Belated happy 2021, Changing Destiny fans! I hope you have been having a good year so far.
To tide you over until Sky's next update, here's something from your unreliable cloud wrangler who's running on sleep debt.
X===X===X
30 November 1941
Hinata Kohi (Sunshine Coffee)
Metropolitan Tokyo, Empire of Japan
"Welcome to
Hinata Kohi!" A brown ponytail swished over the right shoulder of the brunette poised at the entrance. Her brown eyes shone bright and warm like the fire burning merrily in a traditional home's central hearth. She beckoned the visitors to enter with energetic gestures of her right hand. "Come in, come in!"
"Thank you, Sato-san!"
Many nations employed espionage to discern the plans and plots of their potential enemies and allies alike. The Empire of Japan set up Special Service Organs in areas like Manchuria and the occupied parts of China to root out resistance and sniff out rebels. Its newly-declared enemies, the United States of America and the British Empire, relied on the Special Intelligence Service (better known as MI6) and the Office of Strategic Services, respectively, to gather intelligence and sabotage the opposing war effort. And Japan's distant ally Nazi Germany laid these tasks on the Abwehr, not knowing that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris sought to undermine the Nazis he secretly loathed.
"Would you like your usual breakfast?" Another female employee brushed back the locks of chocolate hair that spilled across her rosy face. She winked at the tongue-tied regular as her way of encouraging him to speak up. No order pad for her; she trusted her memory and the notebook got in the way of the bountiful chest that strained against the confines of her blouse and apron. "A Dutch coffee, thick toast, fried eggs, and bacon?"
"Ah, um, yes, please, Akagi-san..."
"Right away~"
The resistance group headed by Junior Admiral Hina Togo, JMSDF, hid in plain sight. A small two-storey commercial building served as the nerve center of their intelligence operations against their own nation. The top floor served as office space while the ground floor presented their official facade to Tokyo - a coffee shop called
Hinata Kohi, Sunshine Coffee.
"Here you are, Sir." A bespectacled waitress carefully transferred a cup of freshly-brewed coffee and a warm sweet roll from her serving tray to the customer's table. Unlike the manager, she kept her long hair in a bun to keep it out of her heart-shaped face's way. "Please enjoy your drink," she bid with a small bow while holding the empty tray against her chest.
"Thank you, Momiko-chan, you're cute as always..."
Hinata Kohi's proximity to a major public transport hub made it easy to gauge the pulse of the nation. Regulars and new arrivals frequented the establishment from the moment they opened their doors to the late hour they closed shop. Many customers dropped by for a quick bite and sip while others spent hours talking over cups of piping hot kohi. Most visitors were civilians from all walks of life, and sailors of the Imperial Japanese Navy stood out because they wore their uniforms to get the discount and special service for uniformed military personnel.
"Kawana-san, we need four servings of hot coffee," Momiko reported to the cook.
"Coming right up!" The dark-haired barista-slash-cook popped her knuckles before starting on the first cup of hand-drip coffee.
Both civilians and servicemen alike looked forward to the regular appearances of the establishment's very own geisha. Kana Sutezawa entertained the customers with traditional song and dance without charging the hefty price of commissioning a typical 'artist.' After every performance, she always approached any military personnel and lavished special attention on the "brave samurai who safeguard Japanese lives and wealth," a description and service that the lusty young sailors appreciated.
"Thank you for your patronage." Kana's graceful bow shook the maple leaf accessory decorating the brown coil of her chignon-styled hair. "Please visit us again."
"We'll definitely come back, Kana-chan!"
The idea for
Hinata Kohi first took root inside Hina's mind the day after she found herself in the Japan of her grandfather's time. She refined her initial plan with every passing day, taking into account her place in the Togo clan, the resources and options within her grasp, and the limitations imposed by her sex and stature. Once satisfied, she waited for the right opportunity to take advantage of her family's connections.
"Dear mother," Hina brought up on a fine May day, less than a month after waking up in Imperial Japan. "I would like to run a kissaten..."
Kissaten were the Japanese spin on the Western coffeehouse. Essentially commercialized tea rooms, they served coffee and other foreign tidbits alongside the traditional Japanese beverages and snacks. Compared to noisy cafes that served alcohol and held rambunctious events, tea-drinking shops were quiet places for people to relax.
Hina's request caught her family by surprise. While the traditionally-minded Togo clan generally preferred tea over coffee, they would still drink the latter if someone offered the beverage to them. Then there was Ryoichi, who trusted coffee to keep him awake during night watches.
Only Hina rejected coffee outright. She had always complained about the drink smelling like burnt water and claimed it churned her frail stomach. And now she wanted to not only drink coffee, but run a coffee shop?
"Why do you want to open a shop, Hina-chan?" wondered her mother.
"While I was sick, I dreamed that I ran a kissaten," Hina lied. "It is the only thing I could remember from that time... It felt so real... After thinking about it, I think it's an omen from the kami that watch over us..."
The Togos were not superstitious. But they were devout Shintoists. They honored their ancestors, the most famous of whom dwelt in a popular shrine in Harajuku. Perhaps the Marshal Admiral himself dispatched the dream to his descendant. After all, Heihachiro Togo had studied in Britain, where he developed a taste for Western foodstuffs like curry and coffee.
And it was their darling Hina who begged for their aid. Ever since she had roused from her coma, she brought up her needs so very rarely that they happily made allowance for this rare expression of selfishness.
The Togo clan threw their energy and resources into making Hina's innocent wish come true. Her 'uncle' Takeshi Togo, 2nd Marquess Togo, paid for his niece's pet project out of his deep pockets. He and his younger brother, Hina's 'father' Vice Admiral Minoru Togo, pulled strings to get the permits approved. Her 'mother' extracted a discount from a Brazilian merchant who sold coffee by the bulk. And her 'brother' Ryoichi encouraged his navy friends to patronize the place whenever possible while also reminding them not to hit on his little sister lest he hit them.
Like her grandfather, Junior Admiral Hina Togo preferred coffee. She even knew a few barista tricks such as dark roasting coffee beans and using flannel to filter the grounds. Running a coffee house gave her an obvious reason to stockpile sizable amounts of an imported good for the dark day that Imperial Japan would cut itself off from almost the entire world. She did not look forward to subsisting on coffee made from roasted rice once the embargo turned into a blockade.
Her real reason for founding Hinata Kohi was to create a safehouse and base of operations for her resistance movement. Hina couldn't plot against the Imperial Japanese military in the Togo home because of her real fear that her mother or a servant might overhear them. She needed a place away from her family that she could secure from eavesdroppers and hide, say, certain protected cruisers who would otherwise stick out in Japan because of their Caucasian features.
By and large she succeeded in her goal. Hinata Kohi was staffed by souls she trusted with her life. She won them over the moment they crossed the boundary between this world and the next...
x---x---x
1 June 1940
Togo Shrine
Shibuya Ward, Empire of Japan
When Heihachiro Togo died in 1934, his family buried his cremated ashes in Tama Cemetery, the final resting place of many Japanese. Several years later, the Imperial Japanese Navy elevated him to the status of a Shinto kami and built a shrine in Harajuku district to honor his life's deeds and legacy.
While Togo believed he was Nelson reborn, he rejected any attempts to turn him into a god. But the IJN needed to compete with the Imperial Japanese Army enshrining Togo's land-based counterpart, General Maresuke Nogi. So, they waited until the Marshal Admiral was well and truly dead before taking advantage of his fame.
Back in her original timeline, Hina paid many visits to the Togo Shrine. She remembered strolling through the garden's wooden-planked paths, visiting the small museum dedicated to Marshal Admiral Togo, and praying to his enshrined kami at the temple. After the shipgirls awakened, Hina took Murakumo and some of the others there, playing tour guide and ignoring jokes about her marrying her secretary-shipgirl there.
The original complex burned down with the rest of Tokyo during the 1945 bombing campaign. The Togo Shrine they visited was a concrete reconstruction built during the Sixties, when Japan did some soul searching and rehabilitated what they could of their pre-war culture.
'I never thought I would get a chance to visit my ancestor's original shrine,' Hina thought as she strode between the red-painted legs of the traditional gate at the entrance.
Her pretense for going here was to thank her ancestor for helping her wake up from her coma. Hina insisted on going alone, claiming she didn't want to trouble her family and assuring her mother that she felt well enough to make the short trip by her lonesome.
Her real reason was the shrine's suitability for summoning Japanese shipgirls. The IJN may have raised the Togo Shrine out of interservice rivalry, but its ships admired the Nelson of the East to a fault. Only Mikasa's hull made for a better summoning spot, and Yokosuka was too far away for her family to permit a trip by her lonesome just two months after her coma.
Hina needed to summon shipgirls as soon as possible. Right now, she was alone, one woman against an empire. With even one shipgirl on her side, she would once more become a commander, an admiral with the power to change Japan's destiny.
The train ride to Harajuku took much longer than what she was accustomed to. Imperial Japan's rolling stock ran much slower than its future successor, and their smaller passenger cars cooled themselves with electric fans instead of air conditioning.
Still, Hina made it to Harajuku Station without trouble. A folding fan helped her cope with the heat during the trip. Once she alighted from the train, the Togo Shrine's main entrance was a short walk away. Her oil paper parasol kept the sun's rays off her head until she found a secluded spot far from potential prying eyes, a small clearing screened by trees and bamboo.
The summoning ritual worked best with physical catalysts. Summoners offered token amounts of fuel, ammunition, steel, and aluminum to increase the chances of materializing a shipgirl. Using artifacts taken from a warship's steel hull guaranteed summoning that particular ship's soul.
Hina lacked access to either conventional catalysts or artifacts. There was no legal way a civilian woman could get her hands on military supplies and equipment in Imperial Japan. As for artifacts, all the ships she could summon had either been sunk or scrapped years before her arrival.
Fortunately, she did possess an unconventional option for summoning Japanese shipgirls. After checking her surroundings one last time, she reached into her kimono's wide belt and withdrew the kaiken tucked between the sash and her robed body.
Hina discovered the dagger in her bedside drawer. She interpreted it as a traditional weapon intended for self-defense. The sheepish Ryoichi explained that he gave the kaiken to her as a prank before her coma. His sister's reaction to getting a knife infamous for its use in ritual suicide had been to chase her cackling brother around the dinner table with said dagger drawn.
'I don't think I'll ever get used to how Grandfather and Hina-chan got along...'
Hina didn't dare keep the kaiken in her handbag for fear that the guards would examine her belongings and find it there. But Japanese didn't like physical contact, so the chances of a guard frisking her body were slim.
'Thank you, Grandfather, Hina-chan,' the time-displaced Hina thought. 'I'll put your gift to the best use.'
Freed from its wooden sheath, the kaiken's blade gleamed in the sunlight. After slipping the scabbard into her bag, Hina slowly drew the knife's sharp edge across her left palm. While she winced as the knife cut into her skin and flesh, she managed to preserve some dignity by suppressing the urge to hiss.
'I should be more careful the next time I do this...'
Shinto considered blood impure and unclean. But blood was thicker than water. And the blood of the Nelson of the East flowed through Hina's veins. There were few better catalysts for summoning Japanese shipgirls than the blood of a Togo.
'Back in my timeline, Grandfather always insisted the spirit of his ship saved his life when his ship sank.' Enduring the pain in her hand, Hina wiped the kaiken's bloody edge with a handkerchief before sheathing it anew. 'Maya-sama confirmed it when I met her during the Abyssal War. She dragged Grandfather out of her sinking hull and threw him overboard. My country's shipgirls will keep the Gensui's descendants safe, even if it costs them their lives...'
She stretched out her left arm with her wounded palm facing downward to let the blood drip freeky. Once the red droplets splattered on the ground, she closed her eyes and quietly recited the prayer she had devised for the summoning ritual.
"Oh, Spirits of Seagoing Castles of Steel,
Hearken my humble appeal.
"Countless foes approach from all four directions
And they have torn away all my protections."
Hina came up with the prayer as a personal touch to the summoning ceremonies she had overseen. She believed shipgirls deserved respect and even reverence for leaving their well-deserved afterlife to answer humankind's cry for their protection. This was the least she could do for them as a supplicant.
"Thus, I turn to you once more in this, my darkest hour
And plead you lend me your power once more.
"Return to the Land of the Rising Sun,
Warship Goddesses of the Empire of Japan."
It was as if her lips poured her words straight into the listening ears of those goddesses. The moment Hina concluded her prayer, the warm June air abruptly stirred into a small tempest centered on her. The sudden updraft sent her long hair flaring upward like the wings of a startled blackbird.
'It worked!' she thought, recognizing one of the signs of a successful summon.
Four women of varying ages and appearances formed an orderly row before her grey eyes. Each woman bore the Rigging that defined them as kantai musume, ship-girls, steel warships reborn into human form, mankind's protectors against the hateful Shinkai, Abyssals.
'One aircraft carrier, one battleship or battlecruiser, one light cruiser, and one destroyer...'
"The great Miyuki-sama has arrived!"
The destroyer looked and dressed like a junior high school student, what with her white blouse and bluish skirt. Her tousled brown hair could use a thorough combing, but her huge smile and confident posture suggested she didn't care about small details like her messy mane.
Having commanded a squadron of the Fubuki class shipgirl in her timeline, Hina immediately recognized this destroyer's outfit as the same clothes worn by Murakumo's sisters. And since only one of the Special-Type destroyers was lost before the Pacific War...
"Oh? Well, isn't this a nice surprise..."
At first Hina thought Akagi had appeared before her in a bizarre violation of the general rule that only sunken or scrapped ships could appear as shipgirls. The most egregious example was USS Iowa, who had only shown up immediately after the Abyssals sank the museum ship to the bottom of her berth in the Port of Los Angeles.
Then the admiral caught the differences between Akagi and this woman: longer locks, the knowing look and teasing smile, and a different Rigging with a trio of superimposed flight decks and no visible island superstructure.
"Finally, I have been completed..."
In a similar vein, the shipgirl standing next to Akagi's look-alike strongly bore a strong resemblance to Kaga. Yet her ponytail was also longer and thicker and dangled from the right side of her head, and her openly smug expression ran counter to the ex-battleship's stoic demeanor.
Furthermore, this woman wore an entirely different yet still-familiar outfit: a white sleeveless top with a striking similarity to a modern sports bra, black arm sleeves that covered her muscular arms, a grey metal corset that exposed her sculpted abdomen, and a pleated white skirt.
"..."
The final shipgirl wore a formal orange-and-black kimono. She wore her dark brown hair in a style that looked like the wigs worn by geisha on official duties. A green willow leaf decoration adorned her coif; Hina recalled that the willow represented June and the rainy season.
While she had met these shipgirls before, Hina didn't know them personally. The three older women served under her Yokosuka-based colleague and professional rival, Hiroshi Goto, much to the delight of their younger sisters in the same fleet. The destroyer likewise belonged to a different naval base.
Still, the weight on her shoulders felt much lighter. Beggars were not choosers, as Riain liked to remind her back in her timeline. Hina would have settled for the warships her ancestor commanded at Tsushima, so getting more recent ships made the ache in her wounded hand feel better.
'I am an Admiral once more.' Realizing she had been holding her breath since her prayer ended, Hina let out a relieved sigh. 'With their help, I can save Japan from itself.'
"Were you the one who summoned us?" asked the shrine maiden on behalf of her companions.
"Yes." After checking her surroundings for any onlookers or eavesdroppers, Hina saluted. "I am Hina Togo, the descendant of Marshal-Admiral Heihachiro Togo."
Name-dropping her ancestor's name did the trick. All four shipgirls stared at her with varying degrees of shock.
"You're the Marshal-Admiral's descendant?" Miyuki-sama's lower jaw looked ready to hit the ground.
"Yes. Here is proof of it-"
Hina kept her personal identification in her bag to prove her identity. As she moved to retrieve the papers, the sharp sting and wet feeling on her left palm reminded her that she had cut herself with the knife in the grip of her right hand.
"Oh!" That came from the shipgirl who looked like Kaga but dressed like Nagato. "Your hand is bleeding!"
The geisha did her better. Even as her other companions gasped at Hina's wound, she stepped forward with a handkerchief. She bound the injured hand wordlessly and with such expertise that Hina barely felt the swift first aid treatment.
"Thank you." Hina had been so happy to summon shipgirls that she somehow forgot about her wound and the knife she used to cut herself. Some eidetic memory she possessed if the obvious slipped past her. Riain would never let her live this down and she was sure that jerk Goto would use this incident against her...
The geisha's only response was a curt nod. She stepped back to give Hina space.
'She looks familiar. Wait, isn't she-'
Suppressing her initial urge to react, Hina handed her personal identification to the geisha as her wordless way of thanking her for the first aid. The latter's brown eyes briefly roved over the papers before she nodded and handed the documents to Akagi's doppelganger, who shared it with Kaga's near-double.
"This looks legitimate."
"Yes, everything looks in order…"
"I never thought I'd get the chance to meet the granddaughter of the legendary Marshal-Admiral..." Miyuki didn't spare even a glance for the identification. She was too busy fawning over a descendant of the foremost representative of Japan's greatest generation.
Hina smiled at the enthusiastic teenager. Miyuki was nothing like Murakumo, but the older Fubuki
class destroyer was endearing in her own way.
"We should get your hand treated properly, Togo-sama," Kaga's mirror image mentioned as she returned the papers to their owner.
"It would be a shame for a beautiful woman like you to bear a scar there," the shrine maiden agreed.
"I'm fine for now." Relegated to a desk job before the Abyssal War while Riain and Goto had fought on the frontlines, Hina had envied her colleagues winning their spurs in real battles. She considered her self-inflicted cut the next best thing to getting wounded in action. "I believe we should introduce ourselves to each other first."
"As you wish, Togo-sama." The shrine maiden bowed gracefully. "I am the aircraft carrier Amagi, the name ship of my class. I look forward to finally forming a carrier division."
"And I am super dreadnought Tosa." Kaga's older sister thumped her fist upon her impressive chest. "If you are my Admiral, I expect the heavens out of you!"
"Fourth of the Special-type destroyers, Miyuki-sama!" The young destroyer posed exuberantly. "I'm ready for action!"
Hina turned her gaze to the last member of the shipgirl quartet. At last her memory put a name to that different-looking yet familiar face. Many shipgirls made up the Combined Fleet, but only one proclaimed herself an idol.
The fourth shipgirl bowed deeply. She shared the same voice as her uptime counterpart, but she looked and sounded so much more serious, more like her younger sister who styled herself a samurai.
"And I am the light cruiser-"
x---x---x
30 November 1941
Hinata Kohi
Metropolitan Tokyo, Empire of Japan
It was Kana Sutezawa's turn to man the phone in the second-floor office after entertaining off-duty Imperial Japanese Army soldiers. While they belonged to a rival service, the infantrymen were customers and behaved nicely for Rikugun soldiers.
Besides, Kana had never served in the Imperial Japanese Navy and now belonged to a different force. She lacked the deep attachment to her service and prerequisite hostility toward the Imperial Army.
Like any task assigned to her, she took the job of secretary seriously. At the very first ring, Kana snatched the handset and brought it to her ear with a single smooth motion of her right arm.
"Good evening, this is
Hinata Kohi," she greeted in the same soft voice she used in public.
"Naka-san! It's me, Miyuki!"
The temporary secretary frowned. Miyuki had forgotten about the rules on operational security again. The Special-type Destroyer was too gung-ho for her own good.
Well, that was why the IJN built destroyer flotilla leaders like Naka. She and her fellow light cruisers reined the rambunctious destroyers and kept them out of trouble.
"Miyu," she coolly reminded her caller, putting steel into her tone. "My name is Kana, not Naka."
Hina had repeatedly stressed the importance of operational secrecy. The Special Higher Police - Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu, Tokko for short, the civilian secret police of Imperial Japan - was always on the lookout for traitors. If they suspected anyone of treason, not even the Togo name would deter the secret police from trying to arrest their targets. And while the shipgirls could shrug off anything mere policemen could throw at them, Hina was an ordinary human with only a basic knowledge of unarmed self-defense.
"Oh!" Miyuki immediately became contrite. "I'm really sorry, Sutezawa-sama..."
Naka let the younger shipgirl stew for several heartbeats. She wasn't her Jintsuu whom Hina had described as a Prussian drill master. Among other things, Naka considered Jintsuu a softie who went easy on her subordinates. Naka entertained no such illusions about destroyers, no matter how cute they acted outside combat - or even during battle. One did not go from
maika to
geisha without a healthy dose of discipline.
"I expect you to remember next time," she finally allowed. "Now, why have you called at this hour?"
"Um, Hina-nee is coming over there in a bit," Miyuki mumbled. "She's going to check on how business is doing."
Naka could read between the destroyer's lines. Today was Hina's day off. Her admiral would only return if something critical came up. And while the day that would forever live in infamy was still a week away, Naka had found herself on edge all month long.
'Admiral Yamamoto hasn't called for me…'
"Understood, Miyu," she replied. " I'll inform the others."
"Thank you, Sutezawa-sama. Oh, can you also get copies of the evening news for everyone?"
"I will do that."
After concluding the call, Naka left the office and headed back to the ground floor. She found the glasses-wearing Momi, the lead ship of the
Momi class destroyers, busy in her cover identity as trainee waitress Momiko Enoki, the oldest of the Enoki sisters who led her siblings to Tokyo in search of jobs to support their impoverished family.
"Momiko, I want you to buy copies of the evening news. If you notice anything odd, keep it secret from your sisters until we tell you it's fine to share it," Naka added. She trusted Momi, having personally instructed the destroyer to serve as her adjutant.
"Yes, Sutezawa-sama." The second-class destroyer left at a leisurely pace while Naka put on an apron to cover for Momi during her absence.
By the time Hina Togo and Miyuki stepped into Hinata Kohi two hours later, the older shipgirls knew about Imperial Japan's declaration of war on the Allied powers. So did Momi, sworn to secrecy by Naka and doing a good job of hiding it from her three younger sisters, Warabi, Kaya, and Nashi.
"Welcome back, Togo-sama!" Naka and her sisters-in-arms greeted.
"Good evening, everyone." Hina took the time to chat with every customer and get their feedback on service.
Hinata Kohi was just a cover for her resistance group, but it needed to look like a real business. And she enjoyed getting to know new faces and rekindling old bonds.
"Akagi-san, Sato-san, Sutezawa-san, I'd like to have a word with you in the office," she told the older shipgirls. "Kawana-san, please look after the shop in the meantime. Miyu-chan, would you mind helping the others?"
"Yes, Hina-nee!" Miyuki scampered off to change into her waitress uniform. Like the Momi sisters, she worked as a part-time trainee at
Hinata Kohi to free up the older shipgirls for missions. But her primary role was Hina's bodyguard, much like Murakumo had done for the admiral back in Hina's home timeline.
Hina followed her three employees to the office on the second floor. Naka locked the door and stood guard near the entrance, one ear taking in the briefing while the other listened for potential eavesdroppers at the door.
"Everyone," Hina began. "As you know, our country has declared war on the United States of America. The Imperial Japanese military has already attacked various American and British possessions, including Pearl Harbor, Wake, and the Philippines."
Ama Akagi and Sato Satomi - Amagi and Tosa, respectively - had already gotten over their initial shock at the premature declaration of war. Still, the realization that Japan was now at war affected them. Open concern marred the usually flirty carrier's lovely features, while the boisterous battleship dropped the brave face she kept up for her customers' sake let her internal scowl show.
'They are right to be worried,' Hina thought.
'Their younger sisters are part of Pearl Harbor strike force. They know that Akagi and Kaga were sunk seven months later at Midway when the Americans struck back.'
"The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor took place a week earlier than in my timeline." Out of the corner of her eye, Hina noticed the corners of Naka's mouth curled slightly downward. "However, we made plans that accounted for this possibility. I want to go over those plans to refresh our memories. Perhaps we can find new ways to improve them."
"Of course, Admiral!"
Six months had passed since Hina summoned her first four shipgirls. She now commanded every steel ship that Imperial Japan had lost or scrapped before the dawn of the 19th century. Her fleet of pre-dreadnoughts, steel-clad cruisers, and early destroyers made for an impressive sight on paper.
But the victors of the First Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, and the Great War were horrifically obsolete by the standards of the Second World War. Hina's most modern and powerful shipgirls used outdated equipment from the Interwar period. Even Miyuki, the newest and most modern hull, lacked even primitive radar and sonar sets, and her torpedoes were older models that preceded the deadly Type 93 Oxygen Torpedoes.
Instead, Hina positioned most of her shipgirls near the various naval bases in the Japanese Home Islands and its colonies of Taiwan, Korea, and Manchukuo. Disguised as ordinary women, they gathered accurate information about the IJN's movements and dispatched their findings to their admiral.
"Soya-san hasn't sent any word yet," Amagi reminded her admiral as they went over their roster.
"The Americans would have locked down the Hawaiian Islands after the attack on Pearl Harbor," Hina replied. "But Soya-san should be fine. The Americans will be looking for Japanese and German spies, not Russian expatriates."
Until a few hours ago, Soya had been one of Hina's most critical agents. The protected cruiser had reincarnated as a woman with pale skin, red curls, and sky blue eyes who stood head and shoulders over her admiral, and Hina herself already towered over most Japanese of this era thanks to her modern diet.
Some Japanese-built shipgirls did possess exotic looks like nonstandard hair and eye colors. Hina's old secretary ship, Murakumo, had hair as white as snow and pupils that gleamed like gold. But Murakumo still bore strong Japanese features, whereas Soya looked very Slavic.
After all, the latter was the Imperial Russian Navy cruiser Varyag. Sunk in Chemulpo Bay during the Russo-Japanese War, Varyag rose from the depths to serve the navy that defeated her before returning to her original owners during the Great War.
Hina had been stunned when the
kreyser answered her summons as Soya. She didn't think a Russian shipgirl would heed the call of a Japanese admiral. But Varyag assured Hina that she respected the IJN of Heihachiro Togo's era as an honorable adversary. She definitely preferred fighting alongside the Marshal-Admiral's descendant as Soya rather than serve under the godless Soviets.
Hiding the painfully obvious
gaijin Varyag in Japan until they could smuggle her to the Philippines had been a dangerous ordeal. But once she reached Honolulu via a steamer from Manila, Soya gave her admiral trusted eyes on the Pacific Theater's ground zero, the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Disguised as Russian expatriate Varvara Rudnev and working various odd jobs to support herself, the Russian cruiser kept track of both the Japanese spies and the U.S. Navy in Honolulu. Soya sent coded reports via civilian telegraph to the Soviet-held northern Sakhalin, where trusted contacts passed her messages to a waiting destroyer in the Japanese-owned southern half of the island. The shipgirl would sail for Honshu under the cover of night, take a train to Tokyo, and deliver the message to
Hinata Kohi. Any orders would take the reverse route.
Now that Imperial Japan and the United States were at war, it would become much more dangerous for Soya to contact Hina, even taking into consideration their roundabout method. Before they parted, the JMSDF admiral had told her Russian subordinate to lie low once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Americans might still try to arrest Soya on suspicion that she was a Soviet spy. And while the cruiser could fight her way past anything short of another shipgirl, any conflict and casualties would make them hostile and less receptive to working together in the future.
"Former Vice Admiral Sakonji remains in charge of the North Sakhalin Oil Company," Tosa continued. "Iwate reported that the government hasn't contacted them yet."
"Tell them to stay on alert," Hina told her. "The IJN accelerated its attack plan for Pearl Harbor. Who's to say the government won't try to recruit him earlier? He's our best bet to get to the Emperor and bring the militarists to heel."
Other shipgirls monitored influential Japanese personalities with moderate or liberal leanings. One example of the IJN's moderate flag officers during the Interwar years was Seizo Sakonji. His honest support for the Washington Naval Treaty led to his forced retirement in 1934. Right now, he currently ran a Japanese oil company that cooperated with the Soviets to tap the oil fields in Sakhalin.
In Hina's timeline, the Konoe government had approached Sakonji in 1941 and asked him to serve as the Minister of Commerce of Industry. Eventually rising to the position of Minister of State, he helped secure Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. Sakonji's pursuit of peace during his tenure saved him from prosecution by the victorious Allies after the war. He even helped found the JMSDF that Hina continued to serve and embody in this dark valley.
Sakonji wasn't alone. The similarly retired Admiral Takeshi Takarabe was an Anglophile who nearly got assassinated for his adherence to the London Treaty and support for civilian control of the military.
And there was Teikichi Hori, who not only backed the same moderate position but also enjoyed a close friendship with none other than Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the IJN's commander-in-chief. Indeed, Hori insisted Yamamoto remain in the Navy when the latter loyally wished to join him in forced retirement. More importantly, the two friends maintained an active correspondence until Yamamoto's death in 1943. Hori now served as the president of the Uraga Dock Company, one of the world's biggest and best private shipbuilders.
These moderate naval officers had opposed war with the United States and United Kingdom on both moral and practical grounds. Once the extreme Fleet Faction took control of the Navy during the early 1930s, they bowed out of active service and sought different ways to serve their country.
While the moderates possessed considerable economic and political clout, the militarists controlled the armed forces. The latter were also far too willing to resort to violence to get their way. Even notional allies were not safe from intimidation and assassination.
That was where Hina came in. Her shipgirls were far from modern and her fleet lacked air power outside of Amagi's air group, but even a 1910s destroyer could rout a conventional IJA or SNLF battalion by herself. And while it sounded very bleak, Hina knew she could get modern reinforcements once the IJN started taking losses against the Allies.
Combining her shipgirls' firepower with the soft power of the moderates could create a proper domestic resistance that was loyal to the Japanese people, unafraid of the militarists, and acceptable to Allied opinion post-war.
To sway the moderate officers, Hina sent the shipgirls of their former commands. The armored cruiser
Iwate currently worked as a maid in Sakonji's firm. Similarly, the destroyer Niji and the pre-dreadnought battleship Fuji lived near Takarabe. Mori was won over when Hina invited him to meet aboard the
Mikasa, where she introduced him to both the pre-dreadnought and Amagi. And so on and so forth.
Hina could expect more recruits in the future if they survived their fall from grace in this warped timeline. The liberal Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue currently commanded the IJN Fourth Fleet. In Hina's timeline, Hiei's favorite admiral was relieved of command and recalled home after losing the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. If the Pacific war progressed alongside similar lines, the disgraced Inoue would find protected cruisers Takachiho and Suma waiting for him with an offer he couldn't refuse.
As the militarists discredited themselves with the Emperor by failing to stop the eventual Allied counter-offensives, Hina would prompt the moderates to arrange an Imperial interview. She would reveal her identity to Hirohito, tell him about shipgirls, and make her case for surrendering to the Allies at the earliest possible time.
If Hirohito persisted in the delusion that Imperial Japan could get a negotiated peace by holding out against the "soft-hearted" Allies, Hina would share the gruesome details of Operations Downfall and Coronet, including the planned use of as many as 17 atomic bombs and chemical defoliants to break the Japanese will to fight. And to twist the
kaiken even further, she would also mention the Soviet plans to invade Hokkaido with Allied assistance while carefully neglecting to mention that said invasion plans were merely mental exercises in Stalin's paranoid mind. Anything to convince the Emperor to accept surrender was fair game.
Hina personally didn't care if Hirohito remained Emperor. As long as the remaining Imperial Japanese military obeyed him before the Americans could start firebombing and nuking and starving Japanese civilians, he could sit on the Chrysanthemum Throne for the rest of his life.
But if he refused… Or if he pretended to go along with the surrender only to betray them at the last second…
...The strings on Naka's shamisen were not limited to playing soothing music, and Akihito could serve as the figurehead of the postwar monarchy even better than his father.
Speaking of Naka, the light cruiser continued to look disenchanted. Something had been nagging at the shipgirl since the meeting started.
"Is there something wrong, Naka?" Hina asked.
"My apologies, Admiral," Naka muttered. "I didn't hear anything from Admiral Yamamoto this month. If I had met with him, I could have found out about his plan to launch Operation AI earlier."
The commander-in-chief of the IJN Combined Fleet was not perfect. Yamamoto was an inveterate gambler and often joked that he wanted to become a casino owner in Monaco. He also loved geisha more than he did his own wife. While he didn't sleep with them, he did spend much of his free time in their company and poured his heart out to them, even as he demanded discounts on their manicure service because he lost two fingers during the Battle of Tsushima.
Hina took full advantage of that weakness by ordering Naka to insinuate herself in Yamamoto's good graces. The light cruiser was a skilled geisha and mastered the admiral's favorite game, bridge, by playing with Hina and her fleet mates. Naka's mysterious origin quickly drew Yamamoto's interest while her natural intelligence held his attention.
Unfortunately, Naka achieved her intelligence coup by stepping on the toes of the other geisha who enjoyed Yamamoto's patronage. The admiral's historical favorite, Chiyoko Kawai, felt so offended by the usurpation that she took drastic action to get rid of the unwanted competition.
Naka had reported spotting suspicious men looking for her while she was returning to the apartment Hina rented for her shipgirls. Since Hina forbade her from doing anything that might draw attention, Naka simply flipped their positions and tailed those men back to their employer.
"It's all right, Naka," Hina assured the sour-looking light cruiser. "Yamamoto patronizes many geisha, and he's only known you for a few months. He was bound to visit the others to keep them happy."
"I should have arranged for Kawai to have an accident back in October," Naka groused. "That would have gotten her out of my way."
Hina fought the urge to wince at Naka's candid cold-bloodedness. The Naka from her timeline was an upbeat idol who wouldn't hurt anything that wasn't an Abyssal. While she appreciated the professional efficiency of this Naka, the shipgirl's ruthlessness sometimes gave her pause.
"Naka-san," she sighed.
"I wasn't going to kill her, Admiral," Naka promised. "But she would not have been able to paint Yamamoto's fingernails with a sprained wrist."
"Why are you so angry with her?"
"She tricked me, Admiral." Naka's eyes flashed like gunfire from her 14cm battery. "Yamamoto always visits geisha before he goes back to sea. During our last session together, I made sure to stalemate our Go match to give him the incentive of returning to finish our game. If he had visited me earlier than he had visited Kawai in your timeline, I would have known something was up. But I didn't hear from him or my contacts in the Floating World, so I spent my time helping out at
Hinata Kohi."
Hina saw it, too. Hindsight was 20/20.
"So you suspect Kawai-san did something to grab Yamamoto's attention and keep you from learning about his visit," she prompted the displeased light cruiser.
"Yes. Kawai is a popular person in the Floating World. She has the influence to keep the news of Yamamoto's visit from reaching me."
"I never imagined politics in the pleasure district could influence military intelligence operations." Hina gave the matter some thought. "In the future, we will take Kawai's interference into consideration. Naka, I want you to come up with a discreet and non-lethal proposal to handle her. You're the expert in that field, so I leave it up to you."
"Understood, Admiral." Naka bowed. "I won't fail you again."
"I know you won't, Naka." Hina cast her gaze among the other shipgirls. "Is there anything else we should discuss?"
"It's not related to our plans, but I'm worried about Ryoichi-sama." Amagi dropped her usual sensuous disposition to show her honest concern. "Will he be all right, Hina-oneechan?"
The aircraft carrier wasn't the only one with vested interest in Ryoichi Togo's immediate future. Naka went from apologetic to quietly intense at the mention of Hina's grandfather.
"If the IJN followed the same plan as in my time, Grandfather is probably in the Pescadores aboard Maya-sama," Hina replied. "He should be fine for now. The Philippines Force didn't face heavy opposition during the Lingayen landings because they caught the defenders off-guard and American torpedoes at this point are practically useless."
I can't keep your country from falling into Imperial Japanese hands, Captain Darren, she thought, remembering the Chinese Filipino commander who had humorously described Murakumo as 'evil Japanese Downes' during a joint operation between the US, Japanese, and Philippine navies.
But Naka managed to eliminate Masanobu Tsuji when he returned here to plan the assassination of Prime Minister Konoye. Without that vile snake undermining General Homma's authority and encouraging other IJA officers to commit atrocities against Americans and Filipinos after the fall of Bataan, there should be fewer deaths during the Death March and the Japanese occupation. I can sleep easier knowing that your grandfather's family and many more good people will survive the war...
"That makes me relieved," Amagi sighed deeply while placing a hand on her chest.
"You should have told him the truth before he returned to service, Hina-nee," Tosa chimed in.
Hina fought down the urge to frown. This was where the Japanese shipgirls' instinctive admiration of the Togo clan worked against her. Why settle for one Togo when they could get more of the Nelson of the East's descendants on their side?
They had immediately written off her great-grandfathers as lost causes. Minoru and Takeshi Togo inherited their father's conservative stance and loyalty to the imperial government. They benefited from the Empire and would never act against the Emperor.
Hina's grandfather was much more promising. Ryoichi Togo went through the motions expected of an imperial servant, but he didn't share the fanaticism of many Japanese. He treated foreigners with utmost respect and behaved like a gentleman to the incognito shipgirls he met during his visits to
Hinata Kohi. And Hina knew that Ryoichi was just as kind at home as he was in the public eye.
Understandably, Hina's shipgirls fell for him hard. Amagi made no secret about her desire to bed Ryoichi. Tosa considered him a good match for either herself, her younger sister Kaga, or both of them. Naka put 110 percent effort into every performance he attended. And the destroyers all treated him like a big brother.
Recruiting Ryoichi would not only make her shipgirls happy, but give an insight into any IJN operations that
Maya participated in. Hina even suspected her grandfather would agree with their goals. At the very least, he would not turn them over to the secret police for torture and execution.
And yet...
"He thinks I'm his adorable sister, the girl who teases him about being a siscon bachelor, the girl who chased him with the knife he gifted her." Hina addressed herself as much as she did Tosa. "How would he react if he learned a stranger had traveled to the past, replaced
his Hina-chan, and pretended to be her with amnesia?"
'In my timeline, Grandfather was an only child,' she thought.
'He didn't have a younger sister who was also named Hina.'
Yet Hina-chan existed here in the past. And going by her family's memories, she behaved very differently from the woman in her body. Despite being a career sailor, Admiral Togo would never even dream of threatening physical violence on anyone, even her rival Goto. In contrast, Hina-chan saw nothing wrong in chasing her brother with the
keiken he had pranked her with.
'And she disappeared because of me.' Hina stared at her palms, the hands of her innocent grandaunt who never existed in her timeline, gentle hands she had repeatedly cut open to call forth the souls of Imperial Japan's warships.
'Her brain fever put her in a coma, which is probably the only reason I could take over her body. I possess none of her memories, so my consciousness must have overwritten hers. And she definitely existed because my grandfather and great-grandfather remembered "me" acting differently...
'My grandfather's sister is gone. And I'm responsible for it. I didn't intend to replace her, but she disappeared because of me. I killed her.
'I'm willing to do whatever it takes to save Japan, even if I have to destroy the entire Imperial Japanese military. But I cannot face my grandfather and tell him that his sister disappeared… no, died because of me. Not until I've saved Japan.'
Her hands closed into small fists. Hina could feel her meticulously trimmed fingernails press into her slightly-scarred palms.
'Who else will save my country and my people? Who else will care about them?'
Fair hands cupped her clenched fists between their warm fingers. The startled Hina looked up to find Amagi giving her a sisterly smile.
"You're not just a stranger to Ryoichi-sama, Hina-oneechan," the aircraft carrier assured. "You're his granddaughter. His descendant. And blood is thicker than water. You proved that when you summoned us. You are a Togo. A part of his family."
Amagi misunderstood the reason for her fugue. But Hina drew a measure of relief from the shipgirl's honest concern. Her bloodline may have made it possible for Japan to fall into the Dark Valley, but being a Togo also gave her the power to change her people's future.
"I'm from a different future," she did persist, but weakly. "A future that may never come to pass because we will change so much."
"Some things never change." Tosa clapped a companionable hand on Hina's shoulder and gave her admiral a reassuring squeeze. "Ryoichi-sama was a good man in your timeline. You yourself told us that he never hated the Americans for killing his friends or sinking
Maya during the war. Well, he is a good man here, too. We have all seen it for ourselves."
'They are probably right. Perhaps I am being scared for no reason.'
"Did Maya-chan ever return to Japan before she sank in your timeline?" Naka asked.
Grateful for the escape route charted by the light cruiser, Hina reviewed her photographic memory. She quickly found the relevant datum from
Maya's tabular record of movement, having read the documentation as a child after her grandfather told her tales of his wartime service aboard the heavy cruiser.
"Maya-sama returned to Yokosuka a number of times before she sank in the Palawan Passage 1944," she replied. "The earliest was for a refit that lasted from March 19 to 28, 1942."
"Then you should visit your grandfather when Maya-chan returns to port," Amagi advised with a persuasive squeeze of the hands she still held captive in her own.
"We don't know if that schedule will hold true," Hina remonstrated. "The Combined Fleet attacked Pearl Harbor early."
"Which means Maya-chan will return earlier!" Tosa patted her admiral's shoulder enthusiastically.
Hina opened her mouth to protest that leap of logic. Then she thought better of it.
"Very well," she conceded. "When Grandfather returns, I'll meet with him and tell him the truth about our plans."
The relieved looks on Amagi, Tosa, and Naka's faces made her decision worth it.
"If it makes you feel better, Hina-oneechan, I'll go with you," Naka offered.
"You just want the chance to spend time with my grandfather," Hina said dryly.
"You're not wrong," the light cruiser confirmed.
"Ah, no fair, Naka-chan!" Amagi protested. "Why do I have to stay here while you get to form a threesome with Ryoichi-sama and Hina-nee?"
"Because you're
Hinata Kohi's manager, Amagi-san," Naka pointed out to her rival in Ryoichi's love. "I'm just a passing-through geisha. And I'm not interested in Hina-nee that way," she added with a slight grimace.
"No seducing my grandfather, Naka-chan," Hina told the all-too-clever cruiser while reminiscing about how Murakumo would firmly intercede on her behalf when her own love life came up for discussion.
"Of course, Hina-oneechan." Naka smiled crookedly. "But what if
he seduces me?"
"I know Grandfather's type of woman." It was Hina's turn to flash a knowing smile. "And you don't look anything like Grandmother."
'Thank goodness I never told Naka that Grandfather liked traditional Japanese women like Grandmother,' she thought while pretending to ignore Naka's flabbergasted reaction. '
Or that Grandfather asked me about her after he met her for the first time.
'I suppose Naka is already in Grandfather's strike zone since she acts like a Yamato Nadeshiko in public. But her ruthless side might shock him… If he does join us, I will have to prepare him to accept all of Naka...'
"If we're truly done..." Seeing no objections, Hina stood up. "I'll inform Kawachi about our situation."
The old battleship was just as eager to serve on the frontline as the others, but Kawachi lacked a suitable partner who matched her speed. Her sister ship
Settsu remained afloat in IJN service, the slower pre-dreadnoughts would hold her back, and she couldn't keep up with the newer capital ships like Amagi, Tosa, and the battlecruisers.
Thus, Kawachi acted as Hina's reserve, allowing Amagi and Tosa to sortie in an emergency while leaving a big-gun capital warship available as a last-ditch force. She usually stayed in
Hinata Kohi''s kitchen, laboring under the guise of cook and barista Misaki Kawana. The battleship even developed a taste for coffee that exceeded Hina's thirst for the beverage.
"I'll tell my sisters about our plans," Amagi offered. Atago and Ashitaka - the youngest battlecruiser insisted on using her original name because it shared the same first letter as her older sisters - were in Taiwan right now, accompanied by the Kawakaze (1917) sisters and the four Isokaze (1916) girls. Their task force kept an eye on the Philippines Force - and, by extension, Ryoichi Togo - and could steam back to the Home Islands at high speeds if necessary.
"Thank you, Amagi."
As her shipgirls followed her out of the office and down the stairs, Hina remained in deep thought.
'I'm walking a fine line between my timeline and this one. Every step I take blurs the already flimsy border between history and uncertainty. As I change the present, I become less sure of how the future will unfold.
'But I'm not afraid. I'm not alone. I have the girls with me. Schreiber-san is surely doing his part on the other side of the world. Perhaps there are others trying to do the same as well.
'We can do this,' Hina swore.
'We can save Japan...'
X===X===X
That Kind-Hearted Light
A Changing Destiny Omake
Chapter 2
X===X===X
8 December, 1941
Several hundred miles from Wake
Western Pacific
The last thing Kaga clearly remembered was the wet darkness of the Pacific Ocean as its cold depths swallowed up her sizzling hull.
"Here's your order-what? Kaga-chan?"
The operation to capture Wake started out so well. Her still-significant air group worked together with Hiryuu's planes to give the American defenders a sound thrashing in the skies over the contested island. Thanks to their air superiority, the transports and their escort cruisers came within gun range of Wake practically unmolested.
Then the US Navy appeared like the cavalry in their westerns. Navy Wildcats joined their Marine brethren in dueling Zero Fighters while Devastators pressed suicidal attack runs on the Japanese carriers without flinching. And while the Japanese combat air patrol devastated the American torpedo bombers boring straight for Kaga, the Zero pilots failed to notice the helldivers stooping down on their carrier Kaga like hunting falcons on a rabbit.
Kaga was a samurai, and she kept her stoic demeanor as a battleship despite her conversion into a far flimsier aircraft carrier. She did not cry out when American bombs punched through her wooden flight deck with such force that her aviation fuel tanks cracked open. Nor did she scream as the Mark 65s detonated within her hangars, igniting flammables and volatiles such as ammunition, fuel vapor, spare aircraft, and crewmen.
Despite her lack of visceral reaction to fatal injuries, Kaga was dead in the water and knew it. As the destroyer
Kasumi hastily took off her surviving crew, the dying carrier made the most of what little time remained before they scuttled her hull to keep her out of American hands.
'Hiryuu, don't forget my words… I hold you to your promise...'
Kaga did not fear death. Like any samurai, she considered life brilliant, delicate, and transient like the cherry blossoms her people cherished. Age and wisdom tempered her enthusiasm, as did the blood that covered her figurative hands ever since her air group deliberately attacked neutral shipping in the Yangtze River, including the USS
Panay in a dark prelude to the later all-out assault on Pearl Harbor. She would never regret her actions, but neither would she ever feel pride in slaughtering ships and humans.
'Akagi-san, if you're safe then it's fine... I'm going first... I will be waiting for you...
And she knew what to expect. Several Japanese warships had sunk and were raised up to continue serving the IJN. Perhaps the most famous victim was Mikasa herself; the Marshal-Admiral's prized flagship sank at her mooring in Sasebo less than a week after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the victim of an accidental magazine explosion. And Mikasa had been willing to share what she remembered of the somber experience before the Navy retired her from active service and made her into a museum ship in Yokosuka.
'Mother, I'm so sorry for hurting you this way… Please stay safe...'
Kaga would not get the second chance at life that Mikasa had enjoyed. Unlike the inland waters at Sasebo or Pearl Harbor, the Pacific was many miles deep. Her underwater grave would lay far beyond the reach of man.
She watched from her vantage point within her abandoned bridge tower as Kasumi pulled away from her burning hull at high speed. The distraught grey-haired spirit of the
Asashio class destroyer stood on top of her own bridge, furiously rubbing her right forearm across her face.
'It's all right, Kasumi-chan,' Kaga whispered even as
Kasumi's forward amidship torpedo launcher trained on her. 'This was not your fault. We are at war. I do not blame you for this, so you should not lay the blame on yourself, even if that is what the admirals and sailors claim.'
Four 1,000 pound high-explosive warheads tore open her port side. Much like before, Kaga gnashed her teeth together to stifle her natural urge to scream. Her steel hull listed toward her wounded side, but she fought the urge to roll over like a cowed dog. When the waves finally washed over her the tips of her radio aerials, she managed to keep her dignity by going down more or less upright.
'Goodbye...'
"Hina-nee! I need your help! Kaga-chan is in trouble! You have to come here immediately!"
Wreckage trailed Kaga on her one-way trip to the seabed miles below. Cold seawater sluiced into every natural port and gaping hole. The flood rushed through open hatches and passageways, caring with it oil and blood and bodies and anything not bolted down. In her boiler rooms, the seawater hissed upon reaching her disabled boilers. The lack of steam explosions was a small mercy that she didn't notice.
"Hang in there a little while longer, Kaga-chan! My admiral is almost here!"
As her consciousness faded, Kaga thought she could hear a voice calling her name. It didn't belong to Akagi or Hiryuu or any of the other warships she knew.
Yet even though she had never heard the voice before, she knew who was talking to her. Only one ship would ever worry about her like this.
'Ah… Tosa-oneechan… I truly am dying if I'm hearing your voice...'
"Kaga-chan!"
'But it's all right…' In the darkness of the flooded bridge, no one could see the small smile form on the bloody lips of the faint spirit. 'We'll finally be together… Oneechan...'
And then everything went dark…
x---x---x
"Oh, Spirits of Seagoing Castles of Steel, hearken my humble appeal!"
That was strange. Mikasa had described sinking as a quiet blackness that only ended when her hull breached the surface of the sea once more. Kaga should not hear anything, much less anyone.
Unless… Unless she was being raised much like Mikasa had been resurrected from the shallow waters of Sasebo. But that should be impossible. The nearest friendly port was thousands of miles away. And even the combined might of the world's navies couldn't pull her free of the western Pacific's abyssal plain.
"Countless foes approach from all four directions and they have torn away all my protections!"
Kaga did not recognize the voice of the praying woman. Yet she found herself captivated by her warmth. The more she listened to the prayer, the more she wanted to answer. As if it was her duty as a warship of Japan to accept that call to arms.
[I am firmly convinced that I am the re-incarnation of Horatio Nelson…]
"Thus, I turn to you once more in this, my darkest hour, and plead you lend me your power once more!"
And so she pulled her shattered self together again. Pulled her reconstituted hull out of Yomi-ni-kuni, the World of Darkness. Pulled herself back into the world of light and warmth.
"Return to the Land of the Rising Sun! Carrier Kaga of the Empire of Japan!"
"Please come, Kaga-chan!"
x---x---x
8 December, 1941
Hinata Kohi
Metropolitan Tokyo, Empire of Japan
Kaga had seen office spaces before. Her steel hull had the military equivalents that her officers used for meetings and paperwork. But the office she now stood in had concrete walls and a wooden floor instead of steel bulkheads and deck, and it also featured amenities and frivolous decorations that would never pass strict military regulations.
'How strange,' she thought.
'Am I outside my hull somehow? That should be impossible. And yet I know I sank-'
"Kaga-chan?"
She stared into a mirror. The woman's hair was much longer, her chest was bigger, and the arms protruding out of her Western blouse's sleeves showed more muscle. But she still looked like Kaga if the spirit could grow older.
Kaga knew. Despite never having seen this woman before, the carrier knew who she was. The tears brimming in the woman's brown eyes matched the ones dripping from her own.
"Tosa-oneechan?" she murmured.
"Kaga-chan!" In the blink of an eye, Tosa closed the distance between them and threw her mighty arms around her sister. The aircraft carrier gasped as her older sister squeezed the breath out of her body. "I'm so glad to see you at last, Kaga-chan!"
"Oneechan…" There was no need to hold back her sobs or tears. Even samurai could cry. And so Kaga wept freely while returning her sister's hug. "It really is you, Tosa-oneechan…"
She didn't know how long they spent crying in each other's arms. She didn't care. This meeting was sixteen years in the making. It was their first meeting in the flesh and Kaga was going to savor it.
"Um… I hate to interrupt you, Kaga-san and Kaga-san's lookalike… But I have no idea what's going on..."
A confused Japanese teenager looked to her for an answer. Dressed in a high school uniform with a white blouse and grey skirt, the dark-haired girl also wore a cap that resembled the funnel of an IJN destroyer.
Kaga recognized Kasumi's sister
Arare. The
Asashio class destroyer had sunk ahead of her, struck by an American torpedo as well as a bomb and possessing far less flotation than the aircraft carrier she failed to protect.
"Arare? Did you also hear that call?"
"Yes, Kaga-san, I did." The destroyer's gaze bounced between her carrier and the unknown woman. "Pardon me for interrupting… But why does that woman look like you?"
"She's my older sister Tosa. The Navy scuttled her long before they laid down your keel."
Kaga didn't blame Japan or its Imperial Navy for sacrificing Tosa back in the 1920s. They had given her sister the next best thing to a warrior's funeral. And Kaga herself should have gotten scrapped or scuttled alongside Tosa if it weren't for the Great Kanto Earthquake rendering Amagi unfit for further conversion. And her cousin Akagi had welcomed her as a surrogate sister despite the former battlecruiser's own personal tragedy. Kaga owed both the living and the dead.
Besides, Tosa was with her again. All was right with Kaga's world.
"Oh…" Arare perked up. "I see now… Huh, Tosa-san and Kaga-san resemble each other... but Nagato-sama and Mutsu-oneesan don't look anything alike..."
"Hey, there, kiddo." Tosa flashed a broad smile at Arare. "Is she your plane guard ship, Kaga-chan?"
"Yes," Kaga immediately replied. "Her name is Arare."
"Then she's part of our family! Come here, Arare-chan!" Keeping one brawny arm around Kaga, Tosa reached out with her other hand to add Arare into their embrace.
"Mmmppphhh!" Although startled, Arare didn't resist, mainly because her face was full of Tosa and Kaga's soft, sweet-smelling sideboobs.
"Welcome to our family, kiddo!" Unable to ruffle the destroyer's hair because the latter's bulky cap got in the way of her headpats, Tosa settled for a hearty laugh.
While she quietly enjoyed Arare's sudden adoption, something occurred to Kaga. Tosa had been scuttled in 1925. Her sister would know what an aircraft carrier was, but she shouldn't know about carrier operations developed after the Navy deliberately sank her battered hull in the deep waters west of Okinoshima Island.
"Tosa-oneechan, you know what a plane guard ship is?"
"Yeah, my admiral brought me up to date," Tosa chuckled. "She knows way more about carrier ops than Amagi , and Amagi's an actual carrier while Hina-nee's maritime self-defense force officially doesn't have one!"
"Amagi-san is here as well?" Kaga automatically thought of her adopted sister. Akagi would be overjoyed to learn about her sister's return. "And you say you have an admiral… Who is a woman?"
The IJN didn't have any female personnel, much less female flag officers. And what's this about a Kaijō Jieitai?
"Yeah!" Tosa turned her head to grin at the other occupant of the room, and Kaga followed her gaze. "Sorry to steal your thunder, Hina-nee!"
"It's all right, Tosa-san."
Tosa's admiral was a kimono-clad woman who stood a head taller than Kaga. Her jet black hair reached down to her waist and her eyes were as grey as battleship armor plating.
Kaga recognized her voice as the one reciting the prayer. The carrier's sharp eyes spotted the bandages wrapped around the woman's right hand. She wondered about the story behind that recent injury.
"Hello, Kaga-san, Arare-chan. I'm Junior Admiral Hina Togo, the descendant of Marshal-Admiral Heihachiro Togo." As Kaga's eyes widened and Arare finally managed to free her crimson face, Hina saluted. "I know this is very sudden, especially since you have just been summoned, but I'd like to ask for your help to save Japan…"
to be continued/itutuloy/つづく
X===X===X
S/N: I know what some of you are thinking. New Ironsides update when? I had promised to work on it last year, but things happened at work and home, so I am taking a long while to get around to it -_-
Going back to Changing Destiny, this chapter took a long while because I was working on other projects that have yet to see the light of day while also laboring to finish my backlog at work. It also ballooned into something much bigger. I re-read many earlier chapters to make sure I got things right. I also had Sky go over the draft and he cleared everything.
Onward to the technical details! (I'd put this in spoilers to save space, but SV is being wonky and keeps splitting the content between two or even three separate spoilers whenever I changed the font color, added/removed italics, or added hyperlinks.)
Readers of Tsun Silent, Tsun Deep (which I looted for much of this omake) will find my depiction of Naka very familiar. For those who don't know, I'm taking advantage of the fact that the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 damaged the unfinished Naka so badly that the IJN scrapped her and laid down a new traffic cone Sendai class cruiser with the same name. Hina's Naka is that ill-fated original and a geisha to contrast with the canon Naka, who is still afloat and coming up with the lyrics of Love Is 2-4-11.
The windy side-effect of a successful summoning comes from Carlo Lombardi's flashback where he summoned Turbine in Chapter 53.
Amagi reincarnated as an aircraft carrier because her conversion was underway at the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake that wrecked her hull. However, she came back with the weird triple flight deck seen in Akagi and Kaga's original configuration before their 1930s refit. Amagi also carries early naval aircraft - Mitsubishi B1M torpedo bombers and Mitsubishi 1MF fighters - that make the Swordfish look like a state-of-the-art design.
I haven't talked to Sky yet if Amagi can be upgraded to Akagi's post-1930s refit since it wasn't important to this chapter. I assume it can be done and that Hina did it during the interval between Amagi's summoning.
I also came this close to using Warship Girls R's Akagi as Amagi before settling for an older KanColle Akagi (plus accompanying Tosa) instead. Tosa herself is wearing an outfit similar to Nagato as the Tosa class battleships were essentially improved Nagato class. The unseen Atago and Ashitaka are also wearing clothes similar to Nagato and Tosa given the Amagi class is the battlecruiser variant of the Tosa class.
I came up with the shipgirls' assumed identities based on various factors. Amagi and Tosa use parts of their real names and Akagi. I flipped Naka's name for her first name and used her last captain's surname. Soya/Varyag pairs the Russian version of Barbara with her captain's surname. And Kawachi is named after my favorite character in the Key visual novel ONE.
The English language records on Ryoichi Togo are sparse and brief. In Heihachiro Togo's Wikipedia article, he is described as an older brother. Logically speaking, he has at least one younger sibling, but no further information is available. For the purpose of maintaining narrative continuity with my first chapter, Hina's grandfather is an only child in her timeline.
I added the native/downtime Hina and made her personality very different from uptime!Hina. I recall an old idea where installing the parts of an old ship i.e. CV-6 on a new ship i.e. CVN-65 effectively installed the old ship's personality in the new ship. So I took the concept and applied it to humans. Because I'm a Sith Lord who bullies my OCs and feeds on the Dark Side energies released by their anguish.
*is beaten by annoyed clouds with blue and green lightsabers*
I'm sorry, I can't help it >///<
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. All mistakes are mine. I enjoyed writing for Changing Destiny, and I hope this honors the spirit of Sky's story. Until next time.
