"Hey, Doc. You got a minute?"
Professor Crowning glanced up from his dinner—a delicious seafood stew courtesy of Lou's time in Brazil—and found himself looking into the prettiest face on the base.
New Jersey loomed over the mess hall table. Her hands rested on her hips as she somehow managed to sashay in place, but there was something just a little…
off about her. Something he hadn't seen in her before that he couldn't quite place.
The way she stuck a tiny bit of her tongue out the corner of her mouth and chewed on her lip… the way the muscles in those massive legs twitched under her sunkissed skin… the big battlewagon almost looked
timid.
"Of course," Crowning leaned back in his chair to save his neck the trouble of staring up at her. "What's up?"
Jersey blinked, those stunningly cold ice-blue eyes momentarily loosing focus while her mouth made a tiny 'o' shape. "Um…"
Crowning couldn't help but wear a tiny half-smile. After what'd happened just a few hours before, he was worried the battleship was teetering on the edge of a full-on nervous breakdown. It would've broken his heart to see her like that.
But seeing her confused was just hilarious.
Finally, the battleship spoke again. "Sorry," She blushed and stuffed herself into a chair with all the grace a flustered woman of her size could muster. "I didn't think I'd get this far?"
"Jersey," Crowning's grin graduated to a full-out smile. "You said one sentence."
"Fuck you," snapped the battleship, apparently more by reflex than conscious thought. Her next action was to blush a brilliant red and shove a handful of dinner rolls into her mouth with a mumbled apology.
Crowning didn't care. He'd much rather have the hard-talking, headstrong Iowa he'd grown to love than the quivering wreck he'd met just a few hours ago. "Very eloquent."
Jersey scowled and swallowed. How she managed to get her latest mouthful down her throat was beyond the professor's limited grasp of physics, but he'd never been that interested in the impossibilities of battleship feeding.
"So," she coughed, and drummed her fingers against the table. "About uh…"
"Don't worry about it," Crowning smiled at the giant battleship.
"Fuck." Jersey scowled. "Um… fucking… lemme think…"
Crowning silently nodded for her to take her time. For a few minutes, Jersey just stared into the middle distance. Every so often, her face would contort ever so slightly, then fall back into her usual neutral scowl. It was one of the weirdest things about Kanmusu, one that wasn't well-known among those who don't deal directly with them, and hadn't yet been fully explained.
"Okay." Jersey slapped her palms on the table with decisive finality. "So, about what happened earlier… I was in a bad place."
Crowning nodded solemnly.
"'an now I'm better," said Jersey. "And… fuck." She screwed up her face and dug her fingers into the table. "You're good people, doc. A good friend. But this whole…" she waved her hands in the air with a huff. "It's all uncharted waters, okay?"
"Mmhm," Crowning didn't try to interrupt her. One thing he'd learned, was never to try and stop a battleship when she's got a good head of steam behind her.
"Look," Jersey bit her lip, "Moving too fast in unfamiliar waters… it's not good. Just ask Mo. Could run aground or worse, tear your whole bottom open." She sighed, "That's not good."
"You want to take things slow?" asked Crowning. If this was any other girl, he might be a little upset at being so metaphorically placed in the friend zone. But this was Jersey. For her, even this was a massive improvement, and it made his heart glow to see her heal.
"Please?" Jersey shot him the most pathetic half-smile a giant amazon who's also the world's most powerful battleship could manage.
"Of course," Crowning offered a gentle pat on her shoulder. "I can cancel the-"
"No," Jersey grabbed his hand in her iron-hard grip. "Um… I mean…" she glanced at her belly. "I promised my crew pie."
"Pie then," said Crowning, "As friends."
Jersey nodded happily. "Yeah."
"I'll make the reservations."
Jersey's face paled. "Res-reservations?" she stammered. "We're not going someplace
thatfancy, right? I… I'm fucking not wearing a dress!"
Crowning sighed, "for a truck, Jersey."
The battleship blinked.
"You're fat."
"Fuck you!" Jersey flipped her shades down with a curt nod of her head and presented both middle fingers as she lounged back in her chair. "I do what I want!"
"And there's the battleship we all know and love."
Before things could get any saner, a frilly orange traffic cone of a girl bounced up to the table. "Hi~ Hi~," Naka set her hips at a slant, one hand throwing up a peace sign to complete the impossibly cute appearance. "Naka-chan, Idol of the fleet, Desu~"
Jersey didn't miss a beat. The battleship grabbed Crowning's half-full water glass and smashed it into Naka's face with all her might. As one would expect when crashing a glass against steel, the implement shattered with a loud crash and splashed water everywhere. "Goddammit, Naka!" Jersey barked with half-hearted fury, "I told you never to say that!"
"I remember no such thing!" Naka pursed her lips and put a finger to her mouth in an adorable 'silly me' pose.
Jersey narrowed her eyes, her icy stare noticeably chilling the air around her. "Fuck," her voice was even colder than her stare. A low rumble that resembled an earthquake more than human speech. "you."
Naka giggled. "Jersey-san, I'm a traffic cone."
For a second, Jersey just stared at the light cruiser. Then a horrified expression crossed her face as she realized where this was going. "No."
"I-"
"Nononono!"
"Do what-"
"No, Dammit, that's my line!"
"I-"
"NAKA!"
"WANT!"
"FUCK YOU!" Jersey grabbed Crowning's half-eaten soup and dumped it all over Naka's frilly orange dress. Her chest heaved with exertion and anger, and her glare narrowed to icy pinpricks.
Naka smiled and wiped the stuff off her face. "You done?"
Jersey shrugged, and effortlessly reverted back to her usual devil-may-care rakishness. "Yeah, I'm done," she said without a shred of lingering distaste.
"Outstanding!" Naka fished a packet of sheet music from… somewhere and shook a few droplets of soup off the pages. "Williams is having another summoning. Think you could help us out?"
Jersey glanced over the music. "Zeppelin?"
"Yeah," said Naka. "I'd play it myself, but…" she did a little pirouette, "You can rock way harder than I can."
"Fucking-" Jersey popped a dinner roll in her mouth, "Truuf!"
"So you in?"
Jersey swallowed. "As long as you don't make me sing, yeah."
Now it was Naka's turn to pout. "What? why!" She balled her hands and puffed out her cheeks. "You've got such a good voice for it!"
Crowning felt compelled to agree. He might not be the most objective judge, but he couldn't imagine a better voice for belting out hard rock than Jersey's rough, dusky contralto.
"Because," was all the explanation Jersey could give. "I just… I'm not a fucking beauty queen."
Crowning and Naka blinked in perfect harmony. "Nobody said that," said Naka.
Jersey scowled. "Just…" she grabbed a handful of everything edible within arms' reach. "Imma go practice this shit."
Naka rolled her eyes. "Have fun!"
—|—|—
Shipgirls were, as a rule, gorgeous. From the girlishly cute destroyers, to the sultry smolder of Musashi or Mutsu, to the round-nosed beauty of Akashi, Major Solette had yet to meet a shipgirl who wasn't attractive. But he'd never met a girl who looked as damn
old as Vestal.
Her hair was streaked with gray, looking in places more like badly weathered steel wire than human hair. Her skin was pale and weathered under the layers of grease and grime that looked thoroughly ground in, and those gritty brown eyes moved liked lead weights.
Solette had seen it before, the look of someone who'd just pulled their third consecutive eighteen hour shift. And that's
before accounting for a shipgirl's superhuman stamina.
"Doc," Vestal's voice matched her battered visage. Low, raspy, and huffed out like every syllable took titanic effort. But there was a spark in her words, a tiny note of defiance proving that however battered she might be, she wasn't broken.
Not just yet.
"Vestal." Solette offered a hand, which she took in one of her heavy leather welding gauntlets. "Thanks for taking over for me."
The repair ship shrugged with a groan of stressed metal and popping joints. Her makeshift skirt of tool pouches and wrenches hung by their ends—a skirt which inexplicably left her hips covered only by her shorts—jingled and rattled as the old girl shuffled her way to the wall. "You did good."
Solette beamed. He'd only met Vestal a few minutes ago, but he could tell she was not the kind of person to lavish praise easily, and she was
not the kind of person who'd accept anything less than utter perfection when it came to caring for her charges. That simple 'Did good' felt better than half the ribbons on his uniform. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it," Vestal's shuffle ended as she pulled up next to the wall. For a moment, the old repair ship just stood in place. Then she slowly sank against the concrete until she sat on the floor in a heap. Her boots skidded against the floor, leaving coal-black slicks in their wake, and she slowly peeled off one gauntlet then the other.
"How's Heermann?"
"Sent her home," Vestal closed her eyes and drank in the cool air. "Should be sleeping with her sisters."
Solette smiled. The three little destroyers had been a little trying on the ferry ride back to Washington, but there was something about the three of them—plus Sammy of course—cuddled up at night that warmed his heart. For all the shit they caused—a reputation that was mostly undeserved in his opinion—they were good girls. "Outstanding."
Vestal offered a tiny nod, and slowly let her hand slink into one of her pockets. A few minutes later, it came back with a chunky black pipe.
"You smoke?" Solette cocked an eyebrow. He wasn't worried about her health, the few months he'd spent taking care of shipgirls had drilled their impossible resilience into him
hard. He was just surprised. He'd never met a girl who smoked. Hell, even the girls who
drankwere few and far between—and mostly eccentric in other ways.
"Used to be a collier," Vestal planted the stem between her gritty teeth while a small party of faeries ran out her sleeve with miniature blow torches. After a few seconds tamping and fiddling, the tiny creatures got Vestal's lit.
"I'm never going to get used to that," muttered Solette as one of the faeries offered him a wave before disappearing back into the exhausted repair ship's welding jacket.
Vestal didn't say a word. It took Solette almost ten minutes of watching smoke slowly curl from her half-open mouth to realize the girl had fallen asleep against the wall.
He shrugged off his uniform jacket and draped it over her legs. "Sleep tight, Vestal."
—|—|—
The summoning chamber crashed to a grinding halt the moment Naka stepped though the doors. Jersey and the band were already taking a break after their last warm-up, but even the gently lapping water below froze in confusion. Every eye was glued to the cutesy light cruiser as she made her way to the stage.
Her boots echoed against the balcony floor, the myriad of buckles clicking against themselves as oiled leather creaked. Polished metal adornments on her blouse glittered in the chaotic lighting, and the chain mail of her over-skirt rustled with each motion.
Jersey was the first to regain her composure. "Naka, the fuck?"
"Hmm?" Naka glanced over the gritty warrior-traffic-cone ensemble she was wearing. Her heels skid against the floor as she did a little spin, leather and chain clattering in the reality-breaking display of a pop-idol/viking mix. "Oh, this?"
Jersey shot her a pointed glare.
"We're playing rock," Naka took the stage in one grand step, somehow managing to keep her short skirt from flashing her antifouling to every band member. Idol magic was the only explanation. "Thought this was more appropriate."
"Well…" Jersey shrugged, "Yeah, it fucking is."
"So why the problem?" Naka slung a guitar over her shoulder and plucked experimentally at the strings. Good, it was still in tune since she checked it before getting into costume. Not that it
wouldn't be, but still. Force of habit.
"Because," Jersey scowled. "Fucking reasons."
"You're adorable," Naka blew a kiss at the confused battleship—which only made her scowl more, then spun to face her audience. The light cruiser effortlessly shifted into a warrior-maiden persona that somehow didn't lack for any of the cuteness she normally put on.
"Hello NAVSTA Everett!" She threw devil horns up with one hand, holding the mic close to her face with the other as she mounted a speaker. "Are you ready to
rock?"
The crowd roared a generally affirmative thunder at her.
Naka made a show of putting a hand to her ear. "What's that?"
Another, even more enthusiastic cheer.
Naka smirked, then gave a nodding signal to Jersey and the band.
The battleship might not want to sing, but she could run a guitar with the best of them. Her hands flew up and down the strings, her head pulsing with the chords as drums hammered out their chorus behind her.
"A-ah-ah-ah-ah" Naka screeched into her microphone, almost bending double as she poured all her lung capacity into a howling war cry.
Jersey kicked up her attack, adding twisting distorted subnotes to the chords she hammered out.
"OH…" Naka held a fist in the air, letting the tension build for a second while she let the music crash around her. "
We come from the land of the ice and snow!"
—|—|—
She'd fought hard.
She'd fought long and hard, fought long after any sane man would have given up. Long after the whole world turned to knives and ashes around her.
She'd fought until her country was nothing more than dust and blood.
She'd watched everything she knew torn to pieces.
Her home was blown apart.
Her country was bleeding dry.
Her people were starving.
Her enemies stood over a beaten foe, gun in hand ready to finish the job with a single bullet to the head. Her country was already half-dead. Its cities burned in firestorms the likes of which no mortal had ever seen. Its people lay dead in droves, the great country was crippled. A dying people just waiting for its foe to finish the job.
And the worst part?
She knew they deserved it.
After what they'd done, they deserved nothing less than a bullet and a shallow grave.
But her enemy didn't land the killing blow.
Her enemy offered his hand, and pulled her people back on their feet.
They opened their treasuries to their greatest foe.
And they'd given her another chance to serve.
Not as a warship, but as a sacrifice.
A chance to burn away her sins with a divine light.
And now they needed her once again.
Weigh Anchor!
—|—|—
"Wat." Jersey stared at the new arrival with utter bewilderment.
She was long and thin, the knife-nosed hull of a cruiser with chisel-fronted turrets and an armored wedge for her superstructure. Her stack rose like a monolith and spherical secondary directors bulged around her after mast. It was a design Jersey knew by heart, a ship she'd recognize anywhere.
Which didn't make it any less fucking weird.
The blond girl stifled a little cough with her glove. Her outfit was no less bewildering. A gray double-breasted officer's coat adorned with gentle armoring around her bust—that was roughly on par with the battleship's own upperworks—and bold red striping down the sleeves. By the look of it, she had plenty of patches on her shoulders, but they'd all been covered by an American flag banana tied around her arm.
And that wasn't even going into the whole 'technically a skirt' matter.
Jersey glanced at Naka, and the two shared a mutual "Wat?"
The newcomer smiled timidly. "Um… Guten—I mean, uh," a rattling cough racked her body, "howdy ya'll'." Her voice was a little shaky, but it oozed with happy enthusiasm. It was the kind of voice that made a rainy day brighter just by the sound of it.
"Wat," was all Jersey could manage to say. Luckily, her Admiral was a bit more eloquent.
Williams stepped out of the crowd in his usual dress uniform, his bearing flawless and military as always. "Welcome back," he said with a gravitas utterly unlike the mind bending confusion of the assembled shipgirls. Probably because he couldn't see her hull. "Report."
The girl snapped to attention, "USS
Prinz Eugen, IX-three-hundred reporting, sir!" She stood in place for a moment, her tiny skirt ruffling against her legs—if she wasn't wearing those undershorts, she'd be in
so much trouble. "Um… is… is Bismarck back yet?"
For a moment, Williams didn't say anything. Then he sighed, and motioned towards the ladder. "
Prinz Eugen, I'll brief you in full."
The cruiser noticed her new Admiral's sudden solemnity. She had to, cruisers were always the most insightful ships. But she did as she was told, clambering up the ladder and trotting after Williams.
Naka glanced at Jersey. "What just happens?"
"I dunno," Jersey fished her shades out of her pocket. "Freedom?"
Fixed spelling.
