This is dumb.It is time, once again, for pasta, and it is once again about..........
and her sisters.
Now, her older, so-called "First-gen" counterpart says that all of the 2nd-gen girls are.......abominations, to a degree. I'm going to post the passages that show how the 2nd-gen could've come about.
Also, spoiler-ed for Body Horror trope, and in case you don't figure out, or just don't care who's viewpoint these sections are from......
This is a flashback to maybe a few years before the bombs fell, in Franklin Kevinson's eyes.
Worse than that, I recognize the people inside these chambers. They're my friends who've been serving with me for some time now. The ship girls...known as the Shiratsuyu-Class.
Drawn in by an uncertain mixture of horrified fascination and terrified awe, I can't help but gawk and stare at them all in their respective chambers. Every single ship girl is completely naked: they are restrained by black steel robotic arms that hold them by their necks, and above those arms are another set of arms that hold their heads in place - at first, this should seem like an unnecessary measure of restraint, as their necks are already being seized, but this second set of robotic arms hold in place a thick black metal band shoved over their eyes and snap around their heads, preventing them from seeing anything. Some kind of strange tubed breathing mask is fitted over their mouths and noses, hooked up to the top of their cylinders.
But I doubt they can even see anything with what's happened to their bodies. Every single ship girl has suffered quadruple amputations; they now no longer have arms or legs to speak of, and only miserable snipped stumps are left where their limbs once were. I suppose this can be relatable to witnessing the sight of a parakeet with clipped wings, except as a human, I can testify that seeing a human quadruple amputee being kept like this like a cell inside of a test tube is far more jarring to behold, particularly when there are ten of them before you all neatly lined up in row, and even more especially so when all of these quadruple amputees happen to be friends of yours. And I can tell that they are my friends because I recognize not only their faces, despite the black rings that are forced over their heads and eyes like crowns of thorns and their misshapen breathing apparati, but also their respective hairs, for they float listlessly about in the clear, shimmering white liquid with which their stasis chambers or whatever they're supposed to be are filled with.
What makes me feel sick to my stomach, enough to make me want to shove my finger down my throat like a bulimic eater, is the fact that every single one of the girls inside these godawful chambers is pregnant. Or, that's what I interpret the unnaturally large bulges in their abdomens to be; what else could they be? Is that why their bodies are only restrained by the necks and over the eyes, so that the robotic arms don't accidentally restrict the growth of...whatever is developing inside them? Because there is no fucking way something like that could be naturally human. The girls inside, they're ship girls, so they technically aren't natural human to begin with, so what the fuck are their babies supposed to be? And as though that weren't sickening enough, for whatever godforsaken reason, there are kanji symbols branded right onto their stomachs: "一", or "First", "罪", or "Guilt", "望", or "Desire", "悪", the first kanji character in "Nightmare", "春", or "Spring", "明", or "Bright", "氷", or "Ice", "冴", or "Clear", "火", or "Fire", and "闇", or "Dark". All of the kanji branded into the skin of the ship girls' pregnant bellies match the colors of their respective hairs, and I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to represent or symbolize.
But I still resent them (the FLEET Project scientists) all, with Sanford being the one I both resent the most and hate the most. I know it's unfair to the scientists here, but there's nothing I can do to stop being hateful. It's hard not to be pissed the fuck off when you have ten of your closest friends floating inside liquid-filled prison cells smaller than home fish tanks with all four of their limbs cut off, impregnated, and forced to become nothing more than just…factories of whatever wretched offspring they are doomed to produce.
Meeting these ten ship girls was the single greatest uplifting experience I have had so far in my life, because for the first time since, I think, elementary school? Early middle school? I was able to make friends with people who were unassuming, pure, and eager to make friends. Admittedly, at the time I had first met them, I had been volunteered for this Moebius Four Project or whatever that my parents, again, had compelled me to join because of my thorough studies in Japanese back in high school and Hargraves. So fresh out of graduation, with my new shiny new rank of Second Lieutenant pinned onto my cadet uniform, I got flown over to Okinawa, where the Moebius Four Platoon had been being developed.
I want to say that meeting the Shiratsuyu-Class, who became my first set of subordinates in my naval military career, was the height of said career. But if that means I'm also in part responsible for the fact that they are now entombed inside these things and stripped of everything they have save for their lives, both figuratively andliterally, then I'm not sure if I can say I even have a "high" point. If this was going to happen to them all along, for their sakes, they should have never been constructed in the first place, and I firmly believe in this statement.
I glance up at the girls again with eyes that are firmly accustomed to the dim lighting settings of this room produced by the dim blue floor lamps combined with the faint shimmering white effects shining out from the container fluids inside the stasis cells…I think Sanford called the liquid navitasium or something along those lines, but that's not important. Their wombs have noticeably grown each day that I have found myself sitting before them in this room, and I haven't been told whether or not this is intentional on the scientists' part or not…though I'd assume it is intentional, given that all ten ship girls have been "growing" at more or less the same rate. The kanji characters branded onto their pregnant abdomens are stretched to the point where they're almost unreadable unless you already knew what they were saying before that point. Normally, you would think that the sight of a new life growing inside the womb of an expecting mother is a heartwarming and charming sight, or something like that, I'm not a sentimental guy by any means. This is just fucking disgusting. There's absolutely no other way to put it. It's like watching that guy who stitches people together to create a human centipede: it's senseless, it's disgusting, and it's unnecessarily cruel, and the people who've done this should all be castrated and/or drawn and quartered like in the old days…except I've met the people who've done this, and I don't want to wish that upon them anymore because they at least all seemed like decent people who were forced to do something they themselves did not want to do. Of course, they could have just been feeding me lies and telling me what I subconsciously wanted to hear from them, but I'm not about to force them to cough up the truth. The only truth I need at the moment is that my subordinates have been fucked, and someone needs to die.
From one of the transparent cylinders, suddenly, I hear a rush of air bubbles bubbling their way up to the top, and I slowly look up to see what is happening. I'm fully expecting to have to take this as a sign that one of the girls is finally showing signs of dying, since I think the human brain gives off a few last spurts of neural activity that cause the person dying to undergo hallucination-like experiences in their final moments, so with this in mind, I imagine it's something similar for the ship girls. Instead, to my small surprise, I find the girl in the sixth chamber from the left, the one that houses the ship girl named Samidare, sporting a slowly brightening six-pronged blue halo over her head. All of the ship girls have sported such pronged halos, but for some reason Samidare's is shining more and more brightly, and the number of air bubbles cascading out of the back of her breathing apparatus slowly returns to normal. I feel intrigued by this, admittedly, so I stand up to my feet and approach Samidare in her chamber to see what's going on.
I certainly didn't expect Samidare's voice to resonate from within the chamber to speak to me through the heavy glass cylinder or whatever the thing's made of.
"…Admiral…?"
I'm kind of done feeling awestruck, I felt enough of that on the first day I stumbled upon them in this room. So I waste no time replying to her, despite still feeling surprised that not only can she talk and that I can hear her clearly, but also that her voice shows no sign of pain or weakness as I'd imagined all of them would exhibit. But what I do notice immediately that is awry with Samidare's voice especially is the heavy tint of seriousness in her voice. I've never heard her speak so seriously or heavily before…but, given what she's going through right now, I don't think I can question it.
"Yeah, Samidare. I'm here," I speak in Japanese, as I've always done. They have never been programmed to understand English, and over the month of always communicating with them in Japanese, my Japanese has vastly improved thanks to her and her sisters. "Have you just woken up, or…?"
I can tell Samidare has just tried to nod, because her head attempts to bob down due to the contraction of the muscles in her neck, but the robotic arms that are restraining her like a farm animal prevent her from doing so, so she simply has to rely solely on her voice…I don't really know how she's speaking underwater, through a breathing mask, but if I can somehow speak to at least one of my ship girls, I will fucking take this opportunity.
"…Admiral, how long have you been watching us…?" Samidare asks. Her voice is very slow and deliberate, like her voice is physically wading through a river of molasses. In fact, she sounds more like an actual A.I. than a humanlike android. I guess it's only fitting…
"It's been eight days since I woke up and found myself here. I've been spending as much time with you girls in here as possible," I reply. "This is the first time I'm talking with any of you."
"…I see…"
I really want to ask her many things, but I restrain myself. I'm not the one suffering here, so my questions can wait. If there is anything she wants to say, she deserves to say it first. So I wait until she wants to speak again, which she does shortly:
"…Admiral…how much do you know? About what has happened to us?"
"Nothing. All they've told me is that your children have no fathers, and I don't know what they meant by that. They've told me literally nothing else."
To my surprise Samidare replies immediately.
"I see…that makes sense."
"What? What makes sense?" For this, I'm totally unable to resist my temptation to ask Samidare at least this one question. What does she mean by "this makes sense"?
"…Admiral…my child…its genetic composition, according to the reports compiled by my fetal development program, is identical to mine. There is no father."
…uh, excuse me?
"The child you're pregnant with is your clone?" I summarize blankly. Now I'm starting to feel shocked and speechless again. "But why the fuck would they do that?"
"Did they not tell you? You are our Admiral…I want to think they at least told you…?"
"Like I said, they didn't tell me anything. I only know that your child and everyone else's child has no father. That's all I've got."
Samidare doesn't respond this time. I can imagine that speaking is a gruesomely tiresome task for her to perform, so I don't mind Samidare staying silent.
But she speaks again anyway within the moment. And this time, she says:
"…Admiral…do not let this child live."
I think I can hear glass shattering somewhere. Then I realize it's my mind being blown. I'm utterly amazed at myself that I'm still able to respond coherently to Samidare even after hearing my own mind blow itself into oblivion.
"Why? Why are you telling me to kill your child?"
"Even if the genetic identification report compiled by my fetal development program suggests that this baby is my exact clone, I feel that it cannot be allowed to live. It does not feel like a child. I feel as though I am giving birth to a weapon."
Giving birth to a weapon…"ow" is all I can say to that.
"But what if you don't make it? Even if you tell me to kill your child, I at least want them to live so that they can carry on your memory."
"Admiral, what is happening to me is designed to kill me once I give birth, the program code clearly indicates this. I will not survive past giving birth. Are all of my sisters also like this too?"
"Yeah, they are."
"Then…I think they will all die too. Their children…I don't know what they would want for their children, but I truly believe my child must not be allowed to live. She may not even be a ship girl like her mother."
"What, really? How's that even possible?"
"I do not know, Admiral. ETA to the birth of my child ranges between thirty-six to forty-eight hours."
The room falls silent. I just realize that Samidare's voice is very watery and echoey, like it's evaporating right off my eardrums the moment she ceases speaking.
"…Admiral, I don't want to tell you what to do with my child or the children of my sisters. If you want to let them live after we are deceased, then please do so. But I urge you to not allow my own child to live. I cannot give you a good reason other than my personal belief that letting it live could be very bad. But please…if there is one last thing I can ask of you, it is this."
I really don't know how to respond to that. I really am completely speechless. This doesn't sound like Samidare at all, and I'm starting to think that her original personality's become corrupted or tampered with somehow. But if it's been corrupted or tampered, why would she emphasize wanting to have her own child killed? Is it because instead of the scientists tampering with her personality codex or whatever they called it, Samidare has somehow corrupted herself?
"…I don't know, Samidare. I really don't know."
"Please take your time."
I nod helplessly. I guess that's the only thing I really can do by this point.
"Admiral?"
I look up again. The bright blue halo over her head is rapidly fading away back to normal.
"This wasn't how I wanted to say this, but…I love you, Admiral. I'll always love you."
Her blue halo is completely drained of its brief blue light, and the rush of air bubbles that has been kicking up from the back of her breathing apparatus as her halo was fading away returns to normal again.
I'm going to cry my fucking eyes out in the corner.
So yeah there you have it, and here's a present for you if you managed to get through all the spoilers.
......WHSIKEY! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!
Belated Battleships has already overtaken Amberlance, so GG isn't the only bastion of non-shitty KC fanficery anymore.
