Just hugged the posts on principle after skimming them, but when it comes to this story, this sums up my feelings on the matter:
I wish you luck in your endeavor to torture yourself by continuing this, but even the good commentary isn't really enough to keep my interest. Even if this story wouldn't feature mind rape and all those mischaracterisations and inconsistencies, I still would have dropped it by now, because it's honestly a pretty boring read. It'll just be 230 more chapters of ever worsening bland story that finally devloves into outright "reference" hell.
Just hugged the posts on principle after skimming them, but when it comes to this story, this sums up my feelings on the matter:
I wish you luck in your endeavor to torture yourself by continuing this, but even the good commentary isn't really enough to keep my interest. Even if this story wouldn't feature mind rape and all those mischaracterisations and inconsistencies, I still would have dropped it by now, because it's honestly a pretty boring read. It'll just be 230 more chapters of ever worsening bland story that finally devloves into outright "reference" hell.
Just hugged the posts on principle after skimming them, but when it comes to this story, this sums up my feelings on the matter:
I wish you luck in your endeavor to torture yourself by continuing this, but even the good commentary isn't really enough to keep my interest. Even if this story wouldn't feature mind rape and all those mischaracterisations and inconsistencies, I still would have dropped it by now, because it's honestly a pretty boring read. It'll just be 230 more chapters of ever worsening bland story that finally devloves into outright "reference" hell.
to me it's pretty good and far more better than your, probably because he have
years of experience
funny you said it bad but you are the one that need to learn from him(the writer), compare to him you just a noob.
Your story have potential believe me it does, but you need to learn how to execute it.I have read a ton of fanfic, novel (and other crap) to known the difference between a experience writer and a newbie.(or just simbly bad)
So yeah that it, good luck on your story
and sorry for bad english
That person knows nothing. Of course, I'm a horrible judge of character, which caused me to, long ago, actually LIKE Ambiance. But those days are long gone now.
In an alternate universe, following the September 11th attacks, "The F.L.E.E.T. Project", or the Fleet Expansion and Enhancement Test, was initiated by a team of American engineers, codenamed "Constitution", who were contracted by the U.S. Navy to research and develop enhancements for the United States Navy. Specifically, how to condense WWII-era ship technology into the size of a human being. Essentially, making ship girls.
All was not well however. While many ship girls were successfully built, activated for initial testing, and prepped for transport to the States, most of them never reached their assigned naval yards before the outbreak of World War III in 2010 that saw the United States and Iran throw nukes at each other. With their developers forced into shelters for their own safety, it seemed as though the ship girls were doomed to fade to myth.
The year is now 2029, and the world is...not actually an okay place to live. Enter our hero, Damon Polchow. Born shortly after the war, he has basically seen all of what life had to offer After the End. He's hot on the trail of a possible ship girl, following a lead provided by a scientist who had worked on the F.L.E.E.T project, and eventually ending up in the scientist's former home in the suburbs of what used to be Houston, Texas. It is here that he encounters his first ship girl, Fubuki-class destroyer Murakumo. But what begins as a lofty yet simple goal of making a better world, by force if need be, quickly takes some unwanted turns when new complications and enemies, some less foreseeable than others, start to come out of the woodwork.
That right there was me and GentlemensDame883's attempt to sum up the backstory and initial premise of the fic to put up on the trope page. And I do forgive you if even THAT is nonsensical.
So a question: What is the Lowest point of this Fic? Is it Damon's first encounter with Murakumo, The First Time Damon dies, or the fact that the author started making shallow and pointless references to other works to the point where it seems that the author is ripping off other works?
So a question: What is the Lowest point of this Fic? Is it Damon's first encounter with Murakumo, The First Time Damon dies, or the fact that the author started making shallow and pointless references to other works to the point where it seems that the author is ripping off other works?
Too many to count.....it could be the rape...the fact that humans are monsters for no reason, the fact that his idea of portraying shipgirls are flawed is so poorly done a kindergartner could do it better, or the fact that :
Too many to count.....it could be the rape...the fact that humans are monsters for no reason, the fact that his idea of portraying shipgirls are flawed is so poorly done a kindergartner could do it better, or the fact that :
So a question: What is the Lowest point of this Fic? Is it Damon's first encounter with Murakumo, The First Time Damon dies, or the fact that the author started making shallow and pointless references to other works to the point where it seems that the author is ripping off other works?
I'm deciding "SCREW THIS" and posting the Let's Read for Chapters 94 and 95 I did last week. Note that there's not much commenting going on due to poor attendance. Of note is that I've red-texted certain blocks of text for you to pay attention to for 94. 95 will be in a seperate post.
*Presses button*
So, who's in with me today?
De: Ayyyy.
Anyway, this is HashiriyaR32, and welcome to the Let's Read of chapters 94 and 95 of Ambience: A Fleet Symphony by Hieda no Akyuu. I've taken over the LR from the previous host.
Anyway, before we begin, I've got a question: Start from the beginning of 94 or jump ahead a bit
De: Ehhhh, I could go either way.
OH ALSO
New Art. Which he proooobably just took off google. And it's not his avii art on FFN it's the story art apparently.
I'm afraid it's gonna be just us two for a while, unless we can wake the others up.
De:So, give us the Tl;Dr of the story 'till now.\.
This starts off with the morning after Operation Nashville, with Damon and select members of the fleet preparing for the next op, Little Rock.
Let's get to it.
De: Eeep, Docs shat the bed.
Chapter 94: Operation Little Rock
Will not be writing for the next four days, as I will be attending Anime Expo 2015 in Los Angeles.
Damon is rudely awoken by somebody sticking her finger up his right nostril. Annoyed but more baffled at why he's just been awoken by someone shoving their finger up his nose, Damon snaps his eyes open and glances at the lump he feels against him, which turns out to be Kongou, the English/Japanese battleship, who is hugging his left arm while lying with him on the two layers of rough blankets against the hardness of the parking lot asphalt. Unamused by this odd alarm clock, Damon rips Kongou's finger out of his nose so he can start breathing properly and tucks it in against her chest and sits up to find his cousin, Jeannie, sitting at the foot of his blankets and staring at him intently with no change in facial expression whatsoever.
"...mornin'," Damon grumbles, bowing his head to tiredly put his hand against the back of his head and scratch, rubbing it slowly to and fro. "When'd you get up?"
"Five minutes and twenty-four seconds ago," Jeannie replies crisply. She has no raspy or hoarse voice that normal humans have after a night's sleep, and she appears exactly the same as she looked when she and her fellow cousin went to bed the previous night. "Vatista has slept for exactly six hours. Six hours is optimal."
Damon pops a small grin at Jeannie. "Guess we really are cousins, I'm the same way. Six hours is enough," Damon agrees before motioning to the sleeptalking Kongou next to him. "So, uh...you know what the deal is with Kongou here? When'd she get in?"
Jeannie nods plainly.
"At 0159 hours, naval personnel signature detected infiltrating this tent. Signature matches that of I.J.N. Kongou's. One hundred and fifty-three seconds before Kongou entered temporary hibernation."
DE: Okay this is after the weird Cousin thing, Basically he has an Aunt and a cousin and they're here now. I think the cousin has powers of some sort.
Lemme pull something from a previous chapter….
"My daughter. Blacklist: Vatista. Unfinished prototype of the Second Fleet Expansion and Enhancement Test. Status: fugitive from the United States Federal Government."
De:Who talks like that. Even fucking robots wouldn't talk like that, they'd be clearer.
Lauren talks normally, but she's just explaining the reason as to why she knows about the fleet.
De: It's the Colon's fucking with me. Also the "My Daughter." bit. It just reads a tad dry/
Okay, pressing on
"She was on night watch during that time, so that sounds 'bout right, the timing," Damon nods in understanding. "But why the hell did she come in here..."
"Entrance most likely due to pathing of Kongou's route from night watch position to her own tent," Jeannie explains. "Initial diagnostic reveals no other possibilities."
"So she just came in 'cause it was on her way, huh," Damon shakes his head this time. "God, I don't get you, Kongou...when we first met, she didn't exactly like me, and then all of a sudden a few days later, she's goin' all 'Burning Love!' on me. I hope she doesn't have like a personality disorder or another problem like Murakumo had..."
Damon glances past Jeannie and at the dim rays of light shimmering through the crack in the tent canvas flaps from the fledgling sun that is just starting to rise. He flicks out his knife handle to check the time, and it reads 0556 hours. He then glances down at Kongou next to him again.
"Should I wake her up...?" Damon mutters, rubbing his face to wake himself up more. "I don't wanna know what she's gonna do if I do..."
"The Admiral is entitled to any order he wishes to impose upon the members of his fleet," Jeannie recites robotically. Her words also come off as extremely matter-of-fact to Damon, but that can be excused because that's just how Jeannie talks all the time anyway.
"No, that's not what I...never mind," Damon shakes his head again. He decides to bite the bullet and wake Kongou up, partially because he wants to ask her something. So he puts a hand on Kongou's left shoulder that is facing him and shakes her until she stirs.
De: I get that the spicy meme is BURNINGU RABU and it's also incharacter, but this gives a good enough segway into: I don't like it when people make that *all* of Kongou's thing.
De: I digress, nothing too unusual as it is here so far.
Time to wake this sleep walker up…...oi, wakey wakey!
"Muaaaa...ngh? Naaaaa...what, what, what...?" Kongou sleep-talks as she awakes, blinking and rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. Once she finishes, Kongou realizes that both Jeannie and Damon are gazing at her, and she looks down at herself. The generic dark green striped pajamas that she is wearing because her modified miko uniform is out drying on the laundry lines overnight is partially undone, so her ample chest is peeking out, baring the inner halves of her mountainous mounds. She then quickly glances up at Damon and slams her palm into his face to cover his eyes.
"Oooohhh, Damon, you naughty, naughty admiral, you mustn't be doing this so soon~" Kongou waves her head back and forth while having a half-embarrassed, half lustful look. "We've barely known each other for more than a few weeks...and yet you're already making moves on me...what will Haruna say?" Kongou quickly falls into a state of blinded Burning Love, with flowering seemingly popping all around her head out of thin air. "Th-There's always a time and a place for everything, you know!"
Kongou is forcibly removed from her state of Burning Love when Damon reaches over and grabs her by the right cheek, pinching it and pulling a bit harder than is necessary.
"O-Ouch! D-Damon, what's your problem?" Kongou cries quietly, pouting at him and rubbing her cheek.
"My problem's that I gotta deal with a horny battleship who snuck into my tent when she wasn't supposed to after her night watch was done, and not only that, she also stuck her finger up my nose," Damon grumbles, rolling his eyes. Kongou's awkward grin gets more and more awkward the longer Damon's complaint drags on.
"Eh...hehehehehe...so...so you found out, huh..." Kongou chuckles with supreme awkwardness. "You're as sharp as ever, aren't'cha..."
"Less 'bout me bein' sharp and you bein' ridiculous," Damon sighs. "Half the fleet's gonna kick my ass into the lake over there if they find out you've been spending the night with me, and for sure they're going to misunderstand because this's somethin' taken straight outta a harem manga. Why the fuckin' hell did you even sneak in here anyway?"
I'd find her antics intrusive and disruptive as well.
De: But ya gotta have Damon be shipped with all the ships, so he's cool with it. It;s weird but i'd rather this than "you suck don't do this thing you dumb" type speech we might have gotten about this.
"What, got a problem with me giving you some of my Burning Love, do ya?" Kongou frowns cutely at Damon, leaning her face forward at him.
"No shit, lady. What kind of a subordinate goes 'n sleeps right next to her own Admiral?" Damon reaches over and bops Kongou on the head lightly.
"I do! How dense of you!" Kongou pouts some more. "Is this how you treat ladies, Damon? By hitting them on the head? You sure don't bloody know how to address a lady like me!"
"Hey, jus' a reminder, channeling your inner Akatsuki ain't gonna help you gain any favors with me," Damon frowns back at Kongou. "And no, this isn't how I treat girls mostly, but I do bop 'em on the head if they're bein' unreasonable."
"And in what way am I being unreasonable?"
"By sitting in front of me with your PJ shirt unbuttoned 'n leavin' half yer rack starin' out at me, that's how," Damon facepalms. "Now button it up already before I do it for you."
Kongou tilts her head, thinking about it for a moment.
"Then you can do it for me!" Kongou happily decides, offering her lovely bosom to Damon by inching herself closer to him. "I don't see why not. So how about it? You ought to only keep your eyes on me, y'know."
Rolling his eyes yet again, Damon buttons up her shirt quickly as Kongou has a smug, satisfied look on her face.
"No need to be shy around me, Damon," Kongou coos into Damon's ear. "I think you're plenty cool even in the morning. If we were alone together, now would definitely be a good time~"
..Kongou, you said so yourself, there's a time and place for everything, and now is NOT the time for a quickie.
De: The chapter has barely started and I am already tired of these antics.
"I have no idea what that's even supposed to mean," Damon mutters back in a deadpan voice.
"Lies, you know exactly what I mean!" Kongou begins to pout again, shaking her fists indignantly. "Weren't you turned on by my breasts?! Any healthy young man would be!"
Damon just gives her a look of pure disgust long enough to the point where Kongou is almost at the verge of breaking into comedic tears.
"Uuuuuu...I'm sorry, Admiral, p-please forgive me, I didn't mean to...make you angry..." Kongou whines quietly, her eyes wading in silly tears because she doesn't understand why Damon is giving her such a disgusted look.
"Not all healthy young men think about tits and ass all day and jerk off to it," Damon snarls, "and I'm one of 'em. And unfortunately, I hate to break it to you, but you're not exactly someone I'd call my type, Kongou. Sorry to say."
Damon and Jeannie promptly hear a distant shattering of glass somewhere. Kongou is frozen, staring at Damon with empty eyes. She stays frozen like that for so long that Damon is afraid she might've suffered an instant system shutdown.
"Is she a'ight? Why's she just frozen like this?" Damon asks his cousin.
"Kongou's system parameters all match normal levels of performance," Jeannie reports calmly. "No anomalies."
"Then why's she like this? What's wrong with 'er?"
"Unable to reply."
"N-Not your t-type...?" Damon hears Kongou whisper, so he turns back to her. "N-Not your type..."
Damon sighs, facepalming yet again. "Are you seriously that heartbroken that I just told you that you're not my type? What's wrong with you? God, you're so - "
But Damon is silenced by the sight of big, fat lumps of salty clear water dumping themselves out of Kongou's eyes. Taking a big sniff, Kongou starts to whimper.
"...b-but...but...but the Admiral...the A-Admiral isn't...supposed...to reject me..."
De: Why you gotta do this to Kongou? I mean really.
Narrowing his eyes with his mouth slightly agape at the situation at hand, Damon plasters the world's greatest what-the-fuck expression onto his face before quickly consulting his cousin again.
"Jeannie, find out what's wrong with her. There's gotta be somethin' - " Damon is interrupted by Kongou letting out a bit of a shrill cry and dumptrucking him back down onto the blankets to pin him down and sob into his chest. "And you're just gonna cry into the chest of a guy who told you that he's not your type!? I don't get you, Kongou!"
Jeannie gets up to her feet and walks over to put her hand on the back of Kongou's brunette hair for a moment.
"Personality codex files copied and analyzed," Jeannie quietly announces as she straightens up over Damon, who looks up at her from the ground. "I.J.N. Kongou's personality confirmed to display favorable emotional states and reactions towards the [Admiral], within reasonable Admiral parameters."
"In English, please, Jeannie. And Kongou, stop diggin' yer face into my chest, it's startin' ta hurt," Damon grumbles, trying to pull Kongou's face off with his hand but not finding much luck in doing so.
"Kongou is programmed to show automatic affinity towards her Admiral, given that her Admiral is a decent man with decent physical appearance and morality."
"Ugh...guess that makes sense..." Damon grits his teeth. "So why's she like this again? And can we fix it?"
"Currently Kongou is undergoing a small form of emotional shock based on your response. Vatista detects no feasible remedy."
"Aw, fuck, that's jus' great!" Damon tries to push himself off the ground, but given Kongou's weight, it is easier said than done. "Kongou, stop cryin' for a sec, I need ta ask ya somethin'. Oi, oi, earth to Kongou. Don't make me use my fockin' bloody terrible English accent, ya hear?" Damon emits his own horrible attempt at an English accent, to which Kongou reacts and cries,
"That's not an English accent, ya duncecap! That's an Irish one!"
"Sorry, I are teh American, and thus am not qualified to distinguish accents," Damon drones like a robot. "Now that I got'cher attention, can I ask you somethin'?"
Kongou makes a small pout as she crosses her arms angrily.
"Why should I answer an Admiral who's just rejected me and my Burning Love? I didn't even know that it was possible," Kongou complains bitterly.
"Then you've definitely got a few screws loose. Anyway, I never asked you why your opinion 'a me suddenly changed for the better all of a sudden. Remember the night after Trenton? When I gave Murakumo that ring? You started glompin' all over me like we been best buddies since forever. Why the hell've you been all Burning Love ever since then? It's not your personality codex forcing you to act like that, is it? Or maybe it is?"
De: So hackyuu is basically every terrible thing I said about Kongou writing, great. Does all of this go anywhere or can we cut to something of substance?
I'm going to fast-forward slightly……..final prep for the op.
Having fed the Asashio-Class destroyers and helped the rest of the fleet make their breakfasts, Damon is finally gathered with the pilots and Chuck near the XV-29 Banshee while the rest of the fleet finishes up their morning meals. Eagle glances at his watch.
"0746 hours...we got some time," he informs Damon, who nods with his fingers on his ear.
"A'ight, we're back," Sanford's voice peels through everyone's earpieces. "Had to help Benny Boy with some fine tunin' with HAVOC. Anyway, Eagle, you said you had some intel on Little Rock?"
"Yeah, so here's the deal..." Eagle clears his throat, "I've actually met with Alastor Scott, the self-proclaimed 'controller' or whatever ya calls it guy-in-charge of Little Rock. We met...I think, a year and a half ago?...to discuss a corporate deal, since Little Rock's an agricultural faction that's allied with the other factions to trade agricultural products and other basic foodstuffs for arms 'n military supplies. Our own deal fell through 'cause that was around the time when the Coalition started to come inta play, so Scott was compelled to cancel our deal to strike up another with the other factions that you jus' took out."
"So you know what he's like," Damon concludes.
"Basically, more or less. I've also been to Little Rock, mind ya, so I know what the place's like specifically. It's the complete opposite 'a all the other factions you'd had to deal with so far. No one carries guns, and the only real standin' forces there at Little Rock's the local police, really. No one bothers the people 'a Little Rock, 'cause if they do, Scott ain't gonna let 'em buy food in his faction grounds for cheap. That's how he keeps his place locked down, with cheap food prices in an area where everywhere else, food ain't anywhere near as cheap. In addition, Scott himself is actually quite the mothafuckin' gentleman...if you can look past the fact that his ego's probably bigger than his dick. Really self-inflated guy, honestly. But at least he'll let you come talk to 'im. You don't even have to go in there with guns up."
"So basically," Damon crosses his arms in thought, "this op should actually end a lot quicker than the others...seems like Scott's willing to negotiate."
Welcome to my Let's Read, which is devoid of the usual witty and volatile comments you'd usually find from De3ta.
De: I am dead inside!
Be my zombie.
"Don't trust him. Assume the worst. Have a backup plan ready," Sanford advises. "Jus' 'cause he's a bit friendlier than the others doesn't mean he ain't a shithead."
"I know, you dumb fuck," Damon grumbles back. "But as it stands, right now I ain't wagin' war against the entire coalition just to negotiate for my ship girls. I've never had to negotiate, and I don't plan on doin' so with Scott, 'cause that's just not how this works."
"Never said ya had to," Eagle beams. "So what're you gonna do? Walk in pretendin' you're just there ta talk, and then pull your guns out?"
"That's the plan..." Damon chuckles sarcastically. "No, but really, it might end up bein' somethin' like that. Once we get aerial confirmation from Hacker..."
"Yup, I'm here," Benjamin the satellite operator calls in. "Yeah, Little Rock is a chill place, by the looks of things. I don't see any major military installations other than highway tollbooths and whatnot. You can totally just drive on in and not have to worry about people shooting at you guns blazing right off the bat. If you're going the whole surprise route of pulling guns on them when you know where their ship girls are at, then you may want to bring the best ship girls with you, like Murakumo. She's been with you from the start, so she's probably the best at, y'know, modern warfare and whatnot."
"Except she ain't usin' an AK anymore like it's COD4," Damon snickers. "Jokes aside, that's what we'll go with. Can we fly in instead of driving? That possible?"
Louisiana : Okay, so… he's just going to shoot up the entire place, because he never negotiated before. Never did with lives. Now, I just came back from metaphysical hell, so I'm not quite up to speed yet, but… why.
You'll see later.
De: Oh god fucking dammit don't drag COD 4 into this. *Ding*
"Little Rock does have a community airfield," Eagle nods, though with hesitation, "but I'm not sure if it's still open to the public, like Chicago's community airfield is. We could check, Little Rock's AA sites aren't ordered on shoot-on-sight, which is nice, so we can ask for permission to land there if you wanna risk it. In the Chinook, though, I'm not risking gettin' this baby destroyed." The CEO of Lukenstor pats the hull of the experimental stealth chopper.
"Still beats the hell outta havin' to look around for a goddamn car that still works in the middle 'a bum-fuck nowhere, a.k.a. bandit country," Damon rolls his eyes. "I'm surprised no one tried jumpin' us during the night."
"I had HAVOC watching you guys down there overnight," Benjamin mentions, "so I would've woken you all if people were getting close."
"Aren't'cha considerate, now..." Damon grins. "Well, they don't have anywhere as near as many ground forces as we've seen in Nashville or Atlanta...we could just run 'em over if we wanted, really. We don't have to play this nice."
"Yeah, but the thing is, if you slaughter everything, most likely the entire state 'a Arkansas 'n every single state around it's gonna starve. You realize that Scott's faction here controls virtually the entire food market, and without his price fixing, people can't even pay for potatoes."
Damon clicks his tongue in response. "So in other words, I can't kill him?" Damon complains casually.
"Well...let's jus' say it's better off if you don't."
Louisiana Nice that there is some attempt to rein in Damon's #1 Solution.
"What if he's a dickhole?"
"You can probably break an arm or two, or somethin' along those lines, but killing him is gonna be steppin' outta line."
"Fiiiine...I won't murder him like all the others. But that only depends on how much of an egotistical maniac I think he is."
"Suit yourself, haha..."
"Then what's it gonna be, kid?"
"Shut up, I'm thinkin'." Damon quickly formulates a basic plan based off his current intel. "It's simple. We kill Scott."
Damon grins a silly, toothy grin as he watches the reactions on everyone else's face.
"Haaaaaaaaah! Got 'em!" Damon laughs hysterically, finding Eagle's contorted facial expression the most hilarious of all.
"See, this is why the kiddo shouldn't be the Admiral," Sanford sighs over the mic. "Pretty soon he's gonna be goin' 'DEEZ NUTS!' every six minutes like it's 2015..."
Louisiana So we have evidence in canon that he's a bit unhinged. Or at least seems like that in story. Alright.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it stated in the first chapter that an all-out thermonuclear war happened well before 2015?
When did that meme take off?
Louisiana : 2014-2015 if my memory serves me right. It didn't take off beforehand.
Eh, another thing I'm gonna take him to task for during Sunday's LR, which he'll be here for.
De: No you guys it's worse than that, nukes dropped in 2010.
Meaning this meme should never have been born in the first place.
Louisiana : Well it could have, if a survivor with huge cancer-ridden gonads started saying "DEEZ NUTS" to everyone he passed by.
De: No no, Deez nutz predates the presidential candidate, but referencing 2015 is the issue. I mean him making a Deez nuts joke would still be *awful* but it could be done.
Louisiana : So why 2015, specifically?
De: Some guy ran for presidential nomination under the name Deez Nuts.
"Yeah, yeah, shut it with your old man references. Anyway, seriously, though, I'll take a team 'a some 'a my girls 'n have 'em come with me to go talk with Scott. We'll try to get him to think that we're negotiating a deal for his ship girls while my girls try 'n search for the ones Scott's got, and once we find 'em, we'll take over from there, get the girls, and get the hell out. No need to waste more time bein' there if we shouldn't kill the guy."
"And what about your backup plan, kid?"
"HAVOC is the backup plan."
Benjamin just laughs over the mic.
"I mean, technically he isn't wrong!" Benjamin agrees, and he howls even more loudly as Damon hears a blunt thump of a mic being tossed aside onto a hard surface. "Oh God, Sanford actually left! He ragequit! Ragequitteeeeeerrrr!"
Damon smirks in amusement as well.
"And...we'll leave in an hour. Should be enough time to prep the team," he finishes.
"And what about the rest 'a your fleet?" Eagle inquires.
Louisiana : So what is HAVOC? Some sort of super-thermonuclear warhead?
De: I wanna throw up.
Surveillance/Communication/Kill-sat that Eagle's company made and gifted to the fleet.
Louisiana : Why does such a thing even exist. Is it solar powered? As in, the weapon uses the sun?
I'd have to re-check the chapters where Eagle makes his debut, because I think he talks about it there.
Louisiana : Only reason why I would ask is that a giant parabolic mirror you can aim anywhere on Earth would be the only justification for a space-launched kill-sat. You can repurpose such a thing to melt targets. And… Aren't kill-sats banned by one of the space treaties in the '80s? Or at the very least: no thermonuclear weapons in space.
Louisiana : Unless this is a "Rods from Gods" situation.
Okay, I found some description of it in the chapter before Operation Gander.
"Practically speakin', yeah, we can," Sanford confirms. "Right now, it's like, what, 1300 or 1400 hours or so. If we blitz it, we can do this. Plus, we've got HAVOC to use to help cover us if we want it to."
"Why? What's HAVOC got that can help us?"
"Didn't I just fucking tell you?" Benjamin reminds Damon, annoyed. "Heavy Artillery Vulcan Ordinance Cannon. This thing was designed to be an orbital support weapon. And here I was thinking you were supposed to have godlike memory."
Damon narrows his eyes. "The fuck? Are we the fuckin' COG all of a sudden now or what? And my godlike memory only applies to things that're worth remembering. We don't even know if that cannon up there even works!"
"Don't worry, we won't be roady-runnin' anywhere anytime soon," Sanford grins at the reference.
"But it's not that far off. So what do we say? We gonna do this today or what?"
"And what about the rest 'a your fleet?" Eagle inquires.
"Hm...they can just stay here. We're not that far from Little Rock, in fact we're really close by, so in case we need extra support, we can just call for it, and whoever's still here can bring 'em over," Damon decides.
"Then Ryjack, get the Banshee prepped 'n ready, you're leavin' in sixty," Eagle orders his Banshee pilot, who lazily nods in confirmation. Damon leaves the Lukenstor men with Chuck.
"Who you pick now?" Chuck asks.
"I'm thinkin'. Lots'a choices, not too sure who to bring," Damon shakes his head. "I'll need to have a list 'a the entire fleet so I have somethin' to pick from. Where's Jeannie, did you see her?"
"She might still be at cooker place. She make rice for Kaga, I think."
Damon groans out loud. "That bitch! What's she makin' my cousin do for her, anyway!?"
He storms his way back to the impromptu kitchen area with the food boxes and cooking supply boxes, and sure enough, he finds sees Jeannie handing Shoukaku a bowl of freshly cooked white rice with bacon bits and salmon furikake.
"Thank you, Jeannie-chan~" Shoukaku smiles warmly as she pats Jeannie's head, and Jeannie gives her a small and rare smile in return. The rest of the carriers are standing nearby, eating similar dishes that Jeannie has probably prepared specifically for them.
"Oi, you fuckin' asswipes!" Damon growls, indignant and assuming, as he storms onto the scene, and the carriers look up at him to see what is wrong. "What're y'all makin' my cousin do? Go make your own food, damn it! I didn't let her come along jus' so that she can be your own personal chef or something!"
"Hey, fuck off, Damon!" Zuikaku yelps back, not understanding why Damon is making such a fuss.
"We didn't make Jeannie-chan do anything! She just came up to us and asked us if we wanted some breakfast! C'mon, Jeannie-chan, say somethin' to your dumbass cousin here, tell him about it!"
De: this is painfuuuuuuullly dull when it isn't being stupid.
Louisiana In regards to earlier: that doesn't help classify it one bit. What's the warhead?
I think it's some sort of beam weapon………..I think
Jeannie toddles up to Damon.
"Personal efficiency is currently lacking," Damon's little cousin states. "Rectified by assisting fleet members with preparation of morning resources."
"So they didn't drag you over 'n force you to make somethin' for 'em?" Damon repeats for clarification, and Jeannie shakes her head. "Okay, good..."
"Er, sir, if I may ask what that was all about...?" Taihou asks uncertainly, nibbling on a few grains of cooked rice.
"Chuck told me that he saw Jeannie makin' rice for Kaga, and so I assumed that Kaga had recruited Jeannie or somethin' to make her food, 'cause knowing you..." Damon glares at Kaga, who smugly puts a wad of white rice with bacon bits into her mouth.
"Then don't just run in here callin' us all 'fucking asswipes' and start accusing us of something completely ridiculous!" Zuikaku yowls angrily. "That's just rude, don't'cha think?"
Damon just rolls his eyes. "Yeah...yeah, I guess so..."
"Why do I get the feeling you're just half-assing that?"
"I dunno...maybe it's 'cause I am..."
Shoukaku, however, is staring intently at Damon's face, specifically his left cheek, noticing that something happened to it, seeing the redder tone of his skin.
"Damon..." she asks once Damon and Zuikaku are done bickering, "...did, um, did something happen...?" She points to his left cheek.
"Oh, this...don't worry 'bout it. Earlier, I was here helpin' Kaga with her hashbrowns, and then when the Mutsuki-Class destroyers came along, I gave them the bowls 'a porridge that she made, since she was already busy eating rice 'n all, and Mutsuki accidentally shoved porridge up her nose 'n flung the bowl right at me." Damon points at the afflicted area. At the mention of this, several of the carriers and all of the light carriers cringe at the pain that Damon must've felt.
De: SO MUCH FOOD, I STILL DON;T GET WHY THEY HAVE SO MUCH OF THIS KIND OF FOOD.
De: Even though we all know amberlance isn't a post-apoclaypse it's still silly considering how many botes he's got by now.
Louisiana : I thought these shipgirls are supposed to be prototype weapons created just a few years before the fall. Well, it never states how many years, but still, we're up to… eighty? A relatively large number of shipgirls, I suppose.
It's going into spoiler territory, but it isn't until maybe 2008 or 2009 that the Project, which began in 2001, got a figurative increase in boost pressure.
Louisiana : And the nuclear weapons dropped in 2010, right? So… where did they manage to divert all the materials into building more shipgirls, and how the heck could have they justified doing so? Smart materials such as the Smartsteel… the power source — I don't get it, why? How?
That's even deeper into spoiler territory, it's entirely related to what Sanford divulges about the project to Damon in Chapter 293. I'll give you the details after.
Louisiana : You know, this could've been told earlier. Because my SoD had been broken if I just read this chapter.
Anyway, more about the HAVOC weapon. If it can be justified as a WMD there is no way in heaven or hell that the thing would've been launched. It would've broken SALT II and the Outer Space Treaty, so unless the United States of America also decided to break one of the laws that they signed with the Soviet Union then ratified with Russia, I have no idea why it's there.
The government, not even POTUS, knows about it.
Louisiana : Secret launch. Somehow. You're telling me that they had a secret launch.
Complicating things at that time was that the government sent the fleet a conventional satellite for launch, so they had to disguise the fact that they not only got one already, but they launched one already
Louisiana : What.
We can discuss the details on that later, but for now…
"Um...then, are you alright now?" Shoukaku asks, her face full of apprehension.
"Yeah, I'm fine now, got a new patch 'n everything. It just stings like a bitch."
Damon rubs his cheek, grimacing at the residual pain.
"Anyway, Kaga, you know the thing we talked about before?" Damon calls to the carrier, who nods back. "We just talked over our plans now. I'm makin' a team who'll come with me to Little Rock. I'll spare the details later. You in?"
"Will we be the first ones into the city?"
"Yeah."
"Very well; I shall submit," Kaga nods, agreeing to join the team. "What are my orders, sir?"
"I'll go over 'em once I get the team ready. In the meantime, finish eating already, how many bowls 'a rice are you on, anyway?"
"Six."
"Goddamn it, Kaga!"
"Wait, wait, Damon, what's this whole team thing you're talking about?" Zuikaku demands. "This's a bit out of a blue, isn't it? Tell us what's goin' on."
"I'll explain it again to everyone once I get my team together, but basically, we're not going to go full blitzkrieg on the Little Rock guys; apparently if we destroy their faction, it'll wreck everyone in this area 'cause there'll be no way for lots'a people to afford food anymore. So we're goin' in a bit more civil, and I'm gonna fly in with one 'a the helis with the team I'm gonna put together from the fleet, and we're gonna go pay that Alastor Scott dude a visit ourselves 'n ask him nicely where his ship girls're at."
"And what if he doesn't wanna give 'em up?"
Damon rolls his eyes casually. "Since when have I ever taken 'no' to a question like that? We'll find 'em 'n take 'em with us back to base, whether Scott likes it or not."
"Okay, then say you'll make this team. Then what? What about the rest of the fleet?"
"You'll stay here on standby. If we need backup, we'll call for it - this place is really close to Little Rock, so it shouldn't take you more 'n ten minutes to get down there to assist."
"Sir, what if those ten minutes is too long of a time for us to reach you before something happens?" Taihou asks, with a bit of bacon stuck on her lip.
Louisiana : I really have no idea why he just doesn't spend a paragraph of prose letting Damon explain exactly what is going to the girls — without having to resort to dialogue. Honestly, it would allow the shipgirls to possibly offer some of their own opinions on how to infil and exfil from the place without much injury.
Louisiana : Or death.
"That's why I'm thinkin' about who I'm gonna put in my little squad here, so that in case shit goes down, I can rely on 'em to keep me alive," Damon grimaces. "Kaga's gonna hafta be in it, 'cause I promised her a long time ago that I would eventually find Akagi for her."
A look of bleakness dawns on the carriers at the mention of Akagi. Damon kneels down next to his cousin.
"Jeannie, I shouldn't even hafta ask, but you'll be comin' with me, right?"
His seven-year-old cousin nods curtly.
"Safeguarding the Admiral is the utmost objective. Failure is unacceptable," she quietly replies.
"Thought so...okay. Kaga, hurry up, I want you ta follow me so that we can put the team together," Damon calls over to the carrrier, who hastens her eating and pours the rest of the rice in her bowl straight into her mouth to give her cheeks a hamster-like impression.
Louisiana: Well, more than that. Biological robot? Synthetic human? ???
"Sir!" Shoukaku blurts out, giving the impression that she's been wanting to say this for some time, "I wish to join this team! If it is to protect and escort you, then I shall join."
"Sh-Shoukaku-nee, you shouldn't!" Zuikaku immediately protests, stepping in front of her older ship sister to block out Damon from view. "There's no need for us to put ourselves in danger. It's not like anything'll happen to Kaga, so don't - "
"It's not just Kaga-senpai I'm worried for, Zuikaku," Shoukaku insists, "Damon is still heavily wounded from yesterday's operation. I wish to ensure that he sustains no more injuries than the ones he already has!"
"Oh, let 'im deal with 'em, it's not like he'll die or anything," Zuikaku rolls her own eyes too. "But that's besides the point. Shoukaku-nee, I heard what happened after I got killed during Atlanta. I swear to God, Shoukaku-nee, if you go with Damon today, you're gonna see something else that'll really rattle you again. I promise you that that's what's going to happen."
Shoukaku bites her upper lip.
"I'm going to do everything I can to keep you from turning completely into one of those Abyssal monsters," Zuikaku hisses in a low voice through her teeth. "I really don't want you to go. Please, Shoukaku-nee, just stay here. You don't need to do this."
"Your sister is right. This is probably for your own sake, Shoukaku," Kaga adds. "We both know that your Abyssalization process is accelerated. We must assume the worst - this may not end well. For you, especially."
Shoukaku remains silent, but her face declares her staunch insistence. So Zuikaku, not willing to have to do this, turns to Damon.
"Tch...Damon, you're the Admiral. Tell Shoukaku-nee to just stay here," Zuikaku says. "She doesn't need to go. You've got so many of us ship girls to choose from to escort you into the city. You know about what's been goin' on with her, so surely you should agree that she - "
"I know, I know," Damon nods quickly, grimacing at Zuikaku to quiet her down. "Look, Shoukaku, I'm concerned with what's been happening to you, and we all kinda know that it might get to the point where it's going to be a major pain in the ass for us all. Just sit this one out. I ain't gonna die out there, don't you worry."
"See? Shoukaku-nee, that's an order from the Admiral. So - "
A burst of Abyssal red flame flares out from underneath the crane-themed eyepatch over Shoukaku's left eye, and instead of the light, hazy red flame that Damon has just barely become accustomed to seeing Shoukaku have, now, the haze is a solid flame of liquid red with a tone that looks almost exactly like blood. It's almost as if Shoukaku's left eye is bleeding an ambiguous substance of bloody liquid gas, a truly strange sight to behold. Shoukaku's normal right eye is glaring so intensely into Damon's eyes that Damon wonders if Shoukaku's trying to set his own brain on fire.
"If you order me to remain, I will simply follow you into the combat zone," Shoukaku threatens. Nothing about her right now no longer seems like her old self anymore. "To me, nothing now is more important than ensuring your safety. Please do not deny me my own conviction to fulfill my purpose, sir."
"Wait, wait, hold on, calm down," Damon says quickly, getting the sense that Shoukaku has suddenly become a living and ticking time bomb. "I get that, and I'm glad you wanna come, I really am. But we're just tryin'a look out for you here, okay? One mission that you sit out won't be the end 'a the world."
Louisiana : Reminder that I just came back from hell — and what the hell is this. So the girls… they apparently have this Abyssification process going on in the background?
It's only 2, actually 3 of them. When the Abyssals crash the fight between the Combined Fleet and the Coalition ship girls during Operation Norfolk, they manage to swipe Kaga and Shokaku with them when they fled. Those two are rescued maybe a few days later from an outpost in Concepcion Bay in Gander, in which the Abyssals, or at least, whoever is behind them, has been attempting to convert them. The third is Murasame, who had been force-fed cubes containing corrupted Navitasium by the controller of Charlotte.
Louisiana : Well, at least it isn't some of the corruption methods or vectors that I've seen in some… places…
*Louisiana visibly shivers*
De: *facedesks*
Oi, no sleep for you.
"It may as well be if you happen to perish in this 'one mission'," Shoukaku snarls viciously, totally out of character of the normal Shoukaku. Her words now have a sharpened edge to them that accentuates Shoukaku's vicious tone.
"Okay, well - your sister, Zuikaku, I mean - I know you're the older one, but you can take some advice from her every once in a while, right? She's just trying to look out for you, isn't she?" Damon tries another way around to bypass Shoukaku's stubbornness.
"I refuse to listen to a sister of mine who has nothing to say about her own Admiral except contempt and complaints."
The carriers cringe heavily at this. Zuikaku looks like Shoukaku just punched her in the face. Damon widens his eyes at Shoukaku's uncharacteristically harsh words.
"Uh...y'know, Shoukaku, I don't really care if Zuikaku talks shit about me, that's kinda besides the point right now..." Damon mutters, scratching his head.
"Then you want me to act all nice to him? Fine! Because I'll do that!" Zuikaku clenches her teeth and fists. "Just don't go, Shoukaku-nee!"
"Silence, Zuikaku," Shoukaku demands ferociously. "Your petty begging will not stop me."
"B-Begging...!? What the - "
"Zuikaku, that's enough," Damon shakes his head. "We're not gonna convince Shoukaku otherwise at this point. You're just gonna hafta deal with Shoukaku bein' a part 'a the squad. Sorry."
"Shall I intervene, sir?" Kaga offers quietly, her own eyes flaring up with Abyssal power, and at this, Shoukaku twirls around alarmingly fast to face Kaga.
"Don't you lay a finger on me, Kaga-senpai. You have already done so once before, and I will not tolerate another such act of friendly fire again," Shoukaku growls back, standing her ground.
"And neither shall I tolerate acts of immaturity based on whims and petty desires," Kaga retorts, refusing to back down either. "Therefore, incapacitating you is of no big task to me."
"All of you, stand down, stand down!" Damon has to put himself between the two partially Abyssalized carriers to prevent a possible breakout of violence between them. "What do I keep saying? Don't fight amongst each other, there're better ways to get over our problems with each other than shooting each other in the face, a'ight?"
Louisiana : I'm tired of seeing the two fight, even if unfortunately there is historical precedent for it…
Louisiana : Seriously, let them hatefuck each other and move on. Or separate them. ._.
Also, welcome to those who just joined in.
Tavish: Hullo. Just woken up from my eternal slumber. Hahahahaha-*cough*
De: Shokaku shut the fuck up and stop being a dick to your sister over this fucking cuntbarge.
Tavish: Just shove a dick into her mouth, de. That will shut her up.
pffffffft
Kaga and Shoukaku give each other one last look of controlled hostility as Damon looks around. They've caused quite a commotion, so lots of the ship girls in the fleet are staring in their direction, either wondering what is going on or waiting fearfully to see what will unfold.
"Where're the subs? Anyone know?" Damon calls out.
"Uh...I think they're off for another swim..." Ayanami nearby calls out, so Damon taps his earpiece.
"Yo, submarines, if you're in the lake, come on out and meet us near the choppers, asap," Damon calls.
"Ah, okay, roger that~!" Imuya calls back, water splashing in the background over the mic. Damon glances down at Jeannie.
"Gimme a full roster 'a everyone in the fleet right now," Damon asks and hands his cousin his knife handle, which Jeannie merely touches with the tip of her finger and instantly transmits the information, which Damon pulls up using the hologram screen. Scrolling down through it, Damon selects his team and taps his earpiece again.
"Uh, so...listen up if I call your name, a'ight? Murakumo, Amatsukaze, Shigure, Yuudachi, all the submarines, Tenryuu, Tatsuta, Furutaka, Haruna, and Kongou, meet us at the choppers in one mike, I've got orders for y'all, a'ight?" Turning to the carriers, Damon beckons at them. "C'mon, let's go."
"Wait!"
Just as Damon is turning to leave, Zuikaku stops him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Let me join this team too. If I can't stop Shoukaku-nee from going, then I'll at least follow along to make sure nothing happens to her," Zuikaku declares in a determined voice. Damon, with uncertainly scrawled all over his scarred face, glances at Shoukaku.
"You a'ight with that?" he asks, but Shoukaku gives no reply. "Er...I'll take that as a yes, then. Then you come too."
Damon leads the three carriers and his cousin to one of the Chinooks, where the ship girls that Damon has called soon arrive. The submarines arrive last, predictably, with towels to dry themselves off after their post-breakfast dip in the lake.
"Aaahhh...freshwater swims are so much different than ocean swims, nano!" Iku sighs with pleasure, Shioi helping her dry her tri-tailed hair, but Imuya taps her on the arm, shh'ing to quiet her down.
Tavish: Huh. "Give me a roster of everyone in the fleet right now."
Um, this is gonna take a while…….
Tavish: Sorry. Habit on fixing atrocious accent shows up.
Okay, please excuse this interruption, while I whip up that list. Gimme 5 minutes or so…….
Tavish: Hash. Just continue, i was just fixing stupid accent, not actually asking you to list it.
Derp…..
Okay, moving on…
"Okay, we're all here, good, good..." Damon looks around at his squad. "So the reason I've called you here's 'cause everyone here's gonna escort me into Little Rock. You submarines will be doin' somethin' different, but I'll go over your role a bit later. For now, lemme go over the basics: we're gonna leave in..." Damon checks his knife handle. "...forty-five mikes, just about, and one 'a the pilots is gonna fly us into the city. We're assuming that we can fly straight in 'cause their community airfield is open to the public. Little Rock is a chill place; it's not like all the other factions where we had to shell 'n shoot our way in, we can just walk in for this op. For that reason, we won't be goin' in armed, except for the subs, but again, I'll go over that later. We're gonna fly in, and we're gonna go see if we can talk with Alastor Scott, the guy in charge 'a Little Rock. If he agrees to talk with me, we'll go in, take out any armed resistance, and force Scott to either tell us where he's keepin' his ship girls, or I'll have Jeannie here locate 'em, or maybe you girls'll find 'em first, whichever comes first."
"Wait, so how're we going to 'take out any armed resistance', exactly?" Furutaka asks. "Especially when we don't have guns ourselves?"
"Just take 'em from the guards. You can do that, can't'cha?" Damon just shrugs like it's such an obvious answer. "Once we get the girls, we're gonna have have the Banshee chopper over there give us a hot extract outta there back here, and then the op's done. It should be a walk in the park...should be."
"But it might not be," Kongou chuckles awkwardly, trying to lighten the mood but failing.
"That's the idea, and that's why I'm havin' the subs tag along," Damon nods at the submarine girls.
"You girls, as soon as we touch down in the airfield that they've got, you all need to Cloak and start hunting through the city and see if you can find the ship girls. The faster we find Scott's ship girls, the better shape we'll be in. Most likely he's gonna keep 'em close to him, as everyone else's done, but we don't know for sure. Once we confirm the location of the ship girls, we'll converge on that location. If it turns out that Scott's got 'em under his thumb, then I want you subs to keep an eye over us. I'll update you girls as we go in, or you'll get orders from Hacker or Meathook; they should be able to tell you what to do. Got it?"
"So we're bringing our guns, but not anyone else," Goya concludes. "Got it, dechi."
Damon narrows his eyes. "Dechi? What's that? Oh...it's another one 'a those weird verbal tics you girls sometimes have, isn't it..."
Goya pouts indignantly at Damon. "Hey, what's so bad about it? I'll talk however I want, dechi!"
"Okay, okay, whatever."
"So what about the rest of the fleet, sir?" Haruna inquires politely. "Will they be stationed around the city as reinforcements?"
"No, they'll be stayin' here. If they come too close, the Little Rock people'll suspect we're up to no good and blast us before we can get a chance. And where we are now, we ain't too far at all from Little Rock - it's not even ten minutes by flight. If worst comes to worst, I'll just call in the fleet 'n drop 'em all over the city so we can blast our way out. But hopefully we don't have to do that. By the way, don't kill Scott, apparently he's kind of a big deal around these parts, so yeah, don't hurt him."
"What if he's been doing all sorts'a bad things to Kako?" Furutaka growls again.
"Well, you can break his arms I guess, but don't actually kill him, okay?"
Friggin' tics. I warned him about overuse of DEM TICS.
De: this plan is fucking awful.
Tavish: Aaaaaaah.
And then Tavish became a blatant disregard for gravity…..
Louisiana : Does… does anyone think that as soon as Damon gets a hold of Scott, there's going to be a gunfight and Scott is going to be dead?
We'll see..
One of the two MH-47D Chinook helicopters lifts off at 0800 hours from the Van Buren Recreational Area next to Greers Ferry Lake. Just before they departed, Shimakaze has begged to join them so that she could be with Amatsukaze, so Damon has allowed her aboard to be part of the team.
"So it's gonna take us 'bout half an hour or so for us to reach the place," Damon informs his team inside the passenger hold of the tandem-rotor helicopter. "In the meantime, we need some sorta alibi that'll get us in."
"Wait, isn't that kind of thing something you should be telling us?" Murakumo says back with an outstretched palm to indicate her confusion.
"Yeah, maybe, but I don't got an alibi for us yet. So help me think of one."
The ship girls look at each other, at first not sure of what to come up with.
"Ooooh, then if we're gonna do that, I get to be Damon's step-sister, poi!" Yuudachi cheers, grabbing first dibs.
"S-Step-sister!?" Murakumo, Amatsukaze, and Shigure all shriek at the same time.
"Yeah! Then, I get to be closest to him all the time!" Yuudachi's face goes nipaaaah as she explains her reasoning.
"B-But why extended family!? Can't we go with something that isn't so cliche?!" Amatsukaze blurts out, blushing furiously.
"Well, Damon's cousin Jeannie-chan's tagging along, so why not, poi?"
"Then I'll be Damon's lover," Shimakaze says in the straightest voice Damon has ever heard anyone speak in when saying words like that. Understandably, nearly all the other ship girls freak out when they hear the destroyer.
"OBJECTIOOOOON!" Iku screams at the top of her lungs. "I won't accept that, Shimakaze-chan! If anyone, I should be that role!"
"Hmph, but that's too bad, you're off on gun duty," Shimakaze sticks her tongue out at the submarine. Notably, none of the ship girls and Damon are carrying firearms, with the exception of the submarines, who tote their suppressed submachine guns over their shoulders with their gun slings.
"Okay, but still!" Iku isn't willing to give up the argument just yet. "I'm waaaayyy better off to act like Damon's lover, nano!"
"No, you're not. You don't have a skimpy outfit like me. People don't call you a slut everywhere you go."
"Yeah? Well, look at me! I've only got a swimsuit on! I'm a walking fetish factory, nano! There's no guy in the world who won't fall for a swimsuit fetish! Try and beat that!"
"Somehow, I get this feeling that their conversation went from weird to downright sad, really, really fast..." Damon sighs, with one palm on his face. "Who the fuck designed their clothes anyway..."
Haruna, who is sitting next to Damon, pulls on a painfully awkward expression.
Also, what's this 'nipaaaah' face he's referencing? I'm not a weeb, you know.
Tavish: Uh…. Higurashi?
Louisiana : Also: Haram harem romcom tropes are haram for a reason.
It's about to…….escalate
"Also, you don't have these!" Iku pushes her breasts together with her upper arms, leering at Shimakaze teasingly. "You can't be Damon's lover with those ta-ta's. Damon's the kind of guy to dig big ballast tanks, not those itty-bitty ones that look like tiny cupcakes, nano!"
"Says you! I'm sure any guy would hate always having to taste saltwater on you 'cause you dive so damn much!" Shimakaze, now getting irritated by Iku's obscene comments that are spiraling out of control in decency, fires back. "Plus, all that diving screws your head after a long time, so I'm sure Damon wouldn't wanna have to deal with a retarded submarine like you!"
"Okay, okay, enough with the shots fired, goddamn!" Damon cuts the two quarreling ship girls off before they start saying things that probably are better off not being said. "Clearly the whole extended family alibi won't fly. Can we try thinkin' 'a somethin' else that doesn't involve one 'a you bein' my pretend lover or something? Jesus."
"Aww...I wanted to be your step-sister though, poi..." Yuudachi whines sadly at the lost opportunity.
"...I don't even..." Damon shakes his head slowly.
"If you don't even, then do you odd?" Kongou jabs Damon with a rather lame joke, so Damon gives Kongou a look of sad disappointment as well. "Wh-What, it was good, wasn't it?!"
"No...no...that joke was like, popular in 2009 or some shit, from what I read..."
"You weren't even born then!"
"Doesn't take an old fart to know if a joke's lame as hell. Moving on!" Damon turns to the rest of his ship girls. "What about...let's say, a trading crew? Like...like a trade guild? I dunno...I think I heard about some wandering traders who travel around the south..."
Louisiana : See, I can say with absolute certainty that this is what is all that is wrong with not only this fanfic, but most of the Kancolle fanfics on Fanfiction.net.
Tavish: Oh yeah, i forgot to introduce myself. My name is Daniel Tavish, also known as AWACS Sky Eye on SV. Hello to soon to be readers out there.
"No offense, Damon, but that sounds really, really laaaaame..." Tenryuu objects. "A trading band? That sounds so dumb! Can't we be somethin' cooler?"
"Well shit, if you've got somethin' better, why don't you cough it up, eh?"
"Like, I was gonna suggest we pose as bandit hunters. Y'know, you mentioned how there's supposed ta be a lotta bandits around these parts, right? We can just say we're going around hunting 'em down."
"Sure sounds believable when none of us are armed at all," Damon facepalms for probably the twentieth time today already. "Bandit hunters without guns? What the fuck kinda bandit hunters are we exactly again?"
"W-We'll just say we left our guns behind 'cause we came into town!" Tenryuu flares up. "Don't make fun 'a me!"
"Either way, bandit hunters ain't gonna work. What else? C'mon, people, let's think 'a somethin' here..."
The team finally decides to use the alibi of having Damon pose as a Lukenstor company representative, going off the fact that Eagle had once negotiated with Scott in the past. Damon would request to speak with the controller of Little Rock and lure him into bringing out the ship girls by offering an extraordinary sum of money in exchange for the ship girls trapped in Little Rock. This would mean that the ship girls themselves would have no alibi, but none of them really minds, as Damon's identity is much more important to protect. Having informed Eagle of their plan, Damon and the team need only wait a few more minutes before the Chinook nears the site of the Robinson Aaf/NG Airport, the community airfield along northern Little Rock.
"Baseplate, the community airfield is letting us in," the Chinook pilot informs, "and the rate's 1500 bucks flat."
"Fifteen hundred!? Fuck!" Damon looks absolutely disgusted. "Even the community airfield up in Chicago ain't nowhere near that expensive! But at least it's flat, I guess...not that it'll matter..."
The Chinook descends into the airfield, and the ship girls look out the passenger windows wherever they can find them to watch the cityscape of the capital of Arkansas loom into view. A few other aircraft, helicopters mainly, are buzzing around, either transporting supplies from different parts of the city to another via the airfields scattered about throughout the city or departing for other airfields across the country. Within minutes, they touch down in their designated lot in the airfield, along with many other kinds of helicopters sitting in the portion of the airstrip reserved for helicopters.
"A'ight, girls, let's do this. Submarines, go low," Damon, standing up, beckons at them to exit, and they all pour out of the rear loading ramp to greet several airfield workers who have come to inspect their helicopter and make sure that the mounted guns and other potential threats are rendered safe. The submarine girls Cloak before emerging and are the last ones out of the helicopter and situate themselves around the rest of the team to make sure that there are no immediate threats in the area.
"Howdy, y'all," one of the workers, dressed loosely in dirty overalls and a straw hat to make himself look like a backwoods mechanic, greets Damon. "Wow...you shore got'cherself a nice time 'ere, what's da occasion?"
"I'm a representative 'a Lukenstor Defense Systems, and I'm lookin' to speak with Mr. Scott, if that's possible. There a way we can get a ride there?" Damon says quickly but professionally, standing up firm and tall so that he can feign an air of self-importance.
"Lukenstor? Name sounds familiar, but I don't quite...you gon' hafta remind me," the worker shakes his head in apology.
"Military hardware and software development corporation based out of Canada. We're looking to expand our contracts," Damon answers immediately.
"Huh, sounds mighty important. I'll call up a ride for ya, sit tight." The worker pulls out a radio from his back pocket and clicks it on. "Uhhh, Picky T, you there? Huulllloooo..."
The radio crackles miserably with tons of static.
"Da fack ya want, Yabber?"
"We need a ride here, Heli Lot 91. A limo, they got a ton'a people."
"Tell 'em limo rental's gonna be two hundo. Where they headed?"
"Uh, they said they wanted ta talk ta Mr. Scott, so...I reckon they be headed down to the capitol buildin'."
"Extra fiddy for the bridge toll. Either they kin pay it now or pay it to the toll booth when they git there. Sendin' one 'a our limos over now, should be there in a sec. Now don't botha me, I'm 'bout ta win my firs' ever checkers game 'gainst dis fool Halibut."
Chuckling, the airfield worker named Yabber stows away his old radio.
"Yer total's gon' be...le's see here..." Yabber lifts up the small clipboard that's hanging by his side on a chain and starts scribbling with an old ink pen, "thousand five hundo...two hundo...'nother fiddy...thousand seven fiddy's yer total. Oh, and no tax, in case yer wonderin'."
"Yeah, thank God..." Damon grumbles sarcastically as he forks over the money. Behind him, Shimakaze and Yuudachi are chasing each other around Shigure, round and round.
"Well, ya gots' ta understand, sir, we get quite a lott'a Yankee folks comin' down 'ere, 'n they're still used ta payin' tax 'n whatnot 'cause 'a the Feds. We gots' ta remind 'em we ain't got no tax here," the worker tries to explain. "Dat bein' said, sometimes prices are kinda expensive, I will admit."
Okay, skipping a bit. They pay their fees and get their limo ride to the Arkansas State Capitol Building.
Tavish: Even in post-apocalypse, people still want a useless stuff like limo.
"...ir? Sir, we have arrived."
Damon snaps his eyes open, his heart beating more rapidly than usual when he wakes up, anticipating an emergency, but he calms down once he looks around, seeing the Arkansas State Capitol Building towering over them. The limousine has pulled up to the east entrance of the state capitol and is rolling to a stop. The driver shuts off the engine and gets out to open the door for Damon and the ship girls.
"Here you go, sir. Welcome to the Arkansas State Capitol."
Damon, the first to emerge, nods his thanks to the courteous limousine driver, and the rest of his team follows suit. Before the driver can close the door, Damon interrupts him. "You don't mind if I take another bottle 'a that sugar water, do you?"
"Of course not, sir. Please help yourself," he replies, and Damon heads back in to grab another bottle of sugar water, thus allowing time for the Cloaked submarines to slip out of the door and begin spreading out to search the state capitol building.
"I have been informed that Mr. Scott is in fact expecting your company," the driver tells Damon. "One of the butlers here will take you to him."
Damon narrows his eyes. Expecting his company?
"Ah...yeah, thanks," Damon says, reaching for his wallet and pulling out an extra hundred dollar bill. Seeing this, the limousine driver puts his hand over the money.
"I appreciate the offer, sir, but I'm obligated not to receive any tips," he says quickly.
"Huh...that so..."
Damon puts away the money and his wallet, and a butler emerges from the entrance doors of the state capitol and heads out to meet them.
"Is this our guest, Rodney?" the butler, a bespectacled white man with a fancy top hat, asks the limousine driver, who nods back. "Very well, sir. Is this your party?"
"Yeah..."
"And may I ask their involvement in your meeting with Mr. Scott?"
"They're business related. I'm afraid I can't tell you out here. Mr. Scott will know what I'm talking about," Damon says with a straight face, leaving no sign of any faking.
"If such is your word. Very well, if you will please, I shall direct you to Mr. Scott."
Damon and the team follow the butler into the state capitol building. The Arkansas State Capitol Building is very similar to the one in Nashville as Damon walks in and beholds the familiar architecture, but at least this one doesn't have the musty smell of wood, peeling paint, rain, and blood. Perhaps this is what he would've seen when he went to hunt down Harper, had yesterday had better weather. The capitol building is sparsely populated, with well-dressed men and women discussing business and suited guardsmen with shades standing at the ready near doors and other points of interest.
"Baseplate to all callsigns," Damon mutters under his breath, "we have a situation."
"Go, Baseplate?" Benjamin calls in.
"All friendly callsigns, be advised, we may be set up. The butler who just came to greet us said that Scott's expecting us."
"Shit. Fleet, pack your shit 'n get in the choppers, the team's status might be compromised,"
Sanford immediately relays orders to the rest of the fleet back at the recreational area near the lake. "Baseplate, I'm takin' direct control 'a the subs."
"Copy all."
Murakumo hurries forward to stand next to Damon, prepared to pop her Waterfall Shield at the first moment she senses danger. Damon nods at her in appreciation, and Jeannie taps him on the hand, and when Damon looks down at her, she gives him a thumbs up, indicating that she has successfully detected the location of the ship girls.
"Subs, Jeannie's relaying the coordinates 'a the ship girls in the capitol building. See if you can find a way to 'em," Sanford instructs, and the submarines split themselves up into two groups, with Imuya going with Maru-yu and Goya and Iku leading Shioi. Imuya's squad heads towards the south wing, while Iku's group heads north. As they try to find access points to the upper floors, the butler stops in front of the main reception desk.
"Woodlane Madness," the butler states, and the female receptionist nods, reaching underneath her desk, probably to hit a call button.
"Mr. Scott, your guest has arrived," the receptionist says in a slight Louisianan accent and looks up at Damon and the butler. "You may see him now. Elevator Three, the Third Sabbath."
"Thank you, Rosie," the butler gives a curt bow to the receptionist. "This way, sir."
As they head over to the nearby elevators, Damon looks around - the people on the floor, having seen them, are now starting to exit the building. Damon's senses are screaming that something is about to crash their plan.
AWACS, I'd appreciate if you could at least stick around until we get to the end of this AND 95, because like I said in the thread, it's going to demonstrate why you don't even want to be anywhere near the capitol building when shit hits the fan.
Tavish: I got an hour. Go go go.
"We may need to take two trips with this elevator, I'm afraid," the butler informs Damon. "If that is alright with you, sir."
"Yeah, I don't mind."
The elevator doors open up, and Damon enters first with Shimakaze, Murakumo, Amatsukaze, Shigure, Yuudachi, Kaga, and Furutaka, and they reach the second floor first. Seeing no one around on the second floor except for a few suited guardsmen all the way down the floor, Damon takes his opportunity to communicate with the team.
"Everyone be on your guard. We're bein' set up," Damon mutters. "If they try anything, you all have execute authority. Subs, can you reach the second floor?"
"No, Damon, there're two guards in front of all the staircases, we can't just sneak past them," Iku whispers back. "We need some more time. Hurry up, Shioi, let's try looking over here, nano!"
With the sincere hope that the submarines can find their way into the second floor without being detected, Damon waits for the rest of his team to arrive with the butler, who arrive promptly. The butler then leads them down the floor to the state capitol building's main atrium.
"Sabbath, on the Third Day," the butler declares to the four guards standing in front of the atrium doors, and they nod and step aside to let them through. The butler opens up the doors for them and holds them open, and Damon and his team file through.
The main atrium is a large, circular room with polished wooden flooring. The walls are plastered with bookshelves that are filled with all kinds of antique books, giving the atrium an air of a compact, cozy library. On the other side of the room, sitting behind a very large mahogany wooden desk,, sits a middle-aged man, as finely dressed as an eighteenth century European gentleman. Next to him stands a teenage girl in southern-style maid outfit whose hair is peculiarly two-toned - black on the outside, pink on the inside.
Damon steps forward as the butler behind them closes the door before exiting the atrium, and Murakumo follows closely behind him in case of anything.
Alastor Scott rises from his chair with a welcoming smile.
"My good man, I have been expecting you," his booming voice rolls smoothly around the circular atrium, amplifying it. "I understand that you have come to discuss some business?"
Damon decides to continue with his cover and clears his throat.
"Yes, Mr. Scott. I represent Lukenstor Defense Systems and I've come to discuss a business deal with you today. You may have heard of my company, for my employer, Mr. Clinton, has informed me that you and he have once negotiated a contract together."
Mr. Scott claps his hands together once. "Ah, yes, I remember it well. I would like to extend my deepest regrets to the man, it would have been a very successful contract had I not received more favorable ones for my city, I'm sure," he says extravagantly. Damon can already sense the man's ego bleeding profusely into his own words.
"And judging by your knowledge of my arrival, I assume you know what I am here to negotiate with you?" Damon continues.
"Yes, indeed, I do!" Mr. Scott laughs jovially and turns to the enmaided girl behind him, still standing near his desk. "Naganami, will you be so kind as to call the others in?"
Naganami bows her head silently and heads to one of the bookshelves near the desk and pulls out one of the books. Like some kind of Indiana Jones movie, the bookshelf slowly slides to its right, revealing a hidden door. Naganami opens it and disappears behind it as the door snaps shut after her.
"It will be a moment before she arrives with the rest," Mr. Scott informs Damon, while the ship girls stare after Naganami, not knowing how to react to Naganami's strange-looking behavior. "I have rather taken a liking to that girl. She is obedient and never frets. Qualities that, unfortunately, not many of the people I have met in my lifetime are decent enough to possess. It's a shame, really."
Damon can hear the submarines whisper urgently to each other through his earpiece.
"They're meeting with that Scott person right now. We need to get there, fast!"
"We tried looking everywhere though, dechi. There's no way up unless we take out those guards!"
"But we need to get there right now! We've got to take some of those guards out, nano!"
"Wait, Iku, why? There's no need to rush, we need to think this through."
"Something's wrong...I just...I just know it...!"
"But we can't just mow the guards down, it'll blow their cover! We need to wait, maybe, wait for the guards to look some other way or something...here, let's find some way to distract them..."
"So tell me, Mr. Scott, how did you know we were coming?" Damon asks.
"What do you mean? You informed our community airfield attendants of your arrival. Once I was informed of your identity, I knew what you were coming for. So I am simply obliging you," Mr. Scott curtly replies. The way he talks is extremely sketchy to Damon, like he's trying to hide something, and most likely he is.
"HAVOC's online over Little Rock. Call down the thunder whenever you need it," Benjamin announces.
"But how did you know what I was asking for? We haven't even begun to discuss sales or negotiate contract terms," Damon keeps pushing.
"Please, Mr., um..." Mr. Scott pauses.
"Fitzgerald," Damon throws out the first name he can think of.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Fitzgerald. My good man, please do not try to play me. You are here for the ones they call 'naval personnel', correct? You have a bunch of them behind you."
Damon's heart drops slightly. The hidden door behind the bookshelf opens again, and Naganami reemerges, this time with the rest of the ship girls owned by Little Rock: Kumano, Kako, and Hatsushimo. Suzuya and Akagi are notably missing. The ones who have arrived, however, are all also wearing maid uniforms identical to Naganami's.
"So! I presume that you are here to purchase my own naval personnel from me, is that correct, Mr. Fitzgerald?" Mr. Scott gestures to the line of ship girls off to the side behind him.
"That's correct," Damon maintains his poker face, despite knowing that his fake identity is being chipped away at an alarming rate.
"Then because you have come unto my turf to demand a business proposition, I would like to lay the terms of our little deal here," Mr. Scott grins. "And my first term is that unfortunately, my girls are not for sale."
Mr. Scott's hand withdraws something from his pocket, something like at first glance looks like a thin cigarette lighter. But when his thumb flips open the top, a red button shows its ominous face for a split moment before a thumb hides it from view.
Damon's ears are filled with extremely loud electrical static - his earpiece is going haywire. But that isn't the only thing going haywire - as soon as Damon rips his earpiece out, he instead hears a tsunami of electrical static behind him, along with the dreadful screaming of his ship girls. Turning around, Damon watches with widened eyes as his ship girls crumple to the wooden floor, bright pulses of white electricity paralyzing them. Damon knows what has just happened, and his first instinct causes him to look at Amatsukaze and Murakumo, who have already experienced what it must feel like getting hit by an EMP charge, and they are both curled up and lying on the floor, screaming at the top of their lungs.
However, none of Scott's ship girls are suffering the same effects as Damon's ship girls. They stand there, staring at Damon's team grovel on the floor and suffer, and their lack of reactions is chilling.
"Since when did you get a fucking EMP?" Damon yells at Mr. Scott, who casually drops the EMP detonator onto the floor at his feet.
"I was under the impression that O'Reilly informed you," Mr. Scott says simply. "I don't believe you have forgotten whom he's named already?"
"Simpson sold you EMP's too?" Damon grinds his teeth together. "Since when? Doesn't he know what he's tryin'a do!?"
"Of course he knows, don't be silly, my man," Mr. Scott just laughs. "He wants to dismantle the Coalition. He told me himself. And the best way for him to accomplish that was by sabotaging each faction's force of naval personnel. Fortunately, O'Reilly and I were able to negotiate the purchases of several large-scale EMP warheads in private."
"So you're sayin' the Coalition was never meant to last?" Damon has to yell over the screams of his ship girls. There's nothing he can even do for them, at this point, and he doesn't know where the EMP was even detonated from. In addition, the submarines still on the first floor must be revealed, as the EMP must surely have disabled their Cloaking.
"I am an idealistic realist, my good sir, not a realistic idealist," Mr. Scott raises his arms gallantly. "I carry myself in the loftiest ways possible but am not ignorant enough to realize that something as stupid as the revival of the old Confederacy is merely a pipe dream, the way it has been done so far. You cannot have five different factions to consist of the Confederacy of old. There is room for only one such faction to control it all, and it shall be mine."
"But never mind the small talk. This city of mine was a honey trap in the making, and you have fallen so perfectly for it. I cannot decide whether you are just an opportunistic young man or just simply rendered foolish by your own desire for power and blood, but it is not something I need to comment on, especially when I get to have the pleasure to watch you die right here."
The doors open up behind Damon and the incapacitated ship girls on the ground. Damon turns around sharply, and a girl in traditional Japanese archery clothes, and long black hair stands in the doorwell.
Jeannie, struggling to run all of her recovery processes as fast as possible, bites down on her lower lip so hard it bleeds, and she slams her foot on the ground to bolt herself up. She lunges for Damon, his name on her lips as the room cracks with the blunt sound of a twanging string, and a single crossbow bolt spirals through the air.
"Baseplate!? Baseplate, do you copy!? Come in, you fuckin' cup 'a asswater!" Sanford's alarmed profanity blares obnoxiously into the fleet comms. Both helicopters have just barely taken off from their rest point at the Marina next to the lake, with a handful of destroyers and battleships left behind to watch over their supplies and the most recently acquired ship girls from Nashville who are in no condition to fight.
"Meathook, can ya not get inta contact with Baseplate?" Eagle asks urgently, piloting the second MH-47D Chinook helicopter.
"Negative, all I'm hearin' is static!" Sanford confirms. "All callsigns, assume an active EMP threat in Little Rock and proceed with caution! That fucktard Simpson must'a shipped EMP's to Scott too, fuck it! Shit..."
"I'm sending you all coordinates of Baseplate's team's last known coordinates!" Benjamin uploads the mission intel to HAVOC's cloud server for the fleet to download. "Their comms just got shut down right now, so that means they've still gotta be in the Arkansas State Capitol building. Be advised, they may have more EMP charges around! If they anticipated Baseplate's plan, they might predict we'll be standing by to assist!"
Akebono shudders silently at the mention of EMP's, her memory files subconsciously playing back all the sensory details that her main processing unit has automatically recorded from her own experience being hit by an EMP grenade back at Atlanta. Ushio notices this subtlety and puts her hand over Akebono's.
"Banshee 1, dump max speed into your engines. Get there as quick as ya can!" Eagle orders the Banshee pilot.
"But what 'bout you 'n the girls with ya?"
"Don't worry 'bout us. Gettin' there's more important! We need Baseplate alive!"
"A'ight then, Banshee 1 copies all."
The XV-29 experimental tilt-rotor stealth helicopter switches from helicopter to airplane mode, its tilt rotors angling from a 90 degree angle to parallel with the ground, and it quickly powers forward, leaving the Chinook flying after it in its wake.
Murasame is hugging her MSBS Radon bullpup assault rifle, with the handguard of her rifle squeezed in between her breasts, sitting inside the XV-29 stealth chopper.
"Please...everyone, be okay..." Murasame is rocking slightly back and forth in her seat, constantly puckering her lips in extreme nervousness. It's clear to the whole fleet that something terrible has happened to Damon's team, and the sudden disconnection of all communications drastically amplifies the urgency of the situation. "Shigure-chan...Yuudachi-chan...Damon...everyone, please...be okay..."
"We'll be there in just twenty minutes, we're not too far from the city," Shiratsuyu, sitting next to her ship sister, tries to reassure Murasame with her normally cheerful and upbeat mannerisms. "We'll be the first ones to reach them, you'll see!"
"Twenty minutes is too long! Too many things can happen in twenty minutes!" Murasame, beginning to panic, cries, turning sharply to her eldest ship sister. "We - we should have left a long time ago - no, we should have gone with them!"
"Murasame, calm down! Panicking won't solve anythin'!" Suzukaze gets up from her seat and lunges directly forward to push Murasame firmly down on her seat by pressing her hands down on her shoulders. "Don't worry 'bout Damon, he ain't the kinda person ta die no matter what happens to 'im. I bet he won't even die when he gets killed!"
Tavish: Oh yeah, most of these girls are still girls. Panicking is one of their forte.
Pfffft
Tavish: But still, how come Damon's plan been uncovered that fast, huh? Innate instinct, experience, or someone leaking out infos?
We're about to find out, but let's just say that Mr. Scott's been keeping a keen eye on the state of the other factions.
Tavish: He's smart. That's a smart move.
Who's the quack that joined us?
For the first time that she can remember, Jeannie finds herself crying. No whimpering, no sobbing, no noise - only clear tears that stream down her cheeks out of the corners of her eyes and from the middle of her lower eyelids. Her red eyes, normally always scrolling with some lines of binary or programming code, is now completely devoid of all such computer activity, and trembling like vibrating atoms, they are locked onto the crossbow bolt that has pierced both her hand and her older cousin, Damon.
The Admiral has reacted, but not quickly enough. Akagi's entrance has been too unexpected, too out-of-the-blue, much less her crossbow and bolt already primed to fire. By trying to sidestep the incoming arrow, Damon has at least avoided a potentially fatal blow, since the arrow was aimed for the center of his spine.
Perhaps "at least" is a terribly inappropriate description. Much help sidestepping the arrow did, because it is now lodged instead firmly through the middle of his right lung.
The doors are once again closed behind Akagi as the aircraft carrier steps slowly past the bodies of the EMP'd ship girls under Damon's control and approaches the body potentially fatally wounded Damon Polchow, which is now lying on its back in the middle of the atrium. Jeannie is lying with him too, as her bid to save him by physically blocking the arrow with her own body has failed due to the effects of the hidden EMP charge critically altering her calculations to reach the arrow in time, and instead, she has only managed to stop the arrow with the back of her left hand, which now rests against Damon's breast, courtesy of Akagi's crossbow bolt. To her credit, Jeannie did press her fingertips against the bolt as it passed through the middle of her hand, shredding the skin and causing her fingertips to now bleed quite badly, making it so that the bolt did not simply pass through Damon's body entirely, but it wasn't enough. The fact remains that Damon is now dying with an arrow sticking out of his lung.
White crackles of electricity still pulse around Jeannie's small childish body. As a prototype of the Second F.L.E.E.T. generation, she was given some electromagnetic pulse protection, but whatever Scott has used against Damon's team, it is far stronger than Jeannie can handle. Despite how strongly she is trying to get her programs to work, Jeannie finds nothing in her mysterious arsenal of attacks that will respond to her pleas, and while her construct has managed to spare her of the pain that the other ship girls are suffering, she finds herself, for the first time in her life, helpless.
Mr. Scott lets out a deeply satisfied chuckle that should befit only the most cunning of comic book villains.
"Allow me to take a guess, my good man," he laughs to himself as Akagi pumps her Izanami Crossbow to ready another bolt, still making her way slowly over to Damon. "You believed, you were under the absolutely ridiculous impression that you could simply walk in and hold me ransom or something foolish, something along those lines, anyway, in order to compel me to give up control of the naval personnel under my directive. You possibly did not think that attacking all of the other factions with whom my own is associated would go unnoticed? You were fortuitous in the order in which you attacked the rest of the Coalition, I shall give you that much. Badeau and Arrechea were at least intelligent and would immediately bolster their defenses in time for your assault, had you chosen to target Little Rock first. Maybe then, all of this may not have led to your downfall. But as I stand here, at this moment, triumphing over an utterly stupid enemy who believes that ramming his head against everything like some kind of NFL quarterback is the easiest solution to all of his problems, you lie before me, defeated by one of the oldest tricks in the book."
Tavish: …. Whoa. Slow claps Alastor Scott, you managed to gain a awesome from me. Your Renegade counterpart would be better in fate, i supposed.
Damon's consciousness is hanging on by a thread. In his current state, his eyesight is already failing him, rendering his sickly yellow eyes unfocused and drifting slowly about up at the ceiling of the circular atrium. Although he is continuously and weakly coughing up more and more blood that is seeping into his windpipe as his body is desperately trying to clear it for search of fresh air, coughing is really the only bodily action he can do - anything else would simply be too much effort. Everything is echoing, like he is lying on the floor of a huge Gothic cathedral, listening to the damning sermon of Alastor Scott that he can't even hear coherently. Extremely light-headed and disoriented, Damon gasps weakly for air, having finally coughed up enough blood to quench his body's ravaging thirst for oxygen. Quite literally, only a deus ex machina-like plot device would save him now, and even if he does somehow roll a critical success on his luck roll or spend the rest of his fate points to survive, Damon will mostly never remember anything from here forward until he recovers.
The crackles of the electricity pulsing on the bodies of Damon's ship girls have mostly died down by now, occasionally cracking like whips every now and then, but they are all rendered too weak to move their own bodies effectively. All they can do is lift their heads up in Damon's direction helplessly and watch Akagi approach him with her loaded crossbow.
"...no...D...Damon..." Murakumo is also silently crying, refusing to weep just yet. Her tears lay on the wooden floor beneath her chin as neat, clear little liquid domes of varying sizes, and she lifts her right hand up in front of her, exerting a pathetically futile effort to reach him. The other ship girls have similar reactions - Kongou is biting her lower lip so hard it's bleeding, Haruna is staring at Damon's limp body with empty, soulless eyes like she's unable to believe that Damon is about to die, Amatsukaze has already given up hope and is pressing her face against the cold wooden floor, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed, Shigure and Yuudachi are both sobbing, injecting Damon's name into their cries every few seconds, Tenryuu just has a blank look of pure shock, Tatsuta is simply lying on the floor with her eyes calmly closed and resigned, Shimakaze keeps repeating the word "no", Zuikaku is more focused on trying to get a good look at her ship sister Shoukaku, who is exhibiting a similar reaction to Haruna, a blank look of mute horror as the reality of Damon's imminent death sinking into her bones.
Kaga watches Akagi's feet shuffle past her slowly, trying to snatch a glimpse of Akagi's face to get her attention, which she does not give.
"A...Aka...gi...san..." Kaga chokes, trying to throw her hand forward to grab Akagi's ankle or something on her fellow carrier sister that she can hold, but this yields no result. Kaga can do nothing but watch her trudge past like a grim executioner being summoned before the chopping block.
Mr. Scott is high on his own over-inflated ego though.
"Fools can lead an army, but only the intelligentsia can wield them," Scott continues his little victory speech. "This is exactly why all of those other factions - Nashville and Atlanta in particular - were doomed to fail! Their leaders were gung-ho, hoo-rah military meatheads with nothing on their minds except an arms race in which they would emerge the victor in the largest guns category! But there are more lethal weapons than weapons, you see. Food, fresh water, any valuable, essential commodity - even words. If only there were more men left in this wretched world who would realize like I have that if you merely take the time to open up your mind and realize that there are always multiple ways to solve a problem that don't involve gunpowder and bullets, perhaps this world would still hold a candle of a chance to rebuild as the world was before the nuclear apocalypse. But...I suppose God has smitten the sinners with his holy fire from heaven, and it would seem that He has tasked me with the holy duty to eradicate those who clearly act more beast than man."
Akagi, stopping at Damon's feet, puts the short-range sights of her crossbow over Damon's head. The doors of the main atrium open up again, and the submarine ship girls are hurled in by the suited guardsmen of the state capitol building, having discovered them when their Cloaking got forced offline due to the unforeseen EMP charge's detonation. The submarines yelp with pain as they, too, collapse and roll quickly to a stop with the rest of Damon's team.
"And so the true nature of your scheming plan is revealed," Scott leers at the submarines, who are missing their weapons after being disarmed. "But that is well - now, your entire platoon of naval personnel can witness yet another cleansing of a rotten, animalistic soul from the face of his earth. Fools deserve no place in this sacred piece of the world that I have so righteously established as a haven from the rest of the hell that God has imposed upon the land. Your fleet shall become assimilated and used in the crusade to bring the rest of the United States under my holy domain. And all I must be required to do to set this all in motion is to see you extinguished before me, lying in a cesspool of your own filthy blood. Goodbye, Mr. Polchow. Your fun has expired, and your rampage ends here. Do send Lucifer my regards, and for the love of God, tell him to stop the Mexicans from trying to steal from my food warehouses in northern Texas, those jumping beans surely ought to know when their efforts have become so pathetically useless. Akagi, if you may, please."
Tavish: Oh my. He put Damon into his place. This is so..
Also lol jumping beans
Tavish: Pistachio's the one that jumps farther than the rest.
Jeannie rests her head over Damon's heart. Listening and feeling Damon's failing and weakly erratic and irregular heartbeat thump desperately to keep Damon's body alive through her forehead, she feels her own chest tighten up.
She's never failed anything she'd been asked to do in her life. Everything she did, she did perfectly. All those scientists working on the Second F.L.E.E.T. Project, Lauren, her mother, and now finally Damon, her cousin - whatever was asked of her, she got done. There was no margin for error; failure was never an option because it never had to be and never was. So the one time she has failed her objective, she has failed it in the worst way possible, and her punishment is to witness the death of her cousin not even a handful of inches away from Damon's face.
Pure failure.
Nothing else occupies her mind right now.
Pure failure.
Because right now, that is what she is. That is what she has done.
Pure failure.
Jeannie doesn't even plague herself with thoughts of regret or desperate counteraction.
She's already accepted Damon's death. There is no use trying her hardest to salvage the situation. If she cannot invoke her skills as a prototype ship girl, then there simply is no hope, because it's not like she knows how to do anything else.
If, perhaps, she was not such a pre-programmed sentient humanoid being, she might be able to do something, anything.
But that's not going to happen.
Pure failure.
Jeannie is a pure failure.
Vatista is a pure failure.
Failure must be punished.
And the only punishment that befits a failure this massive…
A hand is put over her own, her left hand that is skewered with Damon's lung. Jeannie glances sideways at it, not understanding why someone is holding her hand.
It's Damon's hand. Having crept it over to his cousin's small, soft but bleeding hand, Damon rests it there weakly. A final sign of defiance, perhaps, but how or for whatever reason Damon has done this is up to interpretation.
Jeannie feels her heart twinge, something she doesn't comprehend. She can identify it, she knows why she feels it, but she cannot explain it. No amount of computer programming or vector calculation will define what she just felt in her heart. Maybe if she had kept some of her humanity, maybe if she had devoted her efforts to learning how to understand the little bits of humanity she still held onto, she'd better understand. But that's all irrelevant now.
Tavish: The first hallelujah chorus. The first out of the many
If only De3ta and Winty were here for this. Now, if you thought this was the perfect opportunity to crash the party and spirit all the girls away…..not so fast.
But Akagi doesn't fire right away. Instead, she turns around to her left just as Shoukaku barely manages to get back up to her feet.
"…what are you doing?" Scott, appearing confused at Akagi's deviant behavior, demands from his aircraft carrier. "Akagi, I gave you an order, now carry it out!"
This room is about to become even hotter, keep away.
In his centralized anger at his suddenly disobedient ship girl, Scott fails to recognize the physical metamorphosis that mars Shoukaku's appearance. The red hairband that dons the top of her head is now sporting black four-point star-like tattoos like viruses infecting body cells, solid bloody red fires have ignited in both eyes, not just her left eyepatched one, and her skin, starting with her arms, is shedding at a hyper-accelerated rate to reveal a ghastly pale underskin.
"Akagi, I ordered you to kill this boy. Now do it!" Scott raises his voice to nearly a scream. "Just what are you waiting fo – "
Akagi raises her crossbow and half-aims, pulling the trigger. With no active ship mode to provide Shoukaku's physical armor via her Smartsteel construct, the crossbow bolt passes completely through Shoukaku's gut, only stopped by the heavy front doors behind.
"S-Sh – Shouka – ku – nee – ! ! !" Zuikaku chokes, trying her very best to scream but only managing to spit her words out instead. "N-Noooo…!"
Tavish: Whoa. Too focused to kill Demon, are we, Scott?
But like some delirious zombie, Shoukaku seems not to notice the hole that's in the middle of her stomach. Dripping blood and severed bits of intestines, the Abyssalized carrier suddenly lunges forward at Akagi without warning, like her debilitating injury is meaningless to her. Akagi reacts in a panic, quickly pumping another crossbow bolt into place and blindfiring the third arrow, which pierces Shoukaku through the upper right corner of her left lung, barely missing her own spine, and this, too, lacks the desired effect of stopping Shoukaku. The third bolt barely slams against the door two feet above the second bolt that Akagi has launched as Shoukaku grabs Akagi by her black bangs, pulls her towards herself, and despite having her ship power shut down, still stabs her right index and middle fingers square in the middle of Akagi's forehead. Her fingernails dig into Akagi's skin, burying her fingers deep enough for her fingertips to physically touch the brain through the skull, and summoning whatever strength her Abyssalized condition can grant her at that moment, Shoukaku directly injects Abyssal energy straight into Akagi's main processing unit.
Dropping her Izanami Crossbow, Akagi feels her eyes roll up to the back of her head as her limbs tense up, her brain being overridden by the dense concentration of Abyssal energy.
"…I'm…sorry…it had to be this way…Akagi…senpai…" Shoukaku murmurs as fast as she can, for the pain that her Abyssal energy is numbing out for her is going to overpower her. "But…the Admiral…Damon…unforgiveable…!"
Ripping her hand out, Shoukaku stumbles and falls with Akagi, and the two carriers slump onto the floor. Akagi ragdolls, unconscious, with her blank eyes staring off into space, at Damon's feet, while Shoukaku falls to her knees and hands as her body just now begins to enter a state of critical shock. Scott, not understanding the discourse of blood and words that have just unfolded before him, also begins to panic, turning and rushing over to his desk.
"Y-You…! You killed one of my – oh, for the love of God, I'll finish this myself!" Scott rambles loudly, rummaging through his desk drawers in search of a weapon. Meanwhile, Shoukaku forces herself to crawl over next to Damon's side, and Jeannie feebly reaches out to her.
"Shoukaku," Jeannie shakes her head, her open eyes still leaking emotionless tears, "you…will lose consciousness…very soon…most likely, death…is imminent…"
Shoukaku nods, which by itself requires far more energy than she would like to expend.
"Tha…thank you, Jea…nnie-chan…" the Fifth Carrier Division member whispers back.
Zuikaku and Kaga, after watching Shoukaku use her Abyssal power to eliminate Akagi, are too shocked for words to know what to expect next. Kaga is grinding her teeth, shaking her head desperately.
"Shoukaku…you fool…" she croaks.
"Shoukaku-nee, what…are you doing? What are you doing!?" Zuikaku raises her voice to a hoarse call with the strength she is slowly gaining back, the worst of the EMP effects starting to wear off.
Tavish: Okay. one last part before i need to go to school now.
I'll paste it all in two parts, back to back.
Shoukaku leans down and plants her lips over Damon's, as though pulling a reverse Snow White. It's not like Shoukaku knows what else she could possibly do, and this itself most likely won't work. But Shoukaku remembers the fact that Damon probably has something Abyssal about him, for he was able to carry around her Abyssalized sniper rifle from before. Whatever it is that allows Damon to do that, that's probably the only chance she has of saving her Admiral, and if she must sacrifice herself to do it, her own life is, to herself, a small price to pay.
Pouring all of her soul and feelings into this dramatic Romeo and Juliet-esque kiss, Shoukaku floods her last remaining Abyssal energy into Damon's mouth.
But before she can hold the kiss for long, Scott cocks the hammer of his Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver, aims it at Shoukaku, and pulls the trigger. The heavy .44 Magnum cartridge enters Shoukaku's body through her left side, carving a path through the width of her body and destroying her liver and spine. Unable to sustain any more damage, Shoukaku lets out just a feeble cry and topples over, like someone's just kicked her over. Scott fires again; the second bullet pierces her lower left thigh, ripping out a huge chunk of her skin and muscle like a supersonic meat cleaver. The third Magnum round strikes her in nape of her neck, instantly killing the carrier. As the atrium fills with the screams of the murdered aircraft carrier's ship sister who is forced to watch her own sister have her neck blasted out in a sea of blood, Scott lowers his smoking .44 Magnum, then raises it again, the green-tipped iron sights now resting over Shoukaku's head.
As the fourth shot from the muzzle of the Model 29 Revolver dies down from the ringing in the circular room, Scott's eyes are narrowed in mute fury and extreme confusion. Damon's right arm is lifted limply into the air, the palm of the hand facing the controller, and blood is raining down briefly onto the floor, as though there hasn't been enough blood shed just yet in this room alone. Embedded in his bleeding and shattered palm is Damon's knife handle, which he has sacrificed to stop the powerful .44 Magnum round, and the pieces of his ruined knife handle and fractured karambit knife crumble like brittle cookies onto the floor, mixing with the blood.
Damon puts his left hand on his little cousin's back and slowly gets up, lifting her with him because of the arrow still lodged in his right lung. Spitting out a bit of excess blood pooled up in his mouth, Damon rises up much like Shoukaku has done just moments before, before she has attacked Akagi.
"Oh no you fucking didn't."
Repeating this over and over like a broken record, Damon drops the rest of his broken knife handle and knife blade and the morphed bullet lodged inside and puts his shattered hand on the arrow lodged in the middle of his lung. Jeannie watches this and gasps weakly.
"No…!" her voice squeals before Jeannie can control herself. "I-If you – if you – remove it, then – then – !"
"You're supposed to be dead, my good sir!" Scott is besides himself with delirium. "You're all freaks! Zombies! The nuclear apocalypse got you all good! This is the most powerful handgun in the world, and it will not be proven wrong!"
Damon simply places his head against his cousin's forehead lightly.
"Be free, Jeannie."
With the tiny morsel of Abyssal energy Shoukaku has bestowed upon him before her death, Damon rips out the heavy crossbow bolt. Jeannie's yelp of pain and the sound of her fall as Damon lets go of her to turn around mask the sounds of Damon spinning the arrow in his right hand to grip it like a javelin thrower and of Scott's weapon clinking metallically as he lifts it for the fifth time, this time at Damon.
The crossbow bolt and the .44 magnum round pass each other in the air, and both strike their targets. Damon's hurl buries the tip of Akagi's bolt into the forehead of Scott, and Scott's bullet punches another hole in Damon, this time just above the right side of his pelvic bone, spraying Jeannie lying behind him in a mist of gore and blood. Damon hacks and coughs violently again, falling to one knee, but he doesn't fall just yet. Meanwhile, Scott's limp body makes a dull thud against the hard wooden floor.
"Damooooon!" Shigure screams her heart out. She desperately tries to lunge herself forward, trying to force her legs to work, which refuse to do so. "No! Damon, no! No! No! No! No! No! No!"
But Damon listens not. He stumbles forward, having tried to get up to his feet but finding his body simply too damaged and weakened, and continues to stumble until he can finally get his own footing right. He practically stumbles his way to Scott's desk when the doors burst open again, and six armed guards pointing suppressed MAC-11 submachine guns into the room storm in.
"Hey, it's him!" one of the guards yells. "He was the one on the floor just earlier!"
"Whoa, whoa, don't even bother, look at 'im. Mr. Scott done fucked 'is shit up real good," another guard smugly points out.
"Then where the fuck's Mr. Scott!?"
This moment of dialogue exchange buys Damon enough time to crawl over the desk and fall over onto the other side, where Scott lies, his limbs twitching madly with his own gray eyes pointing in different directions and not rolled over in his skull just yet. Damon's return to sender sits in the middle of Scott's forehead, a little more than half of its shaft streaked with Damon's own blood. As the guards spray their weapons into Scott's large wooden desk and then realize that Scott's desk has been built to be bulletproof, Damon pulls Scott's Model 29 S&W out of his right hand and presses the muzzle against his heart.
A cheeky, suicidal grin is on his face, and the sickly yellow hue of his pupils have by now switched places with his white sclera.
"It's all fun 'n games…until someone loses a life," Damon murmurs. "No game…no life."
The last bullet of Scott's .44 Magnum delivers its most annihilating blow before the atrium is filled with the flash of burning light.
Safe to say that he expires from his injuries soon after.
Tavish: [Hallelujah chorus]
Buuuuuut, friggin Rebirth virus from the GT project. And I need to talk to Winty about the stuff in 293 later because Rebirth plays a big part it in as well.
Tavish: Okay, school time. Thanks for the LR, Hash.
Due to time restraints, I excluded the final part of 95, but here it is. No commentary here, because I ended the LR after the above.
"All fleet callsigns be advised, HAVOC is inbound! Danger Close, I say again, Danger fucking Close!"
From MAPS, Benjamin deploys HAVOC's main orbital artillery cannon, using only 10% of its potency to minimize collateral damage. Jeannie has managed to regain enough control over her internal programs to connect back to HAVOC's orbital server and upload the exact coordinates of every single member of Damon's team, including Damon, and capitalizing on this fresh batch of real time information from Damon's ground team, Benjamin is steering the laser cutter from the weaponized satellite around the Arkansas State Capitol building in an effort to neutralize any hostiles around them or at least frighten them away.
Chuck watches the pillar of flaming light crash down like the hand of God into the city from the one-way window of his seat in the XV-29 Banshee.
"Five seconds! I'm takin' you lot straight to the AO, where Baseplate's coordinates were last!" the Banshee pilot alerts, punching the buttons in his console to lower the rear loading ramp, and the ship girls in the Banshee quickly get up, fully armed and stocked, to jump, while Chuck stays put so that the Banshee can drop him off in front of the state capitol building once the ship girls have secured the area. "Go, jump!"
Starting with Ayanami and her ship sister Shikinami, the ship girls practically dash off the rear ramp and pound the ground in front of the Arkansas State Capitol building. Following the orders that Chuck has instructed, Ayanami screams as loudly as she can while the laser-shocked citizens of Little Rock scream out in even more terror at the sight of heavily armed teenage girls in tactical combat gear suddenly materializing out of thin air.
"PLEASE EVACUATE THIS AREA! WE DO NOT WANNA HARM INNOCENTS! PLEASE EVACUATE, THIS PLACE WILL BECOME VERY DANGEROUS!"
Shikinami puts a few warning shots into the air with her Steyr assault rifle, finally convincing all unarmed civilians to rush to safety, if they hadn't already done so at the sight of a massive laser cannon bombarding their city from the heavens. Armed guards from the state capitol building replace the fleeing ranks of butlers and car valet attendants at the east entrance of the capitol to attack the ship girls, but they simply hold their ground and pick off all resistance quickly as they funnel out of the capitol building.
"They're inside the building, somewhere on the second floor!" Murasame shrieks, her face livid with all the pent-up nervousness that she is now finally able to vent. "C'mon, Shirayuki-chan, Hatsuyuki-chan! Murakumo-chan's in there too somewhere, we need to go help them!"
"Y-Yeah...!" Hatsuyuki, although unwilling to have gotten out of bed in the morning, is motivated enough by the threat of Murakumo possibly being heavily damaged to hurry into the capitol building with the rest of the destroyers who flew in the Banshee: Shiratsuyu, Murasame, Samidare, Suzukaze, Shirayuki, Hatsuyuki, Ayanami, Shikinami, Akebono, Ushio, Sazanami, and Oboro. The rest of the light cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battleships secure the site for the Banshee to land on the street in front of the capitol building in order to drop off Chuck. While Chuck heads in with the escort of the ship girls still out on the street, the destroyers clear the first floor with relative ease, find the flights of stairs leading up to the second floor. A pair of extremely bewildered and breathless guards, their suits singed and showing signs of burns from flames recently put out, are found sitting on the floor in the middle of the hall in front of the doors of the atrium, but upon seeing the ship girls arrive, they quickly dive for their dropped MAC-11 submachine guns, but the destroyers don't give them a sliver of a chance. The two guards get showered with liquid lead, and the destroyers rush past them into the atrium and witness the madness that has unfolded within.
"Murakumo!" Shirayuki and Hatsuyuki cry out upon seeing their veteran ship sister lying on the ground, still struggling her best to get back up, and they rush over to her to try to help her. The other destroyers who have fellow ship sisters on the ground due to the electromagnetic pulse charge also follow suit.
"Shigure, Yuudachi!" Shiratsuyu, Suzukaze, and Samidare drag their ship sisters together so they can take care of them together. Murasame looks around, and by this time, Chuck and the rest of the ship girls reach the atrium. "Where's Damon, Shigure-chan, Yuudachi-chan!? Where'd they take him!?"
Yuudachi is howling with uncontrollable depression, and Shigure, too, is weeping much louder than she normally would into her left arm. The ship girls feel their chests tighten, not knowing what to expect. The atrium itself is littered with scorched black laser contour lines, and the split bodies of armed guards are left lying where HAVOC has hit them last. The remaining ship girls in their maid uniforms have collapsed, unconscious, at the death of Alastor Scott.
"O-Over there...!" Shigure sniffs loudly, pointing to the back of the large wooden desk that has been carved into three different segments due to the precision laser strike from HAVOC. "D-Damon - he - he - he - "
Zuikaku is also wailing at the top of her lungs, having been brought to the broken body of her carrier sister, and Kaga has reached Akagi on her own, her emotions too complicated to decide on what she wants to cry for. Jeannie is missing, but Murasame and Shiratsuyu find her quickly, also crying at the body of her older cousin.
Both Murasame and Shiratsuyu drop their assault rifles in disbelief.
"DAMOOOOOOOOOOOOON! ! ! ! ! ! ! !"
Murasame loses her shit completely and freaks the hell out, and she puts both of her hands on the segment of the desk keeping her away from her Admiral and flips it so hard that she launches it out of the window behind where the desk once sat, over the bodies of Scott and Damon. Shiratsuyu does something similar, kicking away the remaining pieces of the desk, and as Chuck sprints over to them to see what has befallen the son of his late friend and former squadmate, Murasame puts her hands on Damon's shoulders and shakes him violently.
"Damon! Damon, no!" Murasame screams in his face, her quaking eyes unwillingly forced to bear witness to the ghastly wounds his body sports. "No! No, no no no no no no no! No!" She continues to shake him, but his tired facial expression remains unchanged.
"There's no way. There's no freakin' way!" Shiratsuyu stammers. Damon's survived every single operation against all the Coalition's factions, just to not make it out of the last one? "You've got to be shitting me! He still has to be alive! We - "
"He's dead," Jeannie sobs, rubbing her eyes with her hands, trying to stop the tears that won't stop. "Damon...he's d-dead...!"
Murasame accidentally drops Damon back down to the floor when Jeannie forces the forbidden word unto them.
"...ridiculous..." Murasame whispers, trying to deny what she sees. Shiratsuyu is already succumbing to tears of her own. "...Damon...he went through all of this...he...he did all of this...just...to...die...?"
Chuck sets down his CZ-805 assault rifle and firmly drags Damon's body towards him.
"Murasame," Chuck instructs with a deep breath, "we give CPR. Maybe he live. I push heart, you breathe. Probably too late...but only chance."
So Chuck and Murasame perform CPR on Damon for nearly five minutes straight as gunfire lights up Woodlane Drive, as the Chinook arrives on scene and drops off its fleet cargo, who are now battling the reinforcement waves of the local Little Rock police and security responding to the disturbances at the state capitol building and trying to get into contact with Alastor Scott. Chuck pulls Damon's body away from the brittle windows through which Murasame has already thrown a piece of a desk through, so they continue their CPR in the middle of the bloody and sky-scorched atrium, but as the ship girls watch with growing hopelessness and forlorn, it becomes increasingly clear that it is too late. CPR will never resuscitate a person whose lung and large intestines have been shot by a crossbow bolt or by a magnum revolver round.
Chuck's hands weaken and cease their movements; he breathes a deep sigh and moves over to put Damon's head on his left thigh, chanting:
"sarva-dharman parityajya
mam ekam saranam vraja
aham tvam sarva-papebhyo
moksayisyami ma sucah..."
Murasame's eyes weakly flare with yellowish hazes before her tears extinguish them as Samidare joins her in mourning. The rest of the fleet present, if they are not crying enough to the point where all they can do is cry, raise their right hands over their right eyebrows in salute.
