Greyscale Memoir (Kancolle)

[Metaldragon868]

Greyscale Memoir

Chapter 1

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United States, Norfolk, 2007

Jonathan Brandt was by no means new to the BPRD, nor was he unaccustomed to unusual circumstances that surrounded it.

He knew that whenever he went out on the job, it was almost always certain to be either boring, disturbing, terrifying, or just downright weird.

That did not, however, make him feel better about wandering through the cavernous halls of a ship this size.

His radio crackled to life on his belt.

"Jonathan?" came through the light static, "It's Kate."

Jon picked up the radio and pressed the talk button, "Jonathan here. You find anything useful up there in the bridge?"

He heard Kate's classic noncommittal hum before she answered, "Nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Captain Honors is trying to point out where they've been seeing the disturbances. How 'bout you?"

"Well," He drawled with a smirk, "I'll say that the empty hanger of a carrier sure is dark and spooky, but I can't say that I've seen anything particularly paranormal."

Looking around he could see all the planes locked in place on the deck casting shadows in the still air. Empty like this, with only the radio and the sounds of the ship to keep him company, he could see the power of the darkness. How a man's imagination could twist something a simple as an open toolbox in the dark into something...more.

He'd seen it before, he'd seen it all over the country. When you worked for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, you tended to work in dark and spooky places where the mind played tricks on you. After a while, dark and spooky become old and boring.

But every once in a while, you stumbled on to something...more.

"Captain Honors has been pointing out cold spots, places where they've heard a woman's whispers, felt a hand on their shoulder, so on and so forth"

"So...par for the course either way." Jonathan summed up as he peered at a particularly dark shadow under a plane. He pulled out a flashlight and shone it at the spot, revealing it to just be nothing, as he expected.

"We get those as much for bogus cases as we do legit ones."

"Yep," Kate agreed, "I'm about ready to take the kid gloves off up here. How 'bout you?"

Jon looked at his watch, noting the time. It was late, almost midnight. They'd started late since nighttime was often a good time to catch spirits. Often, but not always. Some spirits, depending on the type, preferred daytime. He had a feeling that if there was a spirit on this ship, and it was what he thought it was, then it probably didn't particularly care one way or another about the time.
He looked at the other device on his wrist, the leather binding almost blending in with his dark brown skin. It looked a lot like a watch or compass, a round glass screen with various gears buried beneath it and a silver needle in the center.

"I'm waiting 'till midnight," He said over the radio. "That's shift change on this ship, right?"

Kate was quiet for a moment, then he heard the radio crackle back to life, "Captain Honors says yeah. He mentioned they see a lot of activity around that time too."

"Makes sense. It also doesn't actually mean much, all things considered."

"True…"

"Well…" Jonathan said, walking over to another plane, "Might as well wait around until showtime. We'll see soon enough

Jonathan let out a breath, trying to relax. He was winding himself up over probably nothing.

It came out as a foggy mist.

His eyes widened, one hand on his gun, the other holding up his detector. The needle was spinning wildly like a compass in the north pole. He shivered and felt a chill go down his spine, his skin rise with gooseflesh, and saw a low mist fill the floor of the hanger. Most times, he might have been able to explain it as something else, but not in a Virginia summer.

"Kate, probable contact," he said. His radio crackled with empty static. He cursed, knowing he was on his own for the moment. He trusted his partner to get to him eventually, but more than a few of the several dozen possibilities said he was that help wasn't coming any time soon.

He drew his revolver, held it up with his flashlight, and began to scan the deck. He didn't get far before he saw her.

It was a woman on the far side of the hanger, dressed in all white, possibly some kind of dress, and wandering around the planes aimlessly. His eyes naturally wanted to slide off her, to look anywhere else, and a deep part of his mind told him it wasn't real.

Unfortunately for his instincts, this was all part of the job.

Jonathan squared his shoulders and walked forward. "Ma'am!" he called out, trying to get her attention.

The first couple of times, she didn't seem to hear him, nor did she seem to be moving in his direction. Instead, whenever she passed out of his line of sight, she reappeared somewhere else in the massive hanger. He could tell that this wasn't going anywhere, so he switched tactics.

He reached into his shirt and pulled out a golden ankh and held it tight in his hand.

"Spirit" He said forcefully.

Suddenly, the woman appeared in front of him. It took every spark of Jonathan's will to not flinch, but he managed to hold his ground. He'd been in the BPRD for ten years, this encounter didn't even rank on his top ten. Regardless of how...unsettling she was to look at.

On a closer look, he realized that she was wearing something similar to the navy's officer dress whites, with a few caveats. The skirt was longer, much longer, looking something more like a wedding dress but filled with rips and tears. It was also a smokey grey color rather than pure white. Her hair, which looked to be a much darker steel grey, was mostly tucked under the approximation of a dress cap. In addition, he couldn't see anything that indicated any kind of actual rank, just the implication of authority.

Authority she had in spades. Her eyes bore into his own with an intensity no living human could match. Her unblinking stare seemed to cut right through his body and judge his mind and soul. And her eyes, they were as if someone had taken two scoops on the starry night sky and filled her sockets with them. Just looking at them hurt his mind, as if his brain trying to quantify and understand what it was seeing physically hurt him.

She wasn't the worst spirit he'd seen, and she didn't appear to want to rip his throat out or turn him into a blood altar, so he managed to keep his cool in spite of what he was saying.
"Who are you?" She asked, no, ordered. Her voice was commanding and filled with roar of some mechanical thing.

"Jonathan Brandt," he said, lowering his gun and making sure his tone was in smooth measured tones. "United States BPRD Agent Jonathan Brandt,"

Her brow furrowed, as if the titles rung a bell in her mind, as if they meant something to her.

Jonathan had a bad feeling about where this was going.

"And you are?" He asked, figuring that a question for a question was usually okay with most spirits.

"I...I am…" Her frown deepened into a scowl, she looked as if her name was just on the tip of her tongue, as she'd woken in a daze and was trying to piece her past back together. "E-eris? Ingenuity? York?"

She scowled, "No!"

"This ship?" He ventured, praying to the big guy upstairs that he was wrong.

Her eyes widened as if something finally clicked in her mind. "Yes!"

She grinned, pride filling her ethereal form. Hands-on each hip, chest puffed up, and teeth gleaming with starlight, she proudly spoke her name.

"I am-!"

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United States, San Francisco, 2027

"Captain Eris Prince?"

The woman at the counter nodded distractedly, "Yep, that's me."

The clerk finished filing her information into his computer, but out of the corner of his eye he tried to get a better view of her.

Not for any untoward reason, it was barely even a conscious decision. She too much of anything special, just a 30-something woman with tan skin and brown hair wearing a black leather jacket over a navy blue shirt with white stripes and the number six over her heart. Her jeans fit loosely over her long legs and hung over her black combat boots. Honestly, the fact that she towered over him would have been strange enough, but the black and gold hat she wore over her head of shoulder-length hair was something else. No matter what angle he viewed her from, he couldn't see her eyes through the shadows it cast. Nothing beyond the occasional twinkling lights.

It was almost as if-

"So do you have it?" She said, the annoyance of wasting half a day at the airport for her luggage dripping off every word.

"Er, yes," He smiled genially, "It will only be a moment, miss-"

"Captain-" She interjected sternly

He winced, "Captain Prince" he corrected himself. "One of our staffers will be out with it shortly."

The woman let out a breath, either in exhaustion or relief he couldn't tell, and nodded, "Alright."

She stepped back a bit, folding her arms over her chest and looking around the airport. For a moment, they just stood there. The clerk tapped his finger, trying to shrug off the itch to say something. In the end, he gave in.

"Have you been to San Francisco before?" he asked finally

He didn't know why he asked that. The longer she went on without responding, the more he felt like an idiot for saying anything.

"...yeah…" She said slowly, a fond smile gracing her lips. "I guess you could say that. It was quite a while ago, though."

She looked distinctly like someone enjoying an inside joke.

"Well...I certainly hope you enjoy your return!" He said, pulling up that same false cheer he'd honed from all his hours working in retail. "You can't beat the surf and sun of our fair city!"

Though...something about her made him feel a bit more genuine about it.

"The airport's certainly changed, definitely a lot fancier than in my time. I'll give you that." She admitted with a nod. Then the corner of her lips quirked up into a humorous smirk."But it's gonna be a little hard to enjoy the sun with all this fog."

The clerk grimaced, glancing out the window to see a veritable wall of mist hanging outside. Fog wasn't exactly uncommon in the city, especially given it's seaside location, but this was easily the worst he'd seen in his whole life. It'd been like that all morning too, he'd barely been able to see a few feet in front of him driving in to work.

"Yeah, certainly a dour morning today. Hopefully it'll clear up in time for the eclipse." He said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Hopefully," she smirked, "But we'll have to see about that."

"Well, I find that optimism is…"

He stopped when one of his colleges opened the door to the backroom behind him, and lugged in a trolley carrying a large bulky container nearly as long as he was tall made out of some kind of sturdy plastic. The whole thing was covered in various latches and industrial symbols. Combined with her rank, it gave the clerk a very military-grade impression about the package.

"Ah," he smiled, "Here you are, ma-Captain. Your luggage."

"This everything?" She asked, gesturing to the luggage.

"Yes, Captain." He said, giving the woman his best retail smile. "If you need any help taking it out, I'd be happy to..."

He trailed off when the woman gripped one of the many latches on the container with one hand, lifted the box that weighed at least as much as he did with one arm, and hefted it over her shoulder without so much as a grunt of effort. He tried not to gape too hard.

"Is that it?" she asked.

"Er...yes...yes it is…" He said, trying not to think about his embarrassment by absently checking his console to make sure everything was in order.

"Good," She nodded simply, "Now I just-"

"Prince!" A boisterous voice bellowed out.

A large and rough hand slapped the woman on the shoulder, not that she so much as budged an inch. Standing behind her was a massive bear of a man. His sun-kissed skin, weathered hands, thick cords of muscle, and the scar across the bridge of his nose made the clerk wonder is he was military too. He'd certainly seen a lot of action, regardless.

That might have explained his horrible fashion sense. The man wore an offensive orange and yellow Hawaiian shirt contrasting horrifyingly with his black cargo shorts and sandals that he wore over white tube socks. His sunglasses hid his eyes, and added another level to his mismatched fashion choices given the weather. Combined with the sideburns that kissed the tips of his jaw, his stubble, and wide grin, the man looked to be either completely out of touch with fashion, or so lazy as to not care what he put on.

"There you are!" He smiled broadly, his voice loud and untamed. "Been look'n all over for ya!"

Captain Prince looked at him blandly, though if pressed the clerk would have admitted catching a ghost of a smile.

"Hey Rose," She greeted with a perfunctory wave. "Just getting my stuff. You?"

"All packed." He grinned, holding a single-sling backpack that looked like he'd shoved everything that would fit inside it, then stuffed in about 30 more things for good measure. "Everything else's in the car. You ready to head out?"

"Yeah, sure," She agreed easily, walking off towards the exit with him. "You did get a decent ride, right?"

"Oh," The man chuckled deeply, "You're gonna love it."

As the two stepped away, the clerk couldn't help but note the white 6 5 emblazoned on the back of the woman's jacket.

"It's fucking pink, isn't it?"

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A/n: Alright, this is me trying a new thing.

I've been interested in the Kancolle fandom for a while, and came into Azur Lane as the closest thing I could get to it in America, and I've always wanted to do something with.

That said, I've been more interested in the concept than the execution.

Short version: The waifu stuffing bores me and the Magical Sparkly Shipgirl Bullshit feels uncreative. So I'm trying my hand at making a shipgirl fic using my own Hard magic system.

We'll see if anyone other than me has an interest in that.

Spoiler: Longer version

The longer version is a bit more complicated, but I am using my version of hard magic system I started working on for my Hunger quest. I've been working on worldbuilding for this whole thing for about a year and a half, maybe more. Overall I plan on using various designs and characters from Kancolle and AzurLane both as appropriate, though for certain characters I'm going to be using my own interpretation of the ship spirit. Captain Prince is one such examples, with the other most notable one being North Carolina. The reasons for this include the following:

Came up with said character and it's roll before I found out about AL or KC's interpretation of them. An example of that is North Carolina, who won't be appearing directly here.

Or AL or KC's interpretation doesn't track with the hard magic system or worldbuilding I'm using. An example of that will sorta be Hornet, who will.

I could go on and on with that, but really it's all just a bunch of empty promises until I bring it up to the plate. Though I will not that because of the system I'm using, various rules don't always align with the "canon" of Kancolle. They'll be ship spirits and they'll be Abyssals, but everything else is subject to change. Even the nature of what either of those things are isn't necessarily the same.

That said, this isn't actually the main story. I'll be posting that later, after I get done with a trip to Hawaii. This is kind of a short side story, taking place in the same setting and time, just a different part of the planet. I've been sitting on this story for a while, and I'd at least like to get my feet wet today.

So, yeah, I've got a backlog for this, so I'll be posting semi-regularly for a little while, and once I round out the arc I'll mark this as done and get to work posting the main story for the setting I'm using. Shouldn't be more than...10 chapters?

Probably somewhere around there.

That's enough out of me. Hope ya'll enjoyed this fic, and enjoy the rest of your holidays.

 

[Metaldragon868]

Chapter 2


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It was, of course, hot pink.

An enormous hot pink pickup truck that looked like it was big enough to haul a yacht.

Prince knew the only reason he'd gotten it was to piss her off, since the man couldn't give less of a shit about aesthetics. She also knew it was working.

"God, I hate you." She grumbled, glaring out the passenger side window and into the mist.

"What was that, Prince?" Rose grinned knowingly.

"You're like cancer," She responded, "If cancer could be a smug bitch."

"That's pretty harsh, Prince." He joked with a smile, "makes a guy wonder if he's truly appreciated."

"If I shoot you in the head, will blood come out, or will it explode in glitter just to spite me?" She snarked.

"I dunno," Rose commented, scratching his chin in false thought, "I suppose we've seen weirder. You, for instance."

Prince groaned, but didn't dispute it.

"Hey, speaking of, where's my gun?" She asked.

"Well, Big Betty's still in Honolulu,"

"Damn,"

"But your peacemaker's in the gun case." He explained, pointing a thumb to back of the truck where she could see various containers strapped and locked down, including the one she'd brought on the flight here.

"Wait, then why couldn't we bring Betty?" She asked.

"Cause it's heavy as shit, the ATF would make us an entire book on paperwork, and no." Rose countered.

"-but"

"No," He repeated, "You don't need to bring Big Betty everywhere."

Prince scowled, "When we get swarmed by unholy demons from the nether realm, I'll blame you."

"First," Rose held up a finger, "That's why I brought the Peacemaker and the Medicine kit."

Prince opened her mouth to respond, but Rose cut her off.

"Second, Worst case scenario we have the experiment." He ticked off another finger. "Third, you have never needed or used Big Betty to her fullest extent."

"Not. Even. Once."

Prince scowled, but had to admit he had a point. Even if only technically.

"Fine," she grumbled, "But I still think we'd be safer with it around. With magic, you never know what's gonna come around the corner."

Rose shrugged and didn't argue the point any further.

"...So, this place reminds you of better days?" he said, changing the subject.

Captain Prince grunted at her partner's question.

"I wouldn't say better." She commented. "Different, sure, but that was a different time."

"Oh?" He remarked, "Isn't that what old folks love to do, reminisce about the old days?"

"Well, to be honest it-" Prince paused, running through his words again.

"I'm not old, jackass!" She slapped him on the shoulder.

Rose just laughed it off and kept driving, "You're a spirit of glory, you kinda have to be old by definition, Prince."

She frowned, mostly because he had a point. A large factor in a spirit like herself being able to attain enough power to reach sentience was age. Things like fame, prestige, and worship, whatever form that may take, came in to play too, but in order for it to really make something of the world it needed to be done over time.

"I'm not that old." She corrected herself.

Which was true. She was actually one of the younger structural spirits, in the grand scheme of things.

"I only self-actualized a couple of decades ago."

She realized that had been the wrong thing to say when Rose belted out a roar of laughter.

"Do you even hear yourself?" He snorted, " 'a couple of decades ago', Ha!"

"Hey!" She poked him in the shoulder, "You're older than me. How are you gonna call me old?"

"I don't reminisce about the 80's" He pointed out.

"Tch," she'd really dug herself into a hole with that one. "Fucking kids these days. 80's weren't even that long ago."

Rose smirked. "Ok boomer."

"I'm not even a-! That doesn't-! I can't even-!" She looked at him with apoplectic fury. The man just kept on driving with that damnable smile. "ARGH!"

She yelled, throwing her hands up in defeat.

"God damn millennials."

Rose just laughed in his seat.

She huffed and looked out her window.

"Can't you go any faster?" She asked as she tried to peer through the fog. She couldn't see overly much, but she could certainly feel that they were moving well under the speed limit.

"Well, unlike somebody, if I slam into an 18 wheeler, I go squish." He countered, "We can't all have armor plating."

Prince grunted and stared out the window glumly. "It just feels like this is taking forever to get anywhere."

"Yeah, well this is some of the thickest soup I've ever driven through. It's almost as bad as driving through a blizzard." Rose countered.

Prince had to admit he had a point. Even she thought it was a bit thick. She peered through it, trying to make sense of the fuzzy and indistinct shapes just outside of reach. It was almost like they were in a bubble dropped in another world. Like just a few feet away from her, the rules of reality stopped working, that just out of sight the unthinkable was moving and shifting around her. Even now, the cars and pedestrians moving around created shifting shadows, warped by her own imagination into the barest glimpses of nightmarish monsters. It was almost like-

She frowned.

"Hold on," she said seriously, all humor gone from her voice.

Her partner noticed, tensing up and refining his focus on the world around him. "What's wrong?"

"Give me a sec…" Prince said as she loosened her hold on her mortal senses. She opened her eyes and looked, really looked into the fog.

What she saw made her grimace.

"This isn't normal fog." She finally said.

"How bad?" Rose didn't even need to question her judgment, he just rolled with the evolving situation.

"Looks like the whole place is saturated with the darker flavors of aether. It kinda feels like a conduit to the ethereal plane has opened up, and it's all leaking into the material."

"Isn't that what the eclipse does? That's why we're doing Operation Axiom today." He argued.

"Yeah, but eclipses happen all the time. Aetheric fog doesn't."

"Point," He nodded. "Want to call it in?"

"Yeah," She said, getting out her phone and prepping a call, "doing that right now."

"The local branch of the BPRD is probably already on it. I haven't really been in touch with them or anything, but San Fran's a major city. There's no way they'd just let something like this slide." He added.

Prince sighed, hoping he was right. When the phone finally connected, she held up a hand to silence him.

"Hello! Welcome to Deseret Hotels and Resorts! " chirped an annoyingly upbeat synthesized female voice. "If you are looking for the nearest branch, please press 1. If you would like to reserve a stay at one of our-"

"Captain Eris Prince, 7658," She recited from routine.

When she opened her mouth next, her lips didn't move, but a series of sounds came from them nonetheless. It sounded like hundreds, possibly even thousands of voices all speaking at once in some incomprehensible dialect. Rose twitched at the way the unnatural sound scratched his ear, but otherwise brushed it off, long since used to it.

Her jaw clicked shut a moment later, and Prince went back to waiting, as if she'd done nothing special at all.

"...Greetings, Captain Prince." The same voice responded. "What is the nature of this communication?"

"Agent Rose and I are in San Francisco right now," She answered, "About to do some testing on the prototype and take a look at Project Hotel."

"While here we noticed the bay area was enveloped by a thick fog. On further inspection, it appears the fog is magical in nature. The whole thing's stuffed with aether. Feels like it's straight from the ethereal plane." She glanced at her partner, "Beyond the eclipse, no known cause."

"...understood Captain Prince. The situation is known to us. Local Branch Agents are already investigating it."

"Do we need to assist?"

"...no. The current branch has it well in hand. We will let you know if your expertise is required."

She frowned, but wasn't terribly surprised either. "Alright. We'll keep an ear out if we're needed."

The voice didn't respond. Instead, the call just cut out and died. Her phone's screen stuttered for a moment. When it returned to normal, there was no trace that any such call had ever occurred.
Prince glanced at her partner for his thoughts.

Rose noticed, and shrugged. "Not our ballpark. We got no leads on any of this. We've got no idea if this has anything to do with Operation Axiom or Project Orpheus. There are hundreds of rituals that could abuse the Eclipse. And on top of all of that, it's not like the people working on it don't know what they're doing. You gotta trust 'em"

She had to admit, he had a point.

"Alright," She huffed, reclining in the chair fitfully, "If we're not going to help investigate what's happening, and we still got hours until the eclipse or our scheduled time at the range, what do we do now?"

"Oh…I have an idea…"

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The salted sea breeze of San Francisco blew through her hair gently, sending a familiar feeling through her being. She breathed in deeply, taking in the sun, the sea, and the screams.

"Oh My God! Is that Johnny Depp?"

"I need a selfie with him!"

"Oh my god, hashtag trending, hashtag blessed!"

Prince just closed her eyes and sighed.

"Hey," Rose asked asked, a measure of genuine concern entering his voice. "You gonna be alright?"

"Yeah," She waved it off, "Just wondering where your generation went wrong."

She looked up at Rose accusingly.

"My generation?" He rumbled, raising a lone brow. "What are you talking about?"

Prince gestured to the teens with a wave of her hand.

Rose frowned, "That's not my generation."

"You raised them," Prince countered.

"No, pretty sure that was gen x," Rose argued, "Besides, I'm pretty sure every generation has a 'we are literally the worst' phase."

Captain Prince opened her mouth to protest, but then she remembered a few things she'd caught her sailors do in WWII.

And in 'Nam.

...And in Iraq.

…

...And in the 1800's

"Okay," She huffed, "Maybe you have a point." She shot the schoolgirls, now pouting over the fact that the completely ordinary person was not, in fact, Johnny Depp. "Still can't help but feel like they're especially stupid these days."

"You sure it's not something else?" He asked.

"Next Customer!" A voice at the counter shouted.

The man perked up, attention snapping to the food stand like a dog to a squirrel.

"Really Rose?" She questioned.

"Don't judge me, Prince," He shot back, "I am but a mere mortal who requires subsistence."

Prince rolled her eyes, but followed him to the food truck regardless. "You're a glutton who burns through all his hazard pay on food."

"I mean," He began, walking up to the truck, "What else would I spend it on?"

"Hello there!" The cashier greeted them with a smile and a light hispanic accent, "What can I get for you?"

"I'm hoping for a wonderful experience. See, I heard that this was the place to go in the city for the best fish tacos I've ever had." Rose gave the man a wide grin, "Fresh from the sea? Family recipes? Actual passion instead of that drip fed machine processed academy grade restaurant nonsense for the snobby elite?"

At Rose's words the cook leaned down and matched his look with an eager grin of his own, "Yeah, hombre. We get use salmon caught fresh that morning. Hell, that shit was still swimming around just a few hours before we serve it up to you."

"Cook it up with some beans, add in a dash of chili to add in some spice, you know? Give it some kick."

"Nice, nice," Rose nodded along, grin getting wider and wider.

"Put some avocado salsa on it, helps cool things down, and then drizzle a bit of lime juice on the whole thing to give a dash of zest, yeah?"

"Oh yeah," Rose nodded, and Prince could tell he was completely sold on them. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash, "I'll take six."

The cook smiled widely.

"Excellent."

A few minutes later Rose and Prince were sitting at a table, Rose with his collection of fish tacos, and Prince with her large case staring flatly at him.

He pointedly ignored her look as he instead focused on enjoying his fish tacos as slowly as he could.

Finally, Prince spoke up.

"Are we going to be here all day?"

"No," He dismissed the idea easily, "you've seen the schedule. I'm keeping to it."

She grudgingly had to admit he was right. He was kind of being a dick about it, depending on how you looked at it, but he was being fair.

"Fine," She huffed, "I just…"

"You're bored?" Rose guessed.

"Irritated more like." She answered. "I mean, we have most the day off besides the testing at the Alameda bomb range. We each agreed on having three hours to do whatever and you're spending it on just...driving around looking mundane things and eating food."

"We're in San Francisco!" She exclaimed, waving her arms around the area, "This place is amazing! There are so many things we could see or do! Hell, we could spend that time blowing stuff up at the bomb range, they said we could spend the rest of the day there if we wanted."

"Sure," Rose shrugged, finishing off his latest taco and taking a sip from his cup. "But I don't wanna."

"Why not?"

"Because, you know, sometimes I just want to sit back, relax, and enjoy the view, you know?" He said. "I mean, you know what our job description is?"

"Deal with weird shit, try not to die." She answered drily.

"Exactly" Rose nodded emphatically, "All I'm saying is that our job's a little nuts sometimes, and it's nice to enjoy the more mundane things in life."

"Are you saying the Golden Gate Bridge isn't mundane?" Prince questioned. "I seem to recall it being a great mundane achievement."

"And if our track record is anything to go by, before the day's end we'll have fought on it." He smiled thinly.

Prince frowned, "I thought I was your lucky charm?"

"Oh, you are," He explained, "You start with bad luck to bring me into the burning festering pile of shit, but then give me just enough good luck to get out the other side with my sanity intact."

Prince rolled her eyes, but dropped the point.

"Anyways, you seem more irritable than usual," Rosesaid, brushing past the previous issue and cutting to the heart of the matter. "What's really eating at you?"

She waved him off, "Don't worry about me, Rose. Just lost in my memories."

Rose's frown deepened, "Memories? 'Bout this place?" He looked around the area.

The two were in an area of the city filled with small restaurants, bakeries, cafe's, and food trucks.

"I mean, I like this place, but last I checked, you weren't a foodie." He smirked.

"I'm not," Prince muttered, "It's not this, it's the bay area. San Francisco, it's...it's a powerful place for spirits. Me, especially."

He frowned then snapped his fingers. "Right, you were in that movie. The one with the whale probe, right?"

She snorted, "Sorta."

A lone brow rose it's way over his glasses. "Sorta?"

"I wasn't actually there, I was at sea. That was Ranger." She actually scowled at that, "You know I'm still hung up on that. This close to being in my damn own movie and I miss it thanks to fucking scheduling"

"Ah," Rose nodded, understanding the real issue, "I'm guessing this isn't just about scheduling?"

"What do you mean?" She frowned.

"You're a spirit," He shrugged, "A spirit of glory. You're literally made of what people think about you. It's what makes you who you are. And the fact is, a lot of people think you did something that never happened."

"Kinda makes you question your own existence, doesn't it?"

Prince glared at a puddle with a stern look, examining the face she'd taken in the reflection. The tan skin and brown hair was all temporary. Even the narrow jaw and high cheekbones were things she'd chosen to wear. The twinkling lights buried within the shadow of her cap reminded her of her inhuman existence. It reminded her that she'd never have something that came naturally to all humans.

"I remember being there." She finally spoke up. "But...I also remember...being somewhere else."

"Complicated, huh?" Rose asked

"I remember so many things that don't line up with reality, or so many times reality seems to disappoint compared to what I know. It's…" She pursed her lips, staring at her reflection as she parsed her thoughts. She looked at the way the lights twisted and shifted. How they winked in and out of existence with every thought. She'd tried counting them once, but it always changed.

"Well," he shrugged, "welcome to life knowing magic exists. Shit's complicated."

Prince let out a bitter laugh. "Sure," She said, flickering her 'eyes' back up at him.

"Is that why you wanted to visit her?" He asked, gesturing to the pamphlet in her hands.

She looked down and read the cover again.

"The Sea Air and Space Museum of Alameda," Prince read off. "See the ship that recovered Apollo 11."

Unable to help herself, she cracked a smile. "Yeah, yeah I guess I did."

"She an old friend?" He guessed, scratching his chin.

Prince chuckled, "No, Rose. More than a friend." She looked back fondly at the cover. "A sister."

Rose whistled.

"A sister, eh? I suppose that'd be nice. Really help you get your head on straight."

Prince shot him a caustic look and he held his hands up in surrender.

"Look, we're here for a reason, right?"

Prince eyed the large case leaning behind next to her chair carefully. She wasn't particularly worried about anyone just picking it up and running away with it, the thing was 6 ft tall and 150 lbs. The fact she could carry it in one hand with ease was thanks to the literal power of hopes and dreams.

"The test at the bomb range, and Project Hotel." She responded, nodding along. "It's the second part of it that's got me on edge. It's been a while since I've...seen her? Talked with her?"

Prince scratched her head, "I'm not really sure how to interpret those times through a human lens. It doesn't exactly translate well."

Rose shrugged, "Well, if you're sister's anything like mine, she'll be grumpy that you haven't talked in a while. Yank your ear off yapping about ditching her and being practically a ghost. But in the end…"

He smiled wistfully, looking off into the mist-filled bay. "In the end, she's family. She'll love you all the same."

"If only it was that simple…" Prince sighed.

Rose nodded thoughtfully, turning over his partner's words in his mind. "Well, in this human's expert opinion, you've got a bad case of the melancholy."

"Big surprise," She said drily, "Got anything else for me?"

"Yep!" He chirped, and held out a fish taco.

She stared at it with visible confusion.

"I'm sorry?"

"Comfort food," He explained, "it's how we humans deal with our various existential crises. We bury it in food until we stop worrying about it."

"I'm aware,"

"And when you dine with friends, it makes it all the better." Rose grinned, "It's a tradition as old as time."

"I know, Rose," She sighed tiredly, "I know. Kinda got a lot of experience there."

"So?" He asked, holding out a fish taco to her.

Prince narrowed her many eyes at him. Rose merely smiled back.

"Fine," she grunted, taking the taco from his calloused hands.

"Don't even know why I'm doing this," She grumbled, turning it around in her hands, "I don't even need-"

She stopped, mouth clamped down on the taco, her eyes wide and body stunned.

"Eh?" Rose leaned forward with a smug grin.

Prince put the taco down and just chewed in silence, staring out into the ocean waves with a long gaze.

"Fuck, that's good."

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A/n:

Alright, second chapter. Getting into some bits about the world-building and how the magic system here works.

And ominous fog is ominous.

If all goes well next chap'll be out sunday.

So...probably not anytime soon, knowing me.

 

[Metaldragon868]

Chapter 3


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"Alright, Prince. We're here."

Rose pulled on the parking brake and the truck jerked to a stop inside the depression filled with bare dirt. Surrounding the depression in the earth was a bare field, the Alameda bomb range. It wasn't a grand place, nor was it explicitly the best place to field test classified equipment, at least from a material perspective.

From that of the ethereal, however, this place was steeped in energy. And that had it's own uses to people in his line of work.

He turned the truck off and pulled the keys from the ignition. "You ready Prince?"

Prince just nodded, her mouth stuffed with another fish taco.

Rose gave her a dry look. "Really Prince?"

She shrugged as she took another meaty bite. Her pearl white teeth ripped through the meat and bread of the Mexican-American staple, juice and sauce dribbling down the side of her powerful jaws as they ground the meal into pieces. In spite of the messy food, her clothes were still just as immaculate as always.

"And you call me a glutton."

She scowled, swallowing the mouthful with a large gulp. "You can't blame me, I'm a spirit of glory. Stuff like this is my bread and butter. You should have known this was going to happen."

"Oh, I did," Rose grinned teasingly.

Prince groaned and stepped out herself, bringing an entire bag stuffed with empty taco wrappers. "Look, do you have any idea how hard it is for a spirit like me to get a good meal? Like, an actual good meal?"

"Yeah, I'd say I've got some idea." Rose snarked as he started unlatching the containers in the back of the truck. "Kinda why I brought it up."

"I mean," Prince continued on in her rant, waving around a half-eat fish taco like it was a baton, "I need aether like you need mater, Rose."

The burly man sighed, resigned to getting another lecture from his partner. Instead, he worked to open up all their supplies and get everything arranged for them.

"And the only thing that makes aether are living souls. You guys leave that stuff all over the place," She gestured to the expanse around them with her half eaten meal. "But the less involved you are, the less there is. The less you give a fuck about what you're crafting, the less of an imprint you leave. The shit I get from most restaurants or grocery stores is either made from passionless assembly line cooking or full on automated food factories."

"Either way," She waved the taco in Rose's face to accentuate each point, "Most stuff tastes like formless gruel to me."

"Yep," Rose grunted as he hefted open the gun locker's door. "It's why I did it." he repeated.

As he dug through the locker, searching for something in particular, Prince finished off her last remaining taco.

"Didn't mean you had to turn into a pig though." He commented, "especially after giving me lip for 'wasting all my hazard pay on food'." Rose shook his head teasingly, "What a hypocrite."

"Yeah, well, at least you can get something out of Mcdonald's," Prince grumbled. "It's been at least a year since I've had a good meal. Plus, it's not like you're batting 1000."

"Eh, fair. The last place was a bust." Rose admitted, pulling out a revolver complete with a shoulder holster from the locker. "Here you go," He said holding it grip first out to Prince with one hand while the other rustled through the locker for the ammunition.

"Thanks," She accepted it, strapping the holster in place under her jacket, "and I feel like that's an understatement."

"Heh," He let out a chuckle as he pulled a box out of the bottom of the container, "I wonder how the chef of that restaurant would react if he knew he got arrested because a spirit could taste the pedophilia in his food. And catch." He said, tossing the box her way.

"Probably nothing, 'cause then we'd have to kill him, or mind wipe him." She pointed out while catching the box with ease. She opened it up, inspected the specialty rounds inside, before stuffing it in her other jacket pocket.

"Yeah, probably," Rose agreed as he pulled out a highly customized lever-action rifle with gold plating and intricate checker pattern grip along with an accompanying belt of ammunition in the other hand. He wrapped the rifle's strap across him and let it hang from his shoulder, then tied the belt along his waist. After that, he pulled out another large box and hopped off the truck.

Prince shot him a look.

"What?"

"Where's mine?"

"I just tossed it to you," He said, gesturing to her side where she'd stored the revolver.

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"You mean your giant fuckoff huge box?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck that, you do it," Rose said, walking off.

"What, are you too much of a baby to pick it up?" She teased him.

"I only have so many hands." He shot back, wiggling the box in his hand.

"Excuses excuse." She shook her head with a wry smile.

Rose scoffed and his arms.

"You're soft, Rose. You need to bulk up, you know? Put on some muscle string bean." She joked as she lightly punched him in his melon-sized bicep.

"Yeah…" he said drily, "I'll get right on that."

Prince hopped up onto the truck to get her box while Rose walked into the middle of the pit.

He set down the in the center and opened it up, revealing a wide array of advanced sensors and computing equipment. That, and a few deceptively simple objects, such as a pair of gold divining rods, a silver knife, and a round bronze mirror. Using the knife, he started scratching a simple runic circle around him.

While he was finishing up on that, Prince walked up beside him with her container slung over her shoulder. She let it slide off and thump to the ground, the box so heavy that it managed to dig itself an inch or two into the soft soil.

"So, the basic detection setup?" She asked. "Aim for the mirror, right?"

"Eh, sorta." He answered as he applied the last touch to the circle. Getting up he tossed the mirror to her. "If you can go ahead and put it in a good spot, I'll finish setting up over here."

"Sure," She shrugged, then gestured to the circle, "You think that'll be a decent enough privacy screen?"

"It's a start," He said, wiping off the knife.

Then, with a swift move, he used it to slice open the palm of his hand. Carefully measuring his movements, he placed a drop in seven specific equidistant points in the circle. When the last dollop of blood fell into the array carved into the dirt, the air shifted.

It was a subtle thing, if one wasn't listening for it they might not notice or pass it off as something else. To the attentive, however, the world grew both distant and close all at the same time. It was not dissimilar to dipping one's head underwater, if much less intense.

"There we go," Rose said, flashing her a smile as he flipped the knife with his good hand. Catching it, he used it to gesture to the box again, "Now I just gotta get everything else out here."

"Well, let me help you out a bit." Prince said before walking into the center of the array.

Rose raised a brow, "You sure about this Prince? With all this dark aether around…" he said, gesturing to the fog.

It was lighter out here, miles from the coastline. It was far from gone, though. They could still pick up thick whiffs of the stuff swirling around them.

"It's fine, Rose." She brushed his concerns off as took her stance in the center. She raised her arms up slowly, opening them wide to either side of her and turning her head to the sky as if she was giving praise to some sun god.

Rose sighed as he felt the familiar buzz of static slowly fill the air. Tiny blue sparks began to dance along her arms as the wind picked up. The fog around them was pushed out to the edges of the field and Rose could hear a thousand distant whispers at the fringes of his hearing.

It was all what he had expected.

He flinched when he felt something wet hit his cheek. Running a hand it, it came off with something slick and black. Frowning, he looked up to the sky above them.

What he found was an ocean of rippling darkness hanging over their heads.

His eyes widened, "Princ-!

BOOM

The air around Rose snapped with a blast of deafening thunder. Lances of light stabbing painful spots into his vision even through his sunglasses. A hammer blow slammed into his gut, knocking him off his feet and the wind out of his body.

For a moment, he just sat there. Then his mind finally rebooted, and he got up slowly, gasping painfully as he tried to get his breath back. Holding his chest tenderly as pain burned across his body, he took stock of his surroundings.

The skies above them were still black as night. Storm clouds hung overhead, fat, black, low hanging things filled with something far darker than mere water. Lightning strikes flashed across the landscape, each shooting knives into his vision.

On the ground, however, was a more immediate problem. The circle was now scorched into the ground, smoke rising from the runes. The delicate sensor equipment sent scattered around. No doubt most of it had been fried, but some of it might have gotten something. The Mirror was fine, but the divining rods were little more than melted scrap.

And in the center of the circle was a woman in a long, pale grey military dress on her knees, blankly looking at nothing with star-filled eyes.

Rose's heart clenched and his throat tightened.

"Prince!" he croaked.

She didn't react.

Cursing, he picked up the silver knife up from the ground and threw it at the side of her head, then immediately dove to the ground.

Not a second after he heard the knife clink against her skull, than did the mound of dirt behind where he'd been standing explode. More followed, pounding out deafening blasts and tearing holes in the field around them. Piles of dirt were thrown into the air, fire rained around him, and the howling winds threw it all about.

Rose opened his mouth to try and scream her name over the roar of cannon fire and thunder.

BOOM

Then it all came to a deafening stop.

Peeking out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blink dumbly. Then, a moment later, her entire body stuttered. Space folded in on itself, unfathomable lights and colors flashing in a way that made his brain painfully contort itself into a pretzel in an attempt to understand just what it was seeing.

A moment later, Prince sat there, jeans, shirt, and jacket all how they'd been not minutes ago.

"...Prince?" Rose repeated cautiously.

"...yeah…" Prince said absently, her voice carrying a disturbing echo, as if a small chorus followed her every word, "yeah...sorry about that. I just…"

"Dark lightning tazed your system?" Rose grunted as he got up.

"...yeah...sounds about right." She responded, still sounding a bit different. "Give me a minute to pull myself together, Rose. I'm a bit unwound at the moment."

"We don't have time for that, Prince."

She frowned ever so slightly, tilting her head to the side. "What do you mean?"

Rose gestured up to the stormy sky. The lightning striking across the landscape. The raging winds. The soft glow of distant fires. And the dark shapes flitting about in all too familiar twisting formations.

"Well fuck."

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A/n: Sorry this is late. Finished this bit up, and I kinda felt like I needed something more to make it a proper chapter, but it's also a good stopping point.

Plus it was hard for me to think of a good place to take it next within the confines of a chapter.

So here you go.

Sorry it's not more.

 

[Metaldragon868]

Chapter 4



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A/n: Sorry for the delay


"Fucking hell,"

The two of the cursed as the truck came rounded the hill and came upon the city below them. They'd seen the fires from the bomb range, but it was something else to see it in person.

"You see anything in particular Prince?" Rose asked as he steered the truck through the winding switchbacks downhill.

"Airstrikes. Indiscriminate ones by the look of it," She commented as she peered through the glass, "Though that might have something to do with what's doing this."

"Which is?"

The twinkling lights under Prince's brow narrowed.

"Bombers. Old ones. Looks like Vals. I can only spot a flight of them hanging around right now, but that sounds suspiciously low given everything else that's happening."

"Vals?"

"Japanese dive bombers, circa World War II. Real pain in the ass."

Rose pressed his lips together tightly and rubbed a free hand over his stubble. "The whole plane?" He asked as his mind spun through possibilities.

"Like I said, a whole flight of them." She paused, twisting her head as if to get a better angle. "But...I think they're something...demonic...going on with them."

"Yeah, because that clears things up," Rose snarked, "What, we talking black ghostly forms with azure flames? Planes made of slick black metal and pulsating red blood? Skeletal riders and howling banshees on their tail?"

"Bit of column A, bit of column B," Prince answered. "It's...hard to get a fix, really. They're pretty far away, and the pitch black skies aren't helping anything."

"Well...fuck," He ground his teeth together in frustration. A dozen possibilities came to mind, each one worse than the last. "Could be a projection while something else happens. Could also be spirits repossessing old stuff out for vengeance. Could even be Shades from the old war bubbling back up."

Rose shivered, remembering old events he'd tried to put in the past. "I hope it's not Shades."

He glanced at his partner for some semblance of comfort. "Got any theories yourself?"

"Hmm…" Prince said distractedly. "Nothing solid."

"None of us do, if we did we wouldn't be caught with our pants down and a fat log halfway out our ass." He groused. "Now come on, this is a team effort. Spill."

Prince was tempted to roll her eyes and huff, but held herself back. Rose was speaking with a tension and edge she was long familiar with. Part of it irked her, but she knew it was just the normal human response to things spinning wildly and suddenly out of control. Stress and fear were pushing him, and pushing back wasn't going to help anything. She had to roll with his punches, just like he did with hers.

Just like always.

"You know that fog earlier?" She began "How it was steeped in dark aether?"

"Yeah. It kinda disappeared right about the time you got blasted by the sky, which is currently looking more like a demonic lake."

"Got a theory about that." She continued, twisting in her seat to face him. "It felt like the two worlds were merging, right? The Ethereal in the Material?"

"Yeah, Convergence." He nodded, then froze as what she was considering struck him. "You saying it feels like we're undergoing that right now?"

Prince took in a deep breath from the air around her and processed. She held it in what passed for her lungs and felt the air, really felt it, breaking it down and all the little sensations it caused as it passed through her body.

"...Yeah...yeah it definitely feels like it. The air is absolutely flooded with aether. I don't think Mater and Aether ratios are quite at balance, but there's a helluva a lot more magic in the air than there should be for this plane. And that matches up with what we know about Convergence, the spiritual and mortal worlds combining and all that." She explained. "It's a natural cycle, coming in and out like the tides. Tide goes out, the worlds are far apart and magic is weak in our world. Tide comes in, and the mystic parts of reality swell in strength until they become as integral as the dirt, sea, and sky."

"Except," Rose countered, "that's a very long and methodical cycle. An hour ago, we were hovering around the lowest tide possible. It should have taken nearly two millennia to gradually shift back to high tide, increment by increment. Convergence doesn't just happen all at once overnight."

"Well, whatever we're looking at, it's- ARG!"

Rose glanced at Captain Prince from out of the corner of his eye. The truck bounced as he sped over a pothole.

"You alright?" he asked.

Prince grunted and sat up in her seat, "I'm fading in and out."

She held up a hand in front of herself, gazing at it with starry eyes. As she moved it around, it left an afterimage of greyscale in its wake. It was as if just beneath the surface of her skin, another ghostly form pulled from the reels of a black and white film existed.

"I think I've been…" She shivered, the multifaceted nature of her existence spinning around itself, "I'm out of sync."

"Out of sync?" He asked.

"Yeah," Prince said, curling her fingers and watching the ghostly after images trail through the air. "You know how I'm the gestalt spirit?"

Her thoughts felt sluggish and distracted. Every idea branched off into a thousand more, every memory spinning into its own swan song. She felt crowded, like she was alone in her body.

"Well, you're a spirit of glory, but yeah?" He answered. "You saying the central tenants are becoming untethered?"

"No...maybe...I don't-NO", Prince shivered violently as she felt something pass through her.

Rose glanced over and saw a half dozen ghostly forms writhing on top of her, each form slightly different and overlapping with one another. Each one screaming, some in agony, some in horror, and some in rage.

"Dammit! Prince?" He cursed, patting himself down to try and find something to stop it.

Just as soon as it started, Prince snapped back into place as her normal self. She shivered in her seat, soaked to the bone and dripping all over the interior of the truck.

Rose winced, his experience with his partner allowing him to empathize with her pain. "Looks like you're getting ripped apart."

"More like pulling myself back together," She answered with a hoarse voice, brushing her dripping wet hair out of her face. "It's gonna be hard for me to do anything major with aether like this."

"Alright, no magic." Rose summarized. "Got it."

"It's more complicated than that" Prince hedged. Then she pulled her revolver from her holster and checked it over. A wave of soft radiant blue light ran over the gun, then dissipated into the air. She grimaced. "But I'm definitely not at100%. I can barely even sync up with my gun."

She holstered the revolver with a huff, angrily crossing her arms as she glared out the front window.

"So what do we do now?"

"Try and hook up with the Bureau. Can you call them up?" Rose asked.

Prince sighed but pulled out her phone, only to discover it had no bars.

"No signal," She explained, "Gonna try for the network."

She put in the digits for the backup system in place, the one that held a basis on more ethereal laws. She managed to get a connection, which lifted her spirits. Putting it to her head, she waited for the operator to pick up.

When the first twisted, screaming, syllable hit her ear, she crushed the phone in her hands into twisted scrap.

Rose flinched at the loud action, "Christ Prince!" He glanced at her from the corner of his shades and noticed the disturbed look on her face. "...That bad?"

"Communications have been...corrupted." She said with a worried tone. "I...honestly I doubt most mortals could listen to it without going insane or getting subverted. Possibly becoming hosts."

Rose opened his mouth, but wasn't really sure what to say to that.

"Ah…"

Prince brushed it off, her mind spinning to lock on to what she could use. "Communication's fucked for us, so it's probably fucked for everyone. Which means no help coming anytime soon."

"...Well, some people will probably take notice of San Francisco suddenly dropping off the grid, but I get your point," he agreed, "doubt anyone will be getting the word out anytime soon. Kinda makes sense if your whole Convergence theory holds up."

Prince frowned, pondering that, then nodded. "Yeah, as the normal laws of physics start having to contend with the laws of aether, some things will probably get weird. Radio waves and wireless communication probably aren't robust enough to deal with that. Even if they are, they probably line up too closely with basic precepts and tenants of various spirits floating around."

"Not to mention the ones trying to kill us all," Rose cut in, "I bet those guys are responsible for the screaming. Wouldn't even be surprised if it's on purpose, as a kind of ethereal electronic and psychological warfare."

Prince cupped her chin and pursed her lips, eyeing the burning Oakland scenery in the background.

"I don't know about that…"

"You don't? Makes sense to me."

"But you forget, spirits aren't creatures of logic. We're creatures of feeling." She gestured a hand to herself, "I'm fortunate in that one of my tenets is about thinking things through instead of just acting, but I doubt that's what these things are feeling. Given what I'm seeing, it's more likely it's something like blind rage and they're just screaming at everything, and it just so happens that some of our stuff has the misfortune of picking it up. Either way, I'd be surprised if these things are doing it intentionally as a strategic move."

"Whatever the hell they are," Rose added, half jokingly.

The corner of Prince's lip twitched.

"Yes," she agreed with a slow and deliberate nod, "whatever the hell they are."

"Well, I-"

BOOM

A deafening blast of air crashed into them, a feeling not unlike a sledgehammer slamming into their chest and forcing the breath from their lungs. Rose fought to control the truck as the world violently shook around him.

"What the hell was that!" he shouted, glancing around frantically to try and catch a glimpse of what had just happened.

"I don't…" Prince began, head on a swivel as she fought to push her ego's down and find out what happened. "I think...Fuck!"

He flicked his eyes to her for a half second, seeing her twisted around in her seat, head out the window, and staring at something behind them with a grimace.

"What?"

"They bombed the range where we just were."

Rose breathed in sharply.

Above him he could hear the ominous hum of propellers, like the droning of a biblical plague hovering just above them, waiting to crash down like a wave. It set his teeth on edge. He tried to swallow but found his mouth dry. He let out his breath and forced his grip on the wheel to relax.

"They're following us, aren't they?"

"Me, Rose. They're following me." She said solemnly.

Then she went quiet.

"Damn Nip bastards" a voice growled.

Rose's head snapped to the side in shock, and found his partner replaced by the grey apparition from the field. Her face was pulled into a rictus of rage. All teeth, fire, and fury. She twisted around in her seat, pulled her revolver from her deathly pale officer's coat, and aimed at something behind them with half her body hanging out the window.

"Burn in-!"

"PRINCE!" he shouted, cutting her off.

Her form stopped and stuttered, like a program glitching in and out of the fabric of reality.

Rose seized the fleeting moment he'd stolen, taking one hand off the wheel and desperately digging through his various pockets for something, anything that could help, all while he did his level best to keep the truck safe and moving on the road.

"Fuck fuck fuck," He muttered to himself as he tried to juggle several trains of thought at the same time, all equally important to keeping him from to a violent end in the next couple seconds.

Finally, after feeling a solid lump in his shirt pocket, he found it. He pulled out a lump of metal that had been melted and warped into something vaguely resembling a star. He held it tight in his free fist and brought it up to his mouth. He wasn't a mage, not by training anyways, but one didn't survive for nearly 20 years in the BPRD without learning a few tricks of the trade.

Rose whispered her name, her true name into the lump of metal and squeezed it hard enough to draw blood from his hand.

Prince's body gave a violent shudder and Rose looked away as reality twisted into impossible shapes in the corner of his eye. When he looked back, Prince, back in her jacket and jeans, was leaning forward in her seat, head in her hands and gun on her lap. She heaved deeply, her whole body trembling for a moment, before going unnaturally still.

She looked up, her teeth grinding together, and the shadows covering her eyes seemed deeper.

"...Sorry about that." Prince let out. "..Thanks for bringing me back, Rose."

"No problem," Rose said, even as put the warped star away and flexed his sore hand. "Just trying to look out for you. You gonna be alright?"

She sucked in a harsh breath through her teeth. Rose could see the tension in her body. He couldn't see the afterimages anymore, but that was more because she wasn't moving anymore than she had to. She wasn't even keeping up the facade of breathing like she normally did, her entire body was held still by her will alone.

"...no." She shook her head, "no, I've been rattled good. You being here is probably the only thing keeping my psyche in the present, and not spinning back to the old days."

Rose grimaced, "so you think I can expect to see more of Halsey's old girl?"

Prince closed her eyes and let out a harsh breath, "...yeah...maybe...probably. All this," she gestured to the general chaos and darkness around them, "isn't helping. That blast scrambled me, and even though your presence is pulling my spirit back to the present, this whole shit show is a damn strong reminder of the past."

"It just makes me want to...want to...WANT TO…" She bared her teeth, her form flickering with warped greyscale again.

"Prince," Rose cautioned.

Prince visibly worked to reign herself in. Closing her eyes and centering herself, she managed to focus on Rose's presence and anchor herself to him again.

"Yeah, right, sorry." She said, shaking her head from the nightmares of her past. "But you get the idea."

"Yeah...I do…" Rose frowned, putting both hands back on the wheel and trying to think about what to do next.

The Bay Area had been dragged into a hellish nightmare of World War II, they were on their own with no support, and Prince was fighting an internal war with the vengeful shadow of herself. What the hell was Rose supposed to do about that?

He forced himself to calm down, telling himself that he'd been through worse before. That incident in Japan, in particular, came to mind. Prince and him had made it through that, mission accomplished and alive, they could make it through this.

Although, he couldn't help but think, back then, we were going in there for a mission. We knew what we were getting into. We were prepared, we had support, we had information.

Right now, we got jack shit.

He bit the inside of his cheek and forced the doubts from his mind. They wouldn't help him now. He didn't need more doubts, he needed answers and directions. They were running aimlessly now, they needed something to guide them. A mission, a goal.

Well he thought to himself, I suppose the first step of any good op is information gathering.

"Prince," he said sharply, the disparate threads of a plan beginning to come together in his mind. "Do you think you can send up some recon?"

He saw his partner bite her lip and the lights buried in her shadowed face twinkled in thought. "...maybe."

"I'm going to need better than maybe, Prince."

She clicked her tongue in irritation, but Rose could tell it wasn't really directed at his so much as it was aimed at the fucked situation they found themselves in.

"I might be able to send something up," She admitted, "but even if I do, I can't be certain it won't be noticed by the air cover already up there. The Eye in the Sky doesn't exactly have much staying power in contested airspace, not on its own anyway, and in my condition, I don't think I'll be able to manage much of an air fleet."

"How much do you think you can hold in the air at a time?" Rose asked.

"Hmm...depends on what I send up, and how. Maybe...3 birds? I could probably pull more if I pull from the older or more iconic stock. You know, stuff I have a better connection with. But then I run the risk of losing myself in the past." She explained. "If I want more power, then I'll have to stop fighting my instincts and go with the flow, which means basically no control. If I want more control, I'll have to fight myself the whole time and that means barely any actual power getting out there."

"Well...that all sounds like shit…" He sighed, running his sore hand through his hair,

"If we'd brought Betty, this'd be a hell of a lot easier." Prince pointed out, just barely on this side of 'I told you so'.

Rose rolled his eyes so hard they almost fell out of his skull. "Yeah, and if we were back in Pearl this shit wouldn't be a problem at all." He shot back.

Prince paused at that, a pensive look flickering upon her face. "You don't think that...maybe Pearl's being attack too?"

Rose blinked. "That's a scary thought."

"For who?"

"...Probably everyone."

"...Point."

Rose shivered at the thought of what could happen if Pearl Harbor was attacked again, especially like this, and instead focused on the here and now. "Alright, it ain't much, but we're going to have to work with what we got. And the first thing we need is information. Without that, we could make things worse, be working against ourselves, or blunder into a trap. The best way to get that is to have the Eye in the Sky, preferably without drawing any more attention to us."

Prince frowned and leaned back in the passenger seat as she tossed around the problem. She picked up the revolver in her lap idly, running her hands along the classic make of the gun.

"...I might be able to send up a small drone. We don't need much in the way of fancy equipment, right? Just a general vibe on what's happening?"

"Yep. We can save the instrumentation for later, right now we just need to know the basics." He confirmed.

"Then...yeah, a drone would work. Small, low power, quiet, high altitude." She nodded to herself and flipped the gun into her waiting hand. "I can make it work."

"Good, do it," Rose nodded seriously as his mind shifted, focusing on how to deal with their other problem.

Prince leaned out of the open window again, aiming her Peacemaker into the sky as Rose thought. There was a bang, more muted than normal, as the gun went off in her hand. Rose didn't see the arc of white steam and courtesies as the round arced through the sky, but he'd seen his partner do it enough times to know what to expect. A second later, there was the distant pop that he'd been waiting for, followed by a quiet buzz that was soon drowned out by the rest of the violence outside.

As Prince did her thing with the drone, Rose tried to think of a way to leverage their problems as best as possible as well as where to drive next. They needed to keep moving, or else the enemy, whatever the hell they were, would pin them down and bomb them into oblivion. He also didn't have any illusions about who'd have to do most of the work here. If it really was Shades from WWII that were causing this, then Prince would be their best bet for taking them out.

Hell, that's usually what Prince does. He thought grimly, Prince is the magical muscle, and I'm the crafty brains of the operation. If Prince can't bring that magical might to bear properly, then we're in a rough spot. Especially if ti's even half as bad as it looks.

So how can we leverage what she's got properly? How can I get her to pull out her maximum potential?

"Problem," Prince said in a clipped tone, pulling Rose from his thoughts.

He saw the dark frown on her face and cursed internally. He'd been hoping for any kind of good news, but it looked like it just wasn't that kind of day. "What do we got?"

"Ships in the bay, looks like a fleet of Shades straight from the old days. They're all bristling with guns, teeth, and hate."

"Fuck."

"Yep."

Rose rubbed his face, wiping the sweat from his brow and trying not to devolve into a stream of cursing. It'd feel nice, but it wouldn't help.

"Where are they?" He asked.

"Sitting offshore of San Fran. Looks like they're bombing it or doing some kind of invasion. Nothing good."

"How strong is the fleet?"

"What you're really asking is 'can I take them like this'," she correctly guessed, "and the answer is no. Not like this, anyways. I could launch some birds and I might be able to take down some of the smaller ships. Maybe a destroyer or cruiser here and there, but they've got a couple battlewagons and a flat top."

"And…" The twinkling lights of her eyes narrowed, becoming a focused line of glittering stars where her eyes should have been. "It looks like they have something special."

"Special?"

"Big bitch. Kinda looks like it could be a named spirit." She cocked her head, "Actually...I might recognize her."

"A named spirit?" Rose resisted the urge to throw his hands in the air, "Fan-fucking-tastic. That's all we needed."

"Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to do much damage with a handful of birds. I'd need a massed strike to make a real dent, and I don't have a firm enough grip on my Aether to do that."

"To make a real dent…" Rose muttered.

Something about that struck him, and he wasn't quite sure why.

"Isn't that what missiles are for?" He asked.

"Yeah," She shrugged, "but they'll probably only put down the smaller ships, like I said. The big ones are the real problem, and I can't guarantee that I'll be able to hit hard enough with the handful of spit and harsh language I can pull together to take them out. I'm not even sure they'll scratch the paint, some of those old girls are tough."

"What I really need is a fleet."

"Or…" Rose said, gears turning in his mind. "A really big hammer."

Prince shot him a puzzled look. "Huh?"

"Well," Rose shrugged, actually feeling something approaching hope as things started to click into place. "There's two values of worth here. Quantity and Quality. Since we can't hope to match them in the former, we'll just have to play to the later."

"Yeah, but…" She frowned, "The best I have for that probably isn't good enough. Not if the level of dark Aether floating around is any indication of their strength. I'd need something stronger than a couple of Harpoons to take any of the big girls down."

"Something stronger…" Rose smirked, the idea crystallizing. It was a long shot, but...

The lights on Prince's face blinked out and her jaw dropped as the same idea struck hit her.

Rose flashed her a hungry smile.

"We still have to do our weapon trials, don't we Prince?"

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A/n: Sorry again for the delay.

I've kind of had a lot of stuff on my plate, that and I've been sick about 3 times in the past month.

Fun times.

Anyways, things are picking up, dunno when the next chapter will be out, but this'll probably become a once-a-month kinda thing unless something changes.

Which could always happen, I make no promises about anything.

Hopefully, though, this chapter isn't a massive disappointment or anything.