Friscotime
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Heavy Cruiser
San Fransisco —'Frisco' to her friends. If… she had any—braced her feet on the cold steel of her own bridge. Her fine Japanese features hovered a few inches from her Captain's all-American jawline. Her almond eyes narrowed to tightly focused slits, and her ratty, tangled black hair seemed to quiver with nervous energy.
The heavy cruiser puffed out her cheeks, with a mischievous grin. She'd tried every trick in the book to break though to her crew. Which wasn't much, really. At this point, "The Book" was really more of a pamphlet. Or… like a business card. All The Book really said was "do stuff until other stuff happens."
Frisco was sailing uncharted waters, pushing back the gloomy veil of ignorance with each step. Another ship might be a little worried, but not Frisco. She was a cruiser. If battleships were the fleet's fist, cruisers were its eyes. Searching out the unknown and making it… un-unknown was her very reason to exist.
And she had a trick up her sleeve.
Frisco's small, fully treaty-compliant bosom swelled as she sucked in a huge lungful of air. She rose on her tip-toes until she was staring her Captain square in the eyes. And then she spoke.
"NOTICE MEEEEEEEEE!" Frisco bellowed with all the thundering volume her surprisingly capacious lungs could produce. A few drops of spit flew though the air at the power of her voice, and she heard—almost
felt her voice echo back to her against her own hull.
Her Captain blinked.
Frisco panted, her arms furiously waving as she signaled out "N-O-T-I-C-E-M-E" in semaphore while she gathered her strength for another scream. She was close, she could feel it in her… bones? bulkheads? Something like that.
"Notice me!" chanted Frisco, "Notice me! Notice me! Notice me! NOTICE MEEEEEEEEEE!" Her lungs utterly empty, the cruiser slumped against her captain. She closed her eyes, a smile crossing her face at the warm embrace of his uniform caressing her grimy skin.
Only the caress never came. Instead, the cruiser tensed like someone had just poured
ice water over her grave. She opened her eyes just in time to see her own deck come rushing up to meet her.
"Ow!" Frisco bounced off her deck in an undignified pile of sinew, legs, and ratty hair. If she'd taken any serious damage—besides the massive hit to her pride—she couldn't tell right off the bat. She was still so grungy—she'd came to Pearl in the first place for a good through scrubbing—that she couldn't make heads or tails of what was actually busted.
Oh well… if embarrassing herself in front of her Captain was enough to break though, she'd swallow her pride with joy.
"Ta-dah!" Frisco put on her best Hollywoodland smile and rolled onto her back. If she was going to make a fool out of herself, she was going to make a fool out of herself in
style. "I'm here everyone!"
Not a man on the bridge reacted. A rating jogged over to the Captain with clipboard in hand, his leg passing right though Frisco's sinewy belly like it wasn't anything more than smoke.
"Damnit." Frisco cursed to herself and sheepishly stood up. She tried to smooth out the rumples on her long-since sweat-stained uniform, but there's only so much one tired shipgirl could do. She
really needed that defouling. She could feel the crud building up on her skin, slowing even her thinking to a sluggish crawl.
She narrowed her eyes at her captain, one finger thrust out at his face as a stern look crossed her own. "I'm not done with you yet!"
Her captain, predictably, didn't offer her the slightest reaction.
Frisco huffed, her arms crossing her chest as her cheeks puffed out in a pout. She was a cruiser. The eyes of the fleet, she was supposed to sneak around and turn a few random sightings into information her Admiral could use to plan an attack. That meant she
should be able to think on her feet—or keel… screws… whatever. Metaphors are hard.
Well, if there was one thing she knew, it was that sitting around pouting wasn't going to get her anywhere. Frisco glanced at her watch. Not to check the time—the fouling was so dense over the glass she could barely even see the hands, let alone the hour markings—but to give her hands something to do while she thought.
Hmm… still nothing.
Frisco shoved her hands into her pockets and ducked though the bridge door. (Literally. She couldn't open it if she tried, and she
had tried.) Maybe a quick walk would help clear her mind. Lord knows she could use the exercise if she wanted to keep her weight under the ever-looming treaty limit.
So Frisco walked down her hull. She walked, and there may have been some skipping to, but only because she knew nobody could see her. Skipping just wasn't appropriate for a United States Navy warship. Even if if
was fun.
Then, as she skipped down her cramped passageways, Frisco had a thought. Maybe she'd been looking in the wrong place this whole time. Her captain was… her Captain, yes. He commanded her and led her into battle, but he had a hundred other things to worry over. Nine hundred and four things, if her last crew count was accurate. She could hardly blame him for not worrying over his ship when he had actual, living, breathing sailors to worry about.
But her
Engineer, he looked after her, and her alone. Her captain might have led her into battle, but her Engineer patched her up, tucked her in, and read her a bedtime story. There wasn't anyone on… her… that she loved quite as much as her Engineer. And she knew just the way to her machinery spaces.
—|—|—
Frisco found her Engineer right where she expected. Half-buried in her machinery and screaming expletives while banging about with a comically large wrench. The cruiser couldn't help but smile, she always felt so tingly and loved whenever he worked on her.
"Hey, Commander?" Frisco bit her lip and shyly toyed with the ragged end of her matted hair.
"Socket wrench!" barked the half-hidden form of her Engineer. He had a name of course, Commander Mike Burrows. But to Frisco, the man would always be her beloved Engineer.
A ragged-looking rating bolted over to a tool box and plucked a tool with shaking fingers. "Right here, sir!"
Burrows didn't even look at the tool. The instant it settled into his hand, some Engineering sixth sense went off and he all but hurled the tool at the hapless rating's head. "That's a Monkey Wrench, nugget!"
"S-sorry, sir!" The rating scrambled over to grab the correct tool
"How the
hell am I supposed to get this lazy-ass bitch in the fight," thundered Burrows from underneath Frisco's turbine. The cruiser tried and failed to bottle up a sigh of contentment at his loving concern. "Without socket wenches?"
"C-coming right up sir," the Rating fished a ratcheting driver out of the toolbox and slapped it into Burrows' waiting hand.
"First the Naht-sees-" Frisco always liked the way her Engineer pronounced that word. It just felt… right. "-now the nips, and I'm stuck on a boat with a fouled bottom and-" he stopped. "Gimme a half-inch socket."
The rating's hand had barely closed around a socket when the Engineer's voice thundered up again. "I said
half-inch goddammit!"
The rating couldn't let go of the socket fast enough, the little bit of polished steel smacking in to the stamped metal tool box with a loud metallic
ping!
"Uh, this one right here." Frisco happily plucked the right-sized socket from its secluded corner and handed it to the rating.
"Thanks ma'am," the scruffy-haired young sailor offered her a toothy grin of thanks.
And then both of them froze. Frisco blinked, while the poor rating just fainted away in a pile of limbs and dungarees.
"Where is my damn socket!" Burrows' noticeably empty hand flexed in the air, impatiently expecting the ordered tool.
"Coming up, sir!" Frisco leaped over the rating's body and slapped the properly-sized socket into her Engineer's impatient paw.
He grunted a note that might have been either thanks or indigestion, then slid himself deeper into her machinery.
Wait.
Frisco blinked. She'd just… just
spoken to two of her crew. Interacted with them. Handed them tools. She DID IT! She'd BROKEN THROUGH!
"WOOO-OW!" Frisco jumped for joy. And suddenly realized just how little headroom there was in her machinery spaces as her head smashed into a structural beam. "Owowowowowowow," Frisco clutched at her head as she collapsed into a puddle of disheveled heavy cruiser.
The next thing she knew, a heavy, grease-covered hand was gently patting her shoulder. "You okay, miss?"
Frisco nodded, and sheepishly glanced up at her Engineer. "I think so."
Burrows blinked, the muscles in his almost non-existent neck tensing like steel anchor chains. "You're a-"
"Girl?"
"I was gonna say
nip."
"No!" Frisco's mood instantly shifted from unrestrained joy at finally being noticed to disappointed rage. "No! I'm… I'm Nisei! I'm-" She cursed herself for trying to explain her situation with a
Japanese word. "I'm American. I was born down at Mare Island! In
California!"
Burrows folded his arms and glared at her.
"Look, I'll prove it!" said Frisco. The cruiser puffed out her chest and folded her arms with a smirk of fierce determination.
"I'm waiting," Burrows tapped his fingers against his bicep.
"Oh, uh…" Frisco's bluster faded and she scuffed her toe against her own decking. "That was it."
Burrows just arched an eyebrow.
"I said 'look'," explained Frisco. "Not," the cruiser squinted her already narrow eyes until they were nothing more than slits. Her neck craned forwards and she peeled her lips back to bare her teeth, "Rook! Is verrry HONORUBU!!"
"Oh lord in heaven," Burrows' face sagged to his chest.
"SHAMEFUR DISPRAY!" snapped Frisco. She wasn't sure if this was helping, but she would put her full effort into it regardless.
"Alright, stop." Burrows slapped one giant grease-covered mitt on the cruiser's narrow shoulder. "Your accent is terrible."
"Yeah, I know." Frisco glanced at her toes, her voice slipping back to her natural Cali accent. "You believe me, though?"
"Frisco," Burrows smiled and tousled the cruiser's hair. Or at least tried to, it was so full of knots and salt-stained split-ends he had to fight just to get his hand back.
"I really need defouling," said Frisco.
"That you do," said Burrows.
"Um," Frisco clasped her hands behind her back, her torso slowly yawing from side to side as she pursed her lips nervously, "What were you going to say?"
"That I always knew you were a girl," said Burrows.
"You did?"
Burrows nodded. "You're a cranky bitch who begs for attention whenever I spend five minutes anywhere
other than waist-deep in your machinery."
Frisco nodded in agreement.
"But so far," Burrows shrugged, "You've never let me down when it
really mattered."
Frisco smiled from ear to ear and hurled herself at her Engineer's chest. Her sinewy arms wrapped around his barrel-chested body, her face burying itself in his thick neck. "You know just how to talk to a girl, you know that?"
"Ah! Frisco," Burrows gagged.
"Huh?"
"When was the last time you took a shower?"
"Um... why?" Frisco offered up her most innocent smile.
"You
reek."
Frisco huffed. Dangit!
