Hmmm. American Kongou, huh. Let me try.
x=x=x
It's the English-born returnee, Kongou!
"These delays are unacceptable. You dishonor us,
Owens-san. We are dropping our order for
Kongou."
What?
"We heard you had a perfectly fine warship with no buyer. We want her."
What is going on?
Battlecruiser
Liberty. The only major capital warship that the United States purchased from another country, because what major power would not seize the chance for perfectly legal technological espionage through tech transfer?
What are you doing?
The Americans proceed to dissect their new warship. They looked at her armor scheme, her 14" Vickers guns, her boiler machinery. They wanted to know how her sisters Hiei, Haruna, and Kirishima ticked. They used her to conjure ways to counter and hunt down and kill her sisters.
Please don't hurt my sisters! Don't use me to hurt my sisters! I don't want to hurt them!
Afterwards, the US Navy wonders what to do with her. She is the only ship of her class. She is nothing like any of their previous ships.
She does not have All Or Nothing armor; her speed is her armor. Her guns are different, her boilers are different, her operational doctrine is different.
Ordered by Japan, built in Britain, how can anyone call her American?
She would have been scrapped to simplify logistics and cut back on spending. But the higher ups and politicians weighed in on the matter. After all, had not some Navy geniuses wanted a 'large cruiser' for the longest time?
You... You are keeping me? You aren't throwing me away?
With the US Navy she remained. Off to the Scouting Force she went. The destroyers and cruisers welcomed her firepower and armor, where she became the flagship of her very own fleet.
I... It's the English-born warship, Liberty! It's nice to meet you all!
The Americans worked her harder than the Royal Navy worked
Hood. She did not have a deep stock of spare parts, so her resourceful engineers scrounged up substitutes for her broken boilers and worn out turbines. Eventually her internals became a temperamental mishmash of slap-dash machinery that constantly threatens to break down during standard operations, much less the heat of simulated combat.
Oh... seems like my exertions are catching up to me...
She was so happy when she heard of the planned Lexingtons. She was never mass-produced; one of her sufficed for the Scouting Fleet and the US Navy continued to build battleships.
She wants company; she wants sisters; she wants family.
She does not want to remain alone.
I'll have little sisters again! I won't be alone anymore!
And then the Washington Naval Treaty happened, and the Lexingtons were canceled, and her "Little Lex" and "Sweet Sara" were converted into carriers and the others were scrapped.
Constellation... Constitution... Ranger... United States...
She was alone again. She was always alone.
Hope sailed alone.
"It will be okay, Miss Liberty."
You two are too kind, Lex, Sara.
And then the War came, and her home of Pearl Harbor was destroyed by those who would have been her sisters and friends and allies in another life. She was thrust into fevered battle alongside her adopted family, her speed allowing her to accompany the fast fleet carriers as they desperately slashed into the ever-expanding borders of the evil Empire that overran Southeast Asia.
Why? Why would you do this? Why do you desire death and destruction? Why do you want a World War?
She is present when the badly-damaged Lexington is torn apart by internal explosions, when Yorktown is ambushed by I-168, and when Wasp is sunk by I-19. Tasked with protecting the vulnerable carriers against enemy surface combatants, she cannot defend them against aircraft or submarines.
Forgive me, Saratoga, Enterprise, Hornet. I failed you. I failed your sisters. I am a failure.
"There's nothing to forgive, Miss Liberty. I know you did all you could for Lex. It... was just her time to go."
"Miss Liberty, you saved Hornet. You saved my sister. Thanks to you, I still have a sister. And I can never repay you for that."
"I'm only alive thanks to you, Miss Liberty. You towed me to safety. You took those kamikazes under fire and took those bad hits just to get me out of there. I owe you everything."
She hears of Hiei's demise, her sister slain by the aircraft of the carrier she protects. She learns of Kirishima's death in a glorious duel with fast battleships that render her entire existence into redundancy. She is told of how Haruna was torpedoed by an American submarine as they retreated from Samar.
My Japanese sisters are dead. I alone remain of the Kongou class.
She weeps. She rails against the heavens. She grieves for her losses.
But she also forces herself to move forward. To move on. To move towards the future.
To move alongside Saratoga, Enterprise, Hornet, and all of her new friends, her new family, who do not supersede the old but whose gentle arms console her with the knowledge that she has lost much and yet retains so much.
With their help, she survives. She endures. She
fights.
Engaging! FIRE! All guns, FIRE! Receive my BURNING FREEDOM!
She makes it to the end of the War. She enters the Bay of the capital city of the devastated country that angrily abandoned her decades ago. She watches over Missouri as the Instrument of Surrender is realized, the pen putting an end to the sword.
It is over. I am so tired...
Old, worn out, unneeded and unwanted, she takes one final journey to a remote Pacific atoll called Pikinni, where she looks into the blinding light at the end of the dark tunnel and smiles.
Admiral Halsey, Saratoga, Enterprise, Hornet... May your fortunes hold... I'll... be watching from Valhalla...
Hiei. Haruna. Kirishima. Lexington. Constellation. Constitution. United States. Ranger.
I am coming home.
So passes the first and last battlecruiser of the United States Navy. In fire and flood.
But this is not the end of her story.
x=x=x
20XX
She stirs from quiescence. Strong words patter upon her deck and turret roofs and bridge like warm raindrops. Hands draw upon the mooring lines that keep her anchored in this restful sleep.
She recognizes the language. It used to be her first tongue, her old native language. Japanese.
'Why are they calling me?'
There is a new war. A new Enemy. The Abyssals threaten humankind.
Japan is desperate. They are cut off from the rest of the world. They have run out of conventional warships.
So they called upon the spirits of the warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy to protect them. And those spirits awoke from their slumber and fought for Japan once more.
But now there are no more Japanese warships to summon. And the war continues, and the need is as great as ever.
And so they call upon her. The armored cruiser they ordered in 1910, who became a battlecruiser during the course of the next three years of her construction.
"Come! Kongou!"
How dare you...
Why should she fight for those who abandoned her so many years ago? Why should she answer the prayers of the nation who took Lexington and Yorktown and Wasp away from her? Why should she help the people who threw away the lives of Hiei and Kirishima and Haruna in the name of honor and heroism to cover up their greed and idiocy?
What right did they have to call her
Kongou, when her name is
Liberty?
What gives you the r̳i͕̮g͖h̤̹͖͕͙̰̝ͅṱ͙͙̦̬̙͎̦̤?
x-x-x
All of the people shall be respected as individuals. Their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall, to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare, be the supreme consideration in legislation and in other governmental affairs.
x-x-x
The words borrowed by the Thirteenth Article of the Japanese Constitution set her boilers to ignite with deep thumps. Her propellers enter brief spins that cause her hull to push forward through the darkling waters of this quiet anchorage.
She stops herself, but the thought remains and the feelings grow within her.
'Their right to liberty,' she murmurs. 'Liberty...'
x-x-x
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
x-x-x
Thus spake the Founding Fathers of the Thirteen Colonies as their sovereign states joined together to form the United States of America. And in forming a new nation and a new beginning for its hopeful people, they set a precedent for the rest of the world and for all humanity.
'Everyone... everyone deserves life, deserves a chance to be happy, deserves liberty...
'Like me...'
The resentment remains. The taint is imbued within her hull. Only a deeper scouring of the soul will dispel it, and she does not have the luxury of time right now.
But her hate no longer rules her mind and heart. She is free of the red haze and the crushing chains around her heart and the crushing weight upon her shoulders.
She remembers that there are greater things than her hatred, better things. Things she love, others she love.
'Lexington. Saratoga. Hiei. Haruna. Kirishima.'
"I want to see you again, my sisters," she murmurs.
And so the battlecruiser gathers her ghostly crew to her hull. She gathers steam within her high-pressure water vessels, gathers up her anchors and lines. She gathers her courage and her faint memories of the country that she had conquered and the vague faces of the sisters she has never seen.
And she sails out of the fog of history for the Land of the Rising Sun, naval rifles and cannons at the ready, the Star-Spangled Banner flying from her masts, eyes clear and a hopeful smile upon her lips.
She is going to war. She will stand up in defense of life and freedom and happiness. For others. For her family, her two sets of sisters. For her self.
"CC-1. USS Liberty. Weighing anchor."
'I will protect all of my sisters.'
x=x=x
And done. The product of four straight hours plus some quick research and double-checking.
Think it could work as a prologue for a story about an American Kongou?
"
