Looks like cuddle-puddles with a clumsy DD won. This can't possibly go wrong.
- - - -
"Well... Dee sounds like she really wants to cuddle," you say, smiling at the thought of a nice warm destroyer curled up on your tummy. Ideally, it'd be better with more. But luckily destroyers tended to nap in packs. "I'd hate to let her down."
Raleigh smiles, "Somehow I knew you'd say that." He settles into the truck's bench seat, tapping out a reply on what you can only assume is a pocket wireless-telegraph--it's certainly not a phone, given that he's not speaking into it. "She'll be happy, poor thing's been all alone since her sisters sortied a few days ago."
"Sisters?"
"O'Bannon and Kidd," said Your Admiral, "Precious little girls, the lot of them."
"I can imagine," you say, smiling at the thought of a three-destroyer cuddle puddle. Fletchers were just so damn cuddly... whoever designed them could make a decent living selling plushies.
The rest of the ride back elapses in silence. You were tired before, and digesting the massive amount of succulent burgers filling your somehow-still-slender belly only sapped more of your energy. You feel your boilers settle down to an idling simmer when Raleigh pokes you in the shoulder.
"Mmm wazzat?" you elucidate.
Your Admiral waved out the window at... at what seemed to be a second-rate resort hotel with a freshly-painted sign marking it as "Galveston Bay Naval Shipgirl Station."
"We work with what we have," explained Your Admiral, hopping off the back of the truck and offering you a hand.
You stifle a blush as you take it, ducking your way out of the cab and hopping down onto the warm blacktop. You can feel the sun-baked asphalt warm the bottom of your sneakers... it feels nice. The kind of friendly warmth that makes you want to defend this little patch of ground and all that it stands for. "What, uh... what is this place?"
"Galveston Bay NSS," said Raleigh, a good-natured smirk on his face as he waved to the sign.
You shoot him a disappointed look. "I can read you know."
"We needed a base in the Gulf," said Raleigh, his hands burrowing into the pockets of his whites, "And you girls take less taking care of than a normal ship."
"Ah," you say. At least the beds should be nice, even if it is a little weird. But before you can contemplated it further, a tiny speed-demon comes streaking out of the lobby doors as fast as her tiny legs will carry her.
"'LASKA!" screamed Dee at the top of her tiny lungs, "LASKA LASKA LASKA!" The destroyer giggled as she ran, but her enthusiasm overtook her abilities, and her foot caught on a curb.
She had just enough time to yelp as she flipped though the air, her arms flailing in circles as she desperately tried to generate aerodynamic lift. Sadly, it was not to be, Dee landed butt-first on the roof of a parked sedan, crumpling the metal and cracking the windshield with a spray of shattered safety glass. "imokay!" she yelped, bouncing off the car and onto her feet.
"Dee," Raleigh scowled, his stare stopping the little girl dead in her tracks. "I told you not to run around the base."
"Oh," the destroyer froze, her face instantly transitioning from boundless enthusiasm to equally-boundless sadness. "I... I..." she hung her head, "I forgot. I'm sorry," she said, slowly moping over to you.
"That's coming out of your paycheck you know."
"Mmhm," sniffed Dee, shuffling over to you to bury her face in your belly. "'m really sorry..." she moans.
[ ] "It's okay, Dee. You were just happy to see me!"
[ ] "I'm sure you are, but you really shouldn't have done that."
[ ] "Hey, Admiral? Is that room still on the table?"
[ ] Other/write in.