Arizona buried her nose in the thick red fabric of her neckerchief and gasped down a breath of the tainted air. Ever since the fleet had pulled up alongside the battered no-mans-land that'd once been the Chinese Coast, the air had taken a turn for the malevolent. Each lungful felt like having ground glass forced down her throat, and the gentle breeze felt like frozen iron against her skin.
The standard hugged herself under her bust, trying to hide her shaking hands from her division mates. She was scared, terrified even. She had been ever since the fleet left the protective umbrella of Chinese F-16s. She kept looking up at the stone-gray sky, bracing herself for a bomb that hadn't—yet—come.
It didn't help that—to minimize the chance of detection on the final dash to the Paracels—the fleet had accelerated to a sixteen knot cruise. Arizona knew that was nothing more than a lazy stroll to her comrades. But to her, it was a stiff jog. Every wave was a bracing reminder of how unsuited her short, plump figure was to maintaining the speeds modern warfare demanded. Every breath drove home how weak and limited her power plant was next to the massive turbines that purred beneath Kongou's toned figure—and the less said about Jersey's truly amazonian build, the better.
Arizona keep at it for some time. She'd left Sasebo with her bunkers filled to the brim with donuts—the standard had decided maintaining her already-pump figure was less important than steaming into battle in good supply. But every knot she pushed past the ten her designed cruise allotted her was a yet greater struggle.
Her bunkers were draining worryingly fast. Her turbines were purring along, but they were working harder for longer than she'd asked of them before. Her short legs were already starting to burn as she pushed herself to keep up with Jersey's lazy stroll.
She was little more than a relic, a monument to a vanished era steaming along ships that could outrun her best possible speed without a second thought. And she felt… alone.
Pennsy was by her side, but beyond hull-form and armament, the two battleships had nothing in common. Arizona was a peace-time warrior. She'd lived her days as a quiet promise that the ravages of war would never again blight the earth, and she'd died in an instant of fire and steel that'd shattered the idly image of American isolationism and forged it anew into resolute fury.
But Pennsy… the standard was less battleship and more incarnation of anger and loss. She'd shot herself to pieces in a vain attempt to avenge Arizona's loss, but every round burning though her rifles only stoked the fire of her desperate hate. Arizona wouldn't—couldn't bring herself to open herself to Pennsy. She wanted to, but she couldn't treat the standard as anything more than a fellow ship under the stars and stripes.
"'Zona?" A rough contralto as friendly as it was uncivilized cut though Arizona's morose introspection.
"Yes?" Arizona tugged her uniform smooth out of habit, and glanced up at the towering Iowa steaming a scant few dozen yards off her beam.
"You doing alright?" Jersey's eyes were hidden by the mirrored lenses of her aviators, but the concern in her voice was all Arizona needed to hear.
"I…" The standard bit her lip and straighten her cover. Or tried to, at least. Her hands were too shaky for her to do it properly, and she scowled as a strand of coppery red hair fell from her bun into her eyes. "No," she admitted.
"Scared?" Jersey hooked her thumbs over the chunky buckle of her thick gunbelt and gave the whole assemblage of tug. Leather and nickel-plated steel jousted over her hips as the battleship settled her revolvers low near her thighs.
Arizona couldn't bring herself to vocalize her answer, it felt like a betrayal to all who'd served aboard her. So she contented herself with a small nod. She expected the big Iowa to snap back with some suitably profane version of "get over it." Or to demand that Arizona live up to her battleship heritage and face the oncoming threat with cool aplomb.
What she didn't expect was for Jersey to put on a melancholy smile and nod slightly. "Believe it or not, I know how you feel."
Arizona raked her gaze past the big Iowa's massive main battery and along the veritable fortress of secondaries and point-defense flak guns strapped to her hips. "You?" was all she could manage to say.
"Mmm," Jersey nodded. "I spent most of my life in the age of the missile, you know." The battleship tugged at her belt again. "You ever hear about the Russian Alfa class?"
Arizona shook her head. The name sounded faintly familiar, but she could tell her towering companion had a story to tell.
"Russian nuke boat," said Jersey. "Hit the water a few years before I joined the six-hundred ship navy. Little commie bitch can do forty-one knots submerged. And it's got wake-homing fish that'll do forty-five."
"That's…" Arizona's voice died in her throat. She'd known technology had advanced since her time. But
Forty knots!
"And that's not even fucking
considering the Shkvals." Jersey growled and tacked a few degrees to port. "Pointy bastards'll do two-hundred with a four-hundred pound nuke in the tip." She scowled. "Or the Mays… or the Bears… or the Moskits… fucking point is, I know what it's like to be scared."
"Jersey," Arizona fought to keep her face at least reasonably impassive. She'd never considered the big Iowas to be so… fallible. Young and immature, yes. Boisterous and lacking in all decorum, of course. But not scared. Never scared. "I… I didn't know."
"Should fucking hope so," said Jersey. "Look, I'm not gonna say you're being stupid or irrational or some shit. 'cause…" The battleship rolled her thick neck with a groan of stressed metal. "You of all people have good reason to be scared of planes."
A tiny, mirthless smile graced the standard's face. "Thank you."
"Look, I know it ain't gonna make your fear go away," said Jersey. "But… you gotta trust we're looking out for ya. You see flatayam over there?" The battleship waved a half-gloved hand at the distant figure of the titanic carrier.
Shinano's gauntleted hand hung by her side, and Arizona couldn't help but notice the carrier wore her breastplate a little looser over her swollen chest. But in contrast to her usual timid nature, her chin was held high and proud. Her shoulders were thrown back and her face wore the milky-eyed stare of a carrier focusing on her planes.
"Yes." Arizona nodded.
"She's spotting Shidens," said Jersey. "Never went up against jets, but they
could give Corsairs and 'stangs a run for their money. And
those things murdered jets by the fucking hundreds. Mostly when they were low and slow, which…" Jersey gestured angrily at the ocean surface under her sneakers.
"Jersey," Arizona blushed, but her fellow American had gotten too worked up to stop.
"And," said the Iowa. "You've got three murder-happy
Fletchers with absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever pulling escort. These stupid fucking shitballs—"
Johnston beamed at the compliment.
"—charged head-first into the biggest fucking guns ever put afloat," Jersey couldn't help but smirk in pride, "on the off chance that they might, fucking
might, buy a few minutes for the escort carriers. If Davy Jones wants to add you to his collection, he better bring a fucking
fleet."
Arizona blushed, and buried her nose in her neckerchief again. "Jersey, that's—"
"Ah!" Jersey waggled a finger at the standard. "Commander, yo. I'm not done yet. You see that lil' steel hull?" The big Iowa waved at the imposing knife-edged silhouette of the USS
McCampell with her hastily-applied splinter camouflage.
The
Burke was bigger than any destroyer Arizona had ever seen, yet she was still
dwarfed by the twin titans of Jersey and Shinano. But her bridge rose like a castle over her sleek hull, and bow sliced though the waves with determination and grit.
"She's a flight-two-alpha boat," said Jersey. "Ninety-fucking-six cells in her VLS. Packed to the fucking
brim with RIM-Sixty-sixes, -one-seventy-one ERAMs, and you don't even wanna fucking
know how many fucking ESSMs she's got coming out of her ass."
The Iowa wore the kind of cockily bloodthirsty smirk that consisted of nothing but razor-sharp canines that bragging about her fellow comrades under the stars and stripes always elicited. That, and being presented with pie. "Arizona?"
"Hmm?" Arizona forced herself to be the very model of calm grace. Jersey surely wasn't going to rise to the occasion.
"God himself cannot enter our airspace without that destroyer's permission." Said the Iowa. "You are gonna steam right up to that island under a sky of American Iron, and you and your sister are gonna do what you do best and
murder those Nazi bastards."
And then, the big Iowa's bombast vanished with a melancholy sigh. Her massive shoulders slumped, and her bloodthirsty smile dropped to a tired slack-jawed stare. "Which doesn't matter, does it?"
Arizona allowed herself a moment to find her composure. It wasn't that she failed to appreciate the Iowa's efforts—nor did she wish to denigrate her escorts, she knew they'd do their jobs to the best of their ability—but… Like Jersey had said, it didn't matter. Arizona still found the very thought of balkenkreuz-bearing planes above her terrifying.
She'd made the mistake of reading her own wikipedia page once. She'd slammed the laptop closed so hard she'd shattered the screen, but it wasn't fast enough. That… image was permanently burned into her brain.
"No," said the standard quietly.
"I know." Jersey's voice was just as quiet, and strangely tender. Arizona found the bigger American abrasive at the best of times. Jersey didn't have a shred of proper manners or decorum in her massive body, she had the social graces of an untamed gorilla, and the demure manners of a rough-cut two-by-four.
But that raw unfinished state cut both ways. When Jersey was being loud and aggressive, she was all but intolerable to be around. But it gave her kinder moments a raw, genuine honesty that Arizona couldn't help but feel comforted by.
Jersey was the least ladylike person Arizona could imagine. Which was all well and good, the standard didn't need a
lady, she needed a friend.
"Thank you," Arizona nodded, and quickly glanced away to hide the wetness glassing over her eyes.
"Yeah," Jersey suddenly found one of the thunderheads looming above to be fascinating. "And… fucking… it sucks fucking horsecock to deal with this shit. It sucks even more to deal with it alone."
The big Iowa fished a crumpled up piece of paper from her pocket and thrust it at the standard. "If you ever… fucking…" She scowled. "Just call me, okay? I'm here… uh, if you need me."
Arizona glanced at the paper. Jersey's messy handwriting was all but illegible, but the standard could just make out a phone number scrawled on the back of what looked like a Ramen shop receipt. "Thank you."
"'s least I can do," mumbled Jersey.
"And I appreciate it," said Arizona. "And if ever… you wish to talk…" the standard fished her phone out of her blouse and handed it over. Jane had been very kind and showed her how to enter contact info. "I'm not often asleep."
Jersey fished yet another crumpled receipt from her pocket and scratched down Arizona's number. The older battleship bristled internally at her younger companion's utterly atrocious handwriting, but she managed to contain herself. Jersey might be
younger, but she had far more years of active service under her thick gunbelt.
She knew how to
fight, where Arizona knew only how to look pretty during peacetime. And while the standard was loathe to admit it… for all her crass impropriety, Jersey was smarter than she looked. She was certainly more experienced, and… Arizona was forced to concede that her pride may perhaps have gotten the better of her.
"Jersey?"
"Whattup?"
Arizona glanced at her sister for an instant. Pennsy was positively smoldering, and her gaze kept flicking back to the cratered slagpile that'd once been China. Arizona wasn't sure if her sister was enraged by the destruction, or just mad that she'd been shown-upped. "Might I ask you for advice."
The massive fast battleship blinked. "Fucking
why?"
"Because," Arizona struggled to keep an even face at the big Iowa's confusion. "Because I value your opinion."
Jersey's ego swelled until it threatened to burst the already-snug fabric of her tight-fitting vest. If it wasn't for the heavy steel reinforcement riding under her bust, it probably
would have. "Heh," she giggled, "Shoot."
"I…" Arizona stopped to gather her words. "How should I deal with someone… with whom I can't relate." She cut herself of just before adding "anymore."
But if Jersey knew who she was talking about, she didn't show it. "Ari, you're a fucking
battleship. A fucking
standard battleship."
"Yes?" Arizona gave her a look. "and?"
"You… we… fucking…" Jersey sighed. "Battleships don't fucking back down. Ever. You find what's right, and you plunk your over-armored ass down on it and fucking
dare everyone else to move you."
"Right," Arizona nodded. It was the answer she'd expected—more or less. She didn't consider her derriere to be over-anything. She had exactly the right level of plump in her aft, thank you very much. Unfortunately, it didn't exactly bode well when the subject of her query was another, equally stubborn battleship.
"And get some pie," added Jersey.
"Pardon?"
"Pie." Jersey waved her hands in a circle. "Get some pie in her fucking belly. Literally fucking
no one can be
that mad with a belly full of apple pie."
Arizona smiled. She wouldn't have thought of that. But she
did happen to know of a certain Admiral's daughter who loved to bake. "Of course. Thank you, commander."
—|—|—
The moment Sarah Gale stepped into the base mess, she noticed something very strange. Vestal was staring at her.
At first, she thought it'd just been a coincidence. The old repair ship looked even more dead on her feet than usual, and since the only motion her wiry body exhibited was the gentle curl of smoke coming from her pipe, Gale had assumed she'd just fallen asleep with her eyes open. Or at least as open as they ever got.
It was a little weird, but Gale had woken up the other morning to find a fire base emplaced on her tummy. She'd seen Wash walk around with neither a bra nor the slightest hit of back pain, which
should not be possible with a main battery like that. An exhausted shipgirl sleeping with her eyes half-open didn't even register.
But when Gale started loading up her tray—with a nice chicken salad this time. She'd murdered her waistline enough at her mother's—the repair ship's eyes followed. Gale never actually saw them move, of course. But every time she looked in Vestal's direction the repairship's lidded stare was focused squarely on her.
Gale tried to brush it off as nothing. But she felt Vestal's stare boring into the back of her head as she helped herself to a few cucumber slices and some orange juice. When she turned around, she realized Vestal wasn't staring at her.
Not quite.
She was staring at her belly.
Gale grumbled under her breath. She was perfectly aware that the trim and tone she'd been working so hard on had vanished under the unyielding might of her mother's southern-fried hospitality. So what, she wasn't
fat, her fatigues were just fitting a bit snugger than they had been. She'd work it all off, just like she had before.
The sailor couldn't help but scowl as she walked over to the repair ship's table. If Vestal was going to… insinuate things with that wordless stare of hers, Gale was going to mount a defense of her own!
She refused to let herself go now that she'd won the love of the most beautiful woman to ever sail the seven seas. And she resented the unspoken implication that she was turning into a land going whale.
"Well?" Gale glared at Vestal and slammed her tray down with a huff.
Vestal's eyes lazily rolled up to meet Gale's and she let a single puff slip from her pipe.
"I was at my parents, alright!" said Gale.
Vestal shrugged.
"Over the holidays." Gale sat and took defiant bite of her breakfast. "Over
Christmas."
"Mmm," Vestal couldn't have looked more bored if she tried. But she was back to staring at Gale's waist.
"It's
perfectly normal to gain a
little over the holidays!" Gale brandished her fork menacingly. "I'm not fat! This'll all work off."
"Never thought you were fat," Vestal glanced up at Gale. Then she winked.
"I…" Gale felt her train of thought derail in a most cinematic manner. "Then… what… why are you staring at my belly?"
Vestal just stared at the sailor and rolled her eyes.
Gale was confused for a moment. Then in a moment of horrified realization, she put the pieces together. "No," she said. "No no… this… I'm
just fat. It's fat. I'm… we're…"
Vestal pointed to the sliced cucumber on Gale's plate. "Cravings?"
"No!" Gale grabbed her tray and cradled it protectively against her chest. "I eat this for breakfast every day!"
Vestal's response was an unconvinced smirk.
"I'm
not pregnant!" thundered Gale.
The mess fell silent, and every head slowly pivoted to look at the brilliantly blushing sailor.
Vestal's smirk widened, and Gale sank low in her chair and tried to hide her crimson face in her blouse. "I hate you."
"Hmm," Vestal fished a notebook from her battered welding jacket and ticked a box. "That'd be the mood swings."
Gale took the angriest bite of chicken salad ever witnessed by mankind. Vestal just smirked.
—|—|—
Meanwhile, in an altogether different part of the naval base, two battleships from two countries born more than two decades apart huddled over a pregnancy test.
Wash stared at the little plastic sliver she'd just used with calm aplomb. Only the tiniest glimmer of a smile on her serene features hinted at the glee threatening to explode though her inclined belt.
Kirishima, however, was not nearly so calm. The Japanese battleship found it impossible to sit still. Shallow, nervous breaths hissed though clenched teeth as she impatiently waited for the test to reveal its result.
"Why isn't it changing!" demanded Kirishima. She might have rather had Wash to herself, but she loved the queenly American. And she loved her as a
friend too. She wanted Wash to be happy, and the mere
thought of Wash with a little keel or two on the slips made her squeal with glee.
"Relax," Wash put a hand on Kirishima's shoulder, slowing the battleship's frantic oscillation to non-quantum levels. "It needs to think."
"It needs to think faster!" Kirishima scrunched up her nose and tried to intimidate the test.
"In time."
"No!" Kirishima slammed her fist against the floor with a pout. "Wash, you could have
babies! I need to know if my friend's pregnant
Right NOW!"
Wash just smiled, and cradled her belly. She'd figured it's slightly more rounded shape was merely due to her dinner at Gale's—at
Sarah's—mother's house. But if it was more… If Kirishima was
right…
"Wash?"
"Hmm?"
"Um…" Kirishima blushed. "C-can I be her aunt?"
Wash smiled at the battleship. "Kirishima, it would be my honor."
Kirishima was about to say something, but then she noticed the test start to change. "It's happening! LOOK LOOOK!"
"I'm looking!" Wash beamed and squinted at the little test window. Only she didn't see two lines show up. She didn't even see
one line show up.
"Does it say you're pregnant!" half-asked, half-demanded Kirishima.
"Um…" Wash turned the test over. Inside the little window was a stylized drawing of a boat. "It says I'm a boat."
For a minute, Kirishima did nothing. Then her good mood soured and she slumped back onto her bed with a huff. "I want a refund."
