Support Carrier Shinano had never rode a train before. She didn't like it. Her arms were wrapped so tightly around her armrests the steel was buckling under her terrified embrace. Every grunt as the distant engine panted to haul her immense weight sent a shiver of fear down her keel, and every groan of suspension pushed to the limit to balance two Yamatos and an Iowa earned a meek squeak.
Shinano would much rather have just walked, but she forced herself to be content. This was just a journey after all, the other ships had traveled by train dozens of times without a single incident. Shinano knew that what she was doing was safe, but that did nothing to assuage the irrational terror she felt with every sway and jolt.
She'd almost rather be under air attack right now. Or… or even be forced to make new friends. If only White was here, she could cuddle the tiny American and maybe hide behind her skirts. That always made Shinano feel safer, but White wasn't here today. She had her own duties to perform, duties that included picking up enough slack to give Shinano the day off.
For that, the support carrier was eternally grateful. And she was determined not to let the little American's sacrifice go in vain. She would visit Akihabara, and she would enjoy herself! Even if she had to grit her teeth and suffer through it! For White!
"You doing okay, kiddo?" Jersey glanced over from the other side of the train. The gigantic American hadn't said much during the two-hour train raid. She'd played with her phone a bit in the beginning, but after about twenty minutes she apparently got so upset at it she threw it against the wall hard enough to leave a dent. Then she just crossed her arms and muttered under her breath something about "weebs" ever few minutes.
"Mmmhm," Shinano nodded, and relax her death-grip on her seat by a tiny bit. She was still scared out of her wits, but her fear of dying on the train was slowly replaced by her terror at being in public. "J-just…"
"You've nothing to fear," boasted Musashi. Shinano's big sister hadn't been very talkative either, but she'd found work to busy herself with on the ride up. Work that, admittedly, mostly involved her fussing with the handful of bandages covering her chest and snapping selfies with her phone. But Shinano admired her big sister's dedication to letting no moment go unspent.
"Oh," Shinano smiled, "Thank you, Musashi."
"What she said," said Jersey while scrupulously avoiding even a glance in the other battleship's direction. "You're the size of a house and you're built like a fucking tank." She stopped for a second then added, "A real tank. Like a fucking Abrams. Not those fucking useless-ass floaty-tanks you people built."
Shinano blushed and tried to bury her face in her own kimono.
"Point fucking is," Jersey jabbed a finger at the carrier, "You're a national fucking hero. They'll fucking worship the salt you steam on."
That only made Shinano blush harder and try to sink low enough in her chair to disappear from view entirely. She didn't want to be praised, she just wanted to do her job.
"Jersey," Musashi's voice thundered across the train car with forceful hesitation.
"Yeah?" Jersey still didn't look in the battleship's direction as she settled back in her seat.
"Have you seen Albie at all?"
"Nope," said Jersey. "Lost track of her an hour ago."
Musashi blinked. "We're in a sealed train car."
"What part of 'submarine' do you not understand."
Musashi opened her mouth to thunder back a retort, then sheepishly closed it again when the logic of Jersey's statement sank in. "Oh," she said quietly.
"Fucking told ya," said Jersey.
Before the two battleships could get into yet another argument, the train let out a series of pained gasps and agonized metal groans. Shinano squeaked in fright and curled up into as tight a ball as she could manage in the hope that doing so would somehow make the situation better. As she hugged herself tightly and tried to breath, she felt the train start to slow to a crawl.
Finally, her trip was done, and she'd be able to get solid land under her keel again. The carrier never thought she'd look forward to beaching herself like this. But she also never thought she'd be sharing a train car with an American.
"Shinny," Jersey's dusky voice brought with it a gentle prod. "We've stopped, you can cool it with the sonic."
"Sonic?" Musashi shot Jersey a sideways look.
"Fuck you," was Jersey's typically eloquent response.
"I thought I already d—" Musashi's boast died under a withering glare from the American.
"Now," Jersey grunted and helped the carrier to her feet. "Let's—"
"FREEEEEE!" Albie bolted though the towering battleship's legs and exploded out into the bustle of Japanese shoppers in a streak of salt-encrusted hair and stolen fatigutes.
Jersey blinked. "I'm not even gonna question that."
"I, Musashi," thundered the shirtless wonder, "Think that is a wise course of action."
Shinano just blushed and smoothed the rumpled canvas of her uniform.
"C'mon," Jersey waved to the carriage door. "We came to weeb-land, let's go meet the weebs."
The three girls filed out of the exhausted train and onto the waiting platform. That was practically swarming in Japanese people—a mind-shatteringly large number of whom were dressed in Naka-orange attire of some variety—all eagerly pointing cameraphones at the three returned warships.
Musashi puffed out her chest until her sarashi strained at its breaking point and cheerfully mugged for the camera. She tossed her snowy hair back with a laugh and drank in the attention like it was a fine wine, only without the culture. The dew'n'doritos of wines, as it were.
Shinano let out a tiny eep and tried to hide behind Jersey's skirts. When that failed due to the American's not wearing a skirt, she just cowered behind Jersey's legs and tried to will herself invisible.
Meanwhile, Jersey was reevaluating ever decision she'd ever made while an inarticulate, undirected rage slowly filled the empty vessel that was once her heart. "We did not nuke you guys enough," she muttered.
Shinano whimpered in agreement, and shuffled closer to Jersey's protective umbrella.
"Ah ha!" Musashi puffed out her chest even further and thrust a gauntlet-clad hand in the air. Apparently she'd found a shop she wished to visit, only it was a— a— oh no.
"Fuck," breathed Jersey.
"What's an adult toy store?" Asked Shinano as she timidly made a course for her hard-charging sister's wake.
"No," Jersey grabbed the carrier by the strapping of her breastplate and dug her heels in.
"Bu-"
"No," insisted the American.
"What is—"
"I'll tell you when you're older," said Jersey. The American planted her hands on her hips and looked around for the least-weebish place she could find. She towered over the gaggle of assembled denizens of this Naka-infested hellscape, so getting a good vantage point was easy. But she still couldn't find any place that didn't look like it was in dire need of smiting with hellfire and brimstone.
Japan was weird.
"Shinny, what do you say we—"
"Eee!" Shinano suddenly stood bolt upright, and her face blushed a brilliant crimson. Her muscles tensed and she stared at Jersey with utter panic.
The battleship pivoted on her heel, slowly bringing the carrier into view. Standing far to close to her stern was what could be generously described as a man-shaped bag of quivering flesh and sweat-encrusted anime-branded clothing.
The… creature had the look of a formerly obese individual who'd been forced into loosing weight by the crushing supply shortage, despite his ever effort to the contrary. His clothes were baggy and loose, but somehow still far to revealing over his amorphous excuse for a body. His hair was tied back in a ponytail greasy enough to fuel Jersey's boilers halfway across the Pacific, and his hand…
His hand was planted firmly on Shinano's shapely stern, puckering the fabric of her heavy skirt where he'd got a firm hand full.
Jersey planted her hands on her hips and smiled. "Smart move."
He blinked at her in uncomprehending disgust, hand still firmly wedged between the catatonic carrier's shaft galleries.
"She's got a mighty nice ass, doesn't she?" Jersey clapped a hand on the oily otaku and chuckled. "Plus… she's a carrier. She wouldn't know the first thing about what to do in a close-engagement."
He tried to squirm away from the two warships, but Jersey's friendly pat suddenly turned into an iron-hard grab.
"You get in close," Jersey's friendly voice lost all its dusky joking, hardening into a hissing wispier glowing with rage. "But," she leaned in, bending deeply until her lips were less than an inch from his ear. Her teeth flashed in the platform spotlighting as she whispered in his ear. "there's one thing you forgot."
"W-what?"
"Me." Jersey's hand closed around the ratty collar of his shirt and the towering battleship effortlessly hoisted him off his feet until his face was inches from her growling visage. With her free hand she pushed her mirrored shades up over the bill of her cap, forcing him to endure her unadulterated icy stare.
"I'm an Iowa," Jersey's voice had lost all its teasing luster. The amazonian American knew nothing but rage, and she'd lost all pretense of keeping that hidden. "For fifty fucking years I had one job," she growled. "Just fucking one. Wanna guess what it was?"
The slime ball grunted something in anger and threw a kick with his dangling foot. His only reward was a meaty crunch as flesh and bone slammed into the steely flesh of Jersey's musclebound thigh.
"Protect." Jersey hauled him even closer, until her hot breath blasted in his face. "The. Carrier. And I just lost my sister, so I'm feeling EXTRA MOTHERFUCKING PROTECTIVE RIGHT NOW!" Jersey poured all her anger and frustration into her words.
He screamed and threw an ineffectual punch at Jersey's ironclad abs. "Filthy Gaijin—"
"Gaijin?" Jersey laughed. "*Gaijin? You think I'm a devil?" Her laughter stopped in an instant and a glare that could boil steel locked on his squirming features. "I'm more then that. I'm a blue-eyes black MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON!" She thundered at the top of her lungs, "And I am NOT IN THE MOOD FOR GAMES!"
The battleship stepped back, holding him in the air at arm's length without so much as a quiver in her outstretched limb. "So ask yourself this, fat man," her chest heaved and her features twisted into an angry snarl. "Do you really wanna fuck with America, today!?"
"N-no—" mumbled the otaku as a puddle streamed down his legs onto the platform.
Jersey let him drop to the floor in disgust. "Apologize to her. Now! Or I'll rape your fucking corpse!"
"S-Shinano—" he shuffled on his knees, hands clasped in supplication to the quiet support carrier. "P-please…" he trailed off into gibbering Jersey's Japanese wasn't good enough to understand. If she even cared enough to bother tasking her crew with translating.
The battleship pressed her fingers into her palms as her anger boiled over. She was furious, and she knew she was going to catch some sort of flak for what she'd just done. Hell, they might bust her all the way down to Ensign for this, if not recruit seaman. And that's assuming they didn't just throw her in NAVCONBRIG until she rusted to nothing.
But Jersey didn't give a single rotten fuck. Her first instinct, her only instinct was to protect the carrier. Shinano was under her protection, and she would not let some subhuman slime ball lay a finger on her without repercussion.
"Shinano," Jersey squared her hips and bit back her fury to a mere undercurrent in her clipped contralto. "Do you accept his apology."
The giant support carrier glanced from the gibbering puddle pleading at her feet to the quietly fuming battleship standing watch. For a moment, it looked like her soft, youthful features were about to melt into confused tears. But then she squared her broad shoulders, tensed her jaw, and stared squarely at the otaku quivering at her boots. "No."
Jersey shook her head in surprise.
"He apologized to me," said Shinano. Her voice was as quiet and timid as ever, barely audible over the bustle of the vast city surrounding the two warships. But there wasn't a shred of hesitation. "But not to anyone else."
"Uh…" Jersey was about to say something, but thought better of it. Like it or not, this was the carrier's show now. The battleship was a mere observer to the new age of war.
Shinano smoothed her heavy canvas skirts and bit her lip. "Swear to me," she said quietly, "That you will never do this again."
The otaku mumbled a stream of gibbering moon-runes punctuated by frantic shaking of his head and other body parts.
"You there," Shinano waved her armored leather gauntlet at a policeman who'd rather wisely chosen to wait for Jersey's rage to subside. "Did you see what he did?"
The policeman nodded, and any color left in the quietly gibbering otaku's pimple-cratered face drained away.
"I leave him in your care," said Shinano.
For a moment, the two warships stood in silence as the policeman hauled away the crying puddle of manflesh. Then, Shinano pivoted on her heel and flashed a timid thumbs-up at Jersey while her face blushed shades of red never before experienced by man. "D-did I do good?"
"Do good?" Jersey smiled, "Shinny, that was fucking awesome!"
"R-really?" Shinano worried the buckles on her thick leather belt and scuffed her shoe against the platform.
"Fucking yes, really!" Jersey squared her shoulders and squinted. "Swear to me," she said in a reasonable approximation of Shinano's timid accent, "That you will never do this again." She chuckled. "That was badass as fuck, kiddo."
Shinano blushed even redder and shrank back into her kimono.
"C'mon," Jersey motioned to the bustle outside the platform. "I hear there's a whole world of weeb shit out there to—" The battleship stopped dead in her tracks and slowly pivoted to lock her rangefinders on the impossible thing before her.
A girl—a pretty one at that—stood in a non-traditional take on the standard Japanese Miko outfit that Jersey was all to familiar with. Her short, ruffled tartan mini-skirt was accessorized with crisp white thigh-highs, and she carried a bundle of fliers clasped to her bounded chest. A latticework hairband Jersey'd seen far too much of recently sat on her head as she smiled up at the towering American and her (almost) equally gigantic Japanese companion.
Jersey blinked. "You see her too, right?"
Shinano nodded.
"So," Jersey coughed. "Uh… hi."
"Hello, miss Jersey. Miss Shinano." The girl bowed deeply from the waist, "It's good to see you in Akihabara."
Jersey blinked. "How the fuck did you know who we were?"
The girl rolled her eyes in a cute, Japanese way that somehow didn't feel condescending and took a step closer. The top of her head didn't even reach the thickest part of Jersey's chest.
"Oh," Jersey scowled at nothing in particular.
"I work for the fleet activities tea parlor," the girl handed Jersey a flier that was helpfully written in moon-runes the battleship couldn't read. "The owner would like to invite you to dine at cost."
Jersey narrowed her eyes and stared at the flier like it might try to eat her at any moment. "I'm not sure that's—" And then she recognized the only moon-rune she actually knew how to read. "What's this word?"
The girl had to stand on tip-toes to see what Jersey was pointing at. "Oh, 'pie'."
"Pie you say?" Jersey licked her lips and prayed she wasn't drooling visibly.
"Yes," the girl nodded. "Pie."
"Yo, Shinny," Jersey waved at the carrier. "You feel like pie today?"
Shinano offered the battleship a confused look. "What's pie?"
"Oh for the love of god," Jersey grabbed the carrier's wrist and smiled at the girl. "Wgnd beh…" she stopped and wiped the drool from her mouth. She couldn't help it, she hadn't had a good pie in… in far longer than any woman should be forced to go without pie. "We'd be happy!"
