma and the humanoid seemed pleased by the terror they'd inflicted.
So you are separate, Hoppou thought, Even here where all things imaginable are possible. You know you are no longer my master, nor even my patron. You brought me into the world, but I've outgrown you.
"So, you are with the rebels, a poor thing of the Abyss," the humanoid's voice said, but directed by the miasma.
"You smell funny," Hoppou said, and smirked at the change from condescension to irritation.
"You won't have to worry about that for long. Your friends are far away," the miasma said through its humanoid.
Not so far as you want me to believe, Hoppou thought.
"If I am a poor thing of the Abyss, what are we supposed to call you? I've heard so many funny names," Hoppou said, watching the miasma possessed humanoid stiffen at the rebuke.
"I am your Master, your Creator," the human stood up straight, "The Lord over Abyssals, and soon over the world itself."
Hoppou didn't even roll her eyes at the ridiculousness of that claim.
"No cry that your mother-figure will save you?" the miasma asked as the humanoid approached and then stepped back, "What treachery is this?"
"She has to be weakened first," the most hideous and misshapen Abyssal Hoppou had ever seen walked up. Even a battle-damaged transport retained some symmetry, this looked like pieces stuck onto pieces. It was too large to enter the seatainer without hunching over. But Godzilla had described it perfectly, and no one believed him.
"Bikini," Hoppou breathed. She doesn't look like the figure from the pictures, she thought, Was she disguised? Or are the illusions stripped away in this dream. I am whole because I am cohesive. She's a dozen personalities slapped together. No wonder she lurches between brilliant and insane.
"Soon little one, soon," Bikini said and turned to the humanoid with the mist cloaking it, "If your acolytes did their job, she will be yours shortly enough. You cannot summon your rigging here, little one, not where my power reigns."
Hoppou's imps reported that was a lie, but outwardly she struggled and failed. She looked at the pair with the fury she actually felt. "You promised if Hoppou helped, mommas wouldn't be hurt!"
"We lied," Bikini said and walked off laughing. The miasma-possessed humanoid moved away as well, clearly enjoying Hoppou's hatred.
Hoppou waited until the doors closed again before going over to comfort the two others. "Help is available," she told Carlos and The Silver Mare as she hugged them.
"It'll take days to steam here," Carlos replied.
Hoppou shook her head. "We haven't moved from the rock where I was sleeping in your lap," she explained, "And there are secrets here to be discovered, and Nagato is plotting our escape: a man not unlike your dad, we just have to get to him, and then convince him to help us. Where he'll be rescued, we can find the way out."
"That makes no sense," Carlos protested.
"It makes sense if this is a video game," Hoppou said, "And that's what you believe in, so that is strong enough to break us out."
"But how can this be a dream?" Carlos asked, ignoring the soft whicker of The Silver Mare.
"How can it not?" Hoppou said, "This is a dream or a nightmare, they couldn't spirit us away from the others without it."
"So we can't wake up until we find the exit, and Nagato will provide help and the exit," Carlos said, "Seems convenient."
"I think Godzilla and the Mothras are behind this," Hoppou said, "If his Master is Lord of Dreams then he is trained as your father is for his weapons."
Carlos nodded and sat against the walls of the seatainer. A few minutes later ninja Imps appeared, and produced a map from somewhere.
"Hoppou is an installation, in charge of several islands and a biggg piece of ocean," Hoppou explained as she looked over the map, "Hoppou was an admiral, and wants to go back to being a little sister." A coldness settled over her. "But this is everyone's big enemy, and Hoppou will kill him and keep everyone safe."
While Carlos shuddered a bit, The White Mare's horn-light outlined the basic layout of the area and especially the Abyssals' barracks and the airstrip.
"What worries Hoppou is the 'ceremonial area' and what the ceremony would be," Hoppou said, "Versus what The Red Princess and its bootlickers think it will be."
"Are you all right?" Carlos asked, "You sound, well different."
Hoppou smiled. "When I'm like this, I act more like what I look like." Then her expression seemed a mask and the light in her eyes changed. "But this is who I really am. I don't like thinking and being like this, but Hoppou thinks you'd want an installation and an admiral, rather than a tag along kid."
"Sorry, with ah, everything going on," Carlos said.
Hoppou nodded. "We get the intel, and we escape."
Carlos nodded. "We don't need them to call down Death Cyborg Kaiser Ghidorah," Carlos said, "But it might be fun to have them call down Discord."
"Not arrangeable," Hoppou said, "But we have pathfinders."
The White Mare burned a hole in the floor of the seatainer. Mothra wove a cover to disguise it and the pair headed out on their way. They arrived at the large building, the unknown unholy of unholies of the Abyss.
"Now is an admiral's hardest job," Hoppou said as she sat down, a large rock between them and the building.
"What?" Carlos asked as he sat beside her.
"Waiting for competent people to do their jobs, without jostling their elbows to find out what's happening," Hoppou said.
The pair slipped through the dark. Moving from shadow to shadow. The White Mare was covered in a Mothra-made ghillie suit as there was no other way to hide her. The massive concrete building loomed in front of them.
"Are you sure you want to go in?" Hoppou asked Carlos, "I have to see to report to Mothra, you don't."
"I have to see too," Carlos said, "If they question us separately and the stories match, they're more likely to believe you."
"What we see may be different in the details," Hoppou warned, "This is still a dream." They found the recessed stairway and descended to the door Hoppou's Imps had found and opened for them.
"Bombing this place will be difficult," Carlos said as he pushed the door closed behind them.
------------------------------
Godzilla walked a bit away from the encampment while singing.
The ship-girls and Abyssals froze on seeing the leviathan, even knowing their hulls were just as big and they were allies, they still stepped back in fear. He reached down, offering a hand to the assembled.
Crawford ordered the team to return together and took the lead climbing into the massive, clawed hand. The battered droids and their guards came next, and last a few other extraneous people.
Godzilla looked back to where Mutsu guarded a sleeping Nagato, who had another Mothra perched on her head to make the circuit. Then he strode over the fields towards the base, careful to keep the ride as smooth as possible.
------------------------------
Carlos was half-carrying Hoppou as they exited the building. He'd been thoroughly horrified by what they'd found, but at least he wasn't planned as an ingredient.
He cleared the area as fast as he could carry/drag the stunned installation who stared at the world through unblinking eyes. What was new, and was his target, was the Battleship dorms of Yokosuka.
"We'll be safe with Nagato's friend soon," Carlos told Hoppou who wasn't even reacting to Mothra's nuzzles. "I think I know how to play this if we have to really convince him." He glanced back at the building. "And I think both of us can sell it if we need to."
He shuddered as he slung Hoppou on his shoulders and ran. He briefly glanced around for The Silver Mare but didn't see her. I hope we don't have to have all four of us to escape, he thought, I also hope she isn't going to nuke the site from orbit.
------------------------------
Amos woke suddenly, a mitten over his mouth.
"Don't scream," the small albino before him whispered, then removed the mittened hand from his face. "You want to escape, so do we."
"You're an - " Amos said as he stared at her.
"What they've been telling you is an Abyssal, yes," the little girl said. She had the look he'd seen on too many soldiers, those who'd seen too much and saw no way out.
"Yeah, but we need a boat, charts, rations, and I haven't gotten all that together," Amos admitted, he chided himself at falling for perhaps another trick.
But why tear up the facade if they didn't need to? he wondered.
"All we need is a boat, and to catch the US Navy ship that comes in close," the boy behind the girl said.
"And you are?" Amos asked.
"Carlos, my dad's a Marine," the boy said, "I haven't been able to pry him loose, but I've seen them watch you."
"So you have a boat, won't leaving the dorms in the middle of the night seem strange?" Amos asked.
"Me going into the woods at night with men won't seem strange," the Abyssal said, "But we should still avoid being seen."
The clinical tone shocked Amos. He'd heard all kinds of stuff in Basic and on the perimeter, some propaganda, a lot of it bullshit. But the little girl with the 1000-yard stare told him that what had happened to him was a picnic compared to what happened to others lower in the pecking order.
"I'm more worried about Carlos," she said, "Some of the cruisers are finding him intriguing."
If he was seventeen, getting attention like that might be welcome, but at fourteen, it would just be bewildering. Amos nodded, horrified at the parallels he'd heard about both the ChiComs and the Imperial Japanese.
"I'll get dressed and be with you in a moment," Amos told them.
"Use this," Carlos said and handed over a can of grease paint, "It breaks up the silhouette and cuts down on reflection."
Amos nodded again. He wasn't sure if this was another test, and an avenue to punishment. But I can't not act, he thought, It would give away that I know this isn't real. If they ask I can always say I was just keeping an eye on two kids play acting. Which might be the truth.
------------------------------
The kids had good tradecraft, moving from shadow to shadow, moving to the boatyard. Seeing the place with 'everything off' was a mindbender. He wasn't sure how much of the base was real and how much he'd spent in the big building strapped down and hallucinating.
Questions would wait until we are out to sea, Amos reminded himself.
The boat was in the repair shop. The shiny white paint charred and blistered, and thus not shiny white and less visible. A toy horse marking the covered boat until we needed it.
"Some idiot was smoking while using turpentine," Carlos explained on seeing Amos' expression, he carefully packed the toy away in his pack, "Whoosh. That's what gave us the idea."
He could see why they hadn't grabbed the boat themselves, there was no way to carry it for just two of them. Unless they were inside it like a turtle shell, and then they'd be a comedy routine instead of an escape.
They managed to get it in the water without attracting any attention. Paddling with minimal noise would be a problem close to shore, but when they were a ways away, he could put the larger oars in the davits and row with gusto. The two kids kept the smaller paddles and rowed occasionally to steer.
They rowed that way, not speaking, until they heard it. Engines in the darkness.
"So what now?" Amos asked, he thought ships ran with lights in the darkness.
The beam of a powerful searchlight illuminated the boat better than the noon day sun. The girl put her oar away and put up her hands. So did Carlos and a moment later so did Amos. The sound of a motor whaleboat approached and a smaller spotlight.
Amos didn't need to see the Marines in the boat to know something more normal was going on. A Marine tossed over a line and Carlos made it fast to the fitting near the front of the boat as a second whaleboat took up a position on the portside rear. That had no light but he could see at least a dozen M1919's aimed at them. If they twitched wrong, you wouldn't be able to separate the boat fragments from their body pieces. Although they meant it as a threat, Amos saw it as salvation. This was stuff he was familiar with, not rayguns and `cellphones` and all the other weird stuff he'd been forced to live with.
What loomed out of the darkness was something he recognized. An Essex-class. He was smiling almost as much as the kids were.
------------------------------
Hoppou woke to several smiling faces. What actually warmed her heart was that Nagato was resting in the arms of Seaport Princess while she slept, the massive Abyssal holding the ship-girl tenderly and protectively, as if she didn't trust the ship-girls and Marines guarding all of them.
Well, I should give her my thanks, Hoppou thought as Carlos yawned and stretched quietly, Since Nagamon is something even I've heard of. She crawled into Nagato's lap, rested her head on Seaport Princess' thigh and went to sleep. I'll leave it to them what happens next, I hope Nagato can let Amos be rescued and returned home.
She hadn't gotten much rest during her previous nap, so now she would.
------------------------------
Prinz Eugen walked along the road to the Nishinoshima firing range. The news from the mountain had lightened most of the Abyssals' moods but she still smiled as Z-1 and Z-2 abandoned their talk of home and hid behind her as a force of fifteen Abyssal battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers ran towards them.
Prinz Eugen, Pringles, stepped off the road to let them go by, as she'd recognized Mister Gibbs at the end of the formation. So she was only afraid of carelessness or accidents.
"All mimsy were the borogoves, and mome raths did outgrabe. They did outgrabe," the formation sang, "Beware Jabberwock, son! And The Bandersnatch!"
Z-1 stared at the retreating formation. "Those aren't the words to the Panzerlied," she said, "Good singing though."
"I think that was Jabberwocky," Z-2 said as she scratched her head. Both destroyers looked at the grinning heavy cruiser.
"I think I'm going to like it here," she told her two charges, and continued towards the firing range.
------------------------------
Nagato grimaced and looked away from Godzilla's hands. "That was awful," she said to the smirking Mutsu. They half-listened to the droning reports on the status of shipments sent from the mainlands, Nagato knew that until it landed on the dock and was usable, such reports were meaningless.
Godzilla, a dozen meters away began signing again. 'The most brilliant man I've ever met told me this joke. Two shoggoths were flying over the Pacific, when one stared in horror from every eye. "I've just realized! Shoggoths can't fly!" The other rolled its myriad eyes and said, "Don't worry, my grandsire's previous budding is an accountant every Holy Day."'
Nagato rolled the thought in her mind and tried to understand. She glanced at Mutsu who shrugged. The pair looked back at Godzilla and shook their heads.
Mutsu signed, 'I don't understand.'
Godzilla signed back, 'You don't get it either? Thank God, I thought I was getting stupid in my old age.'
Mutsu had to avoid laughing aloud as Nagato smirked. They checked to see if the speaker was still droning on about supplies that hadn't but were supposed to have arrived. Which she was.
Mutsu signed to Godzilla, 'How many surrealist does it take to change a light bulb?' With Godzilla's shrug she continued, 'Just one, five to fill the bathtub with brightly-colored machine tools, and the first to paint the rhinoceros purple.'
Godzilla licked a finger and `drew` the point he gave Mutsu, then he got a thoughtful expression.
Nagato signed, 'When is a raven like a writing desk?'
'Poe wrote on both,' Godzilla signed, 'What have I got in my pocket?'
'Your pants pocket or your shirt pocket?' Nagato signed and waggled her eyebrows as Godzilla had at her numerous times. Then grinned at the stunned expressions on Godzilla and Mutsu. She licked her finger and gave her tally an additional point.
Sorry, a recent thunderstorm ate my computer, and the back up. I still have the files on a thumb drive, but this is from my phone. I'm not going to try to edit these chapters on my phone (I tried, damn autocorrupt). Computers are in the shop.
Sorry, a recent thunderstorm ate my computer, and the back up. I still have the files on a thumb drive, but this is from my phone. I'm not going to try to edit these chapters on my phone (I tried, damn autocorrupt). Computers are in the shop.
The politicians were fuming that they'd been denied photo-ops with the massive force that had assembled, trained and now sailed. Admiral Beale had managed to convince the SecNav and the Swedish Crown Princess not to go, so she could tell others that 'the SecNav isn't jostling people's elbows why were you?' Her Brittanic Majesty and His Imperial Japanese Highness had flat out told her that they were going to be present for the returning force, if people wanted to yell at someone, then people in charge should be there. Few if any politicians wanted to be there to get chewed out by wounded Abyssals and ship-girls.
Beale had to hand it to the two Royals, they knew human nature. She was as close as Tokyo with the remnants of Goto's and Richardson's commands while those two were forward with the bulk of their forces at Nishinoshima, with Crawford not quite going in with the troops.
The plan was simple: bombard the Abyssals by air from altitudes well over their ability to reply, bombard by sea from a gun line that could have beaten both sides at Jutland together, send in a mixed sea and air force to pick off individual targets, then make the landings.
"Everyone knows if you give an enemy two options, they'll invariably pick the third," Delaware said as she stared at the map, "Bombers are an hour and a half out, the gun line an hour behind that."
"We need to blow that building quickly, if the nightmare Hoppou saw is indeed in there," Beale said. The `housing` for the Abyss had terrified the little Abyssal for many reasons, not the least of which was her pieces would be important components, and they'd be harvested while she was alive and conscious. Her agonies and outrage would be as important an ingredient as the physical matter. How anyone would penetrate the screen around that Princess, short of direct divine intervention, was anyone's guess.
Beale knew that the special attack force would concentrate on the building, swinging wide around the island while nearly everyone else came in from the other directions. She looked at the markers denoting Gordon's pirates escorting Godzilla and wondered idly where Nagato and Mutsu's thoughts were.
"Guilty you're not going out?" Delaware quietly asked.
"I could ask the same," Beale replied.
"You don't have a loyal Bat-zilla to guard you," Delaware said, "Many of the Smols may be going in as infantry, but the admirals closer in still have at least a couple Smols or one ship-girl each as a protector."
Beale nodded. The excuse Crawford had used to bring Angie along, so Northampton could join the gun line, he had Bat-Zilla and Angie's two protectors as droid defense.
I hope we don't have to figure out if a Smol can beat a droid-ship aboard a steel-hulled warship, Beale thought.
------------------------------
Spotter planes reported the damage as the gunline fired. Light cruisers and destroyers guarded the fleet while battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers threw tons of high explosives at the beach defenses.
Closer in, UD trained sub girls disabled mines and submerged obstacles. While Abyssal ship-girls could operate underwater, they were at reduced capacity. Sub-girls, Abyssal and not, could operate freely beneath the waves.
Nagato and Mutsu marveled at the massive air umbrella from the many carriers. "Why aren't they coming out to challenge us?" Nagato asked between salvoes. No ship or sub had spotted the Abyssals yet, save a few vedettes in their slit trenches weathering the storm.
"Would they abandon the position and retreat to the deep ocean?" Mutsu asked after she'd fired. The brown, propellant smoke briefly obscuring then revealing her.
"The pickets would have spotted a mass exodus," Nagato said, then sent a message to Gotland who was coordinating the spotters, "Told her to check on the building. I can't believe the air strike got them all."
"We need to drop some depth bombs in the lagoon, they may all be hiding underwater there," Mutsu said. That was relayed to Crawford, and thence to the remaining air flotilla above.
------------------------------
What surfaced out of the water really deserved a bass brass stinger, Godzilla in his Shin configuration walked into the shallows. The purple highlights glowing brightly. The air assault that came at him met the 'Cabinet Resigning Beam' from his mouth and tail and dozens of aircraft, a swarm of bombs and rockets, and even a few shells were effortlessly swept from the sky. The abomination lumbered onto the shore, crushing at least one Abyssal under foot as he marched.
This is too easy, Godzilla thought, as more planes and more shots came at him and were destroyed. They're up to something, he thought as he headed towards the building that by all appearances had suffered a bit from the bombing, but seemed to have avoided being pierced by any of the bombs dropped. We'll see if it stands up against me, he thought as he headed that way. The rest of Gordon's force waded ashore and took the defenses under fire from the rear.
As he tore the concrete apart meter by meter, it came to him what the problem was. This isn't the real one, he thought as he'd penetrated 20 meters of steel reinforced concrete and found no opening, not a room, not a tunnel, not an air shaft. He dissipated his hull and the man was standing beside the monster still tearing the building apart.
He signaled Gordon over. They'd made a mistake and Godzilla realized what it was.
------------------------------
Gordon loosed the salvo towards the defenders and ran towards Godzilla.
"It's in the lagoon," Godzilla said, "The defenders, the summoning area, the whole business."
"They bombed the lagoon," Gordon said, pointing to another stick of bombs entering the lagoon.
"They'd need to bomb it with the bunker busters they used on that. It's just a slab of concrete, a dummy to draw our fire while the real deal is probably under the floor of the lagoon, and we can't carpet bomb the entire floor of the lagoon, even if I could absorb the radioactive cloud that would result," Godzilla said, "We're going to have to do this as infantry, that means me, the Abyssals and the subs."
"I'll tell them, once we can put down the surface defenders, maybe we can use long-lances on the lagoon floor," Gordon said.
Gotengo indicated the growing storm clouds in what had been a sunny sky. "I think we'd better hurry," Gotengo said, "Fighting in a hurricane won't be fun for anyone."
------------------------------
Gordon slogged through wind and rain he'd only faced once before, the storm that had ravaged Nishinoshima, then moved on to savage Okinawa. The lightning playing merry Hell with radios, and the noise and rain made yelling from more than a few yards, blinker lights and signal flags a forlorn hope.
"If the Abyssals weren't also inconvenienced, I'd say this was a good tactic," Gotengo shouted to him from a few meters away, "They could break out and overwhelm isolated ship-girls."
"Why are they staying put?" Gordon asked, "How are they staying put? There should be dozens of cruisers and above, hundreds of destroyers and subs. We've policed up the bodies and there's only a few dozen defenders of all types."
Gotengo stared at one of the cruiser sisters as they broke away from their conversation. "I think they fed us a line," Sharlin told Gotengo and Gordon, "We aren't preventing the summoning, we're the lunch afterwards."
"But what are the . . . everyone who was here were the summoning materials," Gordon realized, "They didn't need Hoppou, she was just a concentrated source and disinformation, they used everyone else. That's how you have eternal war, you eat all your regular soldiers to fuel the one you keep." Gordon transmitted that to command, while the cruisers raced off to warn the squadron commanders. The bland acknowledgment from Crawford didn't settle his boilers any.
"He's `aware` of the problem?" Gotengo asked.
Gordon nodded, then knelt to touch a stone outcropping. The vibration he'd sensed was stronger through the rock. "Gear up, this is the main event," Gordon told her, "Spread the word."
------------------------------
Joshamie raced through the storm, meeting Godzilla, and a dozen Fletcher-class, from the eponymous ship, through Johnston, Heermann, Taylor to poor Willie D were grinning as they walked. "Command thinks they ate most of the Abyssals to make the frame for the Abyss," the battleship told them, "We'll have to be ready to fight or run, they've targeted a couple squadrons of ICBMs, the US and the Russians, if we can't handle it."
Godzilla grinned and clapped the battleship on the shoulder. "Then we'll handle it."
Joshamie was about to demand to know how, when the massive creature erupted out of the lagoon and gave a roar that drown out the fury of the storm. She watched the crawling surface of the tall, sharp cone as pseudopods formed and retracted, symbols both obscure and obscene formed to vanish away, and what light there was fell on it to be absorbed entirely or reflected completely. Joshamie felt that her steam lines had gone to ice as it rose so high it seemed to touch the lightning-filled clouds. Yet no bolt descended to strike it, as if nature itself wanted nothing to do with this abomination. The roar at the heavens seemed triumphant, it had outmaneuvered its handmaids, would subjugate its enemies, and achieve final victory.
"Merciful Heavens protect us," Joshamie said as he watched dozens of tiny explosions that were battleship-grade shells, explode like flickers of static electricity across the creature, probing for weak points, but the monster threw another roar at the heavens as whatever tiny wounds inflicted were erased by the constant ebb and flow of its surface. It apparently had no weakpoints, no antennae to strike, no eyes to pluck out, no veins to open and nothing vulnerable to the relative pinpricks that even the ship-girls' and Abyssals' mightiest guns amounted to.
Joshamie felt hope ebbing away. A squadron of Japanese ship-girls including Ooi and Kitakami jumped into the lagoon deep enough to launch a fusillade of Long Lances. Joshamie knew that Bikini/The Red Princess had survived twenty, even a hundred would mean nothing to this monster.
He turned back to Godzilla and the destroyers, and saw expressions of peace and tranquility. "Are you all just prepared to die?" she asked, then looked up as lights began breaking through, no breaking up the storm above them. There was something soothing about that light, hope filled, as if each ray and photon carried assurance that everything was well in hand and all would be good. Joshamie realized that Godzilla and the Fletchers were beyond the equanimity she felt, and were joyous.
"What did you do?" Joshamie asked the grinning kaiju.
"What, you thought I'd summon Cthulhu? If they're going to give me magic that has to be sung," Godzilla said and gestured at the sky, "You know damn well what I did. All you'd need was twins, so I used a dozen." Godzilla's laugh faded as the man became a huge creature astride the ground around them. His roar answered by a chittering above the fading clouds.
"Beautiful," Joshamie said at the sight of the colorful moth fully the size of Godzilla swooping down through the fading storm.
------------------------------
Hoppou felt The Seaport Princess' arms around her as she and her force were regarded by the moth that surveyed the island. She had seen the movies, and had always thought of Mothra as fluffy: pretty or cute. She understood now Godzilla's warning that beauty was something that touched the soul. She realized hers was tainted beyond any sensible hope of being worthy of such a creature, but the look she and the others received told her that Mothra didn't hate them for their putrescence, that earnestly trying to make it right made them worthy in her eyes. In some ways that hurt worse than open hatred would have.
Hoppou wanted to shout, to warn her of the Abyss, but she also knew that Mothra had to offer the same remission to the skyscraper of foulness as she had offered its former servants, and that Godzilla would guard her from the Abyss' inevitable treachery.
But where Hoppou felt awe and the depths of her unworthiness, and many Abyssals and even some ship-girls fell to their knees or curled into a fetal position at the revelation, the Abyss stood silent. Its rippling grew more rapid and agitated, as if something massive swam beneath the oil-stained surface of a scummy pond.
Pseudopods shot out after the giant moth. She dodged the mass and retreated as the monster sprouted dozens of gun turrets. The ship-girls and former Abyssals now had a target and a mission: dozens of them dotting the monster's surface. Precise aiming and careful gunnery rained fire on the Abyss from all directions. The volume of fire was much less that full broadsides would be, but the rounds hit much closer to their targets, and it conserved ammunition. Cheers went up when a gun turret exploded. Screams erupted as the Abyss manifested more turrets and began returning fire on the ship-girls and Abyssals.
Godzilla had been waiting for this and his fire sprayed over the much taller monster, detonating turrets and causing secondary internal explosions as gun turrets twisted sideways to fire at the high-flying Mothra had their roofs and shell-handling chambers penetrated and consumed.
Now the Abyss roared with rage, concentrating fire on Godzilla and Mothra with a few turrets behind extruded gun shields of its own mass.
Destroyers entered the lagoon to maneuver to get angles on the turrets from where the gunshields didn't protect.
Godzilla briefly vanished, then reappeared as Shin Godzilla, and began intercepting the shells of the Abyss in midflight. Even the purple beam couldn't slice deep into the Abyss' towering form. It was increasingly a stalemate as the destroyers sniped the guns, but could do little else.
With the hurricane dissipated, dozens of Mothra Smols flew to surround the Abyss, flying in a great circle with their template. Godzilla vanished, then reappeared in his default form, and charged. The gunfire now was ignored, and the titan crashed straight into the Abyss, sending the creature reeling. While tall, it was thin and it had less mass than Godzilla. Claws that had ripped through meters of concrete made deep furrows in the Abyss' mass. They closed over, but shavings that didn't remerge fell like rain into the lagoon. Cruisers and subs joined the destroyers in the lagoon to drag the shavings away to the shoreline so they couldn't coalesce back into the Abyss.
The Abyss raged at the Titan that had dared lay hands on it. But the ship-girls and Abyssals noted the MothSmols and Mothra flying in a wide circle, a faint trail of glowing lights in their wakes, growing stronger, brighter and more solid as they circled. While Godzilla tore into the Abyss and the ship-girls pulled the isolated pieces away. The pieces that had been laid out were smoldering and shriveling under that golden light.
"It's trying to trick you," Hoppou said and transmitted, hoping Godzilla and Mothra would receive and understand. What exploded from the towering column was not darkness, but a light brighter than the ring the MothSmols and Mothra wove. Hoppou replayed in her mind every slight, every frustration, every betrayal from both this life and the lives that had formed together to create her. It also showed her power to redress even the smallest grievance overwhelmingly.
Hoppou would have been swayed months ago that such a thing mattered, that for her to win, her foe must lose. But she and the other Abyssals had been drilled on the realization that what the Abyss offered was instant gratification, and a knife in the back from those you never knew you'd offended. You'd asked if anyone wanted the last slice of pizza, never realizing that someone would keep silent just to fuel their own sense of victimization and resentment. Until they murderously struck.
Some were swayed by the `argument`, then looked at those who'd fought and even bled alongside them, and the Abyss' offer was rejected.
"You just want to eat us too!" a battle-scarred carrier shouted, and others took up that cry, turning the Abyss' enticement back on it.
Now others joined the smaller ships, dragging away pieces of the Abyss to smolder away in the light on the Mothras' ring. Hoppou and the Seaport Princess joined them.
That the pieces would contaminate the people, Hoppou briefly considered, then realized, The Abyss would never give of itself that way, even for a moment.
Godzilla kept shaving off pieces and the ship-girls and Abyssals hauled them out of range, while the light of Mothras' ring burned them to nothing. The snipers among them continued to shoot out the guns that appeared to fire at the workers and at Godzilla. The minor explosions the only thing louder than the roars of Godzilla. Whether he was talking to the Mothras or just venting his own spleen at the Abyss Hoppou didn't know.
------------------------------
Gordon fired as another gun turret popped up and smirked as it exploded. Gotengo's 12-inch stinger also picked targets of opportunity. He glanced at the center of the Mothras' circle, and could swear it was getting darker. Maybe it's due to the light getting brighter, he thought as the sky around the island was still cloudy, but the storms had broken up.
"Why hasn't it retreated?" Sharlin asked. G'Quan and Omega only shrugged as they watched, taking their own shots and looking for other signs of treachery.
"It's getting shorter," Omega noted, "Massing for a new attack? Or are we having that much of an effect?"
The cloud of smoke exploded from the pillar with such force that even Godzilla was pushed away. The screech sent everyone scrambling to cover their ears. The Abyss had reshaped itself into a sea urchin looking structure and began rolling towards the edge of Mothras' ring.
"It's trying to escape," Omega shouted as more girls began raining fire down on the creature as it rebounded off a barrier that offered no resistance to the shells being fired at it. The ball of spines backed up and rolled forward again, only to rebound off the unseen barrier.
Destroyers and cruisers who'd been harvesting shards fired up into the mass, but many of the shells detonated on the spines before they reached the central mass. They dodged the descending spines as the Abyss turned its fury on them and sought to impale them as it rolled forward. Most ship-girls and Abyssals simply fled across the boundary of the barrier and relaxed outside the reach of the Abyss.
Then they began shooting at it again. Smaller caliber guns seemed to have a better chance, so the battleships and heavy cruisers abandoned their main batteries and began firing their secondaries exclusively. Cheers went up as a shell made it through the forest of spines, but the explosion was minor and seemed not to affect the Abyss at all.
"What do we do?" Gotengo asked as her crews restocked the ready use lockers.
"Keep shooting while we think of something," Gordon replied as his 5-inch sailed in to detonate among the spines, "Napalm maybe. Or holy water."
"Is it just me," Sharlin asked, "Or is the sky through Mothras' ring getting darker, but the skies are clearing up?"
"Yeah, I saw that earlier," Gordon admitted.
"That's not sky dark," Q'Guan said, "That's deep sea dark. Skies that dark have either stars or lightning. That's just no light."
Gordon remembered what Joshamie had told them in passing. "All ships! Retreat from the lagoon! Immediately! All ships! Retreat from the lagoon! Immediately!"
"Heavy bombers?" Gotengo asked as she scanned the skies.
"No," Gordon said as he led his team farther from the lagoon. He'd seen all the ship-girls and Allied Abyssals racing from the lagoon towards the outer edge of the atoll. "Godzilla said he didn't summon Cthulhu. He never said Mothra wouldn't."
Tentacles, some as thick as Godzilla's arm exploded out of the ring. They grasped the spines of the now-shrieking Abyss, breaking them off easily, then withdrawing to be replaced by more. Eyes and ears and fanged mouths dotted the myriad tentacles as they tore away the Abyss' mobility and defgense, and began wrapping around the mass. The Abyss abandoned the urchin form and became a cloud, but the tentacles held that as they drew it towards the ring.
The Smols had fled when the tentacles burst through, but Mothra flew serenely in circles while Godzilla waited for the inevitable treachery. The cloud became a mass of venus-flytrap-like mouths and bit at the tentacles. The tentacles became strings of incomprehensible mathematical equations, immune to the mouths and the lifted the mass higher. The mass became seawater, but did not pour through the gaps in the equations, but they became strings of interlocked, simple geometric shapes.
A flash of light came from the Abyss, and even Gordon could understand the plea and the offer that the light implied. Then he remembered the carrier's angry cry, and so did most of the Abyssals.
From within the ring, as the Abyss began breaking the plane of the ring, there came a deep bass note that Gordon thought was merely the calving of an iceberg. But some of the Abyssals looked towards the ring, looked at their allies, then began walking forward.
One of those was G'Quan. "Where are you going?" Gotengo asked as she tried to block the larger cruiser. The former Abyssal put her hands on Gotengo's cheeks and kissed her.
"You want to explore, to sail into new adventures," the cruiser said, "You both were eager to see what was over the next wave. I wasn't. I wanted to help protect you, but what I longed for was rest. Now I can do both," the cruiser gestured at the struggling mass of the Abyss as more and more of it transited through the ring. "I'll still be with you, in dreams. And if you really need me, I'll come back. But this is what I want. It's not your fault, it's nothing you did or failed to do. But you're safe and I just want to go back to sleep until I'm needed again."
Sharlin and Omega hugged her, tears in their eyes, and it was clear she wasn't going alone. A large number of Abyssals were walking forward. Joined by a ship-girl or two. And it was clear many others had heard the offer more clearly than he had, and were torn by the possibility.
Gordon nodded to G'Quan as she headed towards the lagoon. As the Abyss vanished through the ring, more tentacles dropped down. They didn't lasciviously wrap around nubile flesh and steel, but the tips bent at right angles and the Abyssals stepped on and rode the makeshift lifts through the ring.
With the last of them through, the ring vanished with an echoing thunderclap. Gordon and Gotengo walked over to hug Sharlin and Omega, reminding them they weren't alone.
Godzilla returned to his human form to approach Mothra, who'd landed and was surveying not only the forces arrayed, but the collection of MothSmols fluttering around them.
------------------------------
With the last of them through, the ring vanished with an echoing thunderclap. Gordon and Gotengo walked over to hug Sharlin and Omega, reminding them they weren't alone.
Godzilla looked over at Mutsu and Nagato approaching, along with a host of destroyers who looked to the pair for permission to approach. The moth was pretty and beautiful, and she also seemed displeased by the situation.
"Yes, a few can approach," Godzilla told them, "She's angry, but with me, and I'm not sure just what part of her ire she'll voice."
The angry moth noises began as Mutsu and Nagato let ten destroyers approach without their rigging. They were a mix of nations and classes, and seemed to be behaving themselves.
"What do you mean why didn't I tell you I wanted kids?" Godzilla countered the kaiju's arguments, "Even when I was a great-grandfather I was still having kids. We're different species and you claimed you were 'above such things'."
Nagato practically heard a bell ring as Mutsu's jaw dropped. Then Godzilla glanced over at the two battleships.
'Oh, that's what you're objecting to,' Nagato read from Godzilla's expression. Mutsu turned almost as red as her hair.
"Besides the mechanism was different, neither of them was the mother," Godzilla said.
Nagato felt the pressure in her own boilers rising.
Then Godzilla dropped the hammer, "I was."
Nagato swore she saw a sweat drop form on the side of Mothra's head.
"And it wasn't just you and me, there are others, although none of him, or them, but plenty of others who'd behave themselves," Godzilla said. Mothra dropped her head, if she'd had longer limbs or smaller wings she'd probably face palm. "Besides, I was thinking of you," Godzilla said and gestured to the MothSmols, "Some are boys."
You can't really have pinpoint pupils with compound eyes, but Mothra was close. Nagato had had enough, she started laughing. Godzilla's sense of humor was one of the things that made him such a good partner, and such a dangerous warrior. Now she was seeing him tease someone who'd obviously thought she'd have it her own way, and was losing badly.
The chirps and chitters seemed much more conciliatory now.
"Sorry, many of them have bonded with people here," Godzilla said, "But I'm sure I can try it again. And then we can go home. The obvious question will be if they remain Smols as they are here, or grow into full-sized versions."
The chittering was more pointed. Godzilla provided equally pointed answers. No, yes, maybe, down below, I will, you will, and so on.
The huge moth was basically ignoring the destroyers who had begun touching her, at first fearfully, ready to bolt at the first sign of displeasure, then stroking her fur gently or just sinking into its deep softness. Nagato couldn't really read the moth's expression but the tone indicated she was relaxing and far less fearful/combative than before. Nagato realized she'd missed something critical when Mutsu yelped.
"What do you mean 'take us home'?" her sister-ship asked. Suddenly Godzilla had every ship-girls' attention.
Realizing he'd attracted quite an audience, Godzilla sighed. "This place needs a few, friendly kaiju to help repair all the damage, and like the Abyssals, there are kaiju who aren't interested in the constant fighting. If you have ship-girls and Allied Abyssals who are interested in fighting, there'll be more than enough where I'm from, and frankly I'm expecting some idiot to start insisting that 'humans need to stand up to the kaiju' as if one supervolcano or gamma-ray burst wouldn't knock their whole civilization back to the stone age in an instant, and they'd need us to protect them from things that cataclysm would awaken. Someone of kaiju-level firepower who can actually talk to them and nominally be under their control would create the illusion of security they need," Godzilla said.
He glanced at Nagato and Mutsu. Both battleships blushed at that look. "Two, pretty, charming women would be ideal. When I went back, I was going to ask Admiral Goto to send them on detached diplomatic duty, when I discovered a way to let them return home safely. Now I know how," Godzilla explained.
Nagato wondered why she hadn't stripped a turbine shaft or blown her boilers' safety valves.
"But the war's not over," Mutsu pointed out, "There's still the Atlantic and Indian Oceans that need clearing."
"Yes, and we have the battle-tested fleets to do it," Godzilla replied, then gestured at Mothra, "With the Abyss itself gone, the whole dynamic changes."
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Admiral Beale was glad she was sitting down when she received the reports of the defeat of the Abyss. "Mothra and Cthulhu," she said, "And both returned home peacefully. They just took the Abyss with them when they left."
Delaware approached with a snack. "That's good news, isn't it?"
Beale glanced over to the battleship, and the apple slices and tea. "That depends on how much the other Princesses and the Abyssal-cultists freak out when they get the news. If they all eat a gun, problem solved. If they decide to take some or all of us with them when they go, that's going to be a serious problem."
The former Abyssal cruiser approached. "There are already calls that we should have captured the Abyss to put it on trial for Crimes Against Humanity. 'Denying the many victims closure.'"
Beale and Delaware rolled their eyes at that. Her partner approached. "They probably wanted an exclusive interview to boost their ratings," she said, "Maybe we should have kept it around to eat the idiots."
"Unfortunately, the oath means we have to protect idiots," Beale said, "We have to protect them from themselves and especially each other, because they're never willing to let people opt out of their utopia."
"If it was perfect, you'd think people would want in," the larger Abyssal said.
"Utopia means nowhere-vil," Delaware said.
The two Abyssals nodded.
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Gordon woke among the `battlefleet` cuddlepile. Gotengo, Sharlin and Omega atop him like a blanket, with their destroyers atop or alongside them, all intertwined like ships' lines and cables to the dock. He considered glancing at the clock, but discarded the idea. They had the week off, and one fewer battlegroup roaming Okinawa was one fewer group getting bored and looking for `fun`. He couldn't roll over, but he could settle back and return to sleep.
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The joint Allied Command were apparently playing Risk, while actually playing Diplomacy. Few were physically present, large screens showed their presence, so functionaries adjusted the maps, while their masters looked on from their screens. The politicians would have a conference full of champagne and fawning reporters, where all would make speeches and quibble over minor points, but the real work would already have been done here. A number of the Abyssal Princess had returned home to draft their territorial claims, while the humans reeled under the possibility the war was ending. There would be tensions and small clashes, but the bulk of the Abyssal Threat was subsiding.
Officially, all the Princesses in the Pacific who'd spearheaded the Blood Week campaign had been consumed by the Abyss and destroyed. While a polite fiction it had the virtue of being mostly true, and insanity and coercion remained a defense for many crimes. The Princesses in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans were sending out feelers on a diplomatic solution other than unconditional surrender, trial and execution. Or were realizing they didn't participate in the Blood Week carnage and were drawing the borders of their realms and working out payment schedules, routes and ports of call for ships traversing their territories, as well as exclusion zones within their territories.
So Godzilla's arrival and request were a welcome break as it affected all of them equally, and the scheming and politicking would come later. Likely against fellow humans.
"Why didn't you return with Mothra?" Admiral Beale asked.
"I needed to assure myself I could come back here should you need me," Godzilla said, back in his suit and cap, "You people need a lot of looking after."
The admirals fluttered indignantly or chuckled, depending on their character. The US SecNav was new, the latest battle had preceded an election and the previous President had term limited out. "What if you need help?"
Godzilla shrugged. "Getting that help would be a new experience. But more importantly, I want to see if ship-girls can transit safely and what effect it has. After all, promising help and then discovering that ship-girls are only slightly enhanced humans would be important to know."
The British First Sea Lord glanced at Godzilla. "Aren't you afraid of ending up somewhere else?"
"Wherever I am," Godzilla said, "I'm still Godzilla."
The others took that in stride. "Still, what do you need two battleships for," the Russian Naval Chief asked.
"Unlike here, there is an aspect of head in the sand, 'unless we can call him before the Commission of the Whyness of Which he's a threat', leadership. So a couple of pretty girls will ease that blow considerably, and there's the big problem that they think I can't talk, therefore I can't think," Godzilla said, "There's also the precedent."
A few snorts of amusement from the Admirals. "Careful son," the new SecNav said, "They may wind up being as tall as they are long. Knowing how ship-girls would be affected by the rules of another world will be useful, before we send a larger force over. You said there were kaiju who might want to fight the Abyssals."
"Or pirates, or something, they love combat, but if they are human-sized and surrounded by ship-girls," Godzilla said, "That's more controllable that if they are kaiju-sized and I'm the only one who can police them."
The Admirals nodded about that. Goto spoke up, "I think we can spare them for a month. The Indian Ocean Abyssals are going through massive political upheavals so that's where much of the 108 and some Japanese ship-girls are headed while the US and Commonwealth/Royal Navies are going to sweep the Atlantic. There'll be a sizable reserve retained in Japan for any spot fires that flare up in the Pacific."
Godzilla nodded and joined the ecstatic Mutsu and Nagato. "Then we'll get going."
The trio left as the admirals returned to force evaluations and other political calculations of their own and to benefit their masters.
Outside, Nagato spoke up. "There are other reasons, are there not?"
"Of course," Godzilla said, "There's a few people and things I need someone to check up on, and I'm the wrong person to do it."
"You're assuming that we will be able to assume a derigged form," Nagato said, "You aren't a shape changer in the other world."
"True enough," Godzilla said, "The other reason I want to verify I can travel back and forth is to repopulate the species."
"Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?" Mutsu said indignantly.
Godzilla glanced between Mutsu and Nagato. "She does it better than you," he said, and smirked, "Caesium, the last thing I want is to create a warring faction, but a few others able to help keeping the peace would be nice." He looked at Nagato. "Being the last of your kind is no fun. It's worse when it will stretch on for eternity."
Nagato gravely nodded. Godzilla felt Mutsu's arms twine around him and she rested her head on his shoulder.
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