The couter-attack on Pearl had been meticulously planned. More importantly, that plan had been carried out with extreme violence of action by angry Marines and SEALs who were at least as angry, but in honed and polished sort of way. With the princess and her queen gone, the remaining abyssal forces crumbled. Leaderless and without any degree of tactical cohesion, the demons collapsed under the green tide of the devil's own wardogs.
The battle was all but over by the time the last battleships showed up, Mo and Wisky's tomahawks were only the final turbo-jet driven nails in a coffin already welded shut. Ford Island was covered with twisted concrete wreckage and speckled with spot-fires. The channel was choked with rotting, waterlogged corpses and upended tanks where abyssal troops had dove for the sea in desperation. And Mo…
Mo sat on an upended concrete block with her littlest sister, greedily stuffing everything in arms' reach into her mouth. She'd never been this hungry before. She hadn't even known it was
possible to be so startlingly ravenous. If she wasn't using both hands to shovel semi-expired MREs down her mouth, she'd be clutching at her achingly twisted stomach. As it was, she was half doubled-over with the crippling stomach cramps.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am," a marine's voice shook Mo out of her frantic gluttony. His face—what little of it she could see peeking out from his heavy winter clothing and MOPP suit—was racked with apologetic pity. But in his hands was the glorious brown packaging of a full MRE. "It's all we could find."
Mo swallowed, and swore she heard a pitifully tiny ring as the morsel fell into her painfully empty bunkers. She belatedly realized the bag she was holding was completly empty. She'd been so hungry she'd eaten the flameless ration heater and hadn't even noticed. She was
still about that hungry too.
"I don't care," she said, trying to ignore the tear building in the corner of her eye and praying her crimson-tinted shades would hide the brief moment of weakness. She was so hungry she would've kissed him if she could somehow do it while still eating. She all but ripped the bag from his mittens and tore open the packaging.
And that was when a signal officer came screaming onto the bridge, panting breathless predictions of doom and gloom. Mo was only now realizing which menu item she'd been handed. Cheese and Vegetable Omelet. She'd been asleep for the infamous horror show's reign of terror, but her last crew still had… memories.
So revolting was the thought, Mo actually hesitated for almost a full second before her stomach-churning hunger took the conn and forced her to continue. She tore open the first bag she found and forced herself to choke down the revolting clump that could only generously be described as 'egg-like.'
It was exactly as revolting as Mo remembered. But she didn't care. It was
food, and the instant it slipped past her throat and into her stomach, it was sweeter than the finest steak. She gobbled the rest of it down, only pausing to wash back the putrid taste with a canteen someone offered her. "Thanks," she said with as much sincerity as she could manage and wiping her mouth with the back of her gloved hand.
She was almost half way through the MRE when she felt a gentle poke against the heavily tattooed flesh of her arm. It was her sister, face half-hidden in her thick turtleneck sweater with one hand wedged between her gunbelt and plate carrier to claw at her stomach. "Sis?"
Wisky blushed and handed an unopened package. "Wa-wanna trade?" she said, her lips shivering from hunger.
Mo glanced at the package. Shredded BBQ beef. Someone must've found a fresh stash while she was busy eating. Just the thought made her mouth water. "Really?"
Wisky nodded. "You m-my sister," she said.
Now Mo was crying, and she didn't care if anyone saw. It was years since the last time she saw her littlest sister. "We'll split it," She said, tearing open the bag and handing it to Wisky.
—|—|—
Musashi was, in a word, scared. In slightly more words, the mightest of all Japan's warships, the biggest proudest and most powerful battleship the world had ever seen or would ever see again was terrified beyond all forms of human comprehension. She forced herself to keep a straight face—for the good of the destroyers and sweet Shinano—but there was no polite way to say it. Musashi was gripped down to her keep by the clutches of mortal horror.
She'd spent months with battleship New Jersey. A battleship to equal even Musashi, a battleship so cripplingly chunni she managed to loop back around to being seriously intimidating. A warship with decades of honorable service, an attitude as commanding as it was bombastic, and an aft that wouldn't quit.
And now there were
three of her. The emperor himself couldn't save her now.
The two battleships—with their requisite encourage of support ships and annoying light cruisers with twitter accounts—rounded the bend into the harbor. Kongou took up the rear, still visibly pondering the appropriate amount of dess for the situation at hand.
Musashi didn't give that a second thought though. In an instant she recognized the two youngest Iowas. They were both tied off against Ford Island, their lines unmistakable even through the post-battle haze of smoke and dust. Long, proud bows, low-set turrets, two massive stacks… there was nothing graceful about an Iowa. Powerful, yes. Tremendously powerful fast beyond imagining even sitting at anchor. But not graceful. They were far too aggressive for that, far too actively violent.
"Mo!" Jersey's voice broke harshly and she hit the island at a sprint. She threw her arms out, catching both her sisters in a hug and tackling them to the deck with her sheer momentum. "Wisky!"
Musashi hung back, both because her plant just wasn't up to delivering that kind of power, and because she was pretty sure three Iowas had a minimum safe distance measured in hundreds of miles. Doubly so now that the youngest two had
missiles. The Yamato gulped and watched the sisters pick themselves up.
They were sisters alright. Each had the same super-humanly towering stature and a build like a power-lifter and sprinter had merged without any of the negatives.
But one was dark, her skin almost the same shade of chocolate as Musashi's and covered in spiraling tribal tattoos that burst from her ragged cutoff sleeves and shorts.
The other was bundled—almost swaddled—in a warm turtleneck sweater with only her shockingly long legs to show off the pure white cream of her skin. Her hair was red—proper, coppery red, not Jersey's strawberry blond—and it fell to her waist in a complex set of braids.
Both sisters had a handful of axes hanging from loops on their belts. Axes so sharp Musashi seriously worried if looking at them too long would give her eyes papercuts.
"Sushi!" Jersey waved the mighty Yamato deeper into the Iowas' blast radius. The red-headed Iowa smiled, waving sheepishly before plunging her hand back into a bag she was holding.
Musashi squared her shoulders and threw out her chest. She was a Yamato, she would face her fears with dignity. "Jersey," she said, stepping onto land with what she hoped was utter confidence and slowly striding towards the assembled Americans.
"Meet my sisters," said Jersey grabbing the other two by their shoulders and hauling them in for a half-hug. "Mo—"
"Musashi," the tanned, heavily-tattooed battleship waved.
"—and Wisky."
"Hi," said the redhead.
Musashi nodded in response. This didn't make sense. They were both so… so
normal.
"Pardon me," said Kongou, appearing at Musashi's with her usual unannounced suddenness.
"'sup, Dessboat," said all three Iowas in glorious harmony.
Kongou blinked, visibly unnerved. "Shouldn't we be chasing the Abyssals?"
"'laska's got it for now," said Jersey, letting her sisters go so they could resume their feast. "They're only doing like… ten knots, and the one's leaking…" she contorted her face. "What I hope is oil but is probably some fucked-up kinda afterbirth."
She shrugged, hands on her hips as she rocked on her heels. "Boss wants to see which way they're heading. And I gotta get these two," she tousled her sisters' hair, "fed 'fore we head out."
"But…" Kongou put her hands on her own hips in imitation of the bigger battleship. She tilted her head, ahoge visibly swaying as she thought. "Even at flank, you wouldn't merge until almost midnight."
The island was very quiet. Even the rustle of Mo and Wisky's meals had stopped. Slowly, belatedly, Kongou realized something. All three Iowas were smiling. And all three smiles consisted of nothing but gleaming, razor-sharp incisors.
"Oh," Kongou blushed, kicking herself for her oversight. "Right, dess."
rofl:
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