Belated Battleships (KanColle) [REHOST]
- Thread starter theJMPer
- Start date
Old Iron
Admiral Unfun
- Location
- The Southwestern Deadlands of America
Richardson: ...Yes. Yes she is.
- Location
- Vancouver, Washington
Saratoga: "Oh thank you sir! That's a relief!"
"Aunti! You are NOT a dive bomber!"
Last edited:
Old Iron
Admiral Unfun
- Location
- The Southwestern Deadlands of America
I am all for this idea and the ensuing mind breakage. XD
Richardson: You're welcome.
Shimakaze takes it as a challenge.
Old Iron
Admiral Unfun
- Location
- The Southwestern Deadlands of America
Let's hope rising to the challenge doesn't involve further loss of clothing.
How else is she supposed to reduce weight and drag?
Old Iron
Admiral Unfun
- Location
- The Southwestern Deadlands of America
Maybe a bit of a haircut? I think a nice shoulder length bit would be rather fetching.
And less lewd inducing.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
She's really just a giant airhead.
Convince her of that. You may need Kongou to set up a tea party to get her to show up so you can try.
Na... There's an easier way than that.
Just say that You know how she can go faste....
Does anyone else hears a high pitch*PORTAL INTERURPTED* MOTHER OF GO...
- Location
- Vancouver, Washington
Saratoga: You battleships always think in direct terms. Just remind Shimakaze to 'use the wind' to her advantage.
Part 40b: Splash one.
- Location
- 'Murica
After much thought, I decided I didn't do a very good job of the last chapter. It was bugging me, so I gave it another go. (Several plot points have been changed, so you should read this even if you read the other one.)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Part 40
Jersey smirked as she glanced up at the sky. Miles above her, barely visible though the shattered clouds and scattered rain squalls were two Boeing Stratofortresses. Their enormous, lumbering fuselages seemed like little more than gray toothpicks hanging from their swept-back wings, their podded engines visible only as minute disturbances in their silhouette.
The Battleship was a navy girl though and through. She'd tease anyone from another service, but the Chair Force always got special treatment. Old rivalries run deep, especially when the planes they flew drove Jersey and her sisters from their oceanic throne. But as much as she'd tease them, those airmen were as much her brothers in arms as Hoel or White. And no one. But no one could beat out a Zoomie bomber when it came to sheer amounts of Freedom delivered on target.
Her guns could level a building. Their bombs could scrape whole cities from the face of the planet. It was fucking awesome.
"Brace yourselves, girls," said the Battleship, her face stuck in a wry smile as she turned her gaze back to the brawl developing on the surface. "Zoomies are gonna saddamize that bitch."
Kongou's head whipped around so fast her long brow hair nearly slapped her in the face. The spray rippling off the tips caught Akizuki in the mouth, sending the little girl sputtering even as she rippled off her long 10cm guns. "Sodomize, Dess?"
"No, Saddamize," said Jersey.
Kongou gave the American a confused look, her finger slowly creeping up to rest against her lower lip while her fourteen inch rifles swiftly silenced an abyssal cruiser attempting to interrupt her conversation with her American counterpart. "What?" she said at last.
"Yeah," Jersey pointed to the string of signal flags her faeries had helpfully run up on her mast. Sierra, Alpha, Delta, Third Substitute, Second Substitute, Mike. "Evil son of a bitch who ruled one of those bum-fuck shitholes in the Middle East."
"Is he dead?" asked Akizuki between the sharp Crack of her hyper velocity hundred millimeter guns.
"Does he need to be?" added her sister.
Jersey shook her head, mentally ticking off the seconds before her main batteries finished reloading. "Hell fucking yeah he's dead. He pissed of America. You girls know how well that goes."
"But this time, they're on our side, Dess!" said Kongou. The battleship threw her fist in the air and pumped it down with a dramatic flourish, the airy fabric of her less-than-perfectly wholesome miko outfit fluttering in the concussion of a perfectly-timed fourteen inch broadside.
"And we're never gonna let you down," said Jersey, a smile growing on her face as she brought her guns to bear on one of the two remaining Abyssal battlewagons. Her gaze narrowed to a squint as she let her fire control computer guide her shots. She was killing them with math how fucking awesome was that? Her finger was already smashing the firing trigger down when something occurred to her. Something horrible "Oh fuck."
Her words were all but lost in the boom of her Mark 7 rifles. Her shells were barely out of their barrels when her target sailed into a bank of fog so thick you could almost swim through it. But her radar kept a solid track on the target.
The abyssal was slamming on the brakes with all the power its badly broken hull could manage. But it wasn't enough, its efforts caused Jersey's shells to slam into its bridge and forward batteries rather than its center hull.
"What?" asked Kirishima, her rain-spattered glasses glinting like diamonds as she swung out to add her forward rifles to the American's salvo.
"I'm going to fucking kill Naka," grumbled Jersey, her sides blazing with five inch and forty millimeter fire as she steered into an oncoming bomber formation. FuckingRickRolling bitch of a traffic cone…. "Yo, Bonecrusher flight."
"Copy, Jersey, what's up?" came the calm response.
"Two questions. You drop that ordy yet?"
"Negative. The Princess sailed into a fog bank. We need a clean visual for weapons release."
"Damnit," scowled Jersey. The battleship barely had to shift her rudder as Akagi's reppus tore into the oncoming pack of pack of torpedo bombers. Only one managed to get its fish off before it broke formation or broke… apart. And that fish was so far off-track it'd make a Mark Fourteen hang its head in shame. "Okay, second question."
"Shoot, miss."
"Please tell me you've got some music there?" pleaded the battleship, "I got that stupid Astley song stuck in my head."
A rumbling laugh crackled though the battleship's radio room, "Sorry, Jersey, but-" In an instant, the pilot's voice shifted from charmingly relaxed to deathly serious, "Princess just came out of the fog. Starting our run."
"Razgriz!" cheered Akagi.
"Copy that," rumbled the pilot's reply.
"The fuck?" grunted Jersey.
"Don't ask," said Kirishima with a shudder.
"Bombs away, breaking off."
Jersey glanced over at the carrier, letting her eyes relax as she searched with her radar. "Bonecrusher, be advised, hostile CAP is climbing to meet you."
"Copy. They closing at all?"
"Not really, no," said Jersey, rolling her eyes as she swung her main battery around to focus on the burning abyssal battleship as it sulked in the fogbank. Like that'd save her. Radar master race, bitch! "What about that ordy?" she asked, rippling off her broadside almost as an afterthought.
"Wait one- shit." the pilot stated the most level-voiced profanity Jersey'd ever seen. Or heard, actually. Heard is more appropriate here. "Eleven splashes, only one hit."
"Damnit!" cursed Jersey, her voice echoing over the sound of an abyssal battleship blowing its magazine. Modern GPS-tech-that-was-basically-magic should've earned more than one fucking hit!
"Jersey, be advised, we've still got six weapons apiece. If we come in low and slow-"
"Negative, Bonecrusher flight," snapped the battleship. "It'll put you at too great a risk."
"That may be, ma'am, but we're willing to risk it."
"Yeah, well I'm not," said Jersey. There was only one abyssal battleship left, and it was doing an admirable job at keeping itself angled and at arms length. Little fucker… "You guys can't take hits, we can."
A very long pause.
"I can make it an order, you know."
"I just hate to leave all this ordy laying around.
"And I'd hate to write a letter back to your families," said Jersey. "Seriously, I fucking hate paperwork. Ditch the rest of your shit from high alt, go home, hug your kids, put on some fucking… rock or some shit for me and the girls."
Another long pause. "Copy," came the reluctant reply. "Forming up for another run."
"Razgriiiiiz!" said Akagi.
"Akagi, stopit!" hissed a noticbly less-bubbly than usual Naka.
"Razgriz," whispered the carrier.
"I work with fucking children," scowled Jersey, bringing her guns to bear on the last Abyssal battleship. "Yo, Tenryuu."
"Yo."
"Your kiddos in position?"
"Hai," said the cruiser with a barely noticeable growl in her voice. "We're lurking in the fog, keeping eyes on as best we can. Want us to go loud?"
"Not yet, the battleship still there?" asked Jersey, her batteries bellowing out a ranging salvo. The abyssal battleship she was chancing was proving a clever little bastard. Always flicking its stern this way and that to put that stupidly-thick belt to good use while it danced around her firing solution.
"Hai."
"Stay dark for now," said Jersey. The battleship scowled as her shells landed in a perfect bracket around her target without scoring a single hit. Not even splinter damage! "I want you doing BDA when-"
"Bonecrusher flight beginning our run."
"Razgriz."
"-When that happens," said Jersey, a smile crossing her face as she brought her guns to bear on the fleeing abyssal battleship. "c'mere you little shit," she said, mentally counting off the agonizing seconds while her main battery reloaded. As much as she enjoyed the feeling of hundreds of faeries scrambling around inside her running her shell hoists, she'd really rather be fucking shooting. "Yo, Kongous!"
"Dess?" "Hai?" came the near-simultaneous responses of the two sisters.
"Push up," said the American, "Zommies aren't gonna be able to finish this."
"No problem, Dess!" bellowed Kongou, her voice somehow carrying over the thunder of her fourteen inch rifles and stupid number of chattering twenty-five millimeter AA guns. Kirishima just offered a polite nod before turning back to her terrifyingly calm deconstruction of the remaining gaggle of battle-weary abyssal cruisers.
"Bonecrusher flight… bombs away."
Jersey smiled. "C'mon you big ugly fat fucks… land this one."
"That's a hit!" the pilot's silk-calm voice cracked into a triumphant yelp, only to be quashed an instant later by Tenryuu.
"Nope. Hit the water."
"Shit!" Jersey scowled, her brows knitting together as she stared down a random patch of ocean in fury. "Fuck! Bonecrusher, RTB. We'll finish this the old fashioned way."
—|—|—
Crowning blinked, his mouth hanging half open as he held his cup close-but not quite atdrinking height. The professor blinked again, slowly lowering his beverage back to the table. "Gale?"
"Yeah?" said the sailor, her hands burrowing deep into the pockets of her fatigue pants.
"I distinctly remember the Air Force dropping bombs into individual rooms during the Gulf war."
"Yeah, that happened," said Gale. The yeoman scuffed one boot against the other, her loose bun glimmering in the bunker spotlighting.
"That…" Crowning raised a finger, pointing in the general direction of the massive abyssal. "That thing's bigger than a room. It's… it's bigger than a block." He stopped, his lips pursing as he was reduced to gesturing emphatically at the notably undamaged iceberg, "How did we miss?"
Gale shrugged, "You tell me, doc."
"I don't…" Crowning stopped, his gaze going glassy as he slowly stroked at his closely shaven beard. "Um…"
"That…" Gale shook her head, "that's not any of that Socratic method shit. I honestly don't know. Those things are laser-guided with GPS as back up. They should have hit. The only reason they'd miss-"
"Is because of abyssal spookiness," said Crowning.
"Yeah," said the Yeoman. "And you're the closest thing we've got to an expert on that."
"I… hmm…" Crowning reached for his chin again, his gaze going unfocused as he thought. "I'll get back to you on that."
—|—|—
The Northern Princess stalked along her deck with her face buried in the machined steel of her choker. Her imps scrambled over her deck like so many miniature ants, fire hoses and shovels trailing in their wake as they frantically repaired what little damage she'd taken.
The seething sea of imps split into two scrambling tentacles, one shoveling all the kicked-up ice off the side while the other filled up the ragged crater with freezing arctic seawater. This far north, especially in the dead of winter, it would freeze solid within a few days, giving her a fresh new deck to launch her planes from.
If she had any planes left. The princess balled her tiny hands into fists, the padding of her thick mittens scrunching up as she shook with unrestrained rage. Her planes, her beautiful precious planes lay shattered on the ocean.
The princess felt her teeth grind against one another. Her eyes were bloodshot as she stared off at the battle. What aircraft she had left were fighting their little hearts out over the brawling mess of battleships and cruisers, but that wasn't where her eyes were focused.
She stared across the ocean at the super battleship and two dreadnoughts tearing into her horribly out-of-position escort battleships. Them, and those hateful little destroyers escorting them.
She hated them. Hated them with every fiber of her being. All she knew was hate for them. Her planes, her toys were broken and it was all their fault. They broke her beautiful planes without even giving them the honor of dying in a dogfight! They broke them with flak! Those destroyers took her precious toys and stomped them into dust! They were mean and evil, and the princess felt enraged tears flow down her bone-white face. Her precious planes!
She raised one shaking mitten, her bloody eyes locked on the hateful destroyers. "Kill them!" she shrieked. "KILL THEM!"
—|—|—
"Oh shit." Naka was suddenly bolt upright, her phone clamped to her ear as… what one might describe as 'sounds' if one was in a generous mood. The noise sent shivers down the cruiser's keel. Her ears rang with what felt like the unholy child of nails on a chalkboard and small animals being crushed to death in excruciatingly slow ways. And behind it all, the furious hammerblow of a war drum. Abyssal comms chatter, or at least their twisted mockery of it.
"Waddup?" asked Ryuujou. The light carrier offered Naka the barest of glances before returning to her summoning ritual, her deck crawling with faeries frantically manhandling Zeros into position.
"I don't know," said Naka, forcing herself to listen to the horrific abyssal war drums. The tempo was picking up now. Fast, almost frantic. "Something big."
An instant later, the lone beat was joined by another ragged beat. This one far more disorganized than the first, but no less steeped in seething hate. The drums beat with furious energy, without a care in the world for harmony or grace.
The cruiser checked her phone. She might not be able to understand the abyssal chatter, but she could trace its location. Combine that with the amount and intensity of the chatter, and it gave her a certain amount of insight into-
"Oh SHIT!" Naka gulped as the direction-finding gear on her phone came happily flashed its result. "Nagato, the Princess just sent an order to the abyssal fleet you're engaging."
"Copy," came the terrifyingly calm response, "what's the message?"
"She's mad," said Naka, "I think it was a designated kill order. She wants one of you dead."
"HA!" boomed Musashi, her voice thundering so loud Naka didn't even have to use her radio, "THEY CANNOT KILL MUSASHI!"
"I… don't think that's her target."
—|—|—
Fletcher-Class destroyer Heermann heard Nagato's warning that the Abyssal battleships were turning to target their task force, at least in the sense that the Japanese battleship's words entered her bridge. But the words themselves might as well have not existed for the little destroyer. They changed absolutely nothing about the situation.
Heermann was never a surface combatant. Try as she might, she just didn't have the guts of her sisters. She'd strike from the smoke when she had to, but she much preferred escorting. It was so much simpler, instead of keeping a laundry list of tactics in mind, Heermann only had to remember one thing: Who she was escorting.
Right now, that was Nagato. No one would touch Nagato. Even the air needed her express permission, complete with forms signed in triplicate to rustle her flowing hair. So what if the abyssals were massing against miss Nagato's division? They wouldn't be allowed to touch her charge. Not now, not ever.
"Turning to port," signaled Nagato, her hull slicing though the water as she threw herself into a lazy turn, her batteries slewing around to focus on the least-badly damaged of the abyssal NelRods.
"Copy that," said Heermann, turning her own rudder over to keep herself perfectly glued to the bigger battleship's hip. The water churned with freezing arctic waves, burning oil slicks and floating debris. But, Heermann noted with pride, the skies were clear. She'd done her duty protecting her charge, hopefully she'd made Jersey proud!
"What are they doing?" boomed Musashi, her head thrown back in laughter. Heermann glanced from the sky to the abyssal surface force. The cruisers had formed into a tightly focused wedge, while the battleships were turning over.
The destroyer scrunched up her nose. The cruisers she could understand, but the battleships were turning far more than they had to to just unshadow their third turret. They were showing their broadsides to…
Heermann gulped. To bring their secondaries to bear. On her. The little destroyer felt her skin go white as snow as she noticed the black maw of cannons pointed squarely at her. "Miss Nagato, help," she muttered, slewing her own guns to reply.
There wasn't enough time to get out of position, and Heermann refused to even try. That'd mean leaving her charge undefended. What kind of destroyer would she be if she did that?
"Heermann, what-" realization dawned on the Japanese battleship's serene face a split second before the abyssal force—battleship and cruiser alight—erupted in billowing cordite blooms.
Heermann felt the water around her churn to a boil as shells splashed all around her. Splashes nearly overshadowed her masts, and the little destroyer danced around them with all she could, trying desperately to maneuver out of their firing solution without leaving Nagato undefended.
It wasn't enough. A High-explosive shell from one of the battleships caught her in the stern. Heermann let out a yelp that died in her mouth as her stern was torn from her hull. Everything from her stern-most gun mount aft was mortally wrenched from her.
Heermann screamed. Tears streamed down her face as bloody oil poured from her mutilated calves. Her skin was torn apart, her shafts spun fruitlessly against raw nerves, struggling to turn screws that had simply vanished. The destroyer clutched at her stomach, dropping to her shattered kneecaps against the roaring Alaskan ocean.
"Heermann's been hit," she heard… heard her sister say. Johnston, it was Johnston. But there wasn't any of the boasting Heermann normally heard in her beloved sister's voice. It was… cold. Empty and emotionless.
"I'm…" Heermann tottered on her bloody knees. She hated hearing Johnston so scared. She wanted to hear her sister be her sister. She wanted to hear Johnston before… Before whatever happened. "I'mokay," she mumbled, keeling over into the water with a pathetic splash.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Part 40
Jersey smirked as she glanced up at the sky. Miles above her, barely visible though the shattered clouds and scattered rain squalls were two Boeing Stratofortresses. Their enormous, lumbering fuselages seemed like little more than gray toothpicks hanging from their swept-back wings, their podded engines visible only as minute disturbances in their silhouette.
The Battleship was a navy girl though and through. She'd tease anyone from another service, but the Chair Force always got special treatment. Old rivalries run deep, especially when the planes they flew drove Jersey and her sisters from their oceanic throne. But as much as she'd tease them, those airmen were as much her brothers in arms as Hoel or White. And no one. But no one could beat out a Zoomie bomber when it came to sheer amounts of Freedom delivered on target.
Her guns could level a building. Their bombs could scrape whole cities from the face of the planet. It was fucking awesome.
"Brace yourselves, girls," said the Battleship, her face stuck in a wry smile as she turned her gaze back to the brawl developing on the surface. "Zoomies are gonna saddamize that bitch."
Kongou's head whipped around so fast her long brow hair nearly slapped her in the face. The spray rippling off the tips caught Akizuki in the mouth, sending the little girl sputtering even as she rippled off her long 10cm guns. "Sodomize, Dess?"
"No, Saddamize," said Jersey.
Kongou gave the American a confused look, her finger slowly creeping up to rest against her lower lip while her fourteen inch rifles swiftly silenced an abyssal cruiser attempting to interrupt her conversation with her American counterpart. "What?" she said at last.
"Yeah," Jersey pointed to the string of signal flags her faeries had helpfully run up on her mast. Sierra, Alpha, Delta, Third Substitute, Second Substitute, Mike. "Evil son of a bitch who ruled one of those bum-fuck shitholes in the Middle East."
"Is he dead?" asked Akizuki between the sharp Crack of her hyper velocity hundred millimeter guns.
"Does he need to be?" added her sister.
Jersey shook her head, mentally ticking off the seconds before her main batteries finished reloading. "Hell fucking yeah he's dead. He pissed of America. You girls know how well that goes."
"But this time, they're on our side, Dess!" said Kongou. The battleship threw her fist in the air and pumped it down with a dramatic flourish, the airy fabric of her less-than-perfectly wholesome miko outfit fluttering in the concussion of a perfectly-timed fourteen inch broadside.
"And we're never gonna let you down," said Jersey, a smile growing on her face as she brought her guns to bear on one of the two remaining Abyssal battlewagons. Her gaze narrowed to a squint as she let her fire control computer guide her shots. She was killing them with math how fucking awesome was that? Her finger was already smashing the firing trigger down when something occurred to her. Something horrible "Oh fuck."
Her words were all but lost in the boom of her Mark 7 rifles. Her shells were barely out of their barrels when her target sailed into a bank of fog so thick you could almost swim through it. But her radar kept a solid track on the target.
The abyssal was slamming on the brakes with all the power its badly broken hull could manage. But it wasn't enough, its efforts caused Jersey's shells to slam into its bridge and forward batteries rather than its center hull.
"What?" asked Kirishima, her rain-spattered glasses glinting like diamonds as she swung out to add her forward rifles to the American's salvo.
"I'm going to fucking kill Naka," grumbled Jersey, her sides blazing with five inch and forty millimeter fire as she steered into an oncoming bomber formation. FuckingRickRolling bitch of a traffic cone…. "Yo, Bonecrusher flight."
"Copy, Jersey, what's up?" came the calm response.
"Two questions. You drop that ordy yet?"
"Negative. The Princess sailed into a fog bank. We need a clean visual for weapons release."
"Damnit," scowled Jersey. The battleship barely had to shift her rudder as Akagi's reppus tore into the oncoming pack of pack of torpedo bombers. Only one managed to get its fish off before it broke formation or broke… apart. And that fish was so far off-track it'd make a Mark Fourteen hang its head in shame. "Okay, second question."
"Shoot, miss."
"Please tell me you've got some music there?" pleaded the battleship, "I got that stupid Astley song stuck in my head."
A rumbling laugh crackled though the battleship's radio room, "Sorry, Jersey, but-" In an instant, the pilot's voice shifted from charmingly relaxed to deathly serious, "Princess just came out of the fog. Starting our run."
"Razgriz!" cheered Akagi.
"Copy that," rumbled the pilot's reply.
"The fuck?" grunted Jersey.
"Don't ask," said Kirishima with a shudder.
"Bombs away, breaking off."
Jersey glanced over at the carrier, letting her eyes relax as she searched with her radar. "Bonecrusher, be advised, hostile CAP is climbing to meet you."
"Copy. They closing at all?"
"Not really, no," said Jersey, rolling her eyes as she swung her main battery around to focus on the burning abyssal battleship as it sulked in the fogbank. Like that'd save her. Radar master race, bitch! "What about that ordy?" she asked, rippling off her broadside almost as an afterthought.
"Wait one- shit." the pilot stated the most level-voiced profanity Jersey'd ever seen. Or heard, actually. Heard is more appropriate here. "Eleven splashes, only one hit."
"Damnit!" cursed Jersey, her voice echoing over the sound of an abyssal battleship blowing its magazine. Modern GPS-tech-that-was-basically-magic should've earned more than one fucking hit!
"Jersey, be advised, we've still got six weapons apiece. If we come in low and slow-"
"Negative, Bonecrusher flight," snapped the battleship. "It'll put you at too great a risk."
"That may be, ma'am, but we're willing to risk it."
"Yeah, well I'm not," said Jersey. There was only one abyssal battleship left, and it was doing an admirable job at keeping itself angled and at arms length. Little fucker… "You guys can't take hits, we can."
A very long pause.
"I can make it an order, you know."
"I just hate to leave all this ordy laying around.
"And I'd hate to write a letter back to your families," said Jersey. "Seriously, I fucking hate paperwork. Ditch the rest of your shit from high alt, go home, hug your kids, put on some fucking… rock or some shit for me and the girls."
Another long pause. "Copy," came the reluctant reply. "Forming up for another run."
"Razgriiiiiz!" said Akagi.
"Akagi, stopit!" hissed a noticbly less-bubbly than usual Naka.
"Razgriz," whispered the carrier.
"I work with fucking children," scowled Jersey, bringing her guns to bear on the last Abyssal battleship. "Yo, Tenryuu."
"Yo."
"Your kiddos in position?"
"Hai," said the cruiser with a barely noticeable growl in her voice. "We're lurking in the fog, keeping eyes on as best we can. Want us to go loud?"
"Not yet, the battleship still there?" asked Jersey, her batteries bellowing out a ranging salvo. The abyssal battleship she was chancing was proving a clever little bastard. Always flicking its stern this way and that to put that stupidly-thick belt to good use while it danced around her firing solution.
"Hai."
"Stay dark for now," said Jersey. The battleship scowled as her shells landed in a perfect bracket around her target without scoring a single hit. Not even splinter damage! "I want you doing BDA when-"
"Bonecrusher flight beginning our run."
"Razgriz."
"-When that happens," said Jersey, a smile crossing her face as she brought her guns to bear on the fleeing abyssal battleship. "c'mere you little shit," she said, mentally counting off the agonizing seconds while her main battery reloaded. As much as she enjoyed the feeling of hundreds of faeries scrambling around inside her running her shell hoists, she'd really rather be fucking shooting. "Yo, Kongous!"
"Dess?" "Hai?" came the near-simultaneous responses of the two sisters.
"Push up," said the American, "Zommies aren't gonna be able to finish this."
"No problem, Dess!" bellowed Kongou, her voice somehow carrying over the thunder of her fourteen inch rifles and stupid number of chattering twenty-five millimeter AA guns. Kirishima just offered a polite nod before turning back to her terrifyingly calm deconstruction of the remaining gaggle of battle-weary abyssal cruisers.
"Bonecrusher flight… bombs away."
Jersey smiled. "C'mon you big ugly fat fucks… land this one."
"That's a hit!" the pilot's silk-calm voice cracked into a triumphant yelp, only to be quashed an instant later by Tenryuu.
"Nope. Hit the water."
"Shit!" Jersey scowled, her brows knitting together as she stared down a random patch of ocean in fury. "Fuck! Bonecrusher, RTB. We'll finish this the old fashioned way."
—|—|—
Crowning blinked, his mouth hanging half open as he held his cup close-but not quite atdrinking height. The professor blinked again, slowly lowering his beverage back to the table. "Gale?"
"Yeah?" said the sailor, her hands burrowing deep into the pockets of her fatigue pants.
"I distinctly remember the Air Force dropping bombs into individual rooms during the Gulf war."
"Yeah, that happened," said Gale. The yeoman scuffed one boot against the other, her loose bun glimmering in the bunker spotlighting.
"That…" Crowning raised a finger, pointing in the general direction of the massive abyssal. "That thing's bigger than a room. It's… it's bigger than a block." He stopped, his lips pursing as he was reduced to gesturing emphatically at the notably undamaged iceberg, "How did we miss?"
Gale shrugged, "You tell me, doc."
"I don't…" Crowning stopped, his gaze going glassy as he slowly stroked at his closely shaven beard. "Um…"
"That…" Gale shook her head, "that's not any of that Socratic method shit. I honestly don't know. Those things are laser-guided with GPS as back up. They should have hit. The only reason they'd miss-"
"Is because of abyssal spookiness," said Crowning.
"Yeah," said the Yeoman. "And you're the closest thing we've got to an expert on that."
"I… hmm…" Crowning reached for his chin again, his gaze going unfocused as he thought. "I'll get back to you on that."
—|—|—
The Northern Princess stalked along her deck with her face buried in the machined steel of her choker. Her imps scrambled over her deck like so many miniature ants, fire hoses and shovels trailing in their wake as they frantically repaired what little damage she'd taken.
The seething sea of imps split into two scrambling tentacles, one shoveling all the kicked-up ice off the side while the other filled up the ragged crater with freezing arctic seawater. This far north, especially in the dead of winter, it would freeze solid within a few days, giving her a fresh new deck to launch her planes from.
If she had any planes left. The princess balled her tiny hands into fists, the padding of her thick mittens scrunching up as she shook with unrestrained rage. Her planes, her beautiful precious planes lay shattered on the ocean.
The princess felt her teeth grind against one another. Her eyes were bloodshot as she stared off at the battle. What aircraft she had left were fighting their little hearts out over the brawling mess of battleships and cruisers, but that wasn't where her eyes were focused.
She stared across the ocean at the super battleship and two dreadnoughts tearing into her horribly out-of-position escort battleships. Them, and those hateful little destroyers escorting them.
She hated them. Hated them with every fiber of her being. All she knew was hate for them. Her planes, her toys were broken and it was all their fault. They broke her beautiful planes without even giving them the honor of dying in a dogfight! They broke them with flak! Those destroyers took her precious toys and stomped them into dust! They were mean and evil, and the princess felt enraged tears flow down her bone-white face. Her precious planes!
She raised one shaking mitten, her bloody eyes locked on the hateful destroyers. "Kill them!" she shrieked. "KILL THEM!"
—|—|—
"Oh shit." Naka was suddenly bolt upright, her phone clamped to her ear as… what one might describe as 'sounds' if one was in a generous mood. The noise sent shivers down the cruiser's keel. Her ears rang with what felt like the unholy child of nails on a chalkboard and small animals being crushed to death in excruciatingly slow ways. And behind it all, the furious hammerblow of a war drum. Abyssal comms chatter, or at least their twisted mockery of it.
"Waddup?" asked Ryuujou. The light carrier offered Naka the barest of glances before returning to her summoning ritual, her deck crawling with faeries frantically manhandling Zeros into position.
"I don't know," said Naka, forcing herself to listen to the horrific abyssal war drums. The tempo was picking up now. Fast, almost frantic. "Something big."
An instant later, the lone beat was joined by another ragged beat. This one far more disorganized than the first, but no less steeped in seething hate. The drums beat with furious energy, without a care in the world for harmony or grace.
The cruiser checked her phone. She might not be able to understand the abyssal chatter, but she could trace its location. Combine that with the amount and intensity of the chatter, and it gave her a certain amount of insight into-
"Oh SHIT!" Naka gulped as the direction-finding gear on her phone came happily flashed its result. "Nagato, the Princess just sent an order to the abyssal fleet you're engaging."
"Copy," came the terrifyingly calm response, "what's the message?"
"She's mad," said Naka, "I think it was a designated kill order. She wants one of you dead."
"HA!" boomed Musashi, her voice thundering so loud Naka didn't even have to use her radio, "THEY CANNOT KILL MUSASHI!"
"I… don't think that's her target."
—|—|—
Fletcher-Class destroyer Heermann heard Nagato's warning that the Abyssal battleships were turning to target their task force, at least in the sense that the Japanese battleship's words entered her bridge. But the words themselves might as well have not existed for the little destroyer. They changed absolutely nothing about the situation.
Heermann was never a surface combatant. Try as she might, she just didn't have the guts of her sisters. She'd strike from the smoke when she had to, but she much preferred escorting. It was so much simpler, instead of keeping a laundry list of tactics in mind, Heermann only had to remember one thing: Who she was escorting.
Right now, that was Nagato. No one would touch Nagato. Even the air needed her express permission, complete with forms signed in triplicate to rustle her flowing hair. So what if the abyssals were massing against miss Nagato's division? They wouldn't be allowed to touch her charge. Not now, not ever.
"Turning to port," signaled Nagato, her hull slicing though the water as she threw herself into a lazy turn, her batteries slewing around to focus on the least-badly damaged of the abyssal NelRods.
"Copy that," said Heermann, turning her own rudder over to keep herself perfectly glued to the bigger battleship's hip. The water churned with freezing arctic waves, burning oil slicks and floating debris. But, Heermann noted with pride, the skies were clear. She'd done her duty protecting her charge, hopefully she'd made Jersey proud!
"What are they doing?" boomed Musashi, her head thrown back in laughter. Heermann glanced from the sky to the abyssal surface force. The cruisers had formed into a tightly focused wedge, while the battleships were turning over.
The destroyer scrunched up her nose. The cruisers she could understand, but the battleships were turning far more than they had to to just unshadow their third turret. They were showing their broadsides to…
Heermann gulped. To bring their secondaries to bear. On her. The little destroyer felt her skin go white as snow as she noticed the black maw of cannons pointed squarely at her. "Miss Nagato, help," she muttered, slewing her own guns to reply.
There wasn't enough time to get out of position, and Heermann refused to even try. That'd mean leaving her charge undefended. What kind of destroyer would she be if she did that?
"Heermann, what-" realization dawned on the Japanese battleship's serene face a split second before the abyssal force—battleship and cruiser alight—erupted in billowing cordite blooms.
Heermann felt the water around her churn to a boil as shells splashed all around her. Splashes nearly overshadowed her masts, and the little destroyer danced around them with all she could, trying desperately to maneuver out of their firing solution without leaving Nagato undefended.
It wasn't enough. A High-explosive shell from one of the battleships caught her in the stern. Heermann let out a yelp that died in her mouth as her stern was torn from her hull. Everything from her stern-most gun mount aft was mortally wrenched from her.
Heermann screamed. Tears streamed down her face as bloody oil poured from her mutilated calves. Her skin was torn apart, her shafts spun fruitlessly against raw nerves, struggling to turn screws that had simply vanished. The destroyer clutched at her stomach, dropping to her shattered kneecaps against the roaring Alaskan ocean.
"Heermann's been hit," she heard… heard her sister say. Johnston, it was Johnston. But there wasn't any of the boasting Heermann normally heard in her beloved sister's voice. It was… cold. Empty and emotionless.
"I'm…" Heermann tottered on her bloody knees. She hated hearing Johnston so scared. She wanted to hear her sister be her sister. She wanted to hear Johnston before… Before whatever happened. "I'mokay," she mumbled, keeling over into the water with a pathetic splash.
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GhostStalker
Jeopardy! contestant
- Location
- NYC
Yup, we definitely Ace Combat now.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Uh... so should I post this as a separate chapter or replace the old one?
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Gotcha. I'll do it when you upload the next chapter so I can note it to the readers on FFN.
In other news:
*laughs nervously*
Yeah, we got him good.
*to himself*
Just hope they don't ask how things went after we deposed him.
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- Location
- 'Murica
Jersey: You know it's bad when you have to ask the fucking Russians to help.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
We technically didn't ask actually. They inserted themselves into the situation. Probably just as well though, now if we could only figure out how to actually cooperate somehow...
Actually, you do have to wonder how the Middle East would implode in the typical Kancolle (or AoBS) scenario of "mysterious anti-human force takes over the oceans". ISIS spreading like wild fire again? Everyone ganging up on Israel even as their economies rupture from the collapse of global maritime oil trade? Iran and Saudi Arabia duking it out in Iraq? Some combination there of?
- Location
- 'Murica
Jersey: No, we fucking did. We were too busy with abyssal things. So we asked the Ruskies, who don't really need the sea, and don't have any allies who do, to step in.
(The above is semi-canon depending on how I want to deal with this. I hadn't put a huge amount of thought into the mid-east worldbuilding.)
(The above is semi-canon depending on how I want to deal with this. I hadn't put a huge amount of thought into the mid-east worldbuilding.)
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obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Ah... I see. That's going to have... consequences after the Abyssals are defeated, you know?
It is a rather secondary subject compared to the Abyssals running amok.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
Eh, your prerogative.
'You gotta be tough to fly heavies'.
And there's those Gulf War memories.
Until you ask us to stabilize a region and built a functional government.
'apart', not 'part'.
Figures the carrier plays Ace Combat.
Except, you know, WWII horizontal bombing did jack-all.
Guess they're not set up for Dive Bombing, or anything other than horizontal bombing.
Dang it Akagi.
And you wouldn't have it any other way, because cuddles.
Not even below-the-waterline damage? Shiiiiiiiit.
Ouch.
Need a space between 'you' and 'dead'.
Oh now that, went right through my heart.
I like this one.
obssesednuker
Commander of 10 Million Men
- Location
- In the Kremlin, activating Perimtr.
Depends on how their on-land capabilities are, given Russia's land power focus.