"Ah, Christmas." Jersey smiled as she steamed into Tokyo bay with the warm rays of a Christmas morning sun bathing her superstructure. It'd been a long, cold, wet, miserable trip over, and she was pretty sure parts of her bra would stay damp for the next week.
But she could put all that aside for now. She was almost to dry, warm land. Soon enough, she'd be able to strip naked and sink into a steaming hot bath to soak for the next however many fucking hours she wanted to. Just thinking about water that was actually warm lapping against her bare skin made the battleship shiver with anticipation.
This was going to feel so good. She could picture it now, a belly full to bursting with Christmas dinner and a steaming hot tub all to herself.
Or… maybe not to herself. If she played her cards right, she might get some fucking eye candy out of the structurally-superfluous tittybitch with a hatred for shirts that made the fucking Nazis seem tolerant. Maybe fucking… something God knows Musashi wasn't good for anything else.
Jersey almost let her train of thought drift further. CNO knows she'd been feeling cranky ever since she put to sea, she could use a little night battle to work off the stress. But the big battleship quashed those thoughts with a hard bite to her tongue. She was a fucking battleship of the United States navy. And she had a… a… a friend. Right. Yes, that was it.
But most of all, Jersey was looking forwards to one thing in particular. "I want fucking KFC."
Prinz Eugen pivoted on her heel and shot an adorably confused look at her cruiserweight companions. "KFC?"
"Kentucky Fried Chicken," explained Lou.
"Oh." Prinz Eugen's precisely engineered Teutonic features gleamed with the kind of utter bewilderment only a Prussian cruiser ceded to the American navy just long enough to face the brunt of its newest weapon before reincarnating as a pretty blond girl could manage. "This explains nothing."
Lou chuckled. "It's chicken, yeah?"
"I know what chicken is!" Prinz Eugen bristled Germanically.
"But you flour 'em, spice 'em and fry 'em," Lou smiled and patted her slender belly. "Not as good as catfish, but damn good."
"This I know," said the stoically bewildered German, "But what does it have to do with Christmas."
"Literally fucking nothing." Jersey tugged at her scarf to keep it sitting right. "Japan is a fucking bizarre place that exists purely as an example to sane countries of what not to do."
Kongou shrugged, "Dess."
"Thank you, teaboat," Jersey dipped her head, but she as too far into her tirade to bother actually looking at the smirking British-built battleship. "But the fucking point of the matter is, KFC is fucking delicious as shit."
"Shit does not seem very delicious," said Prinz Eugen.
"Shh," Frisco patted Prinz Eugen on the head. Or at least she tried to. But she was looking at Jersey while doing so, and the non-treaty-compliant German's superior height put Frisco's pat right at chest-level.
"So," Jersey clapped her hands together and smiled. "If it gets me fucking fried chicken, I'll allow the Japanese weirdness."
"That's not the only good thing it makes," said Johnston with a lewd giggle.
Jersey didn't even need to look to know exactly what the perverted Fletcher was doing. As ways of hiding her sheer unmitigated terror, it wasn't the worst, but she really needed to add a few extra pages to her portfolio. "Johnston!" snapped Jersey, "Stop staring at Musashi's tits."
There was a pause. "I might not have been."
Jersey huffed. "Mushi, was she staring at tiddy?"
"Of course!" Musashi thundered out at the top of her capacious lungs.
"Traitor!" hissed Johnston.
"It's Musashi," opined Hoel.
"Mmm," said Heermann, "You think she'd every lie and say someone wasn't oogling her?"
"The other way around, yes," said Hoel. "But not that."
Johnston huffed, but didn't say anything. Evidently she realized her sisters had a point. Musashi would never lie in a way that made her seem less imposing and attractive. Lie and say someone as staring at her when they weren't? Yes, absolutely. But—
Wait!
"Hey!" Johnston bristled, and even her feathery headdress seemed to pout in the gentle morning breeze, "She lied! I was totally not staring at her pagodas!"
Jersey rolled her eyes. "Johnston…" But before she could chew out to the perverted little destroyer expressing so enthusiastically what parts of Jersey herself wanted to do, she noticed a division steaming out to meet her.
A division lead by Nagato.
Who was, as usual for her class, wearing a skirt that was barely longer than Jersey's gunbelt. If it wasn't for the heavy steel collar riding around her hips, Nagato's skirt would've been unbearably lewd. As it stood, the armor plating just made Nagato's chiseled belly unbearably obvious.
Jersey had to fight back the part of her that wanted to strip her on shirt off and prove that anything Japan could do, American Industrial might could do better and more sexily. She also had to suppress the part of her that was slowly drooling into her scarf.
She was so distracted by the inexplicable sex appeal of the Japanese battlewagon, she almost missed the look on her face.
Nagato's lips were pressed tightly together, tension clear in the muscles of her neck. Her eyes were glassy and slick with tears, and her gaze hovered somewhere miles behind Jersey.
"Jersey," the battleship's stern voice had a soulless, mechanical rasp to it, like she as forcing each word out through a tiny slot.
Jersey felt a pit form in her stomach that could swallow an island. "Yes?"
Nagato pulled into formation a few hundred yards abreast of the big American. Her heels clicked together and her spine stiffened to parade-ground attention. "I, Nagato," her gloved hand came up to her brow in a oiled salute, "Of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force am your relief."
Jersey brought her own hand up to return the salute. "O… okay," she said, a growing sense of worry building in her throat.
"You…" Nagato stopped and bit her lip. The Japanese battleship might not be as tall as Jersey, but her body rippled with muscle and strength. And she'd never looked quite as small and vulnerable as she did right now. "I… there's been a development in the Gulf."
Nagato's gaze fell to her shoes. "Captain Takeda… you should hear it from him."
Jersey tilted her head. Takeda… she knew that name. How did she know that name. There weren't any Japanese ships she knew captained by a man with that name, at least not ships she'd have any reason to be so invested in. Hell, there weren't any Japanese ships in the Gulf period, at least not ones with Captains. Just…
Just American ships.
Wisky.
"No." Jersey heard herself say the words, but it wasn't her speaking. Her body moved without her consent. Her hull knifed though the water as redlining boilers pushed her turbines all the way to their limits while she stood terrified and numb at the back of her own bridge. Crewmen pushed past her like ghosts as they manned their stations while she stood frozen like the Admiral she'd so desperately despised.
Jersey'd served twenty one years on active duty. She'd existed for more than half a century. And all that time, she'd never really known loss. She hadn't even been launched until after Midway, she'd never lost a sister—or even one of her beloved big cousins—in the line of battle.
Her friends had all died quiet, peaceful deaths. Tucked into bed as a living museum, or turned to scrap by a nation that no longer needed such instruments of warfare. It was about the best death she could imagine for a ship.
And now her beloved little sister, the littlest battleship of them all, the last battleship was… Jersey didn't even know. She could be damaged, sunk… whatever it was, it was enough to drive calm, stoic Nagato to tears.
Jersey numbly planted her feet on the waiting pier and with the last shred of consciousness her rattled mind still had grasp on, she fell into line behind a pair of waiting sailors. They were talking to her, she knew that. They might even have been talking to her in English, but she couldn't understand a word. She could barely even hear them over the horrible silence devouring her mind.
Everything around her flowed in slow motion and far to fast at the same time. People passed like shades, muttering soundless words of… sympathy? regret? Jersey didn't even know. They'd all lost sisters. Lost at the hands of her friends.
After what could have been seconds or centuries, Jersey found herself settled in front of a laptop. A sailor—or shipgirl. Kongou, maybe? Jersey honestly couldn't tell—put a friendly hand on her shoulder before leaving her alone with the man on the screen.
Jersey didn't recognize him, but she knew him right away. Captain Bill Takeda, captain. USS Wisconsin. His face was covered in bloody cuts, and a bandage stretched from the open collar of his uniform almost to his jawbone. One eye was covered in gauze, while the other had a deep gouge running over its brow.
"New Jersey," the calm, soulless voice of a man fighting to keep his own emotions in check cut though the haze like a knife. In an instant, Jersey was fully present again.
"Sir," Jersey felt her eyes melt, but she didn't fucking care.
"There's… no easy way to say this," Captain Takeda winced. His voice was raspy and weak, and ever word seemed to strain his scorched neck. "I was captain of the Wisconsin."
"I know, sir," Jersey didn't bother wiping away the tears welling up in her eyes. Even if she could get her arms to respond, she'd just smear around the mess.
"Five days ago," said Takeda, "we were defending the Panama canal when we came under submarine attack." The captain paused. His mouth hung ajar as he looked for the right words. "We're… there's only so much we know. But Wisconsin took somewhere between twelve and nineteen torpedoes. At least six of them under her keel."
Jersey paled. Torpedoes were a battleship's worst nightmare, especially a Iowa-class. And six fish under the keel… that'd break even a battleship's back. "How…" her voice cracked like shattered metal. "How many made it out?"
"Two-thousand," said Takeda, "Seven hundred and twenty-nine."
Jersey blinked back tears. Her arms felt heavy as iron and flimsy as rubber, and all she wanted to do was cry. But… that number… it couldn't be…
"Don't ask me how," said Takeda, "but she stayed together for forty-six minutes." The corner of the captain's battered mouth twitched up in a smile, "Long enough for every soul aboard to escape. Your sister went down without a soul aboard her."
Tears flowed down Jersey's face even as a smile crossed it. Her vision went blurry as her icy eyes melted to warm salt, and she cradled her head in her hands. Her sister, he beloved little sister, the littlest Iowa had died alone.
She'd died alone. Even Jersey herself couldn't claim that honor. She'd died alone in the heat of battle. Her last dying act was to tell the universe in no uncertain terms that her crew was off limits. Dying at the breakers was a good death for a warship. But dying alone at sea was the best.
Even in death, she'd done her duty. "G-good girl," Jersey whispered. She'd never in her life been so proud of her little sister.
