The Royal Family
- Location
- 'Murica
The raider princess was in agony. She was low by the bow, her proud Atlantic stem diving under the pounding waves as often as it smashed its way through. Her sides where gutted. Steel was torn open down to the citadel, exposing her aching bulkheads to the vicious, merciless, relentless hammer-blows her own speed struck. Her skin was scorched glassy and raw, her decks splintered kindling. Every drop of rain sent a lighting bolt of torment down her keel.
None of that anguish even began to approach the ungodly firestorm of pure, refined rage burning deep within her stony heart. The princess was beyond enraged. Her hunt, her righteous prize, her just reward had been stolen from her! Those two cruisers she so furiously dismantled down to their rivets had poached her the prey that was rightfully hers to hunt.
She'd reduced those foolish, insolent warships to nothing more than burning oil slicks on the rigid sea. It'd given her some tiny island of catharsis in the vast roiling ocean of righteous outrage her heart was adrift in. But the waters were rising and so too was her temper.
She longed to punish them for what they'd done. All of them, not only the treasonous thieves she'd so swiftly dispatched, but every last one of the shore-dwelling heathens who'd enabled their unforgivable crime. She wanted to make them all suffer. To watch them starve. To watch hunger drive mothers to tear their children apart. It was far too kind a fate for such an unspeakable crime, but she supposed it would have to do.
If only she could prosecute it! Her hull had been torn asunder, compartment after compartment flooded. Just cruising home drew files over her burning nerves. Her demons were hardly better off. Their superstructures were ravaged, their radars shot to twisted scrap… even if their spotter planes had survived the battle, their catapults were too badly mauled to ever be used again.
The hunt she'd yearned for for so long would have to be postponed. The Princess howled with rage and clenched her fists until wine-dark blood trickled through her talons and stained the iron-gray surf. At least…
At least when she reached the graving dock she would see her beloved sister again soon. The princess swept her tongue along her razor-sharp teeth. That at least made the agony bearable.
She heard the splash of salt against steel, but she didn't feel it. Not really, not beyond a tiny pinprick of cold that could've been an echo from a thousand miles away. When she glanced down at the sim figure and brightly-colored dress of Japan's number one idol, she had to concentrate just to remember she was looking at her own body.
Someone said her name. Maybe. Naka heard a voice, but it was muted and distant. Like someone whispering in her ear from a thousand miles away. She blinked, wiping away heavy tears that sat like forgotten jewels on her delicate features. "What?" she said, her voice strained and quiet.
Beside her steamed the towering Aryan figure of Prinz Eugen. The German-born cruiser was… more miniature battleship to Naka's overgrown destroyer. Her uniform bulged with a mighty twenty-centimeter bust, and her hips swing with nearly twice the power Naka's turbines could scrape together. But for all her size and might, the big German's bright blue eyes had gone gray and misty. Her lip quivered and she couldn't keep her hands still for a second.
"Naka," Prinz Eugen's voice was soft, her accent thick as bunker crude. "I… I served with Bismarck." She coughed and tugged at the hem of her skirt, smoothing the pleats before the stiff breeze made a mess of them again. "Not for long of course," she qualified. "She didn't last very… Anyway… She was like a sister to me. The Kreigsmarine was not a fun place to be, but she and Admiral Lujents were always so kind to me."
The cruiser stopped and bit her lip. Silent tears rolled down her pristine Teutonic features and she sniffled. "To- to hear about what that monster wearing her face did to your sister… And then to think how much worse you must feel… If there's anything I can do. Any of us—" she motioned to where Frisco and Lou were trailing at a respectful distance. "—can do. We'll do it."
Naka took a deep breath and held it. Her spine stiffened as the chilly air slowly warmed in her lungs. She closed her eyes and squeezed away the tears. A moment later, her eyes opened to a glare harder than steel. "You can send that bitch to the bottom," said Naka without a shred of hesitation.
Prinz Eugen nodded and snapped her heels together. "Consider it done."
The queen scoffed to herself, idly dragging a talon up the demon's craggy spine. She'd never birthed a lone demon before, the Darwinian carnage in her womb always left an uneasy balance between two or three of her spawn. Each too mighty to assure victory over the other, they clawed forth into the world hungry for war.
But not this demon. Either by skill or luck, it had bested all the rest of its clutch. Consumed their still-warm corpses while it was still in the womb. Grown mighty beyond all measure. Its birth had been the most agonizingly painful experience of the Snow Queen's life, a torturous episode that drove her mad with pain. But the moment she laid eyes—so to speak, of course—on her newborn demon, she knew the agony had been worth it.
She'd birthed a perfect weapon. A mighty archdemon beyond equal. It was still young, too young to hunt free, but already it was nearly her size. By the time it old enough to range beyond its mother's watchful gaze, it would be truly massive indeed.
"Yes?" The Snow Queen glanced to one of her attendants. She didn't normally like being interrupted when she was nursing, but given her newly-birthed demons' ravenous appetite, she no longer had any choice in the matter.
The attendant—an office with no face beyond the polished lenses of a gas mask—snapped off a salute and handed her a communications transcript.
The Abyssal smiled as she read the neatly-typed message. Her beloved sister was making a visit. Sadly, of course, it was a visit prompted by military necessity. She and her demons had suffered damage at the hands of the traitorous fleet, but seemed to have exacted a reasonable price in blood.
"Prepare three graving docks," said the Snow Queen with a giddy smile. It was going to be so nice to see her big sister again. "And… send out an escort, I don't want anyone jumping my sister."
But there was one exception. One warship who took the news not with rage or tears, but with almost wistful melancholy. A ship who actually smiled at the news. A ship who almost never smiled, even when presented with a bottle of strawberry milk by White Plains.
"Hey, Shina." Jersey tacked a little closer to the towering support carrier. Shinano's smile had dimmed as the trans-pacific journey wore on and her friends' anguish was more and more obvious. But even then, it hadn't completely faded.
She didn't answer at first. Her big brown eyes were milky and her unfocused gaze stared vaguely into the infinite horizon, the tell-tale sign of a carrier giving the balance of her split attention to her planes. But after a moment, the normally timid girl blinked and her gentle hazel irises were back. "J-Jersey?" She started, clearly surprised by how much closer Jersey had gotten while she wasn't looking.
"Kiddo." Jersey tugged at her scarf and scowled at the wind-driven snow whirling lazily around her. "You, uh… you doing okay?"
Shinano nodded, embers of her smile rekindling into a warm glow on her too-youthful features. "Yes," she said simply. "The others— they—" he stopped, and buried her face in the thick wool scarf she'd donned for he arctic leg of her voyage.
Jersey sighed. "Something you wanna say?"
For a long while, Shinano just watched her own chest rise and fall. "Um… I know they see me smiling. The others, I mean."
"Yeah," the battleship kept her voice even. "They did loose two of their friends just now."
"I know," said Shinano quietly. "And…" her voice was even quieter now. So timid Jersey has to strain to hear it. "I… I guess I should be sad?"
"Ya think?"
Shinano looked away. "But… all I feel is happiness. Not-" she coughed, little clouds of hot breath curling through her thickly-gloved fingers. "-not that Sendai-sama and Maya-sama are dead. But… but that they died for something."
Jersey shot the carrier a sideways look.
"I… I thought that was just a story," said Shinano. "It wasn't what we did—what Japanese ships did." She stared at her toes, "what I did."
"Hey," Jersey put a hand on the big carrier's shoulder. "What's done is done. You're back now. We're all back. To fucking do better. You know I could've faced your big sister?"
Shinano sniffed. "What?"
"Yeah," Jersey nodded, then bit her lip. "I… at Samar," she almost whispered. "'stead I went chasing a ghost, never shoot anything bigger than a fucking destroyer the whole war. Now look at me."
Shinano's sniffle took on a hint of a giggle.
"Look at me? Look at you." Jersey gave Shinano a gentle whack to the back, forcing her to stand up straight and proud. "You did fucking shit last time, now you're the goddamn savior of Tokyo and the most advanced fucking flattop on the whole damn planet."
Shinano smiled a tiny bit.
"So yeah, some of us die," said Jersey. "But we die for a fucking reason. We die so we'll fucking live forever. Oh, and I forgot one other title you've got. Probably the most dam prestigious of them all."
"Oh?"
"You're my friend," said the battleship. "And White's friend… which… is honestly probably better."
Shinano snorted. "It is. But I like you too." She tacked over and put her arms around Jersey for a quick hug. "Thank you."
Even the escort fleet her sister had dispatched brought the princess to the very limit of erupting with vesuvian hate. She knew her sister meant well, but the pristine warships with their proud red flags were scalding reminders of her own mauled state. Her sister had done well for herself, while her first hunt slipped through her talons like sand through water.
It didn't help that she was ravenous with hunger. Her bunkers had been holed during the night, and her icy wake was dyed an inky black as precious fuel flowed out by the ton. The meager meal of blood and fear she'd made from the two petulant cruisers had sustained her, but it hadn't even begun to quench the limitless hunger dominating her basest instincts. So primal was her need to feed, she almost fell upon her own demon in the night. Only the immanent promise of resupply by her sister allowed the Princess to assert her self-control. Even then, these last few miles were agony.
Every wave sent what little remained in her stomach sloshing against scorched and hastily-mended metal. She felt what was left of her meal crash against her skin with every pitch and roll, tearing at her flesh like iron eggs bundled in razor wire. Her stomach was mauled with even the slightest motion, and her…
No…
The princess pushed the burnt resentments of her once-proud uniform aside and placed her gauntlet-entombed hand on the ashy skin of her charred midsection. And she felt it.
A mirthless smile graced her lips, and a bitter laugh crashed over the waves like breaking glass.
It wasn't her stomach, but her womb. She could feel them now, now that she was allowing herself to focus on something beyond her rage. Demons growing inside her, dozens of them packed like razor-tipped sardines in the tight confines of her womb. Already they were starting to stir, their craggy metal spines tearing ribbons from the raw, tender flesh. Euphoric agony flooded her mind as she felt the horde within her fall upon itself.
There were dozens now. Hundreds, maybe. By the end, only a few would remain. But they would be strong indeed.
The princess smiled and caressed her middle. Already she could see the first hints of swollen growth. Soon. Very soon. She'd have an army at her command.
None of that anguish even began to approach the ungodly firestorm of pure, refined rage burning deep within her stony heart. The princess was beyond enraged. Her hunt, her righteous prize, her just reward had been stolen from her! Those two cruisers she so furiously dismantled down to their rivets had poached her the prey that was rightfully hers to hunt.
She'd reduced those foolish, insolent warships to nothing more than burning oil slicks on the rigid sea. It'd given her some tiny island of catharsis in the vast roiling ocean of righteous outrage her heart was adrift in. But the waters were rising and so too was her temper.
She longed to punish them for what they'd done. All of them, not only the treasonous thieves she'd so swiftly dispatched, but every last one of the shore-dwelling heathens who'd enabled their unforgivable crime. She wanted to make them all suffer. To watch them starve. To watch hunger drive mothers to tear their children apart. It was far too kind a fate for such an unspeakable crime, but she supposed it would have to do.
If only she could prosecute it! Her hull had been torn asunder, compartment after compartment flooded. Just cruising home drew files over her burning nerves. Her demons were hardly better off. Their superstructures were ravaged, their radars shot to twisted scrap… even if their spotter planes had survived the battle, their catapults were too badly mauled to ever be used again.
The hunt she'd yearned for for so long would have to be postponed. The Princess howled with rage and clenched her fists until wine-dark blood trickled through her talons and stained the iron-gray surf. At least…
At least when she reached the graving dock she would see her beloved sister again soon. The princess swept her tongue along her razor-sharp teeth. That at least made the agony bearable.
—|—|—
Naka was, on some level, aware that she'd left the wedding and set sail with the rest of her squadron. But her memory was… distant. Hazy. Like a half-forgotten story told third-hand by somebody she wasn't really listening to in the first place. She was barely even aware of her own hull.She heard the splash of salt against steel, but she didn't feel it. Not really, not beyond a tiny pinprick of cold that could've been an echo from a thousand miles away. When she glanced down at the sim figure and brightly-colored dress of Japan's number one idol, she had to concentrate just to remember she was looking at her own body.
Someone said her name. Maybe. Naka heard a voice, but it was muted and distant. Like someone whispering in her ear from a thousand miles away. She blinked, wiping away heavy tears that sat like forgotten jewels on her delicate features. "What?" she said, her voice strained and quiet.
Beside her steamed the towering Aryan figure of Prinz Eugen. The German-born cruiser was… more miniature battleship to Naka's overgrown destroyer. Her uniform bulged with a mighty twenty-centimeter bust, and her hips swing with nearly twice the power Naka's turbines could scrape together. But for all her size and might, the big German's bright blue eyes had gone gray and misty. Her lip quivered and she couldn't keep her hands still for a second.
"Naka," Prinz Eugen's voice was soft, her accent thick as bunker crude. "I… I served with Bismarck." She coughed and tugged at the hem of her skirt, smoothing the pleats before the stiff breeze made a mess of them again. "Not for long of course," she qualified. "She didn't last very… Anyway… She was like a sister to me. The Kreigsmarine was not a fun place to be, but she and Admiral Lujents were always so kind to me."
The cruiser stopped and bit her lip. Silent tears rolled down her pristine Teutonic features and she sniffled. "To- to hear about what that monster wearing her face did to your sister… And then to think how much worse you must feel… If there's anything I can do. Any of us—" she motioned to where Frisco and Lou were trailing at a respectful distance. "—can do. We'll do it."
Naka took a deep breath and held it. Her spine stiffened as the chilly air slowly warmed in her lungs. She closed her eyes and squeezed away the tears. A moment later, her eyes opened to a glare harder than steel. "You can send that bitch to the bottom," said Naka without a shred of hesitation.
Prinz Eugen nodded and snapped her heels together. "Consider it done."
—|—|—
The Snow Queen sank into her twisted metal throne with an exhausted huff. Her newly-birth demon was planted solidly on the crook of her hip. Its craggy razor teeth gnawed at the queen's sore, icy teat, finding more coppery blood than what little milk the abyssal's exhausted bosom had left to give. Still it chewed at her barren breast, ravenous hunger driving it on a single-minded quest to sate the limitless hunger sinking at its belly.The queen scoffed to herself, idly dragging a talon up the demon's craggy spine. She'd never birthed a lone demon before, the Darwinian carnage in her womb always left an uneasy balance between two or three of her spawn. Each too mighty to assure victory over the other, they clawed forth into the world hungry for war.
But not this demon. Either by skill or luck, it had bested all the rest of its clutch. Consumed their still-warm corpses while it was still in the womb. Grown mighty beyond all measure. Its birth had been the most agonizingly painful experience of the Snow Queen's life, a torturous episode that drove her mad with pain. But the moment she laid eyes—so to speak, of course—on her newborn demon, she knew the agony had been worth it.
She'd birthed a perfect weapon. A mighty archdemon beyond equal. It was still young, too young to hunt free, but already it was nearly her size. By the time it old enough to range beyond its mother's watchful gaze, it would be truly massive indeed.
"Yes?" The Snow Queen glanced to one of her attendants. She didn't normally like being interrupted when she was nursing, but given her newly-birthed demons' ravenous appetite, she no longer had any choice in the matter.
The attendant—an office with no face beyond the polished lenses of a gas mask—snapped off a salute and handed her a communications transcript.
The Abyssal smiled as she read the neatly-typed message. Her beloved sister was making a visit. Sadly, of course, it was a visit prompted by military necessity. She and her demons had suffered damage at the hands of the traitorous fleet, but seemed to have exacted a reasonable price in blood.
"Prepare three graving docks," said the Snow Queen with a giddy smile. It was going to be so nice to see her big sister again. "And… send out an escort, I don't want anyone jumping my sister."
—|—|—
The fleet was passing through the Aleutians and Jersey had something gnawing at her that she couldn't put off any longer. When the news broke at the wedding, everyone took it hard. Naka and Jintsuu had… well, Jersey didn't exactly know what they'd done, she'd tried to give them their privacy. All of the destroyers, from feisty Johnston to gentle Fubuki had visibly seethed with a primal need to go out and kill something. And to be honest, Jersey was far to damn angry herself to see anything without a slight red tint.But there was one exception. One warship who took the news not with rage or tears, but with almost wistful melancholy. A ship who actually smiled at the news. A ship who almost never smiled, even when presented with a bottle of strawberry milk by White Plains.
"Hey, Shina." Jersey tacked a little closer to the towering support carrier. Shinano's smile had dimmed as the trans-pacific journey wore on and her friends' anguish was more and more obvious. But even then, it hadn't completely faded.
She didn't answer at first. Her big brown eyes were milky and her unfocused gaze stared vaguely into the infinite horizon, the tell-tale sign of a carrier giving the balance of her split attention to her planes. But after a moment, the normally timid girl blinked and her gentle hazel irises were back. "J-Jersey?" She started, clearly surprised by how much closer Jersey had gotten while she wasn't looking.
"Kiddo." Jersey tugged at her scarf and scowled at the wind-driven snow whirling lazily around her. "You, uh… you doing okay?"
Shinano nodded, embers of her smile rekindling into a warm glow on her too-youthful features. "Yes," she said simply. "The others— they—" he stopped, and buried her face in the thick wool scarf she'd donned for he arctic leg of her voyage.
Jersey sighed. "Something you wanna say?"
For a long while, Shinano just watched her own chest rise and fall. "Um… I know they see me smiling. The others, I mean."
"Yeah," the battleship kept her voice even. "They did loose two of their friends just now."
"I know," said Shinano quietly. "And…" her voice was even quieter now. So timid Jersey has to strain to hear it. "I… I guess I should be sad?"
"Ya think?"
Shinano looked away. "But… all I feel is happiness. Not-" she coughed, little clouds of hot breath curling through her thickly-gloved fingers. "-not that Sendai-sama and Maya-sama are dead. But… but that they died for something."
Jersey shot the carrier a sideways look.
"I… I thought that was just a story," said Shinano. "It wasn't what we did—what Japanese ships did." She stared at her toes, "what I did."
"Hey," Jersey put a hand on the big carrier's shoulder. "What's done is done. You're back now. We're all back. To fucking do better. You know I could've faced your big sister?"
Shinano sniffed. "What?"
"Yeah," Jersey nodded, then bit her lip. "I… at Samar," she almost whispered. "'stead I went chasing a ghost, never shoot anything bigger than a fucking destroyer the whole war. Now look at me."
Shinano's sniffle took on a hint of a giggle.
"Look at me? Look at you." Jersey gave Shinano a gentle whack to the back, forcing her to stand up straight and proud. "You did fucking shit last time, now you're the goddamn savior of Tokyo and the most advanced fucking flattop on the whole damn planet."
Shinano smiled a tiny bit.
"So yeah, some of us die," said Jersey. "But we die for a fucking reason. We die so we'll fucking live forever. Oh, and I forgot one other title you've got. Probably the most dam prestigious of them all."
"Oh?"
"You're my friend," said the battleship. "And White's friend… which… is honestly probably better."
Shinano snorted. "It is. But I like you too." She tacked over and put her arms around Jersey for a quick hug. "Thank you."
—|—|—
The raider princess fumed. The agonizing pain that filled every frame of her ravaged hull merged with her apoplectic rage into an unholy concoction of pure unbridled fury. Everything drove her insane with anger. Every wave crashing against her shredded bow, every seagull winging lazily over the surf, every droplet of spray landing on her scorched skin.Even the escort fleet her sister had dispatched brought the princess to the very limit of erupting with vesuvian hate. She knew her sister meant well, but the pristine warships with their proud red flags were scalding reminders of her own mauled state. Her sister had done well for herself, while her first hunt slipped through her talons like sand through water.
It didn't help that she was ravenous with hunger. Her bunkers had been holed during the night, and her icy wake was dyed an inky black as precious fuel flowed out by the ton. The meager meal of blood and fear she'd made from the two petulant cruisers had sustained her, but it hadn't even begun to quench the limitless hunger dominating her basest instincts. So primal was her need to feed, she almost fell upon her own demon in the night. Only the immanent promise of resupply by her sister allowed the Princess to assert her self-control. Even then, these last few miles were agony.
Every wave sent what little remained in her stomach sloshing against scorched and hastily-mended metal. She felt what was left of her meal crash against her skin with every pitch and roll, tearing at her flesh like iron eggs bundled in razor wire. Her stomach was mauled with even the slightest motion, and her…
No…
The princess pushed the burnt resentments of her once-proud uniform aside and placed her gauntlet-entombed hand on the ashy skin of her charred midsection. And she felt it.
A mirthless smile graced her lips, and a bitter laugh crashed over the waves like breaking glass.
It wasn't her stomach, but her womb. She could feel them now, now that she was allowing herself to focus on something beyond her rage. Demons growing inside her, dozens of them packed like razor-tipped sardines in the tight confines of her womb. Already they were starting to stir, their craggy metal spines tearing ribbons from the raw, tender flesh. Euphoric agony flooded her mind as she felt the horde within her fall upon itself.
There were dozens now. Hundreds, maybe. By the end, only a few would remain. But they would be strong indeed.
The princess smiled and caressed her middle. Already she could see the first hints of swollen growth. Soon. Very soon. She'd have an army at her command.
