Ohh that story...well now that i look back it's been a while since i read it....and i don't particularly care...between the story being terrible, with terrible characters thanks to him turning them into overly angsty caricatures and a plot that makes no sense and an author who says that the story is written because he likes writing and that it "shouldn't be taken too seriously", my time being eaten up by work demands and university assignments to the point where my own Kancolle fic has stalled indefinitely and that whatever time i have left is me surfing through forums and reading proper fanfics as a starting point, I cannot bring myself to care about what happens in the story anymore.
As far as i'm concerned...he can write as much as he wants...or he can create a bullshit ending...or he can rant about how we are "unfairly hating this story" and that we are "mindless haters"....it would not bother me one bit what he does...nor does it matter in the end.
He now turned Yorktown into someone who keeps pestering Daimon to fuck one of the shipgirls, or making him choose between them (the Americans or the Japanese ships) on who he would fuck first. Aaarrghh.
But thankfully, Daimon is a pure, asexual cinnamon roll who only maybe kissed a young destroyer on the lips.... iirc.
Oh, he took the American ships, Aoba, and 2-3 other ships to the ice cream store and bought them many tubs of ice cream worth hundreds of dollars total to eat there. Because fuck having something like shipgirls be inconspicuous (which was a big plot point for whenever they are in new Chicago) when you see them eating gallon tubs of ice cream in public. He also spends like $2000 on *more* ice cream to ship back to the mansion he has, for the rest of the shipgirls to eat.
Oh, and he out right murders 2 cringey Chinese teen gangsters while there too. Afterwards, he leaves the shipgirls and goes alone to murder more of the Chinese gang at their hideout for revenge on what they did to poor Benny's company years ago.
I seriously doubt that any but the die hard fans even care anymore about what happens in this story. From all the latest chapter descriptions you guys keep posting, it seems like it turned into an even more schizophrenic, incoherent mess than it was before.
Ok i know the thread is sleepy right now cause everyone's bored of Ambience....but there is something that you all must know.....this is somewhat...no..very important.....Akyuu may, or may not have copied BelaBatts version of New Jersey, under normal circumstances, i would not accuse authors of this, but considering the writer of Ambience and how "light" his fingers are..... well see for yourself.
From the latest chapter... ch284.
"The side door of the Pave Low gets hurled open, and out pops a Secret Service agent first, followed by three girls. Two of them are roughly the same height, most likely destroyers, by their sizes, but the third girl who follows them is most definitely a battleship, if her strong, toned muscles have anything to say about it, never mind her colossal height. Damon recognizes her instantly, but he keeps his shock to himself. He instead watches them also disembark from the presidential Pave Low, lugging with them guns, gearboxes, and...well, apparently they've come already fully equipped for war, judging by all the gear that they've got on them already.
Eagle takes a step forward towards the three new girls, and stepping out of the way to make sure Damon can still see them all, he raises an arm to introduce Damon first.
"Welcome to your new fleet, girls. This's your new Admiral, Damon Polchow." Eagle then turns to Damon. "Damon, U.S.S. Johnston, H.M.C.S. Haida, and U.S.S. New Jersey."
Main points underlined....i don't mean to be a tatter tale or a panic monger, but if this is true....well, it certainly proves that blatant copying and being a hack is someones specialty.
Ok i know the thread is sleepy right now cause everyone's bored of Ambience....but there is something that you all must know.....this is somewhat...no..very important.....Akyuu may, or may not have copied BelaBatts version of New Jersey, under normal circumstances, i would not accuse authors of this, but considering the writer of Ambience and how "light" his fingers are..... well see for yourself.
From the latest chapter... ch284.
"The side door of the Pave Low gets hurled open, and out pops a Secret Service agent first, followed by three girls. Two of them are roughly the same height, most likely destroyers, by their sizes, but the third girl who follows them is most definitely a battleship, if her strong, toned muscles have anything to say about it, never mind her colossal height. Damon recognizes her instantly, but he keeps his shock to himself. He instead watches them also disembark from the presidential Pave Low, lugging with them guns, gearboxes, and...well, apparently they've come already fully equipped for war, judging by all the gear that they've got on them already.
Eagle takes a step forward towards the three new girls, and stepping out of the way to make sure Damon can still see them all, he raises an arm to introduce Damon first.
"Welcome to your new fleet, girls. This's your new Admiral, Damon Polchow." Eagle then turns to Damon. "Damon, U.S.S. Johnston, H.M.C.S. Haida, and U.S.S. New Jersey."
Main points underlined....i don't mean to be a tatter tale or a panic monger, but if this is true....well, it certainly proves that blatant copying and being a hack is someones specialty.
Did BelaBatts use those *exact* words to describe his New Jersey? It might be reaching because he never described more details about what they looked like.
And it's nothing new that Akyuu rips off other shipgirls from other media, like Pacific, Orions, Warship Girls, etc etc.
Did BelaBatt use those *exact* words to describe his New Jersey? It might be reaching because he never described more details about what they looked like.
And it's nothing new that Akyuu rips off other shipgirls from other media, like Pacific, Orions, Warship Girls, etc etc.
This is the description of NJ as per the new chapter.
A clean white tank top that threatens to implode by ripping itself in half against the firm pressure coming from New Jersey's chest, and draped over the top of her gearbox is a letterman jacket whose left sleeve reads, "NAVY" in big gold letters. Digital navy blue camo pants that are standard-issue in the modern U.S. Navy, navy boots, blue fingerless elbow gloves with white stars on the backs of the hands, and an ocean blue baseball cap turned backwards with the visor pointing away from Damon. The lack of sleeves to cover up New Jersey's finely toned muscles feeds Vitamin D onto these fair-toned biceps that are built like a champion boxer's while still retaining a definite feminine, model-like beauty to them. As Damon has already seen in his dreamworld, she possesses that very same shade of golden blonde hair that reaches down to the back of her butt, though her front locks look like they're trying to curl up like spirals of drill hair but not quite succeeding, along with, of course, crisp blue eyes and American flag prints tattooed onto the sides of her upper arms in an unabashed, perhaps even zealous display of patriotism.
This is the description of NJ as per the new chapter.
A clean white tank top that threatens to implode by ripping itself in half against the firm pressure coming from New Jersey's chest, and draped over the top of her gearbox is a letterman jacket whose left sleeve reads, "NAVY" in big gold letters. Digital navy blue camo pants that are standard-issue in the modern U.S. Navy, navy boots, blue fingerless elbow gloves with white stars on the backs of the hands, and an ocean blue baseball cap turned backwards with the visor pointing away from Damon. The lack of sleeves to cover up New Jersey's finely toned muscles feeds Vitamin D onto these fair-toned biceps that are built like a champion boxer's while still retaining a definite feminine, model-like beauty to them. As Damon has already seen in his dreamworld, she possesses that very same shade of golden blonde hair that reaches down to the back of her butt, though her front locks look like they're trying to curl up like spirals of drill hair but not quite succeeding, along with, of course, crisp blue eyes and American flag prints tattooed onto the sides of her upper arms in an unabashed, perhaps even zealous display of patriotism.
Perhaps, but considering that Ambience!Jersey has some eerily similar characteristics......but then again @Nicholas is right...time to let this story disappear into obscurity.
She's apparently a hybrid of both Pac!NJ and BB!NJ
New Jersey's design is a fusion of both jeanex's USS New Jersey design from Pacific, with the blue fingerless elbow gloves, signs of drill hair, and the black and gold fan (the narration also gives a reference to the Miss USA pageant design that the Pacific New Jersey upholds), and the design of New Jersey from the Kantai Collection fanfic Belated Battleship, with the letterman jacket with the gold letters "NAVY" on its left sleeve, the backwards blue baseball cap, and New Jersey's love of apple pies.
I have been granted permission by De3ta to post the LRs of Chapters 19 through 21. So here's 19
Mic-check One, two~
Lilith Thompson (Winter) : Hey. My name's Lilith, and I'm here to read what might very be existential hell. You might know me more as the French battleship Dunkerque.
I thought you were gonna say "And Welcome to Jackass," both fit just as well.
R32: I will check this out after work. just got called
Lilith: So, what are we doing?
Well we seem to be one short, where is the newface?
Ruby: Hello, I'm Ruby
Well, let's jump right in!
Chapter 19: Maiden Flight
Lilith: For more reasons than one...
"Fuck!" Damon yells, watching the Chinook disappear behind the urban horizon.
"Admiral, Iku's right, that was Kaga just now!" Murakumo exclaims urgently. "How did they activate her already?! You said that us ship girls should've been top secret! So how was she activated?!"
"Does it look like I fuckin' know?!" Damon yells back. "All I know's that I just missed out on a golden fuckin' chance to get Kaga, but now she's flyin' away to Atlanta, I bet! Goddamn it, I forgot to account for a possible back exit so that they couldn't get away, fuck me..."
Lilith: So, is she supposed to be some sort of prize?
Waitwaitwaitwait, she was activated!?!
Okay so she is activated, that means they had the codes. So now I'm thinking, on joy he's gonna do the knife thing again while she's awake.
Lilith: What do you think happens in the next chapter? This is just the prelude for even greater insanity.
Ruby:What's the knife thing?
Lilith: Allow me to explain, Homura-clone. The knife-thing that Dee had talked about earlier is a Zeyermeyer Industries Command Interface Device. More commonly known as a 'nanoknife.' Now, how he managed to obtain one in the post-apocalyptic world is an utter mystery to all of us, but the device allows a person to interface with all computer systems by literally stabbing a knife into them and injecting malicious code into the system, never mind that such a thing is impossible and highly reliant on hollywood magitech — unless you're running the knife into the hard drive and inserting the data there, but even then that would imply you're accessing a solid-state drive and not a disk drive…
De3ta : In order to activate//mind control a shipgirl he stabs them in the brain with his magical nanoknife that hacks their brains. He does that to every shipgirls he comes across, as of this point at least. In De3ta talk.
Amatsukaze and the prisoner emerge from the former Walmart. The prisoner has scavenged an M-416 assault rifle from one of the downed soldiers for defense.
"But I guess the silver lining's that the Merlin hasn't taken off yet, so I can only assume there's no one to pilot it. Amatsukaze, good timing, let's check that heli, see if there're some stragglers left..."
They check the Merlin, which is revealed to be empty to Damon's pleasant surprise.
"Okay, I ain't so pissed anymore, now that we have a chopper," he grins, hopping out if the pilot's seat. "I can work with this..." He turns to the former prisoner as Mutsu radios in that all enemy reinforcements have been neutralized. "Good job, Mutsluggy. So, mind explainin' who you are? It ain't the first time we've been a taxi service."
I really fucking hate that nickname. Her headgear doesn't even look like a slug what the fuck why did that become meme.
Lilith: The headgear looks somewhat like the stalks of a slug's eyes? You would think they would go for snail instead…
Not really...
Lilith: Who knows. The world wonders.
Next on our debate list: Is the dress yellow or blue?
The prisoner laughs. "Hey, at least ya got a sense a' humor 'bout it. I'm Jimmy, by the way, my friends call me Slim Jim, ya know, after the snack thing, 'cause I'm pretty skinny; thanks for gettin' me out ta that pickle. Trust me, it was a pretty damn big pickle, I tell ya. Those bitches be threatenin' to chop my fingers off if I didn't do as they said, ya bastards..." He spits onto a nearby corpse of a soldier with his right arm torn off.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you, I like Slim Jims.
Lilith: Alright. So we talk to this guy. There's this pointless interlude to explain his nickname, like everyone in this wasteland now has really inane nicknames. Then… we get an explanation that he was held against his will? What's the point of this?
Ruby:WTF is his nickname fucking SLIM JIMS!!!!????
Oh it gets better, look at how he talks.
Mutsu joins them, having packed up her ship guns. "Any signs of more guys like the ones we just shot up?" Damon asks, and Mutsu shakes her head. "Anyone detecting any more enemies?"
Again, more head shakes. "Good, we got some time to breathe. I'm Damon, and these girls're taggin' along for the ride."
"Oh-ho! The RIDE, huh? Must be real nice," Jimmy whistles suggestively but shuts up as soon as both Murakumo and Amatsukaze point the barrels of their own assault rifles at his face. "Whoa,
whoa, don't shoot me girls, I ain't done nothin' wrong yet, just a bad joke..." He glances back at
Damon. "Say, this jus' a guess, but these girls 'em 'ship girls' I been hearin' 'em Atlantans talkin' 'bout?"
Damon nods. "Was just 'bout to ask you if by chance you knew 'bout 'em."
"Yeah, my man, ya see, I got caught snoopin' 'round the southwest side 'a Macon. Ya see, I'm from that survivor camp down in Savanny, if ya heard 'a it, and I'm a scout, ya know, scoutin' 'round to figure out what the people we live near - 'specially 'em Atlanta folks - are up to. So yesterdy, I heard lotsa shootin', like, a whole chicken farm's worth 'a shootin' more 'n usual, so I be like, dayum, I betta head in there 'n check out what'sa 'causin' this here ruckus, and my jeep gets shot up by 'em soldiers earlier this mornin', and they drag me over here, and now here we are.
While I was all tied up, I heard all this talk 'bout some kinda 'ship girl', and I didn't know what the devil they were talking' 'bout. I mean, I just figured it was some fancy term for somethin' top secret 'r something', until I saw HER..."
"Her?" Damon asks, taking a step forward in keen interest. "Who are you talking about? Who's 'her'?"
"Ermmm...let's see, if I recall correctly, she's this gal in this chestplate over her boobs - she had some mighty fine tits, lemme tell ya - dark hair, either maybe dark brown or black, I dunno, and a side ponytail on this side." He points to the left side of his head. "Kinda gives off a 'better-than-thou' air, ta be honest."
Damon's eyes immediately flash the scene of the Chinook taking off away from the parking lot they are standing in. The woman standing next to Mr. Harrison at the front of the open ramp.
"Kaga?"
"Yeah, Kaga was her name! Kinda a funny name though...definitely ain't 'Murican. So like, yeah, I overheard 'em talkin' 'bout her, how she was some kinda 'ship girl' 'n all..."
Lilith: So we have this guy suggesting that these girls are only around to have sex with. Erm, what on Earth happened to Earth in the thirty years that passed?
Lilith: I'm assuming it's thirty years. Is it?
". "Good, we got some time to breathe. I'm Damon, and these girls're taggin' along for the ride."
"
AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Fuck you.
Lilith: That would imply a certain amount of consent that is sorely lacking in that sentence, Damon Polchow.
Lilith: What kind of name is Damon Polchow anyway? It sounds horribly grade-school.
Ruby:Hahaha! What type of person would name someone Damon Polchow? Polchow sounds like some type of Russian food or something
Lilith: Russian food does not sound like that, mon amie.
Ruby: It still sounds like food
Lilith: I wouldn't want to put a dish like that in my mouth.
Ruby: So I guess he tastes like shit
It sounds vaguely polish.
Speaking of shit, this fuckers accent.
"Can you tell me what they were discussing exactly?"
Jimmy frowns. "Man, iono. Somethin' 'bout buyin' shit, yo. Don't ask me 'bout the details, I was fuckin' tied up back there."
Damon nods. "A'ight. Girls, hold down this position and make sure nothin' happens to this heli here. I'ma go back to our truck and bring it here, and we'll load up the gear inside into this heli. This'll be our ticket straight into Atlanta..."
"Hey, yo, um..." Jimmy asks a bit timidly, "sorry ta ask ya anotha favor, but...by any chance, mind if you could drop me off back at our camp? I can show ya where it is, I'm sure my people'll let ya in just fine once I talk to 'em, tell 'em that y'all saved my hide."
Damon laughs. "Funny thing is, we already saved a few kids who live inside that same survivor camp. We were welcome there...until earlier this mornin', 'til Khal kicked us out, I dunno if you know him at all."
"Oh, shit, Khal?" Jimmy exclaims. "He's our resident Head Guard, son! He's in charge of our entire camp's security and defense measures! But why'd he kick y'all out? Didja do somethin' that pissed him off?"
"Let's just say he didn't like what I had planned," Damon says. "But s'long as your guys don't shoot us down in transit, I'm cool with droppin' ya off. I ain't got a problem with Savannah."
"Yeah. We all good folks down there. We jus' wanna live in peace, ya know? Not hafta bother anyone, but obviously the people livin' around us got some other plans," Jimmy laughs. "If you just land outside the walls we got, I'll talk to 'em. They won't do anythin' to anyone if they bring back one 'a their people safe 'n sound. And it seems like you've already done this shit before, so they really ain't gonna do shit to ya!"
Lilith: This man's accent is annoying to read, though I suppose that would be what an approximation of uneducated swine would sound like.
Lilith: It still bothers me, but I digress.
"I ain't got a problem with Savannah.""
For now.
Lilith: I am waiting for the day he suddenly decides to shoot all of them up because he didn't like a single thing that he found out about them, sort of like some twisted, demented version of Caesar's Legion.
Lilith: Speaking of Caesar's Legion, the misogyny in this story is appallingly high. Did we suddenly go back to the '40s?
On a scale of fucking hatred Damon faaaaaaaaaar surpasses the legion in how much he irks me. Granted with the Legion I could shoot them in the face.
Twenty minutes later, Damon and ship girls, aided by Jimmy, who offers his help for their trouble of rescuing him, load everything from the utility truck into the HC-3 Merlin helicopter's cargo hold. After securing the truck inside the inside of the Walmart via the loading bay at the rear, Damon returns to the helicopter.
"All aboard, c'mon, c'mon!" Damon yells cheerfully as he hops into the pilot seat. "I've seen the veteran pilots back in Chicago fly a couple a these giants around, and it looks hella fun. Oh, I forgot, this's gonna be your first time flyin', right, girls?"
"Yeah...I don't know what to feel about this..." Mutsu says uncertainly, calling from the passenger hold. Iku climbs in last and pulls on the door to close it, but because it proves much heavier than she thought, she uses a bit of her own ship strength to heave the door shut with ease. Damon powers up the helicopter and turns to yell at his passengers,
"Probably wanna put on your seat belts, it's been a while since I flew, so my flyin' might be a bit shaky!"
"Hey man, s'long as ya don't crash, I'm fine with any kinda turbulence God chucks at us!" Jimmy laughs again.
"Flying..." Murakumo murmurs. "Ship girls like us shouldn't be able to fly..."
The rotor blades begin chopping the air, and the sounds of the main engines cause the hull of the Merlin to vibrate slightly.
"Well, Murakumo, you and all you ship girlies are 'bout ta find out what it feels like to fly," Damon yells, "'cause guess what? Anyone can fly, even warships, hah haaaaaaaaa!"
The Merlin lifts off, and Amatsukaze and Murakumo shriek out in surprise at the sensation of being lifted off the ground and grab tightly onto their seats, while Iku simply cheers as she always does.
Mutsu, bewildered, quickly looks out a nearby circular window and gawks in awe as the ground becomes further and further away.
"We're flying! We're actually flying!" she utters breathlessly. "Unbelievable...a battleship like me, flying...in the air..."
"Oh c-c'mon, it's nothing more than another vehicle carrying us into the air!" Amatsukaze says, trying to keep her cool as the Merlin rotates in midair back towards the direction of Savannah.
"I heard ya, lil' Amy, you just stuttered right then, didn'tcha?" Damn teases, chuckling.
"N-N-No I didn't! Shut the fuck up!" she screams back, her whole arms shaking tremendously at her flight nervousness. Amatsukaze tries to peek out at the window, and as soon as she perceives the distance from the helicopter down to the ground, she screams out loud. "O-O-O-Okay,
A-A-Admiral, I give, I fucking give! Now get this thing down on the g-ground, quick, quick! ! !"
Lilith: Again, I said this the last time and I will say it again, why exactly are these shipgirls not programmed to know what helicopters and planes are? You are not ships, you are machines. Why are you afraid? Did the programmers think that this would endear them to whomever commands them?
Lilith: This is pathetic.
Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, Booooooooooooooooooooooo, this is horseshit!
"BECAUSE IT'S SO FUCKING SCARY ALL THE WAY UP HERE, NOW LAND THIS THING, DAMN IT! ! ! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !"
At this, Damon loses himself, shrieking with laughter. "AND WHO WOULDA THOUGHT? WHO WOULDA THOUGHT A SHIP GIRL LIKE YOU'D BE AFRAID 'A HEIGHTS!? OR MAYBE A FEAR OF FLYING? HAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAA! ! ! ! ! ! THERE AIN'T NO BRAKES ON THIS HELI, GAL, WE IN THIS FOR THE LONG HAUL! HERE WE GOOOOOO! ! ! !"
Lilith: Improper use of bolding in prose. And italics. This reads like grade-school writing.
Ruby: Man, Damon is fucking idiot, and an asshole. He's like Makoto Ito from School Days all over again
No see, he was just a fucking idiot. Damon is a malicious, self-righteous idiot.
Lilith: Wait for the harem stuff. Why on Earth...
Right, that's a thing. Fuck.
R32: Jus caught a break after finishing up a car. What's new?
Cancer, as usual. Also Damon being more of a dick than usual.
Lilith: Really?
The Merlin tips forward, causing not only Amatsukaze but also Murakumo to scream at the top of their lungs about how the Merlin would tip forward and crash and cause everyone to die. Mutsu simply continues to stare out the window in awe as the ground begins to pass by at high speed but hangs onto her seat just in case something goes wrong. The Merlin flies with no problems across the sky, away from Macon.
"Wonder why there aren't any other helicopters anymore," Damon mutters to himself, looking around the windows of the cockpit to scan the horizon. "And flyin' this thing is a bitch..."
"So ya know where to go?" Jimmy calls from the passenger hold. Damon flashes him a thumbs up.
"Yeah! I'll know what it looks like once it comes close! Think we ought'a be there in 'bout ten, maybe fifteen minutes."
"FIFTEEN MINUTES IS TOO FUCKING LONG! GET US DOWN TO THE GROUND! WE DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS! ! ! !" Murakumo, having been tipped over the edge as well by Amatsukaze, who has been reduced to a whimpering, shaking pile in her seat, hollers into the cockpit, hugging her fellow destroyer as tightly as she can. Her radar sensors above her head are flashing a pungent pomegranate red.
Lilith: Like I said, why don't they know what helicopters are? It's exceedingly sloppy programming… my creator, bless him, did not put in such pathetic limitations as this.
Ruby: Man, the person who made this is either an idiot, an asshole, and a misogynist but most likely all three.
None of you signed up for this!
Lilith: I wonder if that code he… ahem, injected into them made them believe they joined his 'noble crusade' voluntarily?
I mean look, so far only Murakumo was activated before getting the knife to the head. So that is likely.
Lilith: Then he is a rapist and a murderer, though to be honest we already knew from the beginning. Next, please?
Ruby: Wait… He raped and murdered people? And he's still not getting karma for this!?
Lilith: Mental rape and justified murder because all of the people he had shot were, apparently, worse people than him.
He hasn't raped people, just violent mind control via brain knife.
Lilith: It would still be considered mental rape, and rape in general, since he is doing this against their will. He is forcing them to fight against their will. But alas, because they are machines, it is okay, non?
Ruby: I can't believe that there are worse people than this asshole
Lilith: All of humanity has become one big cesspool, my dear.
Ruby: I agree
"Oh, c'mon, calm down, it's fun! We're so high up in the air, hahahaha, nano~!" Iku cheers, excitedly hopping from one empty seat to another, having fun watching the scenery flying by below.
"Yeah, it's fun, ain't it? Just relax and chill like Iku is!" Damon says. "It's not even gonna take that
long, the fuck are both of you freakin' out over, sheesh!"
Jimmy chuckles at the sight of the destroyers huddled together, trying their best not to imagine themselves flying about a thousand feet above the ground. But less than ten minutes later, Damon spots the survivor camp and turns to Jimmy.
"We're here! I'm gonna land just below the south wall, if that's okay with ya!" Jimmy nods with a
thumbs up, but just as Damon banks the Merlin to the right, he spots a flash of light from within the walls, and he can see the faint outline of a rocket surrounded by an expanding cloud of red and orange and yellow rapidly approach the helicopter.
"Oh fffff - RPG!" Damon banks the Merlin even harder to the right, so hard that the chopper for a moment destabilizes and dips dramatically in altitude before Damon can regain control of the helicopter and banks it back up. Needless to say, Amatsukze and Murakumo again shriek out in fright, and Iku instead screams in delight at the thrill of the sudden drop. The rocket-propelled grenade, however, swerves itself way off course, exploding after some seven or so seconds after it whizzes far away from the Merlin. More flashes of light come from within the survivor camp, indicating the trajectories of even more RPG's being fired at the HC-3 Merlin. Damon, taking no chances, has the Merlin continue to fly past the camp to the east towards the Atlantic Ocean.
"You bastard, you ain't tryin'a fuckin' intentionally get us shot down by havin' me fly near the camp, are ya!?" Damon bellows at Jimmy in the back.
"Aw, hell no, brotha, I ain't that kinda guy to stab someone who helped me out in the back! They jus' real suspicious 'a aircraft they don't know, is all! I jus' didn't expect 'em to fire off all 'em
rockets, is all!"
Damon scoffs. "Tch, yeah, right! In any case, fuck tryin'a land near the camp! If you wanna get dropped off, yer gonna hafta walk yer ass back from at least a mile away!"
"Ummm..." Jimmy looks around quickly in the passenger hold, unbuckles his seat belt, and grabs a parachute pack off the wall. "Tell ya what, brotha, I'll jus' dive on out! It's the fastest way!"
Damon turns to him in his pilot seat. "Are ya fuckin' kiddin' me?! Yer tellin' me to fly back over a complete shitstorm of RPG's?! Besides, do you even know how to use a chute?!"
Jimmy fastens the parachute onto his back and makes his way to the cockpit. He puts his hand on
Damon's shoulder, saying, "You let me worry 'bout that. I'd prolly wouldn't be much better 'n dead anyway if y'all hadn't showed up. Just, like, get this here birdie to get up high in the air so that 'em rockets ain't gonna hit. I ain't tryin'a get'cherselves killed here."
Damon sighs. "Well...whatever, dude, your funeral..." The Merlin, after hovering to a stop on autopilot mode, begins to climb in altitude until it reaches roughly 600 meters in altitude. As the helicopter makes its way up, Jimmy sits down next to Damon in the copilot's seat.
"So what're ya gonna do with 'em gals?" Jimmy asks, nodding to the pair of destroyers huddled together in their seats, now unable to do nothing more than hug one another once they realize that they are going even higher up into the air. "I mean, there's been lots'a talk about fight in' back against 'em factions like the one in Atlanta. You part 'a that too?"
"Not really. I just wanna build my own fleet of 'em ship girls. And if I find out there's one bein' held somewhere by someone, I'ma take it from 'em. Even if I gotta bust my way into Atlanta."
"Seems like a mighty ambitious plan ya got there, though I ain't really too sure what that's supposed ter mean for the rest of us. But listen..." Jimmy looks at Damon, "if ya wanna attack
Atlanta, first off, yer even more of a damned idiot than me tryin'a parachute my way outta this chopper for the first time ever in my life."
Damon laughs. "If some bitch paid me a buck for every time someone told me what I was 'bout ta do was stupid, I'd be able ta pay off this damned country's pre-war debt!"
"Ya think so? But second off, if ya really wanna head up to Atlanty, ya wanna fly in from the east.
Now, I dunno if this's true 'r not, but buuutttt...rumor has it that there's a pretty hefty secret arsenal somewhere to the east of Atlanty. Apparently, if ya fly over, ya can see it real easy. I think...I think I heard it's supposed ta be at some kinda high school, I dunno the name...but point is, you should be able ta see it from the air."
"And why the fuck should I give a damn about some 'secret arsenal'? I mean, I know we could probably use some more guns, but I honestly think we're fine for now. There's gotta be somethin' big there for me to wanna go there."
"I'm just sayin' if you wanna start somewhere, that'd probably be the place. Everywhere else, I hear it's too heavily guarded. I dunno how strong your 'ship gals' are, but I'm just sayin' y'all shan't jus' goose-step right on in, y'know?"
That is a lot of exposition and dialogue when you're being fucking shot at with RPGs and your Pilot is gonna fucking jump.
Lilith: Because as soon as the exposition starts, time stops. Don't you understand how animes work?
Lilith; But wait, ceci n'est pas une anime.
Ruby: Translate that please, I don't speak French
This isn't an anime. I think is what that was vaguely .
Lilith: Oui. It is not an anime.
I barely speak proper english what did ya expect .
Lilith: Then we must educate you. Care to join me for some private lessons later~?
Ruby: I would rather die, and burn in a pit of lava than learn French
Lilith: Why must you break my heart like so?
Ruby: Because I don't like you
Bah you're canadian, you're the bastard love child of france and britain no matter what ya speak.
Lilith: Non, non, they are mostly Anglais.
Ruby: What's a love child?
Lilith: Oh, this little one has so much to learn…
*Cough* MOVING ON
Jimmy gets up from the co-pilot's seat and pats Damon's shoulder. "This should be good. Hopefully they don't snipe me straight outta the air, haha. Get the ramp open, I'll be seein' ya 'round if I don't die 'n y'all come back fer a visit. Drinks'll be on me, 'k?"
Damon opens the rear ramp of the HC-3 Merlin, and it groans open with a metallic pulse. The sudden loss of cabin pressure sucks the air out of the passenger hold, causing the destroyers to screech bloody murder once more. Mutsu, too, cannot help but shriek in surprise, and Iku, as usual, laughs with joy and excitement.
"See y'all 'round, folks!" Jimmy waves to everyone as he carefully walks over to the ramp entrance, the Merlin beginning to mark its course back over the survivor camp in Savannah. "I'll put in a good word for y'all to Khal, if I even make it out, that is!"
Damon slows the speed of the helicopter, seeing that the survivors down at ground zero are not bothering to waste more rockets due to the helicopter's sheer altitude, to time Jimmy's base jump as best he can. "Jump now, Jimmy!" Damon yells as loud as he can over the whistling and roar of the high-altitude winds, and Jimmy gives him two thumbs up before hooting in excitement and jumping out, the entrance ramp creaking to a close behind him.
"A high school in East Atlanta...?" Damon mutters to himself. He quickly checks the GPS in the helicopter and analyzes the map of the area of Atlanta. "South Gwinnett High School..." He plots a waypoint in the GPS to guide his way, and the Merlin turns towards the direction of East Atlanta.
"We're headed to South Gwinnett High School, girls!" Damon yells into the passenger hold. "ETA is ten min...utes...?"
Amatsukaze and Murakumo are both virtually foaming at the mouths, having knocked themselves unconscious out of pure shock. Mutsu is sweating profusely out of nervousness, and Iku is still looking out the windows, wholeheartedly enjoying herself.
"What the hell!" Damon yells again. "Y'all're supposed to be the embodiments of warships, so why the fuckin' shit am I seein' most of you bein' absolute pussies!? C'mon, c'mon!"
"Th-th-that's because w-we've never flown before! Imagine our actual warship counterparts being flown inside of a helicopter like this, that's what's going on right now! ! !" Mutsu cries back to the pilot. Damon immediately envisions a battleship, two destroyers, and a submarine riding on top of a Merlin's rotor blades, spinning way too fast in endless cycles of rotor revolutions, and he simply bursts out laughing. "W-What's so darn funny, Admiral!? We're just not used to this, don't make fun of us for that!"
"I - no - no, seriously - I wasn't - I wasn't trying to - " Damon can't even talk properly over his uncontrollable laughter. "No seriously, I wasn't trying to make fun of you, just - just - that scene - that FUCKING scene - " Damon tries to stifle his giggle fit as best he can as the Merlin makes its way to South Gwinnett High School.
Lilith: I am surprised the GPS network is still operational after thirty years of no maintenance done.
I feel a migraine coming on again…….
Ruby: I feel like it should be dead after all those years
Lilith: Furthermore, I am confused. Are they the souls of warships or are they elaborate computer constructs believing that they are warships? This is the one thing I do not understand about this story: are they machines or are they souls given corporeal form?
Lilith: Because if it is the latter, than this small conversation at the end would make sense, but if it is the former — and it does look like the former is more true than the latter — then why would the programmers deliberately forget to tell them what helicopters are? Wouldn't these shipgirls be built to fight today's battles, not battles fought during World War Two?
Ruby: I also have a question, when does or did this story end?
Lilith: It does not end. In his own words, this is 'his personal journey.' One that is fraught with many perils, like bad writing and rape and needless self-masturbation to fulfil his horrible fantasies of forming the world's biggest harem to challenge the ruling order of society.
Ruby: HIS PERSONAL JOURNEY!!!!!!???????? So I guess he mentally raped and horribly murdered people during his real life!?
Lilith: Non, but it would not be a stretch to say that he has such fantasies.
This is trash, utter trash. Ruby I need to link you to the LR of the Authors note for Chapter 200. (we are on 251 right now), this is shit you need to see to believe.
Ruby: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? IT HAS 251 CHAPTERS!? Even Naruto and Bleach didn't go that far!
And, and I wish i was bullshitting you, 2,518,242 AND COUNTING.
Lilith: Updates every day, due to them being the plot of famous movies and games with the serial numbers filed off. Poorly. You can still make out where he is getting his source material from.
Ruby: Well he's serial-y killing us
He rips of Call of Duty modern warfare a Looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot.
Lilith: And Metal Gear, and a lot of other stories...
For every brain cell of ours he kills he adds 10 thousand words!
Ruby: Oh lord no
Yeah we're pretty deep in the hole.
Also THIS
IS THE COVER ART
Ruby: He ripped off Metal Gear!? He can rip off other series, BUT NOT FUCKING METAL GEAR!!!
Lilith: Among other things. He also took 'inspiration' from movies and popular first-person shooters.
Ruby: What type of movies and first person shooters?
I SHOWED IT BEFORE, BUT IT BEARS REPEATING.
Good ones that he makes shit usually, and probably a few shit ones.
Ruby: Oh no!!! HE'S BECOMING M. NIGHT SHAMALAN!!! EVEN WORSE!!!
PFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft-HAHAHA!
DAMN YOU SHAMALAMALALAMAMA!
Lilith: Ruby, let us take a look at the 'Shout Out' page. or more accurately, the 'Stories I have Ripped Off but my fanbase believes are homages.'
Oh jesus that's worth an LR all to it's own.
Ruby: He's even worse than him. Because at least m. night made sixth sense
Lilith: As you can see, this is how big it is. It had to be compressed into individual subfolders.
Lilith: Some of these shoutouts do not make sense, considering the time period that this story starts in: 2030. After the nuclear apocalypse in 2010.
Ruby: YOU DO NOT FUCKING DO THAT TO STREET FIGHTER AND FALLOUT!!!!!!!!!!!
He makes the Enclave look like the fucking red cross.
Lilith: Would it bother someone to make the government be actually good in a story like this?
Ruby: Who's enclave?
Any of them. He makes the new vegas Brotherhood look like the red cross. SHut up I know it's a shit metaphor but raglfraggles.
AND WI JUST REMINDED ME!
DAMON SAID HE'D ENJOY LISTENING TO THE PAYDAY 2 SOUNDTRACK WHILE HES DOING SHIT.
THE FUCKING GAME CAME OUT IN 2013!
THE NUKES UCKING DROPPED IN 2010!
Ruby: He shouldn't know about them then. Ughhh what a stupid fanfic
Lilith: Of course not, but he is a fool, and he writes because this is his 'personal journey' of enlightenment or something.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-
This is the part where I scream at the top of my lungs and then cry, a distressingly more common event as this fic goes on.
The cockpit of the HC-3 Merlin beeps loudly in missile lock-on warnings as the helicopter activates its on-board AN/ALQ-157 infrared jamming device and deploys IRCM dispensers into the air, forcing the two FIM-92 Stinger missiles that have been launched by ground personnel at the Merlin.
"Holy fuckin' fuck!" Damon exclaims, doing his best with his meager experience flying such a big helicopter as the Merlin to dodge the incoming missiles and small-arms fire. Having approached South Gwinnett High School, Damon immediately saw that Jimmy was right - the Atlantans are using the school campus grounds, mainly the football field, as a great storage cache site, and upon seeing an unauthorized Merlin approaching their way, the Atlantan troops on the ground have begun firing upon Damon's helicopter. "Why the hell do they have Stingers!? They really are armin' 'emselves with World War IV, the bastards! Well, more like the real World War III..."
"Admiral, what are we going to do!?" Mutsu yells, worriedly looking out the windows of the passenger hold in the Merlin. Murakumo and Amatsukaze are still huddled together, having been scared back to consciousness from the incessant and annoyingly loud beeping of the missile lock-on module. Iku, too, realizing the pinch that they are now in, has stopped cheering and has joined Mutsu in worriedly looking out the window, down at the campus grounds. They can see large storage caches, boxes, and containers sitting about all about the football field, with trucks, military jeeps, civilian cars and SUV's parked about in a surprisingly organized manner along the western end of the football field, where the bleachers used to be, and in the school parking lot. A few armed military helicopters, like a UH-1Y Huey, a UH-1H Huey, and an MH-60S Black Hawk, are also landed along the north end of the football field.
"I don't know! We can't land anywhere near this bitch!" Damon yells back as the AN/ALQ-157 IRCM module works in a panic to deter another incoming volley of two Stinger anti-air missiles.
"Fuck, we're running low on flares, and this fuckin' IRCM module won't keep up..." Damon considers bailing out and simply circling around the city to look for another suitable entry point, but then Iku yells out,
"Admiral, Admiral! One of the choppers down in the field's powering up, nano! The rotors are spinning, nano!"
Damon groans. The Merlin is currently not equipped with any real armaments, only defensive countermeasures such as the AN/ALQ-157 IRCM module and the flares that he has been deploying to keep the chopper safe from the Stinger missiles on the ground. All of the helicopters on the ground are heavily armed military choppers, and when Damon takes a look at which helicopter is about to take off, he grinds his teeth when he realizes that the MH-60S Black Hawk is about to join the fray.
"Those miniguns'll fuckin' rip us a new asshole..." Damon says, a sweat dripping down his brow in the adrenaline. "Small arms ain't gonna do jack shit to this baby, but...those fuckin' minigun slugs..." Damon desperately thinks of what he could do. "Mutsu!" he calls.
"Admiral!?"
"Open the side door! Amy, Murakumo, hold onto your seat belts! Iku, stay with Mutsu and spot for her!"
"H-Huh!? O-Open the door!? B-But, Admiral - "
"JUST FUCKING DO IT! IT'S EITHER WE TRY THIS, OR WE'RE ALL GETTIN' SHOT THE FUCK DOWN TO HELL!"
With her order firmly engrained, Mutsu heaves open the door and shrieks as cabin pressure hurtles out of the helicopter again. Iku hangs onto Mutsu just in case, as Mutsu is too heavy for the winds to pull out of the heli.
"Mutsu, get your 41cm guns out!"
"A-Are you - you can't be serious, Admiral! I don't know if it's safe to shoot in such an enclosed position like this!"
"JUST - FUCKING - DO IT!"
Damon banks the Merlin away from the school campus grounds, out of the range of the soldiers with the Stinger missiles, but the Black Hawk now lifts off into the air and raises altitude to match the Merlin's.
First off, Damon, stupid bitch that he is, flew directly into enemy territory and airspace, this place being sold to him as a weapons cache mind, like a fucktard.
"Admiral, that helicopter's coming after us, nano! ! !" Iku screams.
"G-Guns online in five!" Mutsu yells. "I can only fire my starboard-side gun due to the size of the side door! Don't b-blame me if something goes horribly wrong! I told you it's dangerous to be playing around with fire like this!"
"Aim for the Black Hawk!" Damon orders as he bleeds speed with the Merlin and turns it around so that Mutsu is facing the Black Hawk. The enemy helicopter, seeing the Merlin stop to confront it, also bleeds speed and turns its port-side towards the Merlin, its mounted M-134 Minigun already spinning and ready to unleash its hailstorm of 7.62x51mm slugs.
"You'll have to slow down the helicopter, Admiral! My targeting module isn't designed to compensate for stray movements in the air, I can't get a good shot if you keep moving like this - !" Mutsu calls.
"Then you'll have to knock that bird outta the air on your first shot, 'cause if you miss, we're gettin' fuckin' murdered right here!" Damon bellows. "But we'll fuckin' yolo it! On my mark!"
Damon brings the helicopter to a full stop, setting it on auto-hover. The enemy Black Hawk closes in, and its M-134 Minigun begins to churn out bullets. Just as the first few bullets punch hard into the hull of the HC-3 Merlin, Damon orders, "Mark!"
Mutsu pauses for a split second to confirm her aim, and then she fires. The Merlin bobs a bit in the air from the recoil of the 41cm cannon round, but the exhaust smoke from the tip of Mutsu's 41cm barrel barely has time to expand into the air before the 41cm blast wholly rips the Black Hawk into two messy and splintery halves. It is as if they are reenacting the scene in which Rensouhou-kun shot the Little Bird out of the air earlier in the day, except the fireball that the Black Hawk disappears behind is about five times larger. Even Damon can feel the heat blast of the resulting explosion through the cockpit windows.
"YEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH, TAKE IT, MOTHERFUCKEERRRRRRR! ! ! ! ! ! !" Damon screams in delight, watching the two halves of the Black Hawk get flung away by the blast across the sky so far that they clear the school and crash into the the small 78 Highway northwest of the school.
"Okay, this is good! This means we can just blast 'em from the air! Mutsu, get ready to bombard the storage cache down there! They can't do jack shit anymore, hahahaha! ! ! !"
For some odd reason this reminds me of the part in Black Lagoon where they shoot down a Hind by jumping a Patrol boat off a ramp to hit it with a torpedo. But not anywhere near as cool.
Lilith: Shouldn't the recoil do something bad to the airframe of the helicopter?
That and their eardrums should all be bleeding.
Lilith: By the way, most of these shout-outs are from things that came out in the last three years, meaning, after the nuclear apocalypse.
Ruby:Jesus Christ! WTF is he doing this!?
*Sobs*
Damon pilots the Merlin to ascend the heli higher up into the air, and Mutsu shifts her position and her starboard cannon so that she can poke her port-side 41cm cannon out the side door.
"I'm gonna tilt the heli over so you can get a good shot, Mutsu!" Damon calls.
"Don't worry, Admiral, I can just angle my cannons downwards!"
"What the fuck, they can? The dev team even accounted for a scenario like this?
Whatever...Mutsu, target one of the helicopters down there!"
Mutsu locks onto the UH-1H Huey and fires, causing the Huey to explode into a handful of flaming hunks of metal. Soldiers begin to scatter about from their positions all over the football field, the sight reminding Damon of ants.
"Ten seconds until next round!" Mutsu reports.
"Destroy the last chopper!"
Ten seconds later, the UH-1Y Huey also goes up in flames, and the cannon blast causes it to literally jump some fifty meters into the air and fall down right on top of a fuel truck, chaining the explosions together to create a spectacular display of chaos. Damon then realizes that the soldiers down on the ground are loading up into the ground vehicles around the campus and drive away along Highway 78, abandoning the school.
"They're retreating!" Damon exclaims. "Good job, Mutsu, good fucking job! Let's see what's down there...those fucks've been holdin' out on me..."
The Merlin descends, but Damon has Mutsu continue to fire shells until the last of the soldiers evacuate the area before landing.
Lilith: The development team accounted for the possibility of firing these rifles from a helicopter, but did not inform the girls on what a helicopter is. What on Earth…?
""Don't worry, Admiral, I can just angle my cannons downwards!"
"What the fuck, they can? The dev team even accounted for a scenario like this?
Whatever...Mutsu, target one of the helicopters down there!"
"
I mean if they were also intended to be used as you do, heavy super infantry, not being able to shoot down would be pretty fucking bad no? Except they shouldn't have been, so this makes no sense.
Lilith: Apparently this man does not know what 'internal consistency' is.
Half an hour later, after Damon and his ship girls take a quick log of the supplies that have been left behind in the evacuation and have not been damaged by Mutsu's cannon shots, the Admiral loads a Marte Anti-Ship Missile underneath the Merlin's airframe with the help of Mutsu. As it turns out, the storage site was the home base for the Merlin that they flew in with, with supplies for the
Merlin packed neatly away in crates along the east edge of the football field. Amatsukaze, Murakumo, and Iku gaze with wonder into a plethora of opened weapons crates, unable to decide which gun they should use. Iku pulls out an FN FS-2000 assault rifle, marveling at the strange design of the gun, while Murakumo fiddles around with a Steyr AUG-A1.
"Wow...there are so many guns..." Iku says aloud in wonder, staring keenly at the variety of weapons inside of the crates. "I don't know which one to pick, nano..."
"Lemme see?" Damon leans over, having finished installing two Marte anti-ship missiles in the Merlin's airframe, one on each side. He lifts up an AUG-A1 from its crate. "AUGs...I mean, bullpup configs are real nice, but I haven't used 'em very much. I hear they have a couple problems with jamming and consistency...but I could be talkin' outta my ass." He peers down the 1.5x telescopic sight. "Cool sight though."
"Admiral, I found this crate, what's this? This reminds me of that big sniper you have..." Amatsukaze calls, dragging another crate over to them. Looking in at it, Damon feels his jaw drop - a Barrett M82-A1 fifty caliber sniper rifle sits inside the crate, surrounded by two Tango 51 sniper rifles and two .338 Lapua AR-15 sniper rifles.
"Are you fucking kidding..." Damon gingerly lifts up the M82-A1, as if he is holding the last morsel of food in the world. "An M82...? Oh my God..."
"Why, is it good?" Amatsukaze stares at the huge rifle in Damon's hands.
"Good? It ain't just good, it's overkill! And that's why it's fucking beautiful! Here." Damon puts the M82-A1 in Mutsu's hands, and Mutsu, surprised, holds it awkwardly, not knowing what to do with it.
"You use that, Mutsu. Since you're a battleship, you ought'a use somethin' that shows off your power."
"Eh? Uh, um...I-I guess, sure..." Mutsu stutters, not sure whether to be flattered by Damon's praise or to be confused by a gun that she does not know how to handle. Damon runs through the weapons crates that they have been able to secure.
"Goddamn, there really are too many bullets! I don't know which ones to keep..." Damon mulls, trying to decide which weapons he should load into the helicopter. "Too many choices...this is really weird, I usually never get to make a damn choice...why must I choose..." He picks up an H&K G36-C, looking down the iron sights.
Lilith: can you even do that? Load a AShM underneath a helicopter? That sounds impossible, considering the size of the thing. And if you are just loading it up to drop into a launcher somewhere else, do you even have something to launch it?
*Guitar starts playing*
Lilith: Non, actually, you can, but this is an Italian weapons system. What is it doing in America?
Ummm...Admiral, Admiral!" Murakumo yells. "I'm picking up unknown signatures closing in fast from the north and northwest!"
Damon, snapping back to attention, puts the G36-C back in its crate, pulls out a .338 Lapua AR-15, and fills his pockets with the magazines that are inside the weapons crate. "Grab a gun you like and stock up on ammo. It's 'bout to go down, we'll defend this position as best we can."
Lilith: G36C. There are no dashes. Oh, hello Anonymous Rabbit.
R32: So, here comes…...
"Incoming ship girl! Wait, whose signature is that? It's way too fast!"
Then, Damon spies a blur behind Amatsukaze, about a hundred meters off, and quickly raises the barrel of his .338 Lapua. "Get down, Amy!"
Amatsukaze drops to the ground as a .338 Lapua round is propelled out of the barrel of the AR-15 Sniper. It hits their would-be attacker right in the lower stomach, and she stumbles, trips, and rolls along the ground before regaining her stature and stands back up again, some fifty meters away, completely unharmed from a direct hit to an otherwise vital area by a .338 Lapua bullet.
"...you've gotta be shitting me..." Damon mutters, lowering the barrel of his .338 Lapua AR-15.
"They activated both ship girls...?"
Damon's ship girls look towards the direction he shot. Amatsukaze, seeing her first, scrambles back up to her feet, breathless.
Well it's that time again *Puts gun on the table* Ambiaaaaaance….
Who's suffering with me today?
R32: *Hands in his Ticket To Ride*
You are making terrible choices in life, I can respect that.
So we've done it folks, the big 2 0. Kinda insignificant out of the 250 (and counting) within this fic, but a milestone none the less.
Chapter 20: Fifth Contact
This worked the first time, now it's just sorta spoiling/stating the obvious.
IP: Hello, I'm here! Just got sunk by a truly tremendous amount of enemy firepower in WoWs and - sees title … This is where we're at right now, is it? This is the level we've reached.
Fuck fancy names for the chapter LR's, all of them would just be various bemoaning about the thing.
IP: Kinda thought it was the actual chapter title by this point.
It is, Fifth contact is the title.
IP: Why does it still need to be counted when it's already happened five times? And inside 20 chapters? That's not a "contact", that's a "daily occurrence". That's "fifth time I had cereal for breakfast this week".
R32: Oh lil' crow, art thou Whiskey?
Speaking of Whiskey *Swigs*
CHAPTER 20
Shimakaze, Shimakaze-class Super-Destroyer.
To Damon, if he ever thought Iku's outfit, which is normally only a school swimsuit anyway, looked at all scandalous, Shimakaze's is borderline slutty. A sailor fuku top and collar, white long gloves covering halfway up her upper arms topped with a similarly colored blue and yellow scheme as her sailor top, a black headband over the top of her head that sports two strips of black cloth that somehow stand up by themselves and give off the image of a pair of bunny ears, an extremely skimpy blue microskirt, a black thong similar to Amatsukaze's, and thighhighs striped red and white. Flowing blonde hair, too, the same if not slightly less length of Amatsukaze's if she put her hair down.
IP: Let's start with "Super Destroyer". Forgive me, but I don't believe that's an actual ship designation. The paragraph of description of what Shimakaze's wearing helps nothing and no one, and reads very poorly. And the first sentence is near incomprehensible with how it's phrased.
R32: Me neither
Whiskey: It's never existed IRL. You have super dreadnoughts, supercarriers and super battleships. But super destroyers… nah, they'd have been reclassed to CL or CA if they were that super.
"Wait, Shimakaze? Isn't that - " Before Damon can finish his sentence, Shimakaze dashes faster than humanly possible straight for Damon.
"I won't let you, nano! ! ! !" Iku, reacting quickly, steps in front of Shimakaze's way in front of Amatsukaze and flips down the karambit blade in Damon's knife that she has been holding onto, but Shimakaze simply takes a small hop so that her speed brings her right knee up right into Iku's chin, sending Iku flying backwards to crash into a pile of ammo boxes. In the same leap, Shimakaze pulls back her right fist, aiming for a lethal punch onto Damon's cranium. Damon has just enough time to pull the barrel of his .338 Lapua AR-15 towards Shimakaze at point-blank range and pull the trigger, and the kinetic energy from the bullet punches Shimakaze backwards slightly so that she lands awkwardly right in the middle of Damon and his ship girls.
IP: Everything in this world seems to be superhuman - except for the mooks, who are subhuman (as evidenced by how little moral quandary there is when they're horribly murdered). Kinda clashes with the "nitty-gritty dark realism" tone Paul seems to be aiming for.
Whiskey: Um shooting people that not work like that and they don't fall over just like that. Unless they lose their balance, on the pain messes up the nervous system and they fall down. Which is the idea behind rubber bullets: shoot someone, and they drop from the pain and the nerves going haywire.
"Damon has just enough time to pull the barrel of his .338 Lapua AR-15 towards Shimakaze at point-blank range and pull the trigger, "
What the fuck does this even mean, like I can't even hazard a guess at what he's using through the porn.
IP: *activating de-bad-writing translator* "Damon just managed to point his gun at Shimakaze and pull the trigger before she reached him."
R32: Um, I can somehow visualize/physically replicate the movement based on what I'm reading….gimme a sec while I gather my thoughts. Okay, I think he just basically drew the rifle back towards himself under his shoulder (to get just that bit of distance between him and Shimakaze) while training it at her, allowing him to get a shot off before he could be punched. From the text, it sounded like she was almost in barrel-stuffing range.
No no, I mean what the fuck kinda gun is he using. If I were the average joe fucko i'd be completely lost.
IP: I am the "average joe fucko" as you put it in some respects. No clue. I've gotten to the state that I just automatically replace instances of those letter-number designations with "gun".
Whiskey: His gun is an AR-15. *shrug*
R32: The F&D Defense FD338 is probably the only AR15-pattern rifle in .338 Lapua chambering I can think of. And I think he ripped it from its depiction from Battlefield 4.
Thank you. And not to point out the obvious but: saying "Assault Rifle" or just AR-15 would have been muuuuuuuuuch better.
IP: Didn't I write a full paragraph on that in your "(Probably) Shitty Fanfiction" thread.
Yeeeeeeeep, hell it might have been for this.
IP: Think it was a knockoff of it, actually...
"Get away from Admiral!" Mutsu yells, lifting the M82-A1 anti-materiel sniper rifle that Damon had given her and trying to physically strike Shimakaze with the butt of the rifle. But Shimakaze is too quick for Mutsu's lumbering movement, ducks to avoid the rifle strike easily, pushes aside Mutsu's arms, thrusts her right elbow into Mutsu's lower chest, turns, jumps, and lands a solid jumping roundhouse kick right onto Mutsu's head, knocking her down to the ground. Damon drops his sniper rifle in the meantime and draws his Glock 37, and as Shimakaze turns back to him, Damon unloads his entire magazine into Shimakaze from only two meters away. Hissing, Shimakaze, getting struck by three bullets to the head, neck, and chest, lunges herself at him, but Murakumo now joins the fray as Amatsukaze simply stands, frozen, unsure of what to do. Shimakaze ends up ramming herself into Murakumo and pinning her down to the ground, and just as Shimakaze tries to start pummeling Murakumo, Damon tears her off Murakumo and throws her behind him, flattening her against the side of the HC-3 Merlin helicopter, and she quickly regains herself as she lands on her feet. The bullet impacts from where Damon has shot her numerous times are sizzling with light white smoke, and Shimakaze rubs her neck before dashing in again.
He Said " Mutsu's" far too many times in a row. *ding*
IP: In no particular order, Murakumo "joins the fray", whatever that means, purely to get knocked down, Damon is supposedly stronger than a kanmusu now, combat with Mutsu is described like a very boringly (so normal), and the inconsistent effect of bullets returns. Amatsukaze frozen in fear for no good reason.
Whiskey: This is presumably close quarters, so author, if you're so clever why weren't your characters carrying CQB weapons? You gun wanker you.
"Goddamn it, Amy, don't just fuckin' stand there, subdue this bitch!" Damon hisses through clenched teeth. Despite her suggestive appearance and middle school-ish teenage body, Shimakaze is deceptively powerful, even though Damon already knows she is a ship girl. Even with his superhuman strength, Damon is doing all that he can to prevent Shimakaze's fists from reaching him.
Despite her being a super fast and powerful shipgirl Damon still manages to keep her at stand still, all the while his own girls getting their asses kicked like it was nothing. *Ding*
IP: Yeah.
R32: Oh he's about to really get his ass handed to him.
IP: Thing is he ought to have been having his ass handed to him on first engagement. Instead he's made to look like a hero through this "noble effort to protect them". Pheh.
Whiskey: This is something that bugs me about a lot of Japanese anime; the girls are useless to make the guy look good. :/
Fuck shitty harem anime. And most Light Novel shows.
R32: One of my friends basically went "FUCK their concept of and obsession with purity."
Amatsukaze stands, frozen in place, however, torn between whether to help her Admiral or just to stay put to avoid hurting Shimakaze. "I-I don't know - I can't do it, I just can't!" she cries out, shaking her head desperately.
"What the fu - why the fuck not!? This is a goddamned order - " Damon starts to bellow, but Shimakaze suddenly sweeps a leg underneath his feet to knock him off balance, and before Mutsu and Iku can get to her, Shimakaze grabs Damon the rigging of his vest, lifts him up, and hurls him across the football field, straight over the Merlin, and Damon lands painfully on his back right onto a tire of an overturned Jeep.
Ooooh~ Italics. Now he's getting cereal. *Rolls eyes*
Also landing on his back like that should probably have fucked it up something fierce
IP: Again. Why are we supposed to believe that the girl literally designed from the ground up to be a weapons system has hangups over fighting?
R32: Sorta-sisters-cousins, that kind of thing, maybe...Hey it's a KC thing.
IP: Half of Shimakaze's shtick is that she was a one-off prototype of a new (possibly better, but that way leads long arguments, particularly with my level of knowledge of ship preformance IRL or lack therin) design of destroyer. She doesn't have siblings, she's an "only child". At most she has cousins. So I'm not buying it.
Whiskey: Kancolle fandom likes to stick tsunderekaze with speedykaze alot tho.
IP: In other words, more writing based off of crappy memes. Taking bets now on whether he'll have Enterprise pretending to be a human if/when she turns up, and further separate bets on whether she'll develop a relationship with Yamato.
R32: False on the former, and Yamato hasn't debuted yet.
Whiskey: Yet.
IP: Retracting the first bet then.
R32: *inb4 exploitation of Hotel Miami meme*
IP: Also, can we get a quick instant replay of fuckoffyebastard sorry, Damon being thrown into a tire, please? Thaaaaat's lovely.
IP: Now quick, someone glue him in there before he can get up!
R32: NEXT
"Why, you - ! ! !" Mutsu tries to tackle Shimakaze so that her superior weight will simply pin Shimakaze down, but again, Shimakaze is too quick, dashing out of Mutsu's range. Amatsukaze, snapping to action after seeing her Admiral get launched across the football field, bites her lip and charges at Shimakaze. Shimakaze tries to side-dash out of her way in order to juke her out, but Amatsukaze reads Shimakaze's movements perfectly and blocks Shimakaze from dashing away. As Shimakaze tries to attack Amatsukaze with a left hook punch, Amatsukaze grabs her hand with her gloved right hand, pulls Shimakaze in, and drills her left hand deep into Shimakaze's stomach, causing her to reel over in a coughing fit.
"Sorry, Shimakaze..." Amatsukaze mumbles, and grabbing Shimakaze by the neck with only her Ignition Glove, she lifts her up. "Even if...even if you're my sister, orders...are orders. I'm so...sorry..."
Amatsukaze's Ignition Glove flashes, and Shimakaze disappears in a elliptical ball of bright red flames that torches Shimakaze for at least ten seconds before being extinguished, leaving behind a very charred Shimakaze struggling to gasp for breath. Mutsu, in the meantime, seeing Amatsukaze defeat Shimakaze, makes her way over to Damon to check up on his condition. Amatsukaze puts Shimakaze down on the ground and hugs her. "I'm sorry..." she whispers.
IP: More sons-of-bitches mind-raping kanmusu into being their soldiers. If we're lucky, they'll kill each other off. As of the most recent chapter we have not been lucky, as Damon isn't properly dead.
Before Amatsukaze can realize that she is in danger, Shimakaze stabs her hand right through Amatsukaze's own stomach so hard that Shimakaze's hand protrudes out from Amatsukaze's lower back. Murakumo screams out loud, shocked at the fact that Shimakaze has just managed to pull off what should've been an impossible feat.
"It was, Onee-chan...but it was only enough to kill a human," Shimakaze whispers as a single tear drops down her left eye. "It wasn't enough to put me down...and...and you had to let me do this to you..."
Murakumo pulls out the chrome-polished Desert Eagle that she has never previously ever fired a shot before with, puts the sights right on Shimakaze's head, and pulls the trigger. The heavy .50 Action Express cartridge clonks Shimakaze in the side of the head so hard that the sheer force would've been sufficient to snap a normal human neck, but instead it knocks Shimakaze down onto the ground for a second time, her bloody right hand pulled out of Amatsukaze's body. As
Amatsukaze crumples to the ground herself with a hand-sized in her stomach, Murakumo unleashes six more bullets of fifty caliber retribution into the downed Shimakaze, who screams in pain as the bullets punch her harder than anything she's felt before. Tossing aside her empty Desert Eagle, Murakumo pops out her main mast, extends it to full length, and starts bashing Shimakaze until she grabs the mast and uses it to pull herself up to her feet. As soon as she does, Shimakaze grabs Murakumo by her right elbow and kicks her in the upper leg and twists her arm until Murakumo is forced drop her polearm. Shimakaze then pulls Murakumo over her back and throws her down onto the ground flat on her back, takes a small hop, spikes both feet straight down onto Murakumo's chest, and hops off, leaving Murakumo heaving.
IP: brb, checking the Discord chat for that "art of Chp. 21".
"Tossing aside her empty Desert Eagle, Murakumo pops out her main mast, extends it to full length, and starts bashing Shimakaze until she grabs the mast and uses it to pull herself up to her feet. As soon as she does, Shimakaze grabs Murakumo by her right elbow and kicks her in the upper leg and twists her arm until Murakumo is forced drop her polearm. Shimakaze then pulls Murakumo over her back and throws her down onto the ground flat on her back, takes a small hop, spikes both feet straight down onto Murakumo's chest, and hops off, leaving Murakumo heaving.
"
R32: I'm going to get the defibs…..
Whiskey: *facepalms* Why did I agree to read this again?
This abomination
IP: Ohhhhh, you meant the art that's got Picasso revolving in his grave like a dynamo. I see. I wish I didn't, but I see.
IP: Anyways, what's happening?
Okay so
Amatsukaze did the fire hand to shimakaze, who survived and shoved her arm through Amaztukaze's stomach crushing part of her spine. Then murakumo shot her repeatedly and she still survived, mura then used her mast as a polearm to bash an shimakaze, to little effect.
IP: Wasn't there an exchange in one of the first few chapters where Damon decided that Murakumo's mast needed a name for no good reason? Everyone went to town on it.
Maybe, I didn't care to remember.
R32: Anyway that image is from the next chapter when Damon has to carry Amatsukaze because she's been crippled by that attack.
Shimakaze hears a pair of footsteps rushing towards her, so she turns to see Damon and Mutsu approaching her. Damon, seeing first Murakumo rolling slowly on the ground clutching her chest, then Amatsukaze lying on the ground, holding her stomach and shuddering in small splashes of blood, roars,
"SHIMAKAZE!"
Shimakaze blinks dumbly at Damon. Something...something about that voice...
Magically he has a natural affinity to order the shipgirls around.
IP: groan of psychological pain encompassing and shutting down several vital functions ...gimme a minute to recover from that… Concentrated Bullshite right there.
*Chugs Vodka*
R32: So I misremembered then. I thought having an entire mag of .50AE dumped into her head stunned her long enough…...guess not.
IP: Okay. FIRST. Your first response to seeing Murakumo and Amatsukaze is to just yell their attacker's name? Not, y'know, be worried about their well-being? Second! How the hell do you even slightly intend for me to believe that a screamed name sounds anything even vaguely like an order?!?
"Nano!" Iku, Cloaked, has managed to sneak right up behind Shimakaze with an R-700 sniper rifle and swings the butt of the rifle like a club and smashes it into the back of Shimakaze's head, forcing her to stumble forward. Damon seizes the opportunity to lunge at Shimakaze, tackle her down to the ground for a final time, and with his knife that Iku returned to him in his right hand, stabs Shimakaze right in the forehead with the hacking nanoblade.
"Ah - w-what're you doing - what're you doing to me!?" Shimakaze screams, trying to struggle but finds to her horror that she is rapidly losing control over her limbs.
"Ya wanna know? Ya wanna know that bad, ya fucking whore?" Damon spits. "I'ma make ya pay for whatcha just did to my ship girls. You're fucking mine now."
IP: Does This Remind You Of Anything? Like rape, say? Because it feels like fuckoffyebastard Paul here's only barely remembered to keep it to his subtext.
R32: There's going to be another instance of THIS sort of forced hack later on, but that will be for another time.
IP: To wash my memory of this horrifying image ever-so-slightly, I shall once again point out that hacking nanoblades is a completely stupid piece of bullshite.
…..I don't wanna do this anymooooooooooooooooooooooooore.
R32: I REGRET NOTHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING *BOOM*
Shimakaze, now unable to control her own motor functions anymore, inhales sharply and squeezes her eyes shut, fearful of what is about to become of her. The small analog percentage on the small screen of the knife handle gets closer and closer to 100%, but Mutsu reports,
"Admiral, we have even more company...! Just normal human signatures this time, though!"
"Ship mode, Mutsu, and do it fast! You need to buy time for us!" Damon orders, and Mutsu hurriedly begins her conversion. "Murakumo, get up and defend our position with your ship mode too!"
Murakumo groans and stumbles to her feet, still coughing and picking up her mast and her Desert Eagle before unpacking her ship armaments. Damon finally pulls out his nanoblade more harshly than necessary and glares at his newly acquired ship girl.
"I've got a lotta questions for you, fuckface," Damon growls, yanking Shimakaze back up to her feet. "If I cared any less, I would've just hacked your main processor to overheat and implode and left you here."
IP: I really don't like this section. The college I go to had a mandatory online course on sexual assault to be completed before orientation. It was a pretty well-done piece of work, but after that this sort of thing's been… Just excuse me a minute, I need to go suppress the urge to vomit.
R32: Oh cock *facepalm*
HOW DO YOU CONTROL THE HACKING KNIFE YOU COCK!
The first cannon shot, coming from Murakumo's 12.7cm twin turrets, rings out and crashes off into the distance, and the screams of dying soldiers can be barely heard. Damon rushes over to Amatsukaze and turns a bit pale at her wound.
"Shit..." Damon mutters. "She did this to you...?"
"I...I won't die from this, Admiral..." Amatsukaze gasps, "but...but it's going to take me...a long time to recover from this...! Just...just please, don't...don't..."
"Don't what!?"
"Please don't say anything mean to my sister!" Amatsukaze cries out, struggling to sit up. Shimakaze hurries over and holds her older sister.
"Onee-chan, he - he's changed my command protocol somehow! I don't need to fight you anymore!"
"Hold on, what!?" Damon bellows. "You're sisters!? What the fuck is goin' on here?!"
Shimakaze turns to Damon. "Not here, I'll explain if I need to somewhere else! We just need to get somewhere safe so that Amatsu-nee-chan doesn't get hurt any further! Everyone, grab a gun and some ammo, and follow me!"
"What the - Shimakaze, you're not the one givin' orders here!" Damon protests, but Shimakaze screams back,
"If you want to keep one of your ship girls from taking permanent damage to her hull and get outta here, then shut up and follow me, Admiral! Just freakin' listen to me for now! ! !"
"Unbelievable..." Damon shakes his head but picks up his .338 Lapua AR-15 again, along with his dropped Glock 37. Mutsu fires a 41cm round towards the groups of soldiers who have been dispatched from the north and the west to kill them, slowing their advance considerably. "Girls, pack it up, we're moving! We gotta leave the heli behind, it'll take too long to spin up! Shimakaze, you better fuckin' take us somewhere safe! And you'll also tell me where Kaga is!"
"I'll do anything, okay!? I just want to make sure my older sister's gonna make it out of this okay in the end!" Shimakaze yells back. "Do whatever you want, I don't wanna hurt or kill anyone so meaninglessly anymore! ! !"
Damon takes one last look at the Merlin. "I'm gonna rip out the throats'a anyone who messes with my chopper..." he growls as Shimakaze lifts up the wounded Amatsukaze onto her back.
Murakumo packs up her ship guns first as Mutsu fires one last volley of 41cm cannon rounds before compressing her arms and retreating north with the rest of the group.
Well now that that section is over let's review what the hell just happened. *Grabs gun*
Whiskey: Goddamnit stop using long rifles as melee weapons. Also this begs the question why the fuck are they all carrying sniper rifles in close quarters. Mutsu at least I can buy, a light fifty hits like a fucking brick but still. :/
IP: Alright. I have my stomach… mostly under control again. To be safe, though, I'm not going to comment on this chunk any further than to say that the subtext here is horrifying, and Paul and any to all of his readers who think that's okay should be damned ashamed of themselves.
Whiskey: Y'know I've written some pretty terrible stuff but then I've also written that stuff from the position of "this stuff is not okay at all."
I really don't wanna do the rest of the chapter, fuck I don't wanna do the rest of the fic. This is where I break.
IP: There's a reason I disappear from the chats when you start in on that sort of thing, Whiskey. And at least you do acknowledge that it's not okay, which is vastly more than I'm getting here.
R32: T_T
Oh don't give me that, I know we still have more to do. Sadly.
Having successfully evaded the onslaught of soldiers who were sent to retake the football field and run away to the abandoned suburbs to the north of South Gwinnett High School, Damon and his ship girls take refuge inside an abandoned house with half its roof caved in for a breather.
"Alright, Shimakaze, or whatever the fuck your name is," Damon says angrily in a low but frustratedly annoyed voice, "you've got'cherself a shitton of explainin' to do. And while we're at it, since you're mine now, someone transfer memory files over to her so she's caught up."
The way he says "Your mine now" makes me very uncomfortable.
IP: There is, I will admit, something to be said for demonstrating that a character has an accent. Once that starts impeding the reader's ability to understand that character, however, it's time to start considering if the accent needs to go. Or at least, be reduced.
Whiskey: My sole attempts to differentiate American and English accents result in inconsistency between Correct and American spelling. But yes, funetik aksent should be reduced when it hinders the reader.
IP: I think the only accent off the top of my head that'd work really well written out is Scottish, and that's because it straddles the line between accented English and a new language.
Shimakaze, who has Amatsukaze's head laying on her shoulder as the latter breathes unsteadily and laboriously due to her wound, clasps her older ship sister's right hand with both of hers as Iku passes a panel containing her memory files to Shimakaze.
"First, I wanna know how you managed to override my command protocol," Shimakaze says, glaring back at Damon. "And it seems like you're rather lax on your admiralty over us, so don't get pissy over me if I demand some answers."
Damon pulls out his knife handle and ejects the nanoblade for Shimakaze to see. "Hacking knife," he says quickly. "Loaded with a program that changes any code related to command hierarchy so that the program now obeys me. You ship girls ain't no exception either, because up here - " Damon taps his head - "you're all just computers. It's how I got everyone else. You wanna start answerin' my questions now before I put in more stringent command lines to make you not question me?"
How do you do that, how does that work, motherfucker you know it's bad when NEIL FUCKING BREEN IS A MORE REALISTIC HACKER THAN YOU ARE.
IP: Just casually handing memories around on a slab. Fine. Get me another three glasses of hard liquor and I might buy it. Hacking knife? Nope. Gonna need some really really good stuff to make me believe that. Damon's attitude, meanwhile, it as atrocious as usual. That is to say, can he hurry up and die already?
Whiskey: Damon really shouldn't be bragging about his hacking knife. On the other hand he's also an arrogant shit so bragging about things that should be OPSEC is in character I suppose. Still stupid though.
IP: I don't care if it's in-character. I don't want him as my protagonist anymore.
Whiskey: What we want and what we're gonna get are two different things. (God i love that line from Shane.)
IP: Sadly. But we can still see him die, then go home and pretend very hard that that's as far as it went.
"Fine." Shimakaze clasps Amatsukaze's right gloved hand a bit harder. "Then...since I dunno where to start, what do you wanna know?"
"Who the hell activated you? I thought the F.L.E.E.T. Project was supposed to be some 'top secret', 'ultra-classified' program or some shit. So why the fuck is it that it seems like there're more people than there needs to be who know about this, who know about you?"
"I don't know," Shimakaze shakes her head. "I can't really say. All I know is that I was activated around a week ago, along with Kaga, the aircraft carrier, and that we were to obey any order given to us by a head defense officer of the city of Atlanta." She looks down at the moldy floor. "It...it was horrible. Right off the bat, when I woke up, I found myself being told to kill some poor guy. I didn't want to. I don't wanna kill people for no reason - it's sick, and I didn't know if the guy did anything wrong or not. 'To test out my parameters' was their excuse, and even though I didn't wanna do it, orders...were orders. They had me execute these people who honestly looked like prisoners in too many ways for me to count...just using my raw strength as a ship girl, my speed, everything - on top of which, I always had to walk around knowing that every man that I passed was probably leering at me with those sick, perverted eyes behind my back. I hated that place...I don't ever wanna go back there just to return to a hellhole fulla people who probably don't have anything else in mind other than to violate me or go back to 'test out my parameters'. I already know what I'm capable of...those bastards..." Shimakaze looks up at her new Admiral, glaring at him again. "And you better not be any worse. I'm fucking sick and tired of doing things that only a mindless fucking murderer would do, and I'm sick and tired of being seen as some sort of sex toy just because of what I'm wearing."
" "And you better not be any worse. I'm fucking sick and tired of doing things that only a mindless fucking murderer would do, and I'm sick and tired of being seen as some sort of sex toy just because of what I'm wearing."
"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Oh you poor, poooooor girl. This is exactly what you expect it's gonna be like.
R32: She'll be assured that the latter will absolutely not happen as long as she's under his command.
IP: Which is why this whole section has been liberally seasoned with a (not) subtle undertone of "rape", yes. And doesn't even slightly protect her from the first one.
"Great sob story, tell it again, will ya?" Damon coldly and cruelly replies with no hesitation. "So you don't know who activated you, okay, fine, whatever, we'll probably find that one out one way or other down the road anyway. Do you know how you and Kaga fell into the hands of those douchenozzles in Atlanta?"
IP: Fuckoffyebastard demonstrating how he got the nickname.
Shimakaze looks repulsed by Damon's attitude. "Don't just pass off my experiences in that damn city as some 'sob story', you jackass! I really hated that place, you know! It was fucking terrible! Plus, I had to hurt my older sister - " she jabs a finger at the hole in Amatsukaze's stomach - "because I was 'under orders'! I mean, at first I was gonna be grateful to you for making it so that I don't ever have to go back there again, but I guess hoping that you'd be a decent person yourself was begging for too much! So fuck you!"
IP: If they could read the script, I'd think they'd have gone on strike by now. (Now there's an omake idea for someone in the thread to use.)
@Sheo Darren we're giving him fodder for his parody snippets.
"Answer the damn question. It also doesn't help that you've given all of us a hard time, not to mention given Amatsukaze one helluvan injury that I don't know how the fuck we'll heal."
Shimakaze grinds her teeth. Mutsu and Iku look on, sitting together worriedly, while Murakumo shoulders her Steyr AUG-A1 assault rifle, looking out of the broken window away from Damon and
Shimakaze. Swallowing her temptation to simply say "fuck off" to her new Admiral, Shimakaze continues.
"Here's what I know, okay? Regarding anyone who might have any chance of knowing how I or
Kaga got activated, the only bit of info I have on that is that there's someone in the Atlanta City Prison, under the High Value Prisoner Ward - "
"The fuuuuuuck?" Damon emphasizes the profanity. "Why the fuck would your activator be in the damn slammer? The hell he do?"
"Like I keep saying, I don't - freakin' - know! I'm just telling you what I know, okay?! Geez...anyway,
Atlanta City troops have been on the move to find my armaments - you know, my ship guns and stuff like that, kinda like the one Amatsu-nee-chan has." She points at Rensouhou-kun, who is facing Amatsukaze with both cannon barrels angled downwards. Somehow, it gives off the notion that it is very much so concerned about the state of his carrier.
"Well...fuck, they might get it now," Damon sighs exasperatedly. "Your and Kaga's equipment were in that heli we came in."
"Damn..." Shimakaze bites her lip. "I mean, obviously, you probably already know this seeing you've already got four other ship girls besides me...but I can fight a lot better with my Rensouhou-chans. You've seen Amatsu-nee-chan fight, right?"
"Yeah...?"
"I fight like that, too, so..."
"And what're ya callin' Amy, anyway? Amatsu...nee...what?"
"Amatsu-nee-chan. Nee-chan is Japanese for big sis. Amatsukaze is my older sister."
Damon looks confused. "But...you're not even the same class of ship, if I recall correctly.
Amatsukaze's a Kagerou-class, while you're just in a class 'a your own. How're you two sisters? Jus' 'cause your names're similar, or what?"
Amatsukaze coughs once. "It's...it's because..." Amatsukaze struggles not to cough to interrupt herself, "back in the day...my...my boiler was a prototype that was later remodeled and upgraded once they built Shimakaze, so...we share a lot of things..."
Damon looks confused. "But...you're not even the same class of ship, if I recall correctly.
Amatsukaze's a Kagerou-class, while you're just in a class 'a your own. How're you two sisters? Jus' 'cause your names're similar, or what?"
Amatsukaze coughs once. "It's...it's because..." Amatsukaze struggles not to cough to interrupt herself, "back in the day...my...my boiler was a prototype that was later remodeled and upgraded once they built Shimakaze, so...we share a lot of things..."
I am, because it doesn't even make sense as sisters. If anything they'd be cousins or a parent-figure type.
IP: I haven't seen it before, and I'm already sick of it. It makes about as much sense as the Enterprise reincarnation thing, i.e. none at all.
"Onee-chan, you shouldn't talk, you'll just make yourself more tired," Shimakaze urges very worriedly. "We don't have a repair ship anywhere near us, either, so...it's gonna take a long time for you to heal yourself...I'm so sorry that I did that to you..." Shimakaze tightly hugs her older sister, unable to restrain the lump in her throat at her misdeed. Amatsukaze forces a smile and puts her right arm around her younger ship sister.
"It...wasn't your fault...you were only following orders, so...try not to dwell on it too much..."
Damon scratches his head. "Does anyone know how to get Amatsukaze patched up? She can't really do anything anymore with that hole in her. How did that happen, anyway..."
"Shimakaze basically thrust her arm straight through," Murakumo mutters without looking back.
"Nothing else to it..."
"Holy fuck," Damon says in genuine surprise.
Shimakaze again looks down in shame. "...I'm a lot stronger than I look..." she mumbles. "...and it doesn't help that it was my own ship sister that I hurt so badly like this. If only Akashi were here..."
Someone who i'm pretty sure hasn't shown up yet, thank the lord.
R32: Not debuted as of ch250.
IP: Praise be, hallelujah and chocolate. Bet you anything that Paul mangles her into the "mad scientist" meme.
R32: Could be one of those very few ship girls that integrated themselves into various survivor communities by themselves, like Aoba.
IP: Someone for AWACS to use in her thing?
R32: Not sure what Caduceus could offer to entice her away from the Savannah community.
"She's the ship girl that we have listed in our databases as the main fleet repair ship," Mutsu says in a quiet tone. "She has equipment that'll help repair damage like the kind Amatsukaze suffered so that at least she can help fight our way back to base for more extensive repairs. Yeah, it would be really nice if we had her around right now, for Amatsukaze's sake..."
"I suppose I know who I should try ta look for next time."
"I know, right..."
Damon turns to Shimakaze again. "Anything else you know?"
Shimakaze sighs quietly. "I don't know who's in charge of the faction in Atlanta, but whoever they
are, they're planning to sell us ship girls to another faction that they're allies with, another faction somewhere deeper south. I actually saw the guy that they flew over, but then a bit after I was ordered to kill the invaders at South Gwinnett High, which turned out to be you guys."
Damon leans forward. "That guy you mentioned, did he look a bit older, cowboy hat, and shades?"
"Uh, yeah, actually...that describes him pretty well, how did you know?"
Damon spits angrily. "I fuckin' knew it...we've met before, in fact, when I first activated Murakumo." He points his thumb behind him at Murakumo at the window. "She's the first very ship girl among all of you, and we stayed together at Mobile, the faction that the cowboy hat guy leads. We met him in person, and I mean, he didn't seem like a bad guy, just...I didn't know he knew about you ship girls..." Damon clenches his fists. "Fuck that guy. He knew all along..."
IP: These twists aren't. It's very simply to figure out who the bad guys are in this fic; if they aren't Damon, close friends with Damon, or subservient to Damon, they're going to wind up someone to be murdered. By the story's morality, anyways. Actual morality only leaves the kanmusu as possibly good people.
Whiskey: Protagonist centered morality. Also I had to go take a shower because of this story. I still feel unclean, More showers will be required.
That Harrison guy, really? Fucking fine, I dont give a shit.
None of the ship girls answer him. Damon instinctively pulls out his lemon cigarette pack but realizes that it is empty, to his dismay, and clicks his tongue in irritation as he tosses the empty box aside.
"So...what're we gonna do now, Admiral, nano?" Iku asks, slightly hesitantly. "If we go back to the helicopter, we'd have to fight through a lot of soldiers again..."
"Not to mention we're also really underequipped right now, seeing that we had to get the hell outta there since Shimakaze screwed us all, essentially," Murakumo sighs.
"Hey...!" Amatsukaze tries to raise her voice but is interrupted by a burst of blood popping from her throat.
"Onee-chan!" Shimakaze holds her sister as Amatsukaze wipes the blood from her mouth.
"D-Don't blame my sister for what she couldn't control...!" Amatsukaze strains herself to speak.
"I wasn't blaming her for anything, I was just saying, she did mess up a lot of things, after all."
Damon cracks his knuckles. Hearing this, Shimakaze then turns to Damon.
"And you, Admiral!" Shimakaze exclaims. "I need to know this! What the hell did you do to me back when I was still fighting you at the football field?"
"Huuuh? The fuck're ya talkin' 'bout?"
"Don't lie to me, you asshole, you know exactly what I'm talking about!"
"No, I don't, in fact, unless you wanna bother bein' a bit more specific. I already explained the whole hacking your command protocol bit, if ya didn't listen."
"No, no no no!" Shimakaze cries. "That's not what I'm talking about! I'm talking about that time when you shouted my name! Don't you remember that?!"
Damon gazes up at the half-broken ceiling. Oh yeah, he did scream like mad at Shimakaze when he saw what she'd done to his ship girls.
"Hm, maybe I know what you're referring to. But so the fuck what? What'd I do, what happened?"
"When you yelled at me, even before you forcibly changed my command protocol, something went haywire in my information processing unit, 'cause it processed you calling out my name as an order somehow! That's never happened before, that shouldn't ever happen to me or any other ship girl who is under direct commands of somebody else! It's not a glitch or whatever, either! So how the heck did you manage to force me to process that as an order?"
Narrowing his eyes at Shimakaze like she's started sprouting mushrooms out of her ears or something, Damon shrugs. "I have no idea what you're talkin' about. What, are you suggestin' I don't even need my nanoknife anymore? Doesn't make any sense."
"Hey, how am I supposed to know...? It's just...weird, that's all."
"Well, whateva, then. Listen up," Damon sighs, again scratching his head in slight irritation. "We can't go back to the football field if we don't wanna get wrecked even further, especially not if Kaga shows up to fuck us like Shimakaze did already. Instead, we'll push further into the city and try pullin' another Sherman on the city to reach whoever's responsible for activatin' Shimakaze and Kaga. I need to know who that guy is, 'cause he could be a former member of the dev team for the F.L.E.E.T. Project, and if I can convince him to work for me, he'll be able to point me in the right direction for more ship girls. And figure out a way to get Amatsukaze back to fighting condition." He nods at Amatsukaze.
"Speaking of Amatsukaze," Mutsu says in a low voice, "but what shall we do with her? I don't wanna be the one to say this, but it needs to be said: if we bring her with us, she'll slow us down.
She can barely fight with that wound of hers, and worst of all, she can't use her legs. Shimakaze severed her spine where she hit her, by the looks of it, and even though she will eventually repair herself, reconstructing an entire section of her spine will probably take no less than a few days. We can't just carry her around all day until then, can we...? I mean..." Mutsu trails off, and no one answers her in the face of the bitter truth.
"I'm not gonna leave Amatsu-nee-chan behind," Shimakaze whispers fiercely. "I won't, I won't, I fucking won't. Ever since I detected her signature near me and realized she was here, I've always wanted to see her. I didn't want to fight her if I didn't have to, but...but..." Shimakaze glares back at
Damon once more. "And you, even if you order me to leave my sister behind, I won't obey it. I'll carry her around all day if I have to!"
Damon crosses his arms, shaking his head. "Can't have ya doin' that, sorry."
"W-Why not!?"
"Because you're still a ship girl. With that kind of a speed that we all seen you have, you're too valuable not to have fighting simply 'cause you're carrying your ship sister around all day." Damon checks the six magazines of 20-round .338 Lapua cartridges for his .338 Lapua AR-15, then the three magazines of .45 GAP ammo for his Glock 37, one of which he slips into the mag receiver of his pistol and chambers the first bullet, and the broken room reverberates with the ominous click of the pistol's slide.
"I'm telling you, I won't leave her behind!" Shimakaze says desperately. "I - "
Amatsukaze puts her hand on her younger ship sister's cheek. "This...wasn't your fault, Shimakaze. Please don't act like...you have something to make up for, okay...?"
Shimakaze, turning to Amatsukaze again, shakes her head fiercely, squeezing her eyes shut as she feels more tears backing up in her eyes. "But...no matter how you look at it, it still is my fault,
isn't it...!?"
"Regardless, if...if it comes down to it, I'm fine with being left behind here," Amatsukaze breathes.
"I don't want to be a burden to the rest of you. Just think of it...as you replacing me, Shimakaze...so if Admiral orders us to leave me behind, don't disobey him, okay...?"
"But why do I have to listen to an asshole like him?! It's not like he's much better than the other people I've been under orders from until recently!"
Amatsukaze smiles. "He's an asshole, but he's not a bad person. There's a difference, Shimakaze..."
IP: Then why isn't there a discernible difference in the story?
Also Mutsu just answer her own stupid question, she'll repair in a few days. And she thinks they can't carry her for that time because reasons and DRAMA and DAMON NEEDS TO BE THE BIG DAMN HERO WHO CARRIES HER ANYWAY/ Fuck this shit.
IP: Twisting the plot until the sadistic mass-murderer with rape aftertaste is the good guy.
"You flatter me, Amy-boo," Damon smirks. "But I suppose I'll return the complement by not leaving you behind. I'm with Shimakaze on this one, I ain't 'bout to let you get captured by those Atlantan fucks."
The look on Shimakaze's face brightens up considerably, but Amatsukaze protests. "Wait, why...?! This'll be a stupid mistake on your part if it turns out that I'm the reason why you'll fail! You...you have to know when...when it's time to make the smarter decision, even if it's harder...! You have to keep everyone else safe, even if it means sacrificing one, like me...!"
Damon grins with the smile of the devil. "And you talk as if I don't know what that feels like. Hear me out, 'k? When we move out in a bit, I'll carry Amatsukaze because I've got a sniper, and I probably won't be movin' very much if we're bogged down in a firefight. I'd much rather spend the extra effort keeping an injured ship girl with me than to let her get captured and potentially used by the Atlantans, especially when we know they've got someone who knows a lot about you girls. It ain't 'cause I'm bein' all mushy-mushy with Shimakaze and the whole sister thing, but if I don't have to make Shimakaze hate my guts forever, I won't." He looks around to his five ship girls.
"That bein' said, I'm really dependin' on the four of you - " Damon points at Murakumo, Mutsu, Iku, and Shimakaze - "to protect me and Amatsukaze. My plan is fuckin' hella risky, but with you ship girls fightin', we can make it work, a'ight?"
Getting up to his feet, Damon puts down his rifle and stretches out his arms.
"Besides, you were one of the first ship girls that I've found, the second one, to be precise. If I don't have to, I ain't 'bout to lose you, y'know?" Damon grins. "When I said I'll find all the ship girls out there, I don't think I mentioned anythin' about losing you guys either."
Amatsukaze says nothing further.
"C'mon, let's get goin', everyone," Damon orders. "We gotta start somewhere. Shimakaze, lead the way, since you know the way around better than the rest of us. Make sure we avoid as many confrontations as possible, and tell me when we absolutely need to start shootin' some bitches, a'ight?"
Shimakaze nods. "Ou!"
"...that's a...weird little verbal tic there. Can you help Amy up on my back?" Damon kneels with his back in front of the wounded Amatsukaze, and Shimakaze lifts up her ship sister onto his back.
"W-Wha...Admiral, this - this isn't necessary!" Amatsukaze protests once more, but she has no choice but to ride piggyback.
"I'm not gonna carry you any other way, since I need to be able to defend us at all times, sorry," Damon says. "All you need to do is just hold on. Can you do that, or can you not?"
"I-I can, but...but that's not the..."
"Good, 'cause that's all you need to worry 'bout. Everything else, you leave to me, 'k?" Damon looks back at her for confirmation, and Amatsukaze nods her head slowly, not knowing what else she ought to say. Damon picks back up his sniper rifle, and his ship girls gather in front of him, holding their weapons: Murakumo with the Steyr AUG-A1, Mutsu with the M82-A1, Shimakaze unarmed, and Iku with the FN FS-2000.
IP: I feel like I summed up my feelings quite nicely with that poem there. This chapter is just horrid, horrifying in all the worst ways, and I just… I can't. I can't right now.
IP: We lose Hash and Whiskey somewhere?
They died from exposure
R32: BACK FROM THE GRAVE.
Whiskey: I gave up and went to play Armored Warfare. And reread GG.
Last one away! I also added something........abominable as an extra.
IP: I'M HIJACKING THE POST *smacked down*
Thank you Tatsuta. Hello all, you know the drill. I'll be at the bar. *Door is locked*....Shit
R32: Last call was…...an hour ago?
Chapter 21: Sixth Contact
You fucking idiot.
IP: Is this going to be how every bloody chapter is named?
R32: Only those that feature new additions to the fleet.
Jimbo: Time to dive into the fireworks! (Fun fact, I'm only saying this because there's a fireworks display raging on half a mile from my house)
Let's get right in because we have a loooooooooooot to cover.
"So why the hell did you get sent in front of the wave 'a soldiers who tried attackin' us at the football field?" Damon mutters quietly to Shimakaze. The Admiral and his small fleet of five ship girls, one of whom is riding piggyback on him. Having spent the last hour and a half well into the mid-afternoon closely following the Ronald Reagan Parkway along the cover of the hidden alley streets to then travel down near Lawrenceville Highway to enter Atlanta City limits. The five girls and Damon have managed to find themselves on Mount Olive Drive, nearby the North Dekalb Mall, and have eyes over the nearby highway checkpoint where Stone Mountain Freeway and Lawrenceville Highway meet, since parts of the shopping mall that would've blocked their line of sight have been demolished.
"When I attacked you, I was under orders to move in first to deal as much damage as possible before sending in the rest of the soldiers," Shimakaze explains. "They didn't want to lose more men than necessary. And they certainly didn't anticipate that you'd have something to completely hack my command protocol to obey you."
"Understandable..."
Damon sighs lightly as he surveys the city around him. Atlanta City...home to the most notorious and cruel of bandits you could find across the south. In the early aftermath of World War III, a few native residents in the state of Georgia made their infamous reputation as merciless, cutthroat rogues who deeply mistrusted anyone they did not see as one of their own. This meant that if you weren't white or otherwise Caucasian, you were shot on sight. Blacks, Asians, Latinos - they were known for screaming "get the fuck outta our lands, Negroes, chinks, beaners, we takin' back our lands now!" while emptying their hunting rifles into the bodies of their victims. If anything, at the very least they were not discriminate in their targets, other than their fellow Caucasians, of course.
As the years went on, more and more survivors sided with them when it became clear that despite their harsh and cruel outlook on other non-white survivors, the Atlantans certainly knew how to run a close-knit and cohesive community that helped them sustain themselves. Eventually, they gained enough of a population to found Atlanta City, and they quickly built up their reputation as the biggest and baddest faction in the deep South.
Most of it is bullshit except for that last chunk, ohhhhhh boy that last chunk.
IP: I detect heavy Google Maps use in that first chunk.
Jimbo: More map porn.
Damon sighs lightly as he surveys the city around him. Atlanta City...home to the most notorious and cruel of bandits you could find across the south. In the early aftermath of World War III, a few native residents in the state of Georgia made their infamous reputation as merciless, cutthroat rogues who deeply mistrusted anyone they did not see as one of their own. This meant that if you weren't white or otherwise Caucasian, you were shot on sight. Blacks, Asians, Latinos - they were known for screaming "get the fuck outta our lands, Negroes, chinks, beaners, we takin' back our lands now!" while emptying their hunting rifles into the bodies of their victims. If anything, at the very least they were not discriminate in their targets, other than their fellow Caucasians, of course.
IP: So, firstly, they're screaming all of those slurs at the bodies regardless of the ethnicity of whoever it was they actually killed? Second, they're all armed only with hunting rifles?
Jimbo: So… nukes drop and the South goes way past Jim Crow?
R32: Read the upcoming paragraph about their leader.
*Headpats Suzuya*
Hello dearie, we're reading today. It's baaaaaaaaaaaaad stuff, you'd best head back to where ya came from, or at least away from here.
Suzuya: Ingram said that he was testing something and given me access to this. Who are you, sir?
…...Cullus you daft bastard. I am Dee, and welcome to my nightmare.
IP: On top of the issues with the whole "nukes fall and now everyone is racist" thing, I don't think I've ever heard of a truly "cohesive community" built on a backbone of racism.
Suzuya: Hello, Mr. Dee. My name is Suzuya Cullus Davion. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you as well. *Hands Beer* Here, you are gonna need it.
IP: *smacks De3ta* No alcohol to minors.
Doh!
R32: Atlanta has the racism shtick, but you'll see why in the next paragraph.
IP: Another question, didn't anyone who wasn't white have guns?
Jimbo: Last I checked, heavy cruisers were early to mid 20s. Legal enough to drink.
Suzuya: I actually allowed to drink alcohols. But out of Ingram's concern, i decided not to.
Oh he is gonna kill me later-So anyway Hackyuu cannot write race related things with an inch
Their leader is quite the iconic figure: Malcolm O'Reilly, the president of a former mining company that had prospered before the nuclear war. He was the main reason why this former band of carefree do-what-we-want rogues went from amateur anarchists to some kind of contemporary rendition of a National Socialist entity, doing everything from bribing Federal agents to overlook their less-than-idealistic deeds to acquiring as much of what was left of the world's advanced military arsenal. On top of which, a few years ago, he re-founded the infamous southern organization of the Ku Klux Klan, proclaiming that his home faction, Atlanta City, would be home to this new-age KKK. If anyone didn't have enough of a reason to think that this 70-something year old senile lump of skin and bones was an asshole, they probably do now.
Oh my god. Fucking christ on a bike in the morning this is…..where do I start.
R32: TOLD YA!
Suzuya: Wow. Now i know why Dr. Solberg really wants to get out from Atlanta before everything happened.
IP: Racists=National Socialists. You heard it here first, folks. Oh, wait, Nazi's. Carry on.
Jimbo: "Re-founded". I don't think the KKK would collapse that easily even in the face of Nuclear Holocaust.
IP: Federal agents are being spoken about like they need to be bribed after the apocalypse, when America is supposed to have dissolved into a group of nation-states or something. Dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA!
Suzuya: And good thing he escaped before the war happened instead after the war. *sigh*
Jimbo: IP, only the South Balkanized. The rest of the US is united. Albeit under brutal dictatorship.
IP: Isn't Atlanta in the south, though? Or has someone reversed every compass I've ever seen? So shouldn't my statement still apply?
Suzuya: Atlanta is part of the Coalition, yes?
Needless to say, this effectively turned Atlanta into something of Stalin's wet dream. Nothing is private; everything is public. Citizens of the city and the surrounding suburbs were constantly under city surveillance. The city knew everything, and O'Reilly and his council of city elders and advisors could do whatever they wanted. After all, they had the money, and thus, the technology.
Okay so he indirectly calls them Nazi's, they were the National-Socalist party iirc, and then compares them to Stalin.
Jimbo: How did he get that many cameras and bugs?
IP: So apparently this guy replicated 1984 with post-nuclear-exchange equipment? I wanna know where he got all this stuff from.
Suzuya: Even Ingram is quite envious by the amount of security cameras Atlanta has.
R32: 'Cause Raisins >_>
Jimbo: So Atlanta turned into fucking *Oceania*.
Money also meant that the city could hire mercenaries and professional soldiers from around the world - men and women who took advantage of the ensuing anarchy and chaos that the Third World War inevitably brought on immediately after its occurrence. The former employees of Whitewater Mercenaries Co., a particularly well-known and reputable private military company, were themselves hired out by O'Reilly, and many of them had stayed with O'Reilly over the years. After all, the only things a mercenary gives two shits about are shootin' bitches and gettin' money. Morals...eh, who the fuck needs those, right?
How can he hire them worldwide, how is his currency that valuable, does he have his own or is it still the dollar, all this and more never to be answered.
IP: Why does money matter after the apocalypse again? Shouldn't things have regressed back to goods and services?
Jimbo: A PMC actually calling themselves a "Mercenary Co."? Umm… normally they use BS terms like "Private Security Enterprises" or something. These guys are Saturday Morning Cartoon villains.
IP: A name like that'd be about as "reputable" as "Joe's Totally-Not-Rotten-Cat-Meat Sausage Truck".
Jimbo: Also, the name is a reference to… I believe Blackwater, a PMC that's fairly large and (in)famous.
R32: Yes, those guys.
IP: "Morals...eh, who the fuck needs those, right?" Well Damon doesn't, since he's the protagonist.
"Because the mercenaries that O'Reilly had hired to fight Atlanta's wars against the other factions of the deep South were able to recommend other mercenaries to more of Atlanta City's military posts, which by far paid much better than any other mercenary posting in the continental United States, currently a full half of Atlanta City's standing forces were comprised of professional mercenaries from across the country, even a few from abroad as well. They would be frequently seen patrolling through the streets of the faction of Atlanta, maintaining order and beating people back in line whenever trouble arose. But at least they only beat people up when their job required them to - they're professionals, after all. The other half of the Atlantan military would do much more than knock a nightstick over a couple of skulls...they were much less soldiers as they were ruffians disguised as soldiers, not hesitating to crack open a couple heads whenever the chance showed itself. Oftentimes part of an Atlantan mercenary's job was to keep the other soldiers in check, something the mercenaries resented doing, since they did not wish to have their professional conduct marred because of their comradeship with whom they saw as a bunch of drunk, disorderly assholes, some of whom even held higher positions over any mercenary in Atlanta. It didn't really make much sense that some fatass, degenerate forty year old virgin who constantly raved about nothing else but raping black women and bombing their homes with tannerite and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken by the dozen was assigned to be Head Commander of Atlantan defense forces. Fuckin' idiot doesn't even know how to field-strip a rifle, even to this day, and never saw a real gunfight either, to boot, so he probably doesn't even know how to rip the clothes off a woman anyway."
It didn't really make much sense that some fatass, degenerate forty year old virgin who constantly raved about nothing else but raping black women and bombing their homes with tannerite and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken by the dozen was assigned to be Head Commander of Atlantan defense forces.
Suzuya: Even Panacea still not allowing unfit people into their rank! Why the Atlanta Mercenary allows such thing? Oh no, Ingram's shaking again
Jimbo: He's not even *trying* to make the villain more… not stereotypical. Or something.
*Hugs Suzuya* I'm scared
IP: We get it, the villain's an ass. Why do you keep hammering on this? Are you afraid that we'll realize that Damon's horrible too if you don't? In that case, you need to hammer harder. Or, now bear with me because this is kind of a difficult concept to grasp, make your protagonist less of an unlikeable, immoral, disgusting asshole.
Suzuya: Ingram sure is angry right now. A bit.
Damon kneels down behind a dense clump of bushes, making sure that the end of the barrel of his .338 Lapua AR-15 sniper rifle doesn't poke through and give away their position unexpectedly, and his four other ship girls follow up and the rear, led by Shimakaze.
Jimbo: Any gun that's not blatantly made-up is presumed to at least exist in a game somewhere.
IP: Jimbo, remember my little thing about "don't think 'ooh, nice gun reference', I wonder if you've had a stroke at the keyboard"? I don't know what guns are blatantly made-up and which ones aren't, necessarily.
Suzuya: Oh, the thing Ingram created actually let us visited old internet for once! And i found out that those weapon existed.
Jimbo: IP, that's why Google Image Search exists. And Wikipedia. And probably a dozen different firearms databases.
IP: Then why not tell me to Google it instead of just saying "if it's blatantly made-up"?
R32: I JUST linked it, look up.
Jimbo: Because I'm a lazy SOB. That's why. *DING*
IP: Right, fine, carrying on… (R32, you came through after I'd typed all that.)
Suzuya: Oh you people...
"Tell me what's goin' on over there jus' up ahead," Damon murmurs to Shimakaze.
"That's one of the military checkpoints all around the city," Shimakaze replies quickly. "They've got eight total, one in each direction of the city's inner limits. Well, technically the city has a dozen total, one north, south, east, and west along the city's outer limits, and the eight inside, but we passed the ones outside already."
Damon peers at the checkpoint intensely. It was more or less just like the Federal checkpoints at the CCPL's that he lived in before, except much more militarized and a hell of a lot more organized. Just as you'd expect out of mercenaries who pride themselves upon having their work organized and executed efficiently and conducting themselves professionally. Damon feels a vague sense of pride for those guys...it's a pity he and his ship girls would most likely end up having to kill some of them in order to get into the city.
IP: Damon, we've established that the narrative will make you be the one to see and determine anything and everything relevant. Why are you still asking other people to look for you?
Jimbo: As if his sense of pride wasn't a red flag by itself…
IP: And random mercenaries and racist nobodies can put together a more organized checkpoint than a federal - sorry, Federal - checkpoint, apparently.
There aren't a whole lot of vehicles at the checkpoint, however. Only a few civilian sedans, SUV's, surprisingly even an RV along with the two large shipping trucks waiting for inspection and clearance by the mercs guarding the checkpoint. Two heavily fortified guard towers stand in between reinforced metal gates that deny entry to unauthorized vehicles further into the city, and when Damon peers through the scope of his high-powered rifle to take a better look at the towers, he spots two men in their soiled and rugged military olive-camo fatigues, balaclavas, and helmets leaning back in their chairs along the top of the towers, and both of them have D.T.A. S.R.S. bullpup sniper rifles at their sides. Looking down at the rest of the checkpoint area, Damon notes the roofless Humvee with a front-passenger M-240 mounted machine gun and a Mark 19 mounted grenade launcher on the back, a small two-seater UAZ with a modified fifty caliber machine gun turret, and most alarming of all, another AH-6 Little Bird, this time armed with two Hydra 70 rockets. Fortunately, no one seems to be anywhere near the Little Bird.
IP: He keeps determining the exact make and model of these guns from hundreds of yards away, with at most a scope. He has both eagle eyes and a gun encyclopedia in his head, apparently.
He's tracking them by their audio frequencies!
IP: Wrong term now, what's he changed it to? Audio de… Da… Audio d-something-or-other.
R32: Acoustic Radar bullshit, is what I am calling it.
IP: That too, yes.
R32: Sonar, on land. I'm getting flashbacks to depictions of JDS Hibiki, audio surveillance ship.
"Hmmm..." Damon mumbles to himself, trying to figure out the optimal way to tackle this obstacle.
"Shimakaze, is there any way around this, or do we have to barge in 'n rip everythin' to shreds?"
Shimakaze frowns. "I meaaaaan...we could risk just goin' around, but if I'm not wrong, there's a lot of patrols that they have all over the city. Chances are, we'll run into one of them, and they're going to let the whole place know. I guess in the end, it doesn't really matter, so like they say, pick your poison...maybe going around is a better idea after all..."
Damon shakes his head. "Then I'll take this poison right here in front of us," he concludes. "We know there's a couple vehicles at that checkpoint that can be driven. If we can grab one 'a those, maybe that Humvee with the MG and the nade launcher, we'd be golden."
WHY EVEN ASK WHEN YOU WANT TO KILL EVERYONE ANYWAY!
IP: The obvious Damon answer: Go in, murder everyone, maybe torture someone too, make sure the violence is depicted as gratuitously as possible. Diplomacy - not even once. Nor stealth.
Suzuya: Wow. Just. Wow.
Jimbo: *Returns from reading Whiskey's engagement against Fuckyou* What the fuck is this?
IP: I mean, unless there's a special way of detecting that someone's a shipgirl, couldn't you just have them change clothes and walk through?
IP: Except that'd have them unclothed for a prolonged period of time near Damon…
IP: Yeah this is better.
"So hypothetically, once we do get that car, what're we gonna do?"
"You'll tell me where the prison ward is where that guy who activated you and Kaga are," Damon smiles. "And all of you, make sure to make as much of a ruckus as y'all can. Our goal here ain't necessarily stealth, not that stealth was really my forte anyway. We want 'em to throw Kaga at us, much like they threw Shimakaze at us. They shoulda already realized that Shimakaze's gone, but I betcha they ain't got an exact reason as to why. I'm thinkin' I can get Kaga the same way - beat 'er down, and then hack 'er."
"Brutal as always," Murakumo smirks.
"Brutal, maybe, but if it worked once, it can work again," Damon returns. "Though, when we have to fight Kaga, if we do, that is, I don't really want someone else endin' up like Amatsukaze, a'ight? I can only carry one girl at a time." He turns to Amatsukaze, whom he is still carrying, even while kneeling. "Hangin' in there, Amy?"
"...yeah...it's...it's that...all of my circuits are focusing on trying to...get this injury patched up...as best...ow..." Amatsukaze winces. Rensouhou-kun, who is still strapped to Amatsukaze's side, clicks robotically in concern. Damon looks down at the robot.
"Oh shit, I forgot he's still taggin' along," Damon says. "Cool, that means I have somethin' else other than my pistol to defend us with. Will he fire if I'm the one tellin' him to shoot, Amy?"
"Rensouhou-kun, do as he says, okay...?" Amatsukaze murmurs, and Rensouhou-kun clicks, his 12.7cm cannon barrels waving tro and fro like the antennae of a grasshopper. "He...he says he's okay with it..."
Murakumo is basically *me* at this point. When he doesn't write her to be tsun to Damon that is.
IP: Aside from being so happy to kill, sure. On a different note, could someone explain to me how these shipgirls' biology is supposed to work? Amatsukaze's talking like the circuits are physically going over to patch up her injuries, which is definitely not how circuits work. They're supposed to carry and direct electric currents and the term is usually used to refer to the stuff that makes computers "think", if I remember correctly.
R32: *Shruggity Douggity* Also, lemme find my post on the FLEET Project doc that shows up in ch30-something….
Suzuya: Truly, Murakumo's kill happy tendency is from Damon's influence.
Murakumo needs hugs.
Suzuya: Yeah, Mr. Dee. She needs hug badly.
*Hugs Suzuya* You are very huggable to.
"Sweeeet. A'ight, girlies, just to recap. See that mall up ahead of us? We're gonna head down this road right here 'n sneak our way into the mall and try 'n get a good line 'a sight over the entire place. When we get there, be prepared to shoot any bitch who's there who's got a gun - we dunno if there's more soldiers inside the mall 'r somethin', unless Shimakaze wants to clarify." Shimakaze shakes her head, and Damon continues. "If we do find people there, we gotta do it stealth. Iku, you'll be our main attacker for this. When we get close to the mall, Cloak 'n see if you can find anyone. If you do, kill 'em if they're by themselves or in pairs. Don't risk engagin' big groups by yourself, we gotta kill 'em all together at once. Everyone got it so far?"
All the ship girls nod.
"Once we're clear and inside the mall, Mutsu and I'll be up on the upper floors - either that, or on the rooftops. I'm thinkin' the top floors, not the roofs though, since there're a couple sniper dudes on those towers down there. The rest of you, except Amatsukaze, 'course, will head down and prepare to assault the base head-on. I'll give further instructions once we get that far. Oh, and, girls remember: we're basically guerrillas here. Make sure to pick up a gun if you're outta ammo, and once we start lightin' the checkpoint up, fuck everything up. Like I said, we want 'em to throw Kaga at us, but if she doesn't show up, we're doin' everythin' else efficient and quick. Once we torch the base, we're gonna take that Humvee and drive it to wherever that prison is so that we can nab that dude who activated Shimakaze 'n Kaga. Don't hurt him or whatever once we manage ta identify him. Oh, and obviously, don't damage the Humvee. Let's move."
R32: As usual, all-or-nothing. It'd be a lot worse if he's a friggin *New Mexico*.
IP: Gonna disappear for a few minutes for a World of Warships match.
FLY YOU FOOL!
They move as quietly as possible further west along Mt. Olive Drive and cross the wooded suburb block onto North Druid Hills Road, the last road separating them from the shopping mall. Damon peeks out from the alley of an acupuncturist and a State Farm insurance office to look both ways down the street.
"It's clear," he whispers. "Iku, Cloak and take point. We're countin' on ya."
"Okay, nano!" Iku cheerfully takes up the call and disappears into thin air as she moves forward ahead of the group. Damon nods to the others and cross with his remaining ship girls in tow until they reach a jewelers store.
"Wait here," Damon orders. "Wait for Iku to come back with some recon, then we'll move in, dependin' on what she sees..."
A few minutes pass tensely as Damon waits for Iku to radio in with a reconnaissance report.
"Admiral, the whole front of the mall's clear, nano. I don't see anyone," Iku's quiet voice sprouts in Damon's ears. Damon's lips bend downwards at the corners in concern.
"Somehow, I don't think that's good for us..." he mutters under his breath.
"How's that not good? We have a free ticket straight into the mall. Isn't that what you want?" Shimakaze asks.
"It is, but...I'm gettin' that feelin' that we're 'bout ta get a nasty surprise..." Damon says. "Guess we ain't gonna know 'til we get inside, though. See that side of the mall? Get inside as fast as you can. Shimakaze, you'll be the first one there, I'm assumin', so be careful in case there're people inside that Iku hasn't seen just yet."
Shimakaze nods. At Damon's signal, they rush across the road leading out from the jewelers' store
and the front parking lot of the north side of the North Dekalb Mall. Shimakaze, as expected, reaches the north side of the mall first, flattening herself against the wall just outside the front entrance, which would've been covered with glass panes but that have long since been smashed out due to looters and bandits.
"Shimakaze-chan, I'm right next to you, so don't freak out, okay, nano?" Iku warns as she
Decloaks to reveal her position to Shimakaze, who nods. "I already looked inside a bit, but I didn't see anyone, nano. It should be safe..."
"But didn't Admiral mention 'bout how he wasn't so sure?" Shimakaze wonders.
"Like I said, it should, nano..."
Shimakaze grinds her teeth lightly. "I really don't like having things so uncertain," she says a tad bitterly.
GUYS. GUYS I THINK THERE MIGHT BE AN AMBUSH GUYS. I'M NOT TOO SURE THOUGH.
Lilith: Hello everyone! Lilith is here!
Suzuya: Uhm… Mr. Steiner? Wait, no.
Lilith: Who? Oh, Commander Steiner?
Suzuya: Grand Commander William Steiner, of the Panacea. I think i was mistaking you with someone else. Apology.
Welcome, the beer is in the fridge.
They wait for the others to catch up, Damon being the last of them due to Amatsukaze's and Rensouhou-kun's combined weight.
"Anything inside?" Damon asks in a low voice, and Shimakaze and Iku shake their heads simultaneously. "Okay. Guns up if ya got 'em, everyone. No runnin', no shootin' 'til I say so, no makin' loud noises, no nothin'. We ain't got a clue what or who's inside, so follow me, alright? Iku, take point."
"Nano!" Iku Cloaks again and slips inside the mall through the broken front entrance. Damon nods, and Murakumo and Mutsu enter the mall, with Damon and Shimakaze closing the rear. Their guns point at every possible angle, trying to pick out anything suspicious. Only the usual scene of chaos greets them: piles of trash and debris strewn everywhere, rusted railings and poles, broken elevators and escalators, and the small dove statue that stood in the front lobby of the mall is smashed to pieces, with bigger chunks of it still lying, broken and forsaken, on the floor of the mall.
"The top of the escalators is clear too, nano," Iku radios in.
"Up the escalators, girls," Damon commands, and they briskly jog up the escalators with their guns still at the ready.
"...what a scene," Mutsu comments sadly, looking around at the hurried mess. "Was it like this everywhere when World War III happened, Admiral? I mean, I know I might've asked this question before, but...I just...I just find it a bit too unbelievable still that the world's changed so much since our initial activation..."
"Like I said, I personally wasn't even alive at the time the nukes got dropped," Damon says. "I can't tell you personally what exactly happened back then. But I've heard stories from the older survivors...how they had to put up with the shit that happened during all that fuckin' chaos. One day you have a perfectly normal, functionin' society, the next day you got a world fulla people fightin' each other over limited resources, lootin' everythin' they can jus' so that they can make sure their families got enough to live off of for at least a week, maybe a month if you were lucky enough to gather up that much shit. Friends turned against one another, people killin' each other over simple shit like a can 'a beans, crap like that. People bandin' together ta make these rogue groups, drivin' around doin' whatever the fuck they wanted, goin' to places like this shoppin' mall 'n lootin' places up, shootin' people, rapin' people - I mean, if you can imagine what anarchy looks like, I guess that's what the world was back then. Anarchy at its finest."
Lilith: Well, this is pretty accurate. When people don't have hope… they let their inner daemons out. It's regrettable that some people fall to despair so easily, but… it happens.
Suzuya: Cuba is not though. Ingram was very disappointed about the state of his old country,
Ambiance takes shit that would happen up to eleven though. And uses this trope as a fallback. Which is what makes it so infuriating.
Lilith: I'm glad that Cuba isn't in this state. I think Commander Steiner would've been crushed to see that. He was very fond of Cuba when he was a young boy. I think… I think he went there a few years before the bombs dropped.
Lilith: Anyway.
Damon feels something warm dripping through onto his back, and he peers behind him. He realizes that the blood from Amatsukaze' open stomach wound has been slowly seeping through the back of his shirt.
"It's fine, I just felt it go through my shirt is all," Damon says quickly. His foot kicks something, and Damon looks down at it to see a small dinosaur doll with its stuffing ripped out. Narrowing his eyes at it, he notices that there are a few specks of dried blood smeared on the dinosaur's head. "...assholes..."
IP: Well that sucked a donkey. Got burned to death by a Russian cruiser and a Cleveland, wasn't a lot I could do. Sank an enemy Scharnhorst though. What've I missed?
Lilith: Right now I don't have any issues with the story. This is fine, but the lead-up to this point… well… it's anything but fine at all.
Oh we're about to hit some shit, small-time shit, but shit none-the-less.
IP: Why is it that the mauled stuffed dinosaur is what set him off?
Lilith: It's possible he remembered killing the child way back in the first or second chapter, and is subconsciously remembering how much of an arshole he was to murder the child.
Lilith: Or I could be making this up and he's just thinking that he can't loot the dinosaur because it's ruined.
IP: I was about to ask, do you believe that the given author can and/or would write something that deep and layered?
They make their way silently deep into the heart the shopping mall, on the second floor overlooking the former food court. As they slowly approach the escalators leading up to the third
floor, Murakumo suddenly stops and points her Steyr AUG-A1 assault rifle to the right, looking up.
"I think I'm picking up an unknown signature," Murakumo warns in a small voice. "Transferring
estimated coordinates..."
"Iku, check it out," Damon mutters. Barely ten seconds pass before Iku returns a reply.
"Contact spotted, nano...one soldier, by himself. No other targets in sight...Murakumo-chan, he's got the same gun as you, you ought to pick up his ammunition if we take him out."
"If he's by himself, take him down silently, Iku," Damon orders.
"I got it, nano...!"
They soon hear the sharp slick of a throat being slit, and soon, Damon and his ship girls arrive at the third floor to secure the area and approach the now dead soldier.
"Nicely done," Damon nods as Iku Decloaks momentarily to show herself. "Good job to you, too,
Murakumo, for catchin' the guy before we ran straight into him..."
Murakumo beams a bit before kneeling down to take the dead soldier's ammo for her assault rifle, and Iku smiles brightly at her good work.
Lilith: A certain someone could argue it's them letting their warcrimes out
Lilith: But really, I don't think anyone would be that quick to enjoy murder.
Suzuya: I am scared of what will happen if i am with Damon.
IP: Focus on the "if".
Lilith: Be grateful that Caduceus rescued you. It's… it's not pretty what commander Steiner had to go through to get to Cuba.
R32: Who would YOU want for a squad leader if you had to fight on land as augmented infantry?
Lilith: I would want Ursarkar Creed. Or Sir Arthur Currie.
Srgt. Foley, I'd go to war for Keith David any day.
IP: I'll take "no one, I'm building planes for the war not fighting on the front lines".
Lilith: On the story itself right now? Let's see.
Lilith: Well, first things first, I don't see why we must be constantly reminded that Murakumo is carrying around an AUG A1. And it's AUG A1, there is no hyphen. In fact, if one wanted to be pedantic, it's just an AUG. Or Steyr AUG. You don't pronounce the model number.
Lilith: Second, I guess they're happy that they successfully channeled Snake and did a stealth assassination? I mean, okay, that's fine and all, but slightly disquieting.
Lilith: But then again, we are designed to be military shooty-uppy machines.
Damon grabs the soldier's walkie-talkie before they slowly make their way to the next set of broken-down escalators, lowering the volume to a minimum before hooking it onto his jeans. They barely get to the third floor when the walkie-talkie, even at lowest volume, screeches out in static, causing the ship girls to jump in fright.
"Uhhhh...Echo Two to Echo Three 'n Four...ya copy..."
"Yea-haw, Echo Two. What's a-crackin'?"
"We got a problem over at the weapons cache...'
"Ah, yeah, those bastards? Yeah, we already got notified of 'em."
"Yeah, well, they tell ya that one of our ship girls hasn't come back?"
"Whoo, shit, that one's new. So what the hell happened? Why hasn't that slut come back?"
The word "slut" makes Shimakaze tighten her grip on her assault rifle.
IP: *actively rooting for everyone but the shipgirls to die intensifies*
Suzuya: Gah.
R32: Well what the heck WOULD you say if it's your first time seeing Shimakaze's outfit?
Stop Devil's advocating the racist Nazis.
Lilith: Blame the fleet devs for giving her a slutty outfit. And it is pretty revealing, you have to admit that.
Suzuya: I do remember some folders and notes saying that Shimakaze's outift is to make her like, uhm, quick runner or something? Light outfit that not restrict movement.
R32: You'll have to show me those notes some time, because that's a running outfit!?
Suzuya: Well, i dunno if i can find the notes again, Ingram dismissed those things for "clogging up servers".
Lilith: I blame sex-deprived old men.
IP: I'd ask her if she wants a coat or something. Not jump straight to assuming she's a slut.
R32: Just like how Khal blamed the devs for I-19.
Lilith: IP is right. Commander Steiner actually gave Des Moines his coat, even though it was freezing and she doesn't really need it. And she too wears very revealing clothing, though perhaps not on the same scale as Shimakaze.
"Dunno man, she's just gone. I dunno where she mighta went off to...I mean, that dev guy said she'd basically follow any order we'd give her..."
"Tch. I shoulda given her a good dickin' before this shit went down..."
"Pipe down, will ya, so do half the fucking milfags here in the damn city. We're not like those damned rednecks that make up half the city's fucking population, thinkin' 'bout who we'll bang
tonight. You're a goddamned merc, now act like one."
"Ooooh, I'm sorry, I wasn't aware you preferred dicks in your own ass, I apologize, really - "
"Shut the fuck up, Echo Four, before I shove a couple bullets up yours."
"Geez man, can't even take a joke...or maybe you really are ga - "
"A'ight, maybe no dinner for you sounds better, jackass."
"Aw, c'mon man, you fuckin' serious - "
The walkie-talkie makes a clattering static noise, indicating that one of the correspondents have hung up.
IP: Look, when firebombing the general vicinity so your protagonist and his enemies are all dead seems like a satisfactory way to end things from your readers' perspective, it's time to consider whether or not you might have messed up somewhere along the way.
Lilith: I really don't understand— well, I do, but it's just frustrating when people just want to… do… that…
Lilith: Tell me again why everyone seems to be a rapist in this story? Rape this, rape that, is this the fad of the 2030s? Rape rape with a side of rape?
"That...was way louder than I thought it'd be..." Damon hisses quietly through clenched teeth, having been alarmed by the walkie-talkie's volume. "The bitch..."
"Admiral, I just picked up some radio waves that matched the ones coming from your walkie-talkie," Mutsu reports. "Follow me...transmitting estimated coordinates..."
"Let Iku scout it out..." Damon says. "Can't give away our position if we don't need to..."
They don't even need Iku's scouting as they hear the muffled banter of a few soldiers down the corridor just as they reach the next floor. Damon signals the others to wait as he peeks over the top of the escalator to figure out where they are.
"Four soldiers this time, Admiral, nano. They're all sitting together inside that square of benches just up ahead, maybe around thirty meters or so, nano."
From his angle, Damon can only see the tops of the soldiers' heads, two of whom are sporting helmets and the other two without.
"Don't have a great angle from here, Iku," Damon says quietly. "Tell me what they've got."
"Ummmm...let's see, two rifles, anddd...uhhh, I don't know what the others have..."
"Transfer feed to me, Iku?" Murakumo requests, also in a whisper, and Murakumo receives a direct feed from Iku's perspective. "Admiral, they've got two assault rifles, a shotgun, and a submachine gun."
"Shit, then this might be a bit rough on you guys..." Damon murmurs, but just as he is about to give another order, the walkie-talkie on his waist screeches again.
"So like, ya think...wait a minute, the fuck?"
"Cripes, what's Echo Two doin' sneakin' up on us like that, that asshole..."
"Wait, why the hell would Echo Two sneak up on anybody like a retard? Guns up!"
IP: Oh, so now we can pick up radio waves as well as audio? This'd be fine, actually, if I remembered hearing anything about this before.
Lilith: You would think that military androids would be able to intercept radio frequencies, but then again, it sounds like Hackyuu is making this information up on the spot. I wonder if they'll ever use this feature ever again, or it'll be a one off.
Lilith: If it's a one-off this is one heck of a poor ass-pull.
R32: Whelp time to re-read chapters…….AGAIN
Lilith: Additionally, they can only now figure out how to datalink? Didn't I complain about this earlier that they failed to do so last engagement, which severely hampered their efforts?
Lilith: And they're apparently just as weak to small-arms fire as humans. … Why exactly? You would think that they'd be stronger, ship or no ship.
"Admiral...!" Mutsu hisses. All the ship girls are alarmed, now that it is painfully obvious that their awkward position on the escalator is compromised. Damon takes the walkie-talkie and primes it in his hand like it is a makeshift fragmentation grenade.
"Iku, get the two in the back if you can," Damon says fiercely but quietly. "But on my mark."
"Roger, nano...!"
Damon waits a brief moment for the soldiers to come close. "Now!"
Tossing the walkie-talkie up and over the escalator onto the fourth floor, the soldiers, seeing a small black metal blur, yell out in surprise and try to cover their eyes and ears, mistaking it for a flashbang. Iku slips in, invisible, and with one full twist of her body, runs her new huntsman knife through the skulls of the two soldiers in the back and jumps away silently before their bodies even drop to the ground. Damon then peeks over the top of the escalator as the two remaining soldiers hear the death screams of their comrades and turn to them to see what is going on.
"Shimakaze!" he calls, "get up there 'n take the other two out! Iku, support her if you can! Don't shoot your guns if you don't hafta!"
"Ou!" Shimakaze jumps in and speeds towards the two surviving soldiers. One of them hears her approach and tries to fumble for his own walkie-talkie, but Shimakaze is too fast to let him use it properly and slams the butt of her AUG-A1 into his nose, breaking it with a loud crunch. The last soldier watches his comrade get knocked down to the ground and turns to raise his Keltec KSG-12 shotgun, but Iku gives him a swift kick to the nuts from behind, and Shimakaze gives him a quick axe kick on the back of the head as he falls to his knees and reels over in pain, keeping her foot on his head so that he cannot move.
"Don't kill 'em," Damon orders as the he and the others approach. "I could ask 'em some questions here. Take away their walkie-talkies and guns, make sure they can't do anything. Do it quick."
The ship girls disarm the soldiers and strip away whatever gear they think would be a detriment to them, and because the soldier whose nose got broken by Shimakaze was knocked unconscious with Shimakaze's blow, Damon pulls out his karambit blade and holds it up to the last soldier's neck and pushes him against the wall.
"Answer a few questions, and I'll only knock ya out and you can live," Damon threatens. "Ya got it?"
See the problem is, when it's not being racist, rapey, or god damn stupid, this fic is so fucking booooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiing.
Lilith: It's just telling, not showing. I don't get anything out of this other than "He did this, so then she does that, and then this happens." Rule number one when writing: Write so that your audience enjoys the story.
R32: Isn't there a balance to be struck, as in is there such a thing as too much show and not enough tell?
Lilith: Yes, the idea is to balance showing and telling. It can be found in Buddhism. One of the basic philosophies is that you try to keep everything in balance, because too much of something is always too bad.
Lilith: I'm surprised someone programmed that into me. I suppose it was there to make us better people, or interact with—
Lilith: I'm taking way too much time to explain something that doesn't matter to the story again, aren't I?
Suzuya: Not really, Ms. Lilith. It's quite informative.
The soldier, who still inhales sharply from the pain of getting his family jewels kicked by the foot of a ship girl, glares back at Damon. "Fuck you..."
"I'll take that as a yes. Who activated the ship girls? Where is he, or her?"
"Hell...hell if I know, dude...they don't tell us that kinda info to us mercs...better off findin' another guy who actually knows that kinda stuff..."
"Mkay, then do you know someone we can...'talk'...to so that we know?"
"I ain't got a clue who you bunch are, but...I mean, if y'all got this far, which I dunno how on Earth y'all did, but...you can figure that one out on your own, right...?"
Damon clicks his tongue. "Ain't makin' this easy on us, are ya? Well...maybe I can persuade you."
Damon forces open the man's jaw and points the end of his karambit right onto the middle of the soldier's tongue. "If ya don't feel like hissin' like a snake for the rest of yer life, better cough up some answers, motherfucker."
"Aaaaa, aaahhhh!" The soldier struggles, and Damon backs his karambit away. "Fine, fine, you...you've made your fuckin' point! But seriously, I don't know who activated the ship girls that were runnin' around earlier, much less where they are."
"Then where's Baxter Harrison?"
The soldier's eyes grow wide. "The fuck...how do ya know about Harrison...?!"
"You don't need to know that. Where the fuck is he? I got some stuff I wanna talk to him about...some urgent stuff..."
The soldier lowers his gaze. "He's...he's in the Georgia Congress Center...or he should be, last time we got word 'bout him. Dunno where else he'd be if he ain't in there. But if y'all wanna be crazy 'nuff to try gettin' all the way into the heart of the city, then that's your choice, I guess..."
Damon smirks. "We were crazy enough to get this far...you said yourself that we'd have to figure out the rest of the way from here, right? That's what we planned to do from the very beginning. Sweet dreams, fuckface."
Damon grabs the soldier by the shoulders and slams him against the wall that Damon had pinned him against, rendering the man unconscious as well.
Lilith: You would think that being kicked in the gonads by an industrial press would be much more painful than this. Alas, the writer forgot that we're talking about military-grade automations designed to murder people.
Or getting his head slammed in the wall, which probably did more than knock'em out.
Lilith: It's a common misconception that doing that wouldn't leave any lasting side-effects. A rifle stock to the rear of the head can be enough to fracture the skull, which, for obvious reasons I hope I don't need to spell out, is very, very bad.
Suzuya: I am quite scared about his spines more than the fact that he was knocked out by being slammed into a wall. I mean….
Lilith: Indeed. I'm still confused that shipgirls, or, as they should be formally referred to: fleet maidens, are this weak. Discounting the fact that the whole 'human-made military android' is thrown out the window halfway through the story and is instead replaced with 'literal personification of a warship/machine god', ships are much stronger than anything else made by humans that can still move under their own power.
See, I have a theory.
This started out as REALISM AND SHIT and he was bad at it, as we have seen. And only later on did this turn into a story with magic and ghost mom and shit.
Lilith: You could have just reworked the story…
*Looks at TV* Holy shit is that Die hard? Sweet!
Suzuya: Mr. Dee. We still have a review to finish.
I knooooooooooooooooooow. We can save christmas later.
"Everyone grab a tactical vest if you haven't already," Damon orders. "Lets you carry more ammo. Here, both of the guys with AR's have some STANAG ammo..."
After looting the soldiers, they move on without further incident to the fifth and final floor. Damon picks out a good spot that overlooks the checkpoint and eases Amatsukaze down on the ground behind a chipped and scarred support beam.
"Alrighty. Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Iku, get back down to the first floor and sneak up on that checkpoint. It's only about..." Damon peers out the broken glass windows over to the checkpoint,
"...maybe around a hundred and fifty meters or so. When you get there, stay outta sight from the snipers up in the towers. Use the trees for cover and make sure not to get seen. Stop when you're within about fifty meters or somethin' like that, and wait for me 'n Mutsu to pick off the guys up in the towers first. Once we do that, y'all're free to wipe everything out...except for that Humvee, of course. Get goin', we probably don't have a lotta time."
Before Shimakaze follows the other ship girls back, she approaches the Admiral. "Don't let anything happen to Amatsu-nee-chan, okay!?" Shimakaze demands. "Promise me!"
"I won't promise anything," Damon retorts. "But I already said that you got my word that I'll try my damnedest not to let anything further happen to her. A'ight?"
Shimakaze gives him one last long glare before following the others back down to the first floor of the mall. Damon lays prone on the dirty and trashed tiling of the fifth floor and props up his .338 Lapua rifle as best he can, setting his scope on the guard of the second tower, further away from them.
"Do the same as me, Mutsu," Damon says. "Lay prone, stand your rifle up, and put your scope over your intended target. Use the scope to sweep the area to scan for other viable targets if you have to. Don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready for a shot, prevents accidental discharge. When you shoot, hold your breath for the most accurate shot. And since you've got a bolt-action, remember to chamber the next bullet."
Mutsu complies with Damon's instructions.
"Aim for the guy on the first tower, closer to us," Damon says. Mutsu puts her crosshairs on her designated target, and her targeting module further highlights him in a faint red circle around his image.
"What are these tick marks for, Admiral?" Mutsu asks. "The ticks that are on each of the four crosshairs..."
"Range indicators," Damon answers. "I'd have to look at the scope to know exactly what kind it is, but basically the idea of those ticks is to give you an indicator of where to shoot depending on how far away the guy you wanna shoot is."
"Then...then which tick should I use...?"
"You shouldn't have to use any. We're close enough that bullet drop won't be a factor...only a slight delay, since we are shootin' people over a hundred meters away. But it shouldn't matter too much, s'long as they don't make any sudden movements..."
R32: Um, confusion between the M82 (self-loading) and M95 (bolt-action)?
Motherfucker what do the range indicators even matter in the story, and why are you explaining them/ Why did you not explain these when you gave her the gun!
Lilith: Why are military hardware not trained instinctually to use firearms? If they can get into firefights without any issue, why exactly are they not programmed to use firearms?
Suzuya: Now that's a question i would like to see an explanation from the author himself.
R32: Doesn't match what the doc says about them. My post is thread marked in LR thread.
Lilith: Also, M95 is a bullpup .50 AMR, right? Hold on, let me look it up in my database…
R32: Yes, but Hackyuu explicitly noted that Mutsu picked up an M82…but incorrectly noted that it was bolt-action in Damon's instructions to her.
Lilith: How can you fail at gun pornography when it is one of the selling points of your story?
"And..." Mutsu continues, looking around. "What should we do once they realize we're here...? Is there, like, a quick way to get away?"
"Honestly, I haven't thought that far, but we'll just go back down the way we came," Damon sighs.
"If anything, I'll just jump straight out if I gotta."
Damon hasn't got Adamantium bones and shit, he'd break his god damn legs!
Suzuya: Adamantium. Ingram corrected it for me.
Lilith: So they can survive falls that would cripple a normal human, but they cannot survive bullets.
Lilith: The inconsistency in this writing disturbs me a great deal.
IP: Okay, that match went a little better. I should probably be paying more attention to this LR.
Lilith: And why exactly must our protagonist must be some sort of ubermensch? It's grating to hear how he's this powerful in comparison to everyone else. It makes the story boring. Woo, he can do a one-eighty spin while falling and effortlessly beat the world's longest sniper shot by over four kilometres (which is in fact really impressive, since you have to account for the Coriolis Effect when firing that far) and landing on his feet without breaking any part of his body.
IP: Boring Invincible Hero syndrome.
Lilith: Exactly. I don't want to have to put up with someone who could and probably would cut through swaths of infantry. I want tension, drama, action! Where is the 'interesting' parts of a story? Why should I read this instead of reading something else?
Okay guys, we have an "action" scene coming up. Can I skip through the boring parts? Because Most of what I've seen of it is really really boring.
IP: Please. These things go on hours as it is.
R32: Don't skip I-19 chucking a torp.
IP: Come again?
Lilith: She does what?
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.
They both inhale deeply but quietly, and their scopes momentarily freeze onto their respective targets. Both triggers are pulled simultaneously, and two loud booms erupt from the fifth floor of the mall, punching through whatever fragile glass is in their way to reach their intended victims.
Damon's target suffers the effect of having his brains splattered all over the wall of the tower behind him and slumps in his chair, very much so dead, and Mutsu's target loses his head entirely in a fanfare-ish display of flying blood, brain, and bits of skull fragments.
"Oh man, this thing kicks like a...!" Mutsu exclaims, surprised by the strong kick of the M82-A1
even while shooting it prone.
"Move in, all of you! Mutsu, stay sharp, focus on more targets!" Damon orders. The soldiers posted in the checkpoint, alarmed by the gunshots, pick up their weapons and look around, shouting to each other, trying to figure out what just happened and where those shots came from.
"I don't know what happens when I try to use a sea-to-sea torpedo on land," Iku says excitedly as she pulls out a compact torpedo from her rear waist where her stock of seventeen compact torpedoes are held, "but we'll see what happens now, nano!" A 6x533mm torpedo expands quickly to full size, and Iku hurls it like an Olympic javelin thrower straight at the small UAZ, which a couple of the soldiers on the ground are running towards. Apparently Iku has thrown it so hard that the torpedo breaches right into the side of the vehicle, beeps once while wedged into the side of the UAZ, and explodes, tossing the UAZ high up into the air, along with the bodies of the soldiers who were already inside the car and have been torn apart by the explosion. Murakumo and Shimakaze emerge from the grove and open fire, with Iku giving them covering fire with her FN FS-2000 rifle.
Lilith: Why exactly is— I'm not going to bother at this point since I know the author doesn't care about me pointing out flaws in the story, but you're talking about using .50 BMG against soft targets. Why. There is no reason to use that much overkill on a single target. Shooting a person in the head would be just as efficient using a smaller calibre round that — presumably — would be easier to find in a post-apocalyptic setting than an anti-materiel round?
IP: The battleship, possessing 16 inch guns, can't handle a hand-carried rifle's recoil. Also, what is the functional difference between "brains splattered on the wall" and "head exploded" that the two need to be described separately?
Lilith: Because apparently according to him chunky brain matter comes in different varieties. If you want some extra variety, sometimes ballistics causes the human body to react in very strange ways. Like ejecting the entire brain intact while the skull opens up like some sort of twisted nut being cracked open.
Suzuya: That surely wasting resources. I heard several eager cuban conscripts can create those torpedoes exploding thing with just spears and explosive tied on it.
IP: Torpedoes don't "beep" before detonation. I'm pretty sure torpedoes don't beep before detonation. Do torpedoes beep before detonation? There's no reason for them to, is there?
Lilith: That's giving away that there's torpedoes headed towards you, which is, you know, like shouting "I AM SHOOTING AT YOU" before firing at a person.
IP: If the soldiers' bodies were torn apart in the explosion, why are you saying that the bodies were tossed into the air? Surely you could just say one or the other?
Lilith: Their souls were thrown backwards?
R32: Playing 7.62mm High Calibre's gotta be better than reading this…...who else here plays this Jagged Alliance successor?
Lilith: I want to go back to playing Phantom Fortress...
IP: There's a reason I keep popping out to play WoWs matches. And no, I'm afraid I've not played either.
Lilith: Reminder that British Light Cruisers are inbound! I think I should re-introduce myself to anyone new that is reading this: I am HMS Tiger, design Z4A Minotaur-class light cruiser. My name is Lilith, since Commander Steiner is a bit of a nicknamer.
IP: Let's keep going...
Suzuya: Yeah.
NEXT!
"Shit, our position's compromised!" Damon quickly puts his head down, lifts his rifle, and rolls to his left behind the nearby section of the wall of the fifth floor. "Mutsu, get away from the windows! We gotta get off this floor, asap!"
Rensouhou-kun clicks and beeps loudly, calling for Damon once a steady flow of bullets ping and snap into the fifth floor of the shopping mall into Damon's and Mutsu's sniper nest. Damon hurries over, and Mutsu helps Amatsukaze back onto Damon's back. But before they can make their way back to the escalators that led them up to the fifth floor, something bright punches a hole right through the weak and unmaintained wall of the fifth floor ahead of them and detonates onto the ceiling above, causing a small avalanche of broken debris and glass to collapse onto the escalators, blocking off the escalators and effectively trapping them onto the fifth floor.
"Fuck!" Damon yells. "We're cut off!"
"W-What do we d - " Mutsu is about to yell back when another rocket smashes into the floor where they were just lying prone to snipe the mercenaries at the checkpoint, causing that portion of the floor to cave in and threatening to collapse the rest of the floor where Damon and Mutsu are standing.
"We've gotta jump out!" Damon shakes his head. "Only way out now!"
"But that's ridiculous! It's so high up from here! Maybe I'd be fine, but you two - !" Mutsu protests. "There's gotta be another way out!"
"Admiral, just leave me here, don't go risking your life for me like this!" Amatsukaze pleads. "We're all eventually going to become outdated and dumped anyway! Losing just one ship girl isn't going to kill you!"
Another rocket zooms in again, this time striking the support beam close to them. The explosion forces Mutsu to stumble backwards shakily and knocks Damon off his feet, causing him to flatten himself against Amatsukaze, who screams with pain as her open wound skids across the breaking floor, which audibly groans and creaks, threatening to disintegrate completely.
"Admiral! ! !" Mutsu shrieks as Damon unsteadily gets back up to his feet, hanging on tight to the ship girl on his back. "We're running out of time! We - "
"Shut up and follow me!" Damon roars, and Mutsu, catching a glimpse of Damon's eyes, blinks in surprise. A look that she has never seen Damon have before, a facade of toughness and sheer determination, as if he were preparing himself to fight against a horde of a million zombies with only a dinky pistol. "Out the hole in front of us! Amy, hang oooonnnnnn! ! ! ! ! ! !"
Before Mutsu can even try to dissuade him, Damon abandons his .338 Lapua AR-15 sniper rifle into the imminent grave of the shopping mall, surges forward, and jumps out of the fifth floor of the shopping mall, and Mutsu, having no choice, quickly rescues Damon's dropped rifle and jumps with a sniper rifle in each hand, following the Admiral out just as another M-72 L.A.W. rocket sails into the fifth floor of the mall and finally destroys what is left of it. They drop straight down into the parking lot on the south side of the shopping mall, and there is nothing to break their fall. Damon prepares himself to take the brunt of the shock upon impact, and Amatsukaze, holding her breath, hugs Damon's back tightly.
Damon slams the ground on both feet, but the sheer shock of the landing is so great that Damon is forced to transfer some of his falling momentum throughout the rest of his body to prevent his ankles from taking too much strain and either breaking or dislocating and thus flattens himself eagle-sprawled onto the hot asphalt, smashing his nose and forehead against the rough bit of gravel on the lot. Amatsukaze further exacerbates the situation by smashing her weight into Damon, who acts as a cushion for her, against the ground before being flung further and painfully rolling to a stop. Mutsu lands hard onto the lot as well, but because of her ship construct, she suffers no damage upon her fall, and instead, her feet make indents and punch lacerations into the parking lot.
"Admiral! ! ! !" Mutsu screams louder than ever as Damon struggles to get up. Amatsukaze, coughing up blood and wiping it away, her shins and knees scraped and bloody, also looks up in horror as Damon flops onto the ground, choking with pain. Mutsu turns him over and holds his
head up, putting his sniper rifle next to him. "I-I told you it was going to be a bad idea jumping out
all recklessly like this! Where are you hurt? Please tell me!"
Lilith: Can someone tell him that using bold in prose is a very bad idea? I really, really hate it when people presume that using anything other than italics very rarely is a good idea.
R32: He ain't no Tenno!
Ingram: [Nooooooooo. Not the Rifle. Why must be the Rifle]
Lilith: Though it might be my inner English professor screaming for release. Did you know that one of my lead programmers wanted to be a teacher before he joined the FLEET Project?
DAMMIT INGRAM GO BACK TO THE LAB, YOU DON'T GOTTA SEE THIS SHIT.
Lilith: Considering that Damon is the biggest threat to his existence by virtue of warping reality to fit his needs, he needs to learn what is going on so that he can counter what this guy has planned.
Suzuya: Oh please, Mr. Dee. Let my husband comment on things too.
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.
"Amatsukaze, coughing up blood and wiping it away, her shins and knees scraped and bloody, also looks up in horror as Damon flops onto the ground, choking with pain. "
One one hand OH GOD AMATSUKAZE IS HURT CALL THE MEDICS
On the Other: HAHAHAHHAAH, THE FUCKER BLEEDS!
Lilith: Why would automations have blood…? Are they human flesh grafted onto a combat exoskeleton or are they made out of metal? Or Living Metal or Machine-Programmable Matter? What exactly are fleet maidens here made out of?
Fishy: I only just got here and my eyes are already glazing over.
Suzuya: Welcome, Mr. Fish.
I brought the JoJo, hide your dogs.
Damon coughs uncontrollably, fighting to even breathe properly, and soon he starts to hack up some blood. "Sh...shit...!" Damon clenches his teeth, trying to endure the pain. "Feet...lungs...part of my spine, probably..." He coughs violently again.
Lilith: I'm awaiting the next chapter, where it turns out that he is fine because he has Wolverine-levels of regenerative abilities.
Lilith: By the way, whoever programmed me gave me a whole load of data dedicated to pop-culture references…
Fishy: You know, I've noticed a common trend in this fic
Lilith: What's that?
Fishy: The way it describes what's happening makes it feel like...hum...that we aren't at all familiar with the characters? I'm not entirely sure how to communicate it.
Lilith: Like the struggle isn't personal? That we don't connect because we don't see the protagonist's struggles as our own? We don't root for them? We don't feel a desire to see them to succeed because we know they will anyway?
R32: I linked something for you above.
Fishy: Oh, I just got it; it's all tell. No show. Everything is so mind-numbingly technical that I just can't care about it, even if the characters were ones that we cared about.
Lilith: It's like reading a script, is what you're essentially saying, yes?
Fishy: Yup.
"Admiral, Admiral, what the hell just happened!?" Murakumo's shrill voice calls through Damon's headset, the mic somehow surviving Damon's fall. "We saw lots of explosions where you and
Mutsu-san were! What's going on!?"
Struggling to even speak, Damon coughs loudly, "Our posi...position was c...compromised! We...we h...had to ditch the pl...place! We're gonna re...regroup with you, c...c...clear out the ch...checkpoint...!"
"Admiral, are you hit!? You don't sound good! You didn't get shot, did you!?"
"Mutsu to all ship signatures, please be advised, due to the compromise of our sniping position, Admiral and I had to emergency-evacuate, and now, Admiral is in critical condition!" Mutsu radios.
"Those guys hurt my Admiral!?" Iku shouts, now aggravated. "They won't get away with this, nano! ! !"
Damon shakes his head, his coughing fit finally showing some signs of subsiding, and tears
Mutsu's hand off his head. "Let's move!" Damon gasps, struggling to his feet. "Mutsu, cover me as we move up! Murakumo, secure that fucking Humvee! Shimakaze, check all perimeters for any stragglers! Iku, kill every bitch you see that ain't one of us!"
"Gladly, nano!"
"Admiral, the Humvee's basically clear, we've taken out most of the guys here! Shimakaze, you better take care of anyone else who's left!"
"Okay, just leave it to me! Admiral, you still have Amatsu-nee-chan, right!?"
"Yes, I fuckin' have her, y'all got'cher orders!" Damon bellows, lifting up Amatsukaze and her pet robot with much difficulty. Blood now drips in thin lines down from Damon's forehead and left
nostril, where he crushed his face against the lot upon his fall.
"Y-You're h-hurt, Admiral...!" Amatsukaze coughs, not doing too well herself. "You...stop forcing yourself on like this...!"
But Damon pays no heed and, scraping the bottom of the barrel of whatever strength he has left in him, sprints across the lot, across the grove of trees where Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Iku launched their attack onto the checkpoint, and finally to the heavily armed Humvee. To Damon, he feels like he just ran a marathon carrying a giant fifty-gallon barrel that steadily filled up with water. He helps Amatsukaze into the back seat.
"Everyone get in the Humvee!" Damon roars, practically throwing himself into the driver's seat. As soon as he sits down, his vision blacks out momentarily from the sheer strain and exhaustion that his body is suffering, and he struggles just to keep himself conscious. "Fuck...no key..." he mumbles, fiddling around the front of the armed Humvee. "Mutsu...look...look around for a key!"
"Well, what does the key look like?"
"I don't know..."
"Then how am I supposed to find it when I don't even know what it looks like!?"
Murakumo quickly kneels next to the body of a dead mercenary, who has multiple gunshot wounds to his chest through his vest and legs, and produces a key. "Here, Admiral!" Murakumo calls. "I saw this when I passed this guy, maybe this is it! Catch!"
Fishy: ...Everybody always says the same thing when worrying about him.
Suzuya: Even i knew how to hotwire cars! Uhm… Ingram told me to learn it.
Lilith: One more thing, you could have made the prose so much more interesting than how bland it is right now…
Lilith: "He struggled to breath, let alone talk…"
Lilith: "His voice was choked with blood…"
Lilith: And those are just some of the examples I just made up a second ago! Instead of just telling us by choppy and poor dialog, show and do not tell.
IP: This fic seems to have a chronic problem with that.
Damon turns and barely catches the key. Coughing up a bit more blood, he slams his forehead against the wheel to shock himself back awake from the pain, causing the Humvee to honk its horn.
"We're coming, Admiral, nano!" Iku calls hurriedly, and Shimakaze returns to the Humvee and hops into the back with her sister, and Iku also joins the destroyer sisters in the back of the vehicle. Mutsu climbs onto the Mark-19 Grenade Launcher turret and hangs on as Damon revs up the engine.
"We're gonna drive straight into the heart 'a the city!" Damon yells, backing the Humvee out of the ruined freeway. "Murakumo, blast any motherfucker who gets in our way with that MG! Mutsu, there's a safety switch along the bottom left side of that turret! How many nades does it have?"
"Ummmm, standby...!" Mutsu quickly takes a count of the 40mm explosive rounds strung on a long belt feeding into the turret. "There's a good fifty or so, Admiral! Plus, there's another belt of it at my feet!"
"Then you light up every motherfucker you see too! We're blastin' our fuckin' way past these
bitches, a'ight!? We either get what I want, or we goin' out Michael Bay-style!" Damon pulls out his
Glock swiftly with his left hand and shoots a mercenary who followed Shimakaze to the Humvee and was about to shoot at Mutsu with his TAR-21 assault rifle. Even with several crushed spine vertebrae, badly sore ankles, and a bleeding nose, Damon apparently has not lost his touch with his marksmanship.
"Oughta be careful who ya bring with ya next time!" Damon yells, tucking his smoking pistol away as the mercenary drops his gun, clutching at his neck and slowly choking to death with his trachea pierced by a .45 GAP bullet. "Hang the fuck on!"
The Humvee roars and hurtles through the checkpoint gate, which is only a flimsy striped bar that is lifted up and down to allow cleared vehicles through, and smashes the bar right off in a small shower of wooden splinters.
"Shimakaze, you know the way to the Congress Center, right!?" Damon calls.
"Yeah, I've been there before! Do you want directions?" she calls back.
"Please! We're basically gonna drive in circles 'til we either find it or get blown the fuck up!"
"Well, for starters, just keep following the 29 until it merges into the 23!"
The Humvee speeds down the highway into the heart of the city.
Lilith: I really am tired of hearing what kind of guns they're holding at all time. You would think that telling us once is enough. No, apparently it's not, because the readers are goldfish?
Lilith: That's actually wrong by the way, since goldfish have amazing memory. But still.
IP: Is slamming your head into something recommended medical practice for avoiding shock?
Lilith: No, no it is not. Please don't, or else Commander Steiner will come down your throat and yell at you. Violently.
Fishy: No, it is not IP.
IP: Wait, he means to use it to wake himself up. Which is… Still very iffy-sounding.
Lilith: What. That's… what? What? Er, what?
Fishy: Still stupid, even if it's something that I know that people would do.
Lilith: By the way, how does he know who Michael Bay is? I thought he was born after the bombs fell?
IP: He's decided to drive deeper into enemy territory despite being badly injured, if I read this right.
Fishy: He spent his early days up in outer space, watching cheesy movies that his bosses sent him.
Lilith: Gah.
Lilith: And he went deeper into enemy territory because 'fuck logic' apparently? Everyone would've turned tail and run in the opposite direction.
IP: Also, lookit all this stuff they have in the apocalypse! Where are they getting all this? Guns & Explosives Central Atlanta, half-off to racist jerks this Friday?!?!
Lilith: Everything degrades. So finding all this heavy ordinance twenty or so years after the nuclear weapons dropped from the heavens is a big stretch. Especially if everyone looted everything.
Fishy: Because everything is easily findable after the apocalypse. As in, decades after they stopped being made. Because that makes sense..
Lilith: Someone played too much fallout.
R32: Before you post the next paragraph, I'm gonna pull something relevant from chapter 210. Basically, someone in that chapter talks about something that happens between the passage that was just posted, and the upcoming one.
Lilith: Go ahead, Book keeper.
Olivia leans back and pulls the photo off its tack on the bulletin board and holds it up in front of Damon, allowing him to see himself and four of his very first group of ship girls he'd ever recovered.
"That's you in the photo," Olivia says, quickly retracting the photo when Damon tries to snatch it away from her to get a closer look. "The navy blue hair and the yellow eyes give it away so easily."
"How'd you get that photo...!?" Damon raises his voice a little. "You weren't there in Atlanta when I picked those girls up!"
"Oh, that's just what you think," Olivia frowns. "I was there in Atlanta, when you attacked it the first time. When you were shooting everything in your path while driving in that big Humvee or whatever it was called, you shot at a van that was in your way, on its way into downtown Atlanta
as well."
Damon looks utterly confused now. "Van? But we shot a lotta cars on our way in. You were in one of 'em?"
"Yes. I don't remember the exact details of my reactivation, but I awoke after finding myself disabled by an EMP grenade and was being forced to go into the city. Your party took out the van I was in, along with the crew, so I was the only one to survive your attack and managed to escape as a result. I was then found by Dee Jay's group here, and I've been with them for the past month since I don't have anyone else to stay with."
"But that doesn't explain how you got that photo," Damon says.
Lilith: Who is she and why is she important? And… EMPs don't work like that. If you get EMP'd while active, you're kind of screwed. Unless we're throwing the 'fleet maidens are robotic/mechanical in nature'.
"I am the fourth Kuma-Class light cruiser, Ooi," Ooi reintroduces herself, properly this time. "Olivia is just a random name I used to keep my identity as a ship girl safe, since I'm not sure how well the kids here will react to finding out that I'm not exactly human. Though, I guess with the number of people here with radiation-induced mutations, I shouldn't really have to worry, but I do anyway."
"Good name, though," Damon nods, "makes sense when it comes to your shirt."
Ooi looks down at her sailor uniform. "Hm, what a coincidence. I didn't even think about that," she
Fishy: If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go watch Kung Fury.
IP: I don't even care anymore. I'm numb.
R32: Next passage please.
I WANAN FUCKING SHOOT MYSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELF.
R32: Didn't I already mention Ooi a few weeks back?
IP: *taps forehead* Right here for me, please, before you do yourself if you're gonna carry through on that De3ta.
R32: Saazbaum-wannabe
Three hundred seventy two 7.62x51mm NATO rounds and thirty-seven 40mm grenades later, the Humvee, now riddled with bullet holes, screeches down Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard. Iku squeezes off a couple more STANAG rounds from her FS-2000 assault rifle to the rear of the Humvee, firing at the group of soldiers that they just passed and took some fire from.
"Is this what battles are like on land!?" Iku screams in delight. "It's so exciting, nano~! ! !"
"Admiral, Admiral! ! !" Shimakaze screams, lifting her head after ducking from the fire they took, "the Congress Center is on our left! You took a wrong turn! ! !"
"You mean that building right there!?" Damon points to their left. "The one with all those military vehicles around it!?"
"Yeah! You need to - "
"No need! Everyone, brace! ! !"
Before any of the ship girls can say anything further, Damon swings the Humvee all the way to the right, and once it rolls over onto the bridge on the intersection of the boulevard and the underlying railroads, Damon swerves the Humvee right off the bridge.
"Ah - " Murakumo tries to scream, but because the drop is not too far, the Humvee bounces roughly onto its wheels before any of them can scream, and Damon drives it over the railroad tracks to pull up right next to the west side of the Congress Center.
"What the hell was that for, Admiral!?" Shimakaze yells shrilly, rubbing her head. "That wasn't even the right way to go!"
"But this's the building you pointed out, and this's an alley no one's in just yet!" Damon returns, kicking open his door. "Everyone out! Amatsukaze, I've gotta leave you here. Renny, whatever the
fuck yer name is, make sure no one we don't know comes near this car, you hear me?" Rensouhou-kun's cannon barrels swipe up and down with determination.
"Just let me stay here!" Shimakaze pleads. "Please!"
"No, you're too valuable just to leave you to a simple guarding assignment! C'mon, the faster we get in there and grab Mr. Harrison, the faster we return, think of it that way!" Damon grabs his Lapua rifle that Mutsu grabbed for him when they had jumped from the crumbling shopping mall. "I gotta ditch this for somethin' else, and quick...c'mon."
Leaving Amatsukaze and her Rensouhou-kun to watch over the Humvee, Damon and the rest of the ship girls approach a rear utility service door. "Mutsu, kick open the door. I'd do it myself, but my feet are fuckin' killin' me," he commands, and Mutsu breathes in sharply as she heaves her right foot onto the door, and she successfully kicks it down. Shimakaze enters first, motivated to get the job over with as quickly as possible, and Murakumo and Iku enter after, followed by Damon and Mutsu, who bring up the rear. They make their way across the dark and narrow service hall until they reach the next door that leads into one of the main atriums of the center.
Fishy: And more gun porn. How surprising. As if we haven't had enough. This stopped being Big Trouble in Little China and started being the Star Wars Holiday Special. I can't even...see ya guys later. For real this time.
Lilith: STANAG rounds are mentioned earlier as not existing in real life. FS-2000s are mentioned everywhere, along with everything else. They don't exist. FS2000 is the correct designation.
Suzuya: The day is my enemy, the night my friend.
IP:
"Ah - " Murakumo tries to scream, but because the drop is not too far, the Humvee bounces roughly onto its wheels before any of them can scream, and Damon drives it over the railroad tracks to pull up right next to the west side of the Congress Center.
IP: I'd like to know why any of this paragraph is necessary, please.
"Lots of people inside, Admiral," Shimakaze reports. "Probably lots of soldiers. I recall there being a lot of people stationed here since this's where a lot of important people like to be in the city."
"No surprise," Damon mutters, wiping some blood off his brow. "We gotta move quickly, they've gotta know this's where we were headed, and we don't know if they'll find our ride and Amy back there, either. All of you should know what Mr. Harrison looks like, right? If you see him, grab 'im and secure 'im. Once that's done, we drag his ass back to the Humvee and get the hell out. Got it?"
All the ship girls nod gravely.
"Go!"
Shimakaze knocks down the door and immediately faces a squad of six soldiers led by an important-looking officer with a green beret.
"You're the - " the green beret soldier starts to exclaim, but Shimakaze cuts him short with a short burst from her AUG-A1. Murakumo and Iku both slide next to Shimakaze and spray their weapons at the six soldiers who are about to return fire, but they are all cut down before they can even fire a single bullet. Hearing the gunfire, three more soldiers run into view to see who is shooting at their comrades, Damon half-aims his sniper rifle and cuts down two of them, and Mutsu annihilates the last man with an M82-A1 shot, blasting his body across the lobby. Damon tosses aside his .338 Lapua AR-15 and snatches up one of the dead soldiers' Carbon-15 9mm carbine and his ammunition.
"We're splittin' up! Shimakaze, Murakumo, on me! Iku, go with Mutsu in that direction! Report when you have a positive ID on Baxter Harrison!" Damon orders, and the group divides itself into two: Damon, Shimakaze, and Murakumo hurry north, and Mutsu, who swaps her anti-materiel rifle out for a Bushmaster ACR assault rifle, and Iku head east. Damon's group heads up a flight of stairs, and Shimakaze calls out in alarm:
"More human signatures coming in on us! Probably more soldiers!"
"Go in first, Shimakaze!"
"Ou!"
Once they climb up the stairs, Shimakaze bursts through the door leading into the second floor and raises her AUG A-1 right at a group of soldiers, who are dressed in normal civilian clothes instead of the sleek uniforms of the mercenaries.
"Hey, it's the whore!" One of them, swinging around a bottle of Jameson whiskey, calls out, laughing his ass off. "When're ya gonna fu - "
Shimakaze puts a bullet in his head before he can finish his sentence, and she and Damon mow everyone down. Apparently all of them had been too busy drinking and being drunk to put up much of a fight.
Suzuya: Imagine the wrath of the Marshall and Sub Marshall if they see the soldiers acting drunk like that.
Lilith: I think Commander Steiner would descend from the clouds to smack some common sense into them.
IP: I can't even feel satisfaction over the villains' deaths, because they're given about five seconds screen time to make themselves unlikeable and because the other side is… Damon.
Lilith: They could be replaced with paper targets and you would get roughly the same amount of satisfaction from their death (?).
"If there's anyone I'd like to kill, it's you fucking pervs!" Shimakaze screams as her AUG-A1 assault rifle clicks empty, requesting a reload. "It's not my fucking fault I have such a skimpy outfit!"
"Let's be real, though, it does seem skimpy," Damon remarks.
IP: And this little exchange doesn't make me feel or consider or change my opinions on anything. Next!
Skipping some shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
"All ship girls, be advised, I have a visual on our target!" Damon yells, pointing to Mr. Harrison, whom he barely recognizes. "Murakumo, do you see 'im? Over there, look!"
"Yeah, I see him! Transmitting location of primary target now!" Murakumo says, and all of Damon's ship girls have their memory files updated with Murakumo's transmitted information in the form of localized coordinates.
"Everyone, hunt him down! Do not harm our target! Kill everyone else!"
"I'll get him, ouuuu! ! !" Shimakaze roars, and using her immense speed, she simply gets out of the
cover she, Damon, and Murakumo were hiding behind and dashes straight past every single soldier in her way, dropping her rifle behind her so she can run as fast as she possibly can.
"Admiral, we're near the target, we're about to flank them!" Mutsu reports. "If Shimakaze gets rid of the guards, Iku and I can move in and secure the target!"
"Go, go!" Damon urges, blindfiring his Carbon 15 over his cover, and Murakumo carefully picks off two headshots with well-placed AUG-A1 shots.
Just before the escort can go down the last flight of stairs to reach the first floor, Shimakaze tackles one of the mercenary guards down the flight of stairs and slams him hard enough against the ground to knock him out. The guards open fire on her, and Shimakaze gets hit by a couple of bullets before she dashes back up the stairs with breakneck speed and punches another mercenary in the jaw, breaking it. Iku, already Cloaked, runs her huntsman knife through a soldier's throat, and Mutsu, finally catching up, puts a short burst of ACR bullets into the remainder of the soldiers. Other soldiers in the vicinity, realizing that their VIPs are under attack, start to divert attention towards them and away from Damon and Murakumo, and Mutsu is caught by a wave of lead and stumbles backwards.
Shimakaze snaped the fuckers neck, not "Knocked him out" you fucking fool.
Lilith: Does he assume that people can magically get better from a neck injury? Does he even understand basic biology? Your entire CNS (Central Nervous System) uses the spinal column to communicate to the rest of the PNS (Peripheral Nervous System). It's the primary mode of data transfer from the rest of your body to the brain, and vice versa. If you snap that you're basically cutting the wires to everything in your body south of the break. Sure you might retain some basic autonomous control since they use different channels, but for manual 'brain-guided' (which is a misnomer since everything is brain-guided in some way or form) commands you won't be doing anything since you literally cannot communicate with whatever you're trying to command.
"She - she's also one of 'em ship gals!" one of the soldiers exclaim. "Capture her! I'm sure ol' man O'Reilly'll give us all a big fat fuckin' pay raise if we bring 'im another of 'em ship gals!"
Shimakaze, after knocking out the rest of the guards, roughly grabs Baxter Harrison by the collar and drags him down the flight of stairs, with Iku close behind her. Mutsu fires back at the attacking soldiers, buying Shimakaze and Iku enough time to get away from the danger of the second floor before retreating herself.
"Wh-Who are you all?!" Mr. Harrison demands, terrified of his current situation.
"We were ordered by our Admiral to take you in!" Shimakaze quickly yells back. "Don't ask questions or be annoying, just follow us!"
"Admiral, we have secured the target, what next!?" Mutsu calls urgently.
"Head back to the Humvee with Mr. Harrison, we'll follow it up! Murakumo, follow me, I think I saw a shortcut outta here!" Damon and Murakumo slip away from their cover and dive into a dark corridor leading to several offices and small conference rooms. Shimakaze, annoyed by Mr.
Harrison's inability to keep up, simply lifts him up and dashes across the lobby as Iku escorts her and Mutsu gives them suppressing fire as she, too, follows after them. The soldiers, as much as they shoot the ship girls running back to the Humvee, cannot stop them, as they are under orders not to harm Mr. Harrison. The three ship girls and Mr. Harrison reach the Humvee after a mad dash.
"Get in the car!" Shimakaze practically screams, and Mr. Harrison, virtually at gunpoint by this point, has no choice but to get into the rear seats of the Humvee, and Mutsu and Iku both climb onto the MK-19 Grenade Launcher turret, with Iku sitting on the back of the Humvee, scanning around for threats.
"There's a lot more people headed this way, nano!" Iku reports hurriedly. "Where's Admiral?!"
Just on cue, a piercingly loud shatter of glass shrieks just above the Humvee, and the ship girls in the Humvee look up to see Murakumo put her foot through a conference room's outer window and bash out the glass to make a space for her and Damon to jump on through. She barges out first, making it easier for Damon to slip out the broken hole in the glass windows, grab onto the edge of the window, and drop as softly as he can onto the ground and roll to break his fall and make the strain minimal on his already injured body.
"Y-You - " Mr. Harrison, startled to see Damon as the latter hops back into the driver's seat and revs the engine back up again, "how did you manage to fight your way all the way here, son?!"
Damon turns around and gives Mr. Harrison the meanest stinkeye he's ever given anybody.
"Listen, Mr. Harrison," Damon growls, "if there's ever gonna be somebody who's gonna be the
question asker, that's this hard-ass motherfucker sittin' in the driver's seat right the fuck now. Now answer me: where's the guy who activated Shimakaze and Kaga? And where is Kaga?"
"Shima...oh, you m-mean the two ship girls that belong to O'Reilly?" Mr. Harrison stammers.
"Why...the person who activated them...yes, he...he ought to be at Grady Memorial Hospital right now, in Ward 5, and I do not know where Kaga is, but what in the world are you doin' here, son? You ain't got no business in a place like this - "
Damon points at all the girls in the Humvee. "Do you see these girls, Mr. Harrison? What makes ya think I ain't got no business with a place that has girls like these?"
Mr. Harrison starts, the realization just starting to dawn upon him. "Wait...w-wait, son, all...all of these young gals are...?"
"That's fuckin' right, ol' geezer, now shut the fuck up like the good upstandin' citizen that'cha are 'n keep yer head down, buster." Damon guns the engine and pulls out back onto the streets again, driving past a group of soldiers sent to cut off their possible retreat path, but Murakumo simply mows them down with the onboard M-240 mounted machine gun as Damon keeps his head down in case of flying bullets, getting onto Northwest Marietta Street with Shimakaze shouting directions to the Grady Memorial Hospital.
Jesus christ, finding this guy is harder than the Legendary Gunsmith.
Rensouhou-kun immediately lets rip a pair of 12.7cm cannon rounds, destroying a technical across the street from the Humvee that has now screeched to a full stop. Leaving the engine idling, Damon hops out and barges into the main lobby of the hospital with Iku and Murakumo close behind him as Shimakaze shoves Mr. Harrison's head underneath the bulletproof sides of the Humvee and hopping into the M-240 machine gun turret to mow down any soldier she sees.
Damon and his two escorting ship girls awkwardly face a mass of huddled, cowering people, frightened terribly by the chaos that is going on outside.
"Where is Ward 5?!" Damon yells. "We aren't gonna hurt anyone here, but we need to know where
Ward 5's at!"
"I-I-It's down to the left!" one of the women in the back of the main lobby stammers, terrified.
Damon, Murakumo, and Iku rush down the left-hand corridor, following the signs that lead them straight to the double doors of Ward 5. Murakumo and Iku blink a couple times in alarm, confirming the reports being compiled by their sensors.
"Admiral, there's another ship signature inside!" Murakumo reports, pointing at the doors of Ward 5. "It's gotta be Kaga!"
"Anyone else?"
"No...!"
Without a further word, Damon swiftly kicks open the doors.
Lilith: I'm board. Can I head back to bed Commander Steiner?
R32: Nice typo
Lilith: I— no. I am not going there.
Kaga, Kaga-class aircraft carrier.
Finally a more modest outfit for a change out of this one, is Damon's initial thought upon seeing
Kaga within the first frame of kicking open the doors. A taller, older girl, looking around the age of
maybe twenty or twenty-one, possibly eighteen or nineteen if you were to stretch it. A muddy white short-sleeved thick shirt that is reminiscent of a light sweater, a deep blue short-sleeved undershirt, a thick black breastplate (muneate), and a deep blue skirt that reaches down to just above her knees. Black thighhighs, specialized blue combat boots, darker brown hair tied up in a distinctive side ponytail to the left of her head, and dark brown eyes to match her hair.
The instant Damon kicks open the doors, Kaga, who was standing behind the doors just out of the way so that she would not be hit, raises a P-99 handgun at Damon and squeezes the trigger. The 9mm bullet pierces him in the upper breast, just barely missing his left lung.
Lilith: I swear this is going to turn into Pokemon. Speaking of which, Pokemon GO is referenced in one of the latest chapters, despite the game coming out in… 2016.
R32: Damon getting shot at by the CarDiv1 "step-sisters" is going to be a recurring thing. HOWEVER, what happens when AKAGI shoots him is something I will NOT elaborate on at this time..
Suzuya: I actually rooting for Ms. Kaga here. Even Ingram.
Lilith: I'm sure everyone is rooting for the 'villains' at this point.
I hate them all.
Lilith: E-Even me?
*pats* Nah.
IP: Wait, isn't this one of the parts he tried to justify in his A/N after his little edit run?
Lilith: I believe so.
Damon reels back, the pain of the bullet wound being registered throughout his body, and Murakumo and Iku simultaneously scream out and open fire with their assault rifles, littering Kaga at point blank range with rifle cartridges and knocking Kaga backwards and punching holes into her skirt and lower shirts. Kaga, having never experienced the dull but oddly painful sensation of getting shot before, is forced to drop her handgun as she raises her arms to cover her face and chest in an effort to protect herself as best she can. Burning through their ammo, Iku and
Murakumo both drop their guns and charge in, Iku with her huntsman knife and Murakumo with her main mast, but Kaga recovers enough to block Iku's knife thrust at her head with the back of her right wrist, and the blade fails to penetrate much past the initial layer of skin. Murakumo succeeds in slamming her main mast as hard as she can into Kaga's left side, but Kaga simply winces a bit and buries her left fist into Murakumo's forehead, sending her airborne for a brief moment before Murakumo gets pounded off the wall outside the ward and crumples to the heap near Damon, who twirls out his knife handle and rushes in. Kaga fails to block Iku's back kick, but she grabs Iku's foot instead as Iku tries to pull it back away and hurls her the opposite direction, and Iku yelps as she tumbles across the floor of the ward.
"Oi, bitch!" Damon lunges at Kaga, his hacking nanoblade itching for Kaga's forehead, but Kaga sidesteps Damon's attack and hooks her left fist again into his stomach, grabs the back of his head with the same hand, pushes it down, and smashes her left knee into his chin. Damon falls backwards onto his back but still hangs on to his nanoknife, so Kaga brings her boot down on his right hand and forces him to relinquish the weapon before lifting him back up off the floor and, dashing back outside the ward into the hospital corridor, crushes him against the wall of the hall.
Suzuya: I heard the hoorah from outside of room, looks like Mr. Vargas is also watching. And rooting on Ms. Kaga.
Lilith: I am very tempted to say that every single diplomatic engagement Damon is confronted with ends in a gunfight.
IP: Damon has diplomatic engagements?
Murakumo, getting back up, jumps onto Kaga's back and tries her best to get Kaga to let go of her Admiral, and eventually she becomes annoying enough to succeed, so Kaga lets go of Damon, who slides down the wall in another coughing fit, tears Murakumo's hands off herself, and exerting some effort, hurls her again across the ward like she did to Iku. Iku, meanwhile, manages to recover Damon's nanoknife and pulls Murakumo back onto her feet.
"Thanks," Murakumo mutters, facing the subtly threatening image of Kaga. "As expected of an aircraft carrier...she's built to be too strong for just a destroyer and a submarine like us. Maybe at sea we'd face a better chance, but here..."
Lilith; People forgot that— oh wait, he doesn't know anything about naval history. Never mind.
IP: Hackyu. Do you remember that carriers weren't meant to fight in any way other than at a distance?
Lilith: The Russians and the Germans certainly haven't learned that.
IP: In the German's defense, they had the much smaller Baltic Sea potentially limiting the size of engagement areas and the like. The Russians just had a crap navy.
Lilith: And not to forget that they lost most of their naval construction expertise when Versailles went up and forced them to basically abandon any attempt to build a sizable navy for about a decade or so. Meanwhile, the Russians were just invested in the idea of building memeships that could launch guided missiles while also launching planes at the same time, though those are more like aviation cruisers than actual carriers.
IP: This is the same Russian navy whose trip from one coast to the other for the Russo-Japanese War could give a Three Stooges routine a run for their money in the comedy department, yes?
Lilith: Hey! They've gotten better! Now they only have three vessels that are potentially at-risk of suffering severe nuclear meltdowns!
Lilith: I hope Stalina isn't listening…
IP: How's their ability to deal with very large snakes and fishing trawlers?
Then, a pistol shot rings out, and Kaga suddenly stumbles forward from being struck in the back of the head by a P-99 shot. Damon, having picked up Kaga's dropped handgun, shoots it once to close the distance between him and Kaga, and as soon as Kaga turns to him to face him, he is already within melee distance, and Damon packs as much focus into his right fist as he can and simply socks Kaga in the face as hard as he can. Kaga gets knocked down hard, not expecting Damon to pack such a hard punch like that, and Damon calls to Iku,
"Iku, toss it!"
Iku underhands the nanoknife over to Damon, and snatching it out of the air, he buries his left knee into Kaga's stomach just below her breastplate and plunges his knife into Kaga's forehead, but Kaga manages to barely block it from reaching her head with her hands.
"Sorry, Kaga," Damon grins sadistically, "but this ain't anywhere near the amount of energy you
need to stop this."
Putting both hands on his knife, Damon finishes the job, and the nanoblade sinks into Kaga's forehead and pierces her brain, and the knife's hacking system goes to work hacking into Kaga's command console. Kaga's arms flop to the sides as her body becomes unresponsive to herself.
Lilith: So… now they're tough enough to withstand bullets? What?
R32: That's been established from the very beginning.
IP: Except it hasn't. They periodically go from being terrified and needing to protect themselves from gunfire and so on to… This.
Lilith: Then why did Damon comment that clearing a room would be difficult to them if they can't just wade through the fire? This was made very clear in this chapter.
R32: Just because they can't get penned doesn't mean they don't feel the impact.
Lilith: What idiot gave combat platforms fear of getting hurt?
IP: At least fear of getting hurt by something on the relative level where it ultimately does nothing to them, like gunfire to a shipgirl. Fear of getting hurt on a more severe level is a great incentive to not die.
R32: That I can't answer T_T
Lilith: Someone might say "but humans have pain so why can't shipgirls?" but they fail to realize that pain is literally just a biological warning system to warn stupid animals that what they're doing has a very high chance of killing them or severely hurting them. Someone could very easily make up a system that wouldn't give them fear of getting hurt while still retaining this 'warning system.' But again, I have this sinking feeling that Hackyuu must have slept through biology class…
Lilith: In high school. Really, this is something you learn in high school, and should be remembered every single time you curse out in pain. Because it's your body telling you that you are fucking stupid, don't ever do that again.
*Sputters and twitches*
Suzuya: Ingram's body is shaking again. I take my leave for now. Thank you, everyone.
*Waves, still twitching*
"What...what are you doing to me..." Kaga asks in a low, serious tone that only betrays a small amount of worry.
"Hacking you," Damon says coolly. "After this shit's done, you'll be takin' yer orders from me now. Got it?"
Kaga narrows her eyes, a minute trail of blood oozing down the left side of her head, the same direction as her side ponytail.
Lilith: Is there a moment in the story where he doesn't basically mentally rape a girl to obey him? No? Ferchristsakes…
"I was not aware that such a feat was possible..." Kaga mutters. "Perhaps you are telling the truth..."
Then, a slow clapping grabs everyone's attention except for Kaga. Damon, Murakumo, and Iku turn to look up at a middle-aged man in a ragged lab coat and even more ragged orange and black prisoner uniform clothes underneath it.
"Impressive," the older man in the lab coat says. "You were not only able to take down Kaga, the aircraft carrier ship girl, but you are now also hacking her to join you. That's some high-level shit you've got goin' on there, kid."
Damon starts to stand up as he gets a good look at the man. A tall man with a lot of wrinkles across his forehead, a distinctive tiger-stripe scar just over his right eye, gaunt facial expressions that are the result of weeks, maybe even months of malnutrition. But one thing catches his eye in particular: just underneath the lab coat's left breast pocket are the letters: SANFORD.
Something snaps inside Damon's mind.
"You..." Damon hisses with as much anger as he can muster.
IP: Oh look, he's gone berserk. Could you hurry up and kill this guy so we don't have to suffer through this chapter any further, please?.
STANDFORD, GET USED TO HIM, HE'S GONNA BE HERE A LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME.
Lilith: So he's going to beat him up next, I presume?
Lilith: Because it's getting blindingly obvious how he operates. See a problem you don't like? Physically maim the thing you don't like.
Damon leaves the nanoknife stuck inside Kaga's head to finish the hacking sequence and approaches the man in the lab coat slowly. Not knowing why Damon is suddenly acting so differently and so hostile, the lab coat man takes a cautionary step backwards, towards the row of computers hooked up to one another along the wall.
"...what's wrong? Do I remind ya of someone, kid?" he asks slowly, but Damon raises the P-99 that he took from Kaga and points it at the man's head.
"Yeah, ya shit-suckin' redneck monkey-dick, you kinda remind me 'a someone that I never wished I'd meet," Damon is practically spitting fire. "You can't possibly be Sanford, eh? Eh?"
"Hm, that's what's written here on my shitty lab coat," Sanford smirks. "What about it?"
"Oh, Sanford. Nice ta meet'cha, buddy. Or, should I say, 'Godfather'?"
Sanford's eyes nearly pop out of his head.
"No...no fucking way...you...you aren't...?!" he stammers, his calm facade immediately wiped away with the power of a single word.
"Yeah, it's me, 'Godfather'. Damon. Damon Polchow. The kid of the man you abandoned when the nukes dropped, you fucking faggot."
Damon shoves the P-99 pistol right up in the man's face.
"So gimme a reason why I shouldn't just end ya right the fuck now! Huh!? You coulda went in ta save my ol' man 'n his boys, but what'd you do, motherfucker? Huh?! What the fuckin' fuck didja do!? Ya blew it, fucker! Ya blew it! Ya jus' ran away! Left 'im there ta rot in the radiation! So why! Shouldn't! I! Just! Shoot! Your! Bitch! Ass! ? ! ? !"
Lilith: One, I don't want to read this bolded and italicized prose precisely because it's bolded and italicized — it's improper form, damn it, don't ever do it unless you want to look like a — oh wait, I forgot when he wrote this.
IP: This dramatic confrontation isn't. It's Damon growling backstory, Sansan here being smug over knowing his own name - for some reason - and us just sitting here thinking "please, for the love of anything you hold holy, hurry up.
Lilith: Or busy trying to put away the big red marker.
THIS IS FO' REAL. THIS IS REAL, IT IS HAPPENING. I COULDN"T MAKE THIS UP IF I TRIED.
R32: I think a read of the next chapter tomorrow night is in order, because Sanford is going to explain what the fuck is up, to the best of his knowledge, to the girls.
IP: Oh lord. Hackyu trying to do exposition. I am filled with a nameless dread.
Damon's face is bright red with unholy fury. Murakumo and Iku dare not to interrupt their Admiral, and even Kaga is silent, taken back by such a display of emotion from a human being. Damon spits out a bit of blood off to the side, not even caring about the fact that the yelling just made him cough up some more blood.
"...look, Damon," the man named Sanford says slowly, "You ain't gonna believe me, but it wasn't
my call. There wasn't anythin' I coulda done then ta save yer ol' man. I can't say much else than that."
Damon glares at Sanford so angrily that if looks could kill, Damon's look could probably be filed in court for cruel and unusual punishment. Then, a radio call jerks Damon back to reality:
"Admiral, where the hell are you!? We're gonna get overrun! They've got reinforcements 'bout to surround us! ! !" Shimakaze's frantic voice screams into Damon's ears, the deep thumping of the M-240 machine gun beating in the background. Damon turns and yanks his nanoknife out of Kaga's forehead, the hacking sequences completed by this point, and violently pulls Kaga up to her feet.
"Welcome to the fleet, Kaga," Damon growls dangerously quietly, stabbing his piercing eyes into Kaga's. "Don't you ever fuckin' fight me again, you bitch, otherwise I'ma twist your fuckin' neck off when I ain't coughin' blood. And I'm damn serious." He turns to everyone else. "We're gunnin' our way back to the chopper. And you - " Damon points the P-99 at Sanford. "You're followin' me.
You're better alive than dead to me...for now."
They return to the Humvee and pile into the already crowded vehicle.
"I'm running low on ammo!" Mutsu calls to Damon as he pulls the Humvee down the street.
"You might as well waste it all! We're headin' back to our heli!"
"But - isn't that place overrun by enemies!?"
"And so what if it is? By the way, someone pass Kaga memory files! Mutsu, once we approach the helicopter, get your 41cm guns ready! We're gonna blast our way through!"
Damon drives the Humvee as best he can through more and more groups of soldiers coming out of the woodworks to stop them, the ship girls on board firing back to defend the Humvee as it gets onto the 154 Freeway.
"So, uh, Damon - " Sanford starts to speak as the Humvee enjoys a brief respite from all the action once on the freeway, but Damon pulls up the P-99 pistol to aim it at Sanford's head.
"Shut your fuckin' mouth until we reach the heli," Damon orders. "You of all people have no right to talk to me. I'd rather shake the hand of the asshat that runs this damn faction than let you talk to me right now."
Sanford shuts up immediately, and Mr. Harrison, his brow brimming with sweat from all the gunfire, speaks up. "Er...son, do you, erm...do you have some sort of problem with Mr. Sanford? What's goin' on here, sonny?"
"None 'a your business either, Mr. Harrison," Damon replies right away. "Don't push the issue."
IP: Damon, why are you referring to the racist prick as "Mr."?
R32: …..you're confusing him with O'Reilly.
IP: I can't keep track of anyone right now, and I can't bring myself to care.
AND THEN DOCS EXPLODED.
Where was I? Who's still here?
IP: I'm here, mostly.
R32: Here
Let's move on then, shall we?
"EVERYONE OUT AND INTO THE HELI!" Damon yells at the top of his lungs, and pulling out the helicopter keys, Damon tosses them to Sanford. "You were a former military op like my dad. Fly this bitch for us, or there's gonna be a bullet in your brain, motherfucker!"
"Not as if I had any other plans, kiddo," Sanford smirks, getting out of the Humvee and getting into the pilot's seat. Mutsu, fully packing away her 41cm cannons, jumps into the passenger hold that Murakumo throws the door open to, and as everyone climbs into the chopper, Damon takes Rensouhou-kun, whom Amatsukaze had taken off so that the robot could better protect the Humvee when Damon and co. were raiding the Congress Center, and tosses him to Shimakaze inside the passenger hold. He is about to open the door to reach Amatsukaze, but suddenly cracks of gunfire ring out. Amatsukaze watches in horror as Damon collapses backwards onto the ground, disappearing beneath the Humvee.
"Ad - ADMIRAL! ! ! !" Amatsukaze screams, but a bullet hits her in the head too, and she is knocked down into the seats beneath the doors of the Humvee, ironically protecting her from further gunshots. Damon, shot three times in the upper and middle chest, immediately pulls out his Glock 37, still lying on the ground and bleeding profusely, and does his best to stabilize his rapidly increasing breath and his aim, and just as he hopes, a mercenary soldier rounds the Humvee to finish him off, but Damon spams his Glock 37 as fast as he possibly can and fills the mercenary with .45 GAP lead, and the soldier cries out and falls backwards, dead from fatal shots to the body and head. His M16-A4 ACOG clatters to the ground, and the Merlin's rotor blades begin to spool up.
Expending the entire rest of whatever energy he has left, Damon reaches up and grabs the handle of the Humvee passenger door to pull it open. By this point, the pain and adrenaline combination is so great that Damon's body feels entirely numb and extremely heavy to himself, like he is now dragging Boeing 747 jets tied to his back. He gets to his knees, blood liberally pouring from his mouth and bullet wounds, pulls Amatsukaze out from the Humvee's backseat, shuts the door, and as Shimakaze peers out of the passenger hold door to see what is taking Damon so long to bring in Amatsukaze, Damon heaves Amatsukaze into Shimakaze's arms and throws himself into the passenger hold, and Mutsu slides the door shut.
"We're takin' off! Everybody's onboard, right?!" Sanford yells into the passenger hold. As the main rotor assembly reaches its minimum spool requirement to take off, Iku screams in shock once she realizes the condition Damon is in.
"Admiral! ! ! You're - you're hurt! ! !" Iku practically falls onto the ground next to him and lifts him up. Blood is covering his mouth down to his neck, and his shirt is half-drenched with his own blood. The fleshy entry wounds inflicted by the high-velocity 5.56x45mm rounds luckily did not leave unreasonably nasty exit wounds, but his right lung has collapsed, the top part of his left lung is damaged, and his liver is obviously heavily damaged. The other ship girls rush over, but Mr. Harrison, catching a glimpse of Damon's wounds, gets out of the co-pilot's seat and urgently pushes his way to reach the young man.
"Give him air to breathe, gals," Mr. Harrison strictly says. "If you wanna help him survive this, that is."
Oh hey, he finally got hit in the lungs! I expect him to shrug this off bby the next chapter, two max.
R32: Fucking GT Project, why didn't that other girl who survive the tests live past the age of 7? Oh wait, bullshit stuff's from his mother's side. Fuckin' Hellflower, fuckin' Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, etc.
The Merlin lifts off and flies away, out of the city, amidst constant gunfire that ping off the Merlin's heavy armor designed to make small arms fire have the same amount of damage as children throwing handfuls of sand at a car. Mutsu, at Mr. Harrison's request, brings him the medical first aid kit in the passenger hold, and Mr. Harrison begins treating Damon as best he can. Iku is crying into Damon's stomach, and Amatsukaze is close to tears herself.
"Why wasn't there anyone out there to defend him while he brought in Amatsukaze!?" Murakumo demands to her fellow ship girls, filled with indignance and frustration at their failure to protect their
Admiral. "Why did we all just pile into the helicopter when he clearly was in danger and could've
gotten shot at any time!?"
"Well, his orders were to get into this vehicle..." Kaga mumbles.
"Y-Yeah, but...but even still...!"
The helicopter flies through Georgian skies in silence for a while.
"...he carried an extra hundred and seventy or eighty pounds or however much Amatsukaze weighs with her little Rensouhou-kun for a good hour or so, jumped five stories to the ground, and got shot three or four times just to make sure Amatsukaze is still with us," Mutsu mutters miserably. "Is it just me, or does it kind of feel like it's not us protecting our own Admiral anymore, but our own Admiral protecting us?"
No one says a word. Mutsu shakes her head slowly to herself.
"...Admiral called himself an asshole before. If that's what it means to be an 'asshole', then I guess...I guess we're not really qualified to call ourselves ship girls."
Damon's eyes are hazy. He is still conscious, but just barely, afraid that if he is to lose consciousness now, he would never be able to regain it. He hears nothing but muffled sounds, no matter how loud, and everything is just a blur. But his strength is quickly giving out as the wounds he has taken, no matter how well treated at the moment, takes their toll, and Damon manages to put his rough and bloody hand on Iku's head before passing out.
Suffice to say, we're more or less exhausted and decided that we're not going to press on merely assaulting this thing. We're planning on doing better.
Suffice to say, we're more or less exhausted and decided that we're not going to press on merely assaulting this thing. We're planning on doing better.
That's not saying much ....hints on what it could be pleaseeeeeeee.
On a side not this is the BEST LR in a long time, we have Hash who sounds like a tired reader who is sick of this shit, Lillith a.k.a winter who is as arrogant and snobbish to this story like a true French lady, Whiskey who behaves like a grumpy old man tired of this retarded shit and Ruby the naive newcomer who is shocked at the atrocities going on in the story.
Now @De3ta you LR's are good as well, it's just a different sort of good, you are more like a fan whose favourite setting has been raped by a axe-crazy author....which is so horrifyingly true here.
Remember that whole "Ingram and Suzuya" thing like uh.... 10 or so pages ago? The one about a faction with computer as it's leader thingie? Yeah, that's the hint.
IP: Let's start with "Super Destroyer". Forgive me, but I don't believe that's an actual ship designation. The paragraph of description of what Shimakaze's wearing helps nothing and no one, and reads very poorly. And the first sentence is near incomprehensible with how it's phrased.
R32: Me neither
Whiskey: It's never existed IRL. You have super dreadnoughts, supercarriers and super battleships. But super destroyers… nah, they'd have been reclassed to CL or CA if they were that super.
Shimakaze (島風?) (Island Wind) was a one-off super-destroyer built for the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. She was armed with six 127 mm (5.0 in) dual purpose guns and conventional anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weaponry. More importantly, she was the only Japanese destroyer to be armed with 15 torpedo tubes each capable of firing the deadly 610 mm (24 in) Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedo. The ship was a testbed for an enormously-powerful, high-temperature, high-pressure steam engine that was able to develop 79,240 shp (59,090 kW). This made her one of the fastest destroyers in the world: her designed speed was 39 kn (72 km/h; 45 mph), but on trials she made 40.9 kn (75.7 km/h; 47.1 mph).
Remember that whole "Ingram and Suzuya" thing like uh.... 10 or so pages ago? The one about a faction with computer as it's leader thingie? Yeah, that's the hint.
.
....hints on what it could be pleaseeeeeeee.