Kant-O-Celle Quest [a Kantai Collection game, transcribed from 4chan]

[Trace Coburn]

Transcriber's forenote: I own nothing within this thread, except for whatever effect my posts in the original threads had on the decisions made during each Quest thread. I am archiving this Quest to Spacebattles.com with the gracious permission of demetrious. but none of the side-material — Crix's Torpedo Cruisers, the Naka side-story, the contributions by Hate-poster or [Navy Vet], and so forth. Those you'll have to read on suptg or archive.moe; that said, that side-material is well worth the effort, not to mention it explains a number of things that happen in-quest.
After much interest, most of the side-stories and other write-ups have been transcribed into this thread. The major write-ups are linked below; please check the thread-marks for a fuller listing.

Also, for reference, italic text — or the [bracketed black text] I am transitioning to — in the various transcribed posts indicates text that was spoilered/redacted in the original.

For those who want to know when the next thread(s) will be, demetrious announces that on his Twitter account - demetrious @ Twitter

The central archive for the entire Quest, including all the discussion and supplementary material I'm (currently) omitting, is at sup/tg/ - Archive

Now, without any further ado, I present: demetrious's Kant-O-Celle Quest!

Index of side-stories: — Current through Thread #144/Session #73
Opening Crawl
BB-61, by FeelthyHornet
Idol of the Fleet, Naka-Chan! by Naka-poster — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
—» Idol of the Fleet, Naka-Chan! — the Second Act — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Chief Parker: Secret Squirrel from the Goat Locker, by Navy-Vet
Akagi-sama and Tomohara-Ittō-Kai-i, by song-anon
The Adventures of Kitakami and Ooi!, by Crix
Nightmares of Ironbottom Sound, by Balistafreak
Kaga, 76 years Later by FeelthyHornet
Maple-leaves and Molson's by RCN-Anon
HMS Warspite, by UnAble Seaman Brit-Anon
An Interview in London, by FrostyZippo — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Central's Portsmouth Series:
—» The Battle of Portsmouth
—» Of Monuments and Memories
—» Back in the Saddle
Murakumo (is) Special, by Crix
LurK's Addresses series:
—» Retreat, Hell! — POTUS Addresses the Nation
—» To Do One's Duty — The British Prime Minister addresses the Commons
—» An Appeal to Sanity — the UN General Secretary addresses the world
—» We Remember — the Canadian Governor-General's Address
Of Storms, Sweet Water and Spirits: The Fresh Water Fleet, by Fluffbringer — Explicitly declared non-canon
CNN.com reports on the Battle of Los Angeles, by Richard D. Fox
BB-bamalalamamlama, by Arty-anon
The 'AWOL' Series, by Renaissance-anon — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
The Rebirth of USS Oklahoma City, by Dante41
Hornet and Akagi's Excellent Adventure, by drfeelgood
'Bong-ships', by FrostyZippo — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Panzerschiffe Deutschland, by Venom
You Gotta Go Fast, Willie! by Shimakaze Write-anon
Memories of Higgins, by LurK
Fighting Lady, by Rin
Day Off (or "When Settle Met Hōshō"), by Crix
Project E, by The Fabulous Mr. Foxx — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Radio Free Vengeance, by Melpomene — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
CV-9 Essex, by Essex-poster — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
HMS Thunderchild, by Central
Maya-Sama and Sword-chan Learn THINGS!, by theJMPer
The Queen of the Cape, by Melpomene and Naka-poster — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATORS; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
South Dakota and Ostfriesland, by North Atlantic Shipping — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Lokasenna, by an unknown poster — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Hell and Texas, by Melpomene — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Shoukaku Time, by Senator NANO!Desu — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
E and E, by Nicholas
Shipgirl Sea Shanties, by Renaissance-anon — REMOVED FROM SV BY REQUEST OF THE CREATOR; PLEASE READ AT THE SB.COM THREAD.
Destroyer Dad, by Merc Command
From Akigumo's Sketchbook, by LurK

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-O-CELLE QUEST #1: SHIPSLUT SLAUGHTER


Settle's Devils (art by pixel-anon)​

"Wake up, sir."

You simply slump in your seat a little more, just enough to let your hat-brim fall over your eyes a little more – a motion that, to any outside observer, could look like you're just shifting in your sleep. Unfortunately, your attacker is a ChairFarce man first and a loadmaster second, which means he takes especial delight in being a fucking prick. You hear him clear his throat with much preamble and brace yourself for the inevitable blast.

"SIR, WE HAVE ARRIVED AT OUR DESTINATION Suff," he finishes as you smack him across the face with the brim off your dress uniform hat.

"Thank you, jackass," you mutter as you painfully extract yourself from your seat. C-5s are built for capacity, not comfort – and during Our Current Difficulties, as POTUS has seen fit to call it, even Rear Admirals don't get priority for special rides. You could've waited for one, but that would've given the Navy more excuses to schedule you for impromptu speeches.

Fuck that, fuck them, and fuck the barge they floated in on. The only memory of Los Angeles you need follows you around every day – and even speaks, on occasion. You jerk your thumb over your shoulder at him.

"Want to wake him up, too?"

The loadmaster's eyes slide towards the sleeping man with short-cropped hair, and then back to you, smoldering with suspicion.

You grin at him. "Can't blame me for trying."

You disembark the C-5 with the rest of the crew, and take a moment to stretch while standing on the tarmac. The concrete and asphalt of Yokota airbase sprawls out on either side of you far as the eye can see in the... you check your watch and do some math. It's only 0530, local time, and the sun's not quite up yet.

You dust at your dress uniform, which seems remarkably unrumpled, considering your transit. You're supposed to have a JSDF counterpart meeting you here to drive you to Yokosuka, but he's nowhere to be seen – yet. It might be a good chance to talk to your charges and make sure everyone's on their best goddamned behavior.

Especially Sammy.

Goddamned Sammy.

>wait for the welcoming committee
>go wake up the walking nightmare
>see to your charges


>go wake up the walking nightmare

Corporal Hate, USMC (art by pixel-anon)​

You find yourself having to choose between dealing with Sammy after she's been cooped up on a plane for a trillion hours, and having to wake up Corporal Hate.

It's going to be one of those goddamned days, and the sun hasn't even insert-rising-sun-pun-here oh, fuck it. You trot back up the ramp and into the C-5s cavernous cargo bay, and over to the shitty little seat where Corporal Hate is sleeping. Settling your hat back onto your head, you dust off the scrambled eggs, for what little good it's worth, and take a deep breath.

"FUCK!" The shouted expletive is the only warning you get before the horde is upon you. The sound of their excited little yips and thundering pawpatter echoes around the cavernous fuselage of the C-5 before thirty goddamned Corgis cannonball directly into Corporal Hate's lap, swarming over him with much barking, pawing and licking.

"GORARMFUCKSHITDCXZ," the Corporal seems to shout, rising from his seat, his bloodshot eyes red and raging, hands ready to kill. You feel a faint breeze which you attribute to the air molecules near him getting the fuck out of the way. Seeing this, the corgis finally settle down on their haunches, panting happily at the only man you've ever met that can handle the little bastards.

You glance over at the loadmaster and his crew, who are looking at the prematurely-opened door of their very large dog carrier and then looking back at Corporal Hate. They wisely decide to leave the area, leaving you to retrieve the thirty leashes from inside it and hand them to the Corporal.

He eyeballs you with bloodshot eyes as you hand them over. "I hate you," he says, with real feeling.

You smile at him. "Means I did something right!"

>May as well see to Sammy, before someone gets owned.
>You don't have enough sleep for that shit. Just go find Hornet, see how she's doing.
>You're a rear admiral now, fuck that noise, go get food.


>You don't have enough sleep for that shit. Just go find Hornet, see how she's doing.

CV-8, USS Hornet (art by pixel-anon)​

With Corporal Hate occupied with glaring dirks and daggers at the corgihorde as he clips their leashes on one-by-one, you decide to find Hornet. The - girl, you suppose - has been worrying you lately. Bad enough how the other one is; you don't want both of them becoming silent recluses.

You find her on the flight deck, still in the jumpseat behind the pilots, who are still scribbling industriously in their clipboards. They salute you politely before returning to their work.

Hornet is staring off into space, across the cockpit at nothing. Her raven-dark bangs hang loosely on her dusky cheeks, her slate-grey eyes focused on nothing. And in her hands, being turned around again and again, thoughtlessly, is the black arrow.

>Give her a talking-to. No more of this shit. She needs to be focused.
>Let it slide. Some wounds never heal – you should know.
>Remind her that you're always available to talk, and leave it at that.


>Let it slide. Some wounds never heal – you should know.

The Arrow is a long, lethal-looking shaft of heavy ebony, fletched with crowfeathers. A chiseled obsidian arrowhead glints wickedly at the tip, the volcanic glass razor-sharp. Hornet has never nocked it, and never will... you hope. You sincerely hope.

You take a step towards her, your hand already rising to clasp her shoulder companionably – and then you halt. What are you going to say? That all wounds heal, in time? That someday, the loss won't hurt as much?

It's horseshit, and you know it. You know it better than most, after Los Angeles.

"Hornet," you say softly. She doesn't react. "Hornet!" Her pretty grey eyes snap up to yours, and the black arrow vanishes into thin air with guilty dispatch.

"A-Admiral," she stammers, caught off-guard. "I'm sorry-"

You silence her with a raised palm. "No need. Just come with me and get some fresh air, okay?"

She nods, still looking a bit bashful, and rises to follow you down the narrow stairway to the cargo bay, and then down the ramp to the tarmac. Corporal Hate is waiting for you, his thirty corgis circling him warily, wrapping his legs up in a neat tangle of leather leashes. He gives Hornet a passing glance, then averts his eyes, able to read her expression fine.

BB-39, USS Arizona (art by pixel-anon)​

Standing next to Corporal Hate is the other worrisome member of your unit – the silent one. The collar of her duster is turned up high, and her face is turned away from you. Beneath her coat you can hear the slight creak of gun leather – she goes nowhere without arms, now.

You can't really blame her.

"Look," mutters Hate. "There's the welcoming committee." Sure enough, a man in JSDF flag-rank uniform is stalking across the tarmac towards you.

"Where's Sammy?" you ask, not relishing the task of bringing her to heel.

Hate shrugs. "I gave her a few boats to keep track of. She loves the damn things."

You're about to object, when you surrender with a sigh. It's honestly the best thing anyone can do – just keep her occupied. Sammy's a sweetheart when she's got something to do, but when she gets bored... things happen.

"Wait," you ask with sudden alarm. "Where's Wee Willie Worthless?"

Hate shrugs, and shows you the leashes with a wicked grin. "Sorry, Sir. You kind of made sure my hands were too full to do anything about that."

>What-the-fuck-ever, formalities need to be handled first.
> FUCKUP-CHAN MUST NOT BE ALLOWED OUT OF OUR SIGHT, SHE'S JINXED


> FUCKUP-CHAN MUST NOT BE ALLOWED OUT OF OUR SIGHT, SHE'S JINXED

DD-579, USS William D. Porter (art by pixel-anon)​

You turn away from Corporal Hate and bolt back up the boarding ramp like greased lightning, terror filling your heart. Wee Willie Worthless's inadvertent talent for destruction is a force to be reckoned with, and one you've learned not to underestimate. You've barely made the cargo bay again when your nose detects the all too familiar scent of smoke and ahead – the flickering light of a fire.

And you know for a fact this plane was carrying a fresh load of Standard Missiles for the 7th Fleet.

You rip a nearby fire extinguisher off the wall so hard that the mounting straps rip right out with it, screws and all, and gallop sidelong towards the scene; the fastest way to move with your bad leg still on the (alleged) mend. Reaching the source of the fire, you play out the extinguisher on the unfortunate victim until the flames are smothered, and all that's left is a small girl curled into the fetal position, weeping miserably. The extinguisher has coated her chestnut-brown hair, lovingly woven into a braid, with a dusting of white residue, and the still-smoking pool of some sort of hydraulic fluid or oil or some shit is soaking into her singed uniform.

"Willie," you ask her, "how the fuck!?"

"I J-J-JUST T-T-T-RIED TO TIE MY SHOOOOOES," she wails, and begins crying again. Glancing aside, you can see the dent in the nearby shipping crate where her skull made contact with it when she probably leaned over too far.

"Jesus," you say, rubbing your face. This only makes the girl cry even harder. You want to feel sorry for her, but her constant fuckups have run you ragged lately – and of course, Sammy hasn't been any fucking help, either.

"You're the new guy, I take it?"

You turn around to find the JSDF Admiral looking you in the eye – and good Christ, he looks worse than you do.

>Confirm, with tears.
>Explain the situation. It's not as bad as it looks.
>Ask him why he looks like he's been run over by a truck.


VOTES DISCARDED, WRITE-IN ACCEPTED: > This is exactly as bad as it looks.
Then
>Commiserate with a fellow tortured soul, he knows what fresh hell we've been through.

The haggard-looking man has that faint beard and intense, almost mildly insane stare you associate with the kickass old samurai movies – everything you'd hoped for from a JSDF Admiral. The bloodshot eyes and obvious lack of sleep, not so much.

You look down at Willie, who's weeping softly as she tries to melt into a puddle of failure and flow down a drain so nobody can witness her shame, and then back to your counterpart.

"Yeah, so," you mutter, "this is, uh, pretty much as bad as it looks."

Willie begins crawling away, slowly, as if you won't notice, her racking sobs growing even worse.

The Admiral gives you a wild-eyed look that says all sorts of things you don't want to consider. "You poor son of a bitch," he says, shaking his head. "You poor poor son of a bitch."

"Yeah," you say, rubbing your head. "I guess you've got it even worse-"

"No," he says, slicing a hand through the air. "No. It's how you think it can't get much worse, right now."

You blink. "But-"

"It will," he growls as he turns away from you and walks towards the gangplank again. "Oh, Christ, it will."


The next hour passes mostly uneventfully. You eventually have to bodily drag Willie Dee to the waiting van, and manage to get her in the middle-middle seat, between Hornet and the Silent Girl. Corporal Hate sits in back, amidst his horde of corgis, his eyes boring fire into the rear-view mirror. The JSDF Admiral, still unintroduced, hops into the driver's seat, and you all manage to get to Yokosuka unmurdered.

Sammy was provided with "special transportation." You're not sure what that means, but you did see a Pave Hawk taking off before you pulled onto the highway.

Your arrival at Yokosuka is muted, given the ungodly hour. Base security gives you scrutiny, and gives even more scrutiny to the not-so-subtle air escort of shadowing helicopters. You carry precious cargo – Willie Dee included.

There's many enemies, and too few warships of any sort.

Corporal Hate departs for the kennels with his horde, a sour cloud squatting over him as he wrestles the headstrong little dogs that pull him every which way with ferocious force and insatiable curiosity. Hornet slips off somewhere, and the Silent Girl slinks towards the dorms like an extra in a spaghetti western, led by a nervous-looking JSDF seaman. Within a few minutes, you're sitting in the Admiral's office; a shot of Scotch in your hand before your ass hits the chair. There's a broad window behind you that shows the piers, and you can just see the first rays of the rising sun peeking over the ocean horizon.

The Admiral refills your Scotch, which you made vanish rather fast. He doesn't bother with a glass for himself, taking a slug right out of the bottle before smacking it down.

He sighs.

"So."

>Wait for him to speak
>Ask question? Specify.


>Wait for him to speak

"This is fucking weird," you say aloud.

The man across from you seems to deflate, slumping over the desk. "Oh Jesus, I'm glad you said it." With his forehead on the table, he pulls his hat off and rubs his short hair with a sigh. "What the hell is this shit?"

You lean back in your chair with a sigh. "We were kind of hoping you could tell us more about that. Y'all have been summoning these things for a lot longer than us."

He sighs, straightens up, and finds you holding out your glass for a refill. He chuckles, and complies, matching you drink for drink. "Yeah, I got the whole briefing. They told me to let you down easy, but..." you tense up, expecting him to mention the Battle of the Bay, but he just shrugs. "You're the one man in the US Navy that nobody can bullshit, on this stuff."

"I wouldn't say that-"

"You *saw,*" he says with a quiet intensity in his voice and eyes that stops your objections cold. "We can make up all the bullshit we want for the press and the politicians, but once you... see those things..."

You both sit in silence. You watch his eyes, and wonder if yours unfocus when those scenes replay before your eyes – the dark cloud, the abyssals, the choking smoke-

"The truth is, we don't have a fucking clue," the Admiral says. "No more than you do. No more than they. We've summoned them with everything from Shinto rites to meetings of surviving crewmen from veterans associations. And sometimes-"

"-they just show up," you reply. "Like the girl in the coat."

(art by pixel-anon)​

He humphs. "Yeah, I wondered why I didn't see any mention of her in the briefing. When did she show up?"

"Not a week ago," you reply. "She hasn't spoken a single word yet. We were going to keep her in reserve, but she showed up at the loading ramp of our plane before take-off and wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Huu," the Admiral replies. "What's she got up her stack?"

"A 410-millimeter shell converted into a bomb, last I checked," you reply quietly.

The Admiral takes a second to absorb that, before a haunted look enters his eyes. "What the fuck were you Yanks thinking, bringing her HERE!?"

You shrug. "She wants to be where the fight is. She wants to sortie. She's been sitting at her berth for a long time. Who are we to refuse her, at last?"

He absorbs that, and seems to deflate again. The heavy, damp atmosphere weighs heavily on you both, the wheezing air conditioner doing little to lighten the mood.

>Ask question?
>Just look out the window at the rising sun over the docks. Atmosphere, read it, etc.


>Just look out the window at the rising sun over the docks. Atmosphere, read it, etc.

"You think it's going to cause pr-"

"No shit, Sherlock," he snaps back, taking another slug from the bottle and rudely wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Come ON. You know what we've got, you've seen the roster. Akagi's here, and Kaga, and the – the whole goddamned Pearl Harbor attack force, basically. You – why – UGH." He sighs. "Who's the angry-looking guy with the boats in tow, anyhow?"

"That," you reply, "is Corporal Hate."

He hoists an eyebrow. "Hate?" Recognition slowly crosses his face. "Wait, is he the one who-"

"Yeah," you reply.

"I thought he-"

"He did," you reply. "The last torpedo he nailed went off close enough to dent the ship's hull, and he ate a faceful of shrapnel, to say nothing of the blast."

"He looks pretty good for a half-dead man. How did he pull that off?"

You smile at the Admiral. "The truth is, we don't have a fucking clue," you say, recycling his own words. "He sure does, but he's not... forthcoming."

The Admiral squints at you. "He told you, didn't he?"

You smile back at him. "He'll tell you, too – once he knows you well enough."

He sighs, and nods. He swivels his chair to look out the wide windows, and you both enjoy the sunrise together in companionable and increasingly-sloshed silence. Even after years in the service and at sea, the beauty of a sunrise over glassy, still waters never ceases to please you.


At length, you see a figure silhouetted against the rising sun – a young girl in a hoodie, with her sleeves rolled up. She seems to be going for a jog down the docks.

"Huh," the Admiral says thoughtfully, rubbing his bearded chin. "Fubuki seems to be making an extra effort."

"Fubuki-class?"

"No, Fubuki herself, the lead ship," he corrects you. He smiles a bit as he watches her through the glass. "She's our resident Willie Dee, you might say."

"Total fuckup?"

"A-yep!" he says with a sigh. "But she's getting better. At least she tries her ass off."


You squint at her through the predawn haze. "So... it's like a shakedown cruise, or something?"

"What do your girls eat?" he asks you abruptly.

"Food," you reply. "Hornet wolfs down burgers like nobody's business; I needed to get a government credit card just for her."

"Ours too," he replies. "Don't try to make sense of it. You can't. It's..." he shrugs, and turns his attention back to Fubuki, who's starting to flag a little, her exercise having taken its toll. Still, she looks happy to be out and about, with the blood flowing through her veins and the clean, cool sea air on her face. You envy her, just a little – looking forward to a future that has a place in it for her, with none of the burdens of command on her shoulders.

Maybe they're not all messed up, you let yourself hope. Maybe they don't all remember sinking into the abyss with the voices of their doomed crews ringing inside their compartments.

Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance.


You watch the girl reach the end of the docks, and look up in wonder at the sight of the sun rising over the ocean's edge, spreading its brilliant orange light over the glassy, still sea. Both Admirals and the destroyer girl watch in silence for a minute; and you feel that you're all absorbing this moment of beauty and silence, trying to save it for later, when such moments will be rare indeed.

But as beautiful as the scene is, a tiny corner of your mind gives thanks for the glassy sea because it makes for better sonar reception – and as that thought flits across your mind, you see something rippling in the water near Fubuki.

It looks a lot like a small periscope.

>Wait
>ACT


>Wait

You sit bolt upright in your chair, on high alert... but as far as you know, abyssal submarines don't use anything that looks remotely like a periscope. Theirs look like... like eye-stalks, basically. Still, you don't like it one bit.

"Admiral-"

"Yeah," he says, taking his phone off his desk and beginning to dial. "I'll call the dorm watch – probably just one of our I-classes dicking around after night exercises. They don't get to sortie much."

You pluck your cellphone from your pocket and hit the speed-dial; you've already got some ASW ships awake and kicking. "Willie, emergency. Get down to the docks as fast as you can, kiddo." You click the phone shut and decide against calling Sammy – once that girl's let off her chain, things get ugly fast. Besides, Fubuki's a destroyer – she's equipped and trained for anti-sub ops. Willie could use the practice, however.

Meanwhile, Fubuki has turned and begun jogging back down the docks, pursued by a slight ripple in the water that paces her progress. She jogs on, oblivious to her submerged pursuer. You and the Admiral have another drink as you watch, rather bemused, as the destroyer-girl continues her morning constitutional without a clue that her favored prey is, instead, shadowing her.

The attack happens so fast you barely see it.

SS-257, USS Harder (art by pixel-anon)​

You have the briefest impression of a nylon-blue figure exploding from the water like a tomahawk missile, hitting Fubuki with a flying tackle and taking her down. Within a second, the swimsuit-clad figure is sitting astraddle Fubuki's middle, his hands raised high over its head gripping the sleek metal shape of a Mark 14 torpedo.

With a snarl of primal fury, he brings the nose of it down on Fubuki's chest.

"Uwaaaah"! Fubuki states as she flails around madly.

The swimsuit-clad one raises the torpedo over his head and brings it down on her chest again, only to be greeted with a small, sad puff of smoke. He snarls and tosses it away, manifesting two more, one in each hand. By the time you get outside, he's baffing at Fubuki's head with the wrong ends of them, a mad gleam in his eye.

"DIE, MOTHERFUCKER!" he screams, his ragged, hateful cries ringing over the water. "DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE-"

>SIC'EM, FUBUKI! YOU CAN DO IT!
>Wait for Willie Dee to sort this shit out; with Mark 14s, she's safe.
>what the actual fuck is happen


>what the actual fuck is happen

You stare at this scene for several seconds, trying to process just what the fuck is going on. The Admiral has come to a halt next to you, and is staring as well.

"... is that-"

"No," he says. "No, that is not anyone I know."

Just as it dawns on you that you might want to put a stop to this, Willie Dee arrives. She skids to a halt, her weapons already summoned, a whisp of smoke drifting from her stack. She levels one forearm at the ranting submarine.

"H-H-HALT!" she cries, the turret on her extended arm quavering slightly. "O-OR I'LL SHOOT!"

The submarine halts. His – or her – short, blonde hair is all wet and wild, and the wet strands hang down to trail over his piercing blue eyes, enhancing the madman-look. He rises from Fubuki slowly, and swings both torpedoes wide, one in each hand, like swords.

"So," he says quietly. "It's true, then."

"W-wh-what?!" Willie Dee says – good Christ, even her braid seems to be quivering now.

"It's true that you're a DIRTY ROTTEN COMMIE-LOVING TRAITOR!" the submarine roars, his voice so loud you think you hear the plate-glass window of the office rattle a bit. He stalks towards Willie Dee, a horrible wrath in his eyes. You *think* it's a he, but given his youth and the one-piece swimsuit, you can't really tell. You're too busy staring into those wide, mad blue eyes that seem to brim with barely-restrained violence. He stalks right up to Willie and sticks his nose right up against hers. She tries to back away, but he just pursues till her back is pressed up against a dockside warehouse's wall.

"Yeah," he hisses. "Fuck with me. Go ahead. I eat destroyers for LUNCH. You think my tubes are empty? I got one more, right here, just for you."

With a start, you realize who it is.

>A-THOR-I-TAY
>Let him have his way, this is funny as hell.
>STOP. CORGITIME!


>STOP. CORGITIME!

You suck in a deep lungful of breath and crank your ANGRY FUCKING OFFICER meter to 11, knowing full-well that this particular boat will require every goddamned ounce of authority you possess to bring it to heel.

And that is when you espy Corporal Hate coming down the sidewalk, heading towards the commotion... with all his Corgis in tow.

You make eye contact from 35 yards. His face blazes with a keen lust, an almost animalistic need – and you realize, in that moment, that his long suffering has finally found a momentary respite.

You give him the nod, and he lets slip the Corgis of War.

30 little dogs. 120 wee little paws, hammering down the sidewalk as one. The submarine hears them coming just in time to look up, and a truly hilarious look of confusion spreads across his face. The Corgis are rushing at almost impossible speed now, their short little legs almost a blur as they really hit their stride – and then, as their excited barks and yips subside into the heavy breathing of marathon runners, they summon their Outfits.


The little hats are the first to appear; a little row of windows on an open flying bridge. Next come the wee fifty-cal emplacements, little roundish things, one on the front-right shoulder, another on the back-left haunch. But it's when the tiny little torpedoes appear, two hanging on each side, that the submarine's eyes widen in horrified realization. He springs away from the terrified Willie Dee and bolts for the open water, clearing the dock in one leap and hitting the water moving, already kicking up an impressive wake as his bare heels slide across the water at flank speed. He's trying to escape the harbor, to get into deeper water where he can dive to safety.

He's not going to make it.

PT Corgi (art by pixel-anon)​

The thirty little PT boats are upon him before he even makes the breakwater, and in an instant he's flailing like a madman, corgis affixed by their nippy little teeth to every limb he's got. He twirls in mad circles, desperately trying to dislodge them, the angry little yips and aggressive growls drifting sedately across the glassy, still waters on this peaceful summer morning. Corporal Hate has come up next to you to watch, wicked little sniggers escaping him from time to time.

"Devil boats," the Admiral observes, his face paler. He lifts the bottle of Scotch to his lips and takes another hit.

"Devil Dogs, eh?" you say, nudging Corporal Hate.

"I've been expecting that joke for three weeks and fuck you," he says absently, his eyes still fixed on his lethal little horde, a wicked smile on his lips. The Corgis are dragging their swearing, flailing victim back to the dock, where you're waiting to meet him.

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, NIP!" the submarine screams up at you, and flings his last Mark 14 into the water. It splashes in, fires up, and zooms away into the sunrise, running straight, hot and normal.

"GOD DAMMIT, THE ONE TIME I WANT A CIRCULAR RUN!" the submarine snarls. "DAMN YOU, NAVY ORDS. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

You lean over, trying to keep the shit-eating grin off your face, and look down at the subdued sub.

"Well if it ain't Hit'em Again Harder, in the flesh." You reach down and grab his hand, waving the Corgis away. They slink back reluctantly, still growling as you haul the beleaguered Gato-Class out of the water and slap him on the back. "Welcome back, sailor."

HOKAY, I think this is a good time to call it a night! Tomorrow I'll outline some shit in my lit class instead of paying attention and then we'll run SWQ sometime this weekend - maybe Friday, but possibly Saturday if I end up crashing Friday after work for several hours.

SEE Y'ALL SOON. I am also soliciting as many AWFUL, BAD, NO GOOD IDEAS as I can for future runs of KANT-O-CELLE SHIPSLUT SLAUGHTER because that's just how I roll, baby

Click to shrink...

 

[Trace Coburn]

KAN-KOOKO-QUEST TWO: TORPEDO BOOGALOO​

burning, the foredeck wreathed in smoke as the five-inch continues firing. The ship's listing as she swings through the emergency turn and through the flames and haze of choking black smoke you can see –

- the hazy red numbers on your alarm clock, it's repetitive monotone eerily similar to the General Quarters tone. You snatch it off the table and hurl it at the wall. It reaches the end of the cord, which snaps off cleanly, unable to stop it from smashing into the wall opposite in a shower of plastic shrapnel.

You fall back in bed, pull a pillow over your face and punch your skull a few times till the echoes subside. Then you haul your ass upright and grope for your watch on the endtable.

7:02. Time to get moving.

Your dress uniform was standard practice for the first day in-country; appearances and all that; but today you can revert to less rigid day uniforms. After you saw to Harder's... re-introduction into the world, you spent your remaining daylight squaring things away and, of course, filling out and faxing all the damn paperwork the old Gato-class caused you. Your old Annapolis instincts take you through your morning toilet on autopilot while your brain slowly spins up, creaking all the while. You managed to steal a march on jetlag by sleeping on the C-5, a feat only achievable by the 36 hours of waking paperwork hell that'd preceded it.

You're not quite sure you've recovered, yet.

>check your e-mail, set the alarm on your watch for tomorrow, take it easy.
>fuck e-mail, lets get some goddamn food, we can always check it on our phone
>other?


>fuck e-mail, lets get some goddamn food, we can always check it on our phone

You briefly contemplate your laptop bag, discarded in one corner, and snort at it. This morning – especially this damn morning – you're in no mood to ruin your appetite early. You can always check it on your phone later, if you need. You rummage around in your toiletries bag, feeling a moment's frustration before you turn up a small brown RX bottle which dispenses a few Vicadin. You weigh the pills in your hand for a long minute, then dump two back in and take one. Tugging your cap onto your head, you make for the door but stop short, looking at the black cane hanging off the knob.

>take it
>leave it


>take it

You swallow the impulse that hits you then, and it sears all the way down. With a steady hand you unhook the cane from the knob, intact and unsmashed, and step out into the new day. You'll probably do a lot of walking today, so *something'll* need to prop you up, and you just left Option #2 on the bathroom counter.

Yokosuka is a little cool this morning with the sea breezes blowing in, but that'll change later, you wager. You flag down a passing Marine with your cane and get directions to the officer's mess, and limp your way across the base, your stomach already growling loudly.

You find your target shortly, an off-white building with proud silver letters declaring it the "Arleigh A. Burke Commissioned Officers' Mess" on the side, complete with tasteful landscaping and a wheelchair-accessible ramp. You snort at it and haul yourself up the stairs, cane be damned, and push inside to find a brick-walled interior with green tablecloths and chairs. It's mostly empty; ship captains rise rather earlier, and the Admiral might well treasure his privacy, a privilege of flag rank. You, on the other hand, are simply hungry. You make for the buffet line, the scent of bacon and eggs irresistible.


Halfway across the mess, you come up short, staring at the two women in line before you – if the first one's long, flowing hair didn't give it away, their old-fashioned garb would've pegged them as ships. Girls, that is. Ship-girls. Whatever-the-fuck they are. You vaguely recall the Admiral making noises about stopgap secure housing measures, but apparently they're just dining in the officer's mess, for now.

You step into line behind them, politely, hoping they don't take long to serve themselves. The first one is loading her plate high, stacking the bacon atop the eggs like a pro while her companion taps a plate against her palm irritably.

"Have you seen the American yet?" the short-haired one says.

"Not sure," the other one replies. "I think I saw one, but she was wearing a long coat with the collar turned up; I couldn't recognize her." She sighs as she finishes her load and moves to the next station, picking up the plastic tongs as she evaluates the pancakes carefully. "I hope we're introduced formally, though. I can't imagine it going well... considering."

"Not the ships," replies short-hair, picking at the bacon with disdain, and settling for some pancakes. "Their Admiral."

Your attention snaps away from the buffet bar and to the women ahead of you.

"What about him?"

"What's he doing here?"

The long-haired woman grabs two pancakes and ever-so-carefully slips them onto the edge of her plate, folding them in half to squeeze them on. "Commanding their forces, of course."


"Why aren't they being attached to Goto's command? He's proven himself capable."

The long-haired girl gives her companion a sharp look – but her expression softens before she speaks. "Kaga, that boat that showed up yesterday-"

"The Gato?"

"Yes, the Gato. Can you see *him* taking orders from Goto?"

Kaga just frowns, conceding the point.

"Gato and the American seem to be getting along, too, so I wouldn't worry about it." You slide in behind them and load your plate to the brim, taking a cue from the long-haired girl. They remain silent till the drink station, when Kaga speaks up while her friend's using the hulking silver milk machine.

"What about the American vessels, then?"

"I'm happy to have the help," long-hair responds, sipping at her milk carefully till it's not in danger of spilling.

"They sent Hornet," Kaga says flatly, a trace of dourness slipping in. "That's not what I'd call help."

>file this away for later and lurk more
>speak up (suggest words)


>speak up: "Would this be a bad time to mention that the Arizona is here too?"

Kaga's words bolt through your mind and collide headlong with the image of Hornet turning that damned black arrow around and around in her hands. The thought of Hornet *hearing* that -

- your molars grind as you bite down on the impulse long enough to think, picking a plastic cup off the stack and moving onto the milk machine as Kaga turns to leave.

"She's not the one you've got to worry about, anyways," you say nonchalantly, pressing your cup under the spigot and lifting the handle with the edge of your plate. Kaga turns to look over her shoulder, and you see her eyes open wider than her plate as she comprehends who you are. Her companion – Akagi, you presume, a vague memory of briefing dossiers surfacing – turns slowly, mindful of her laden plate, and nearly drops it when she sees you.

You watch this from the corner of your eye, keeping your face entirely neutral. You sip at your milk as Akagi had, still not looking at either of them. "It's Arizona you should be worried about."


Kaga blinks. "Arizona."

"Yes," you say, turning to her at last and giving her a winning smile. "Arizona. She's been sitting at anchor for seventy years, now, so she's very, very eager to be helpful."

Kaga's expression hardly quavers. "We're all looking forward to being useful to our nations once more, Admiral...?"

You blast her with your best staff-room smile, pointedly ignoring her invitation to introduce yourself. "Well, glad to hear it, Miss Kaga. The United States Navy is happy to work with you in this brave new age of co-prosperity," you say, waiving your milk and plate to indicate the entirety of the base. "I can't speak for our ships, though – and Arizona doesn't speak at all. With words, at least. So you might want to tune it down a notch, eh?"

Akagi nods numbly, but you're already sweeping past them, heading for a table in the far corner. Hot words tumble and nip at your heels; a slew of darts begging to be thrown – more than enough to take Japan's only maritime defense and blow it to hell, should you indulge yourself. Leaving your big bootprints all over traditional Japanese manners will suffice, you tell yourself as you clap the plate down. You think of Hornet again and shove your plate away in disgust, too angry to eat. Draining your milk in three gulps, you head back up to get some coffee.


You've just settled on Columbia Roast and are pouring yourself a mug when the personable Corporal Hate appears at your elbow, scanning the world through half-open eyes. He selects the steaming, mostly full carafe labeled "Shockwave" and lifts it off the warmer. Upending the cardboard sugar container, he pours in about a quarter of it before moving onto the creamer while he hunches over, groping groggily at his boot. He straightens up, a Ka-Bar in his hand, and walks away stirring the coffee pot with the blade as he slouches towards the door, where about twenty small, furry heads are watching him intently.

Returning to your seat, you tug your plate closer and tuck in, your growling stomach finally overriding umbrage. When you come up for air, you glance around for the CVs- Kaga seems to be wolfing down her meal as fast as possible in the opposite corner, but Akagi is clearly taking her time, giving Kaga lidded-eyed looks every now and then. She even sends a lazy wink your way with a slight shrug, which you return with a faint nod.


Pushing your empty plate away, you sip your java while thumbing through e-mails on your smartphone. The first message is from the CNO informing you that USS Harder (SS-257) has been officially re-added to the Naval Register, and is approved for operational deployment "at force commander's discretion." The second is from Admiral God – your recommendation's being approved; the ball's rolling on Hate's Silver Star. The final one is... you thumb through the inbox a little more, but there's still no word from the SanFran drydock. You sigh and tuck the phone away.

"Hey!"

The high-pitched exclamation draws your attention towards the door, where a young officer in the newly re-re-introduced tropical khaki dress uniform is standing with his arms crossed; a skipper's hat riding his head at a steep angle, his face lost somewhere behind a pair of aviator lenses. Standing before him is a shorter girl in an odd outfit, and she looks pissed.


"You!"

"Yeah?" he nearly snorts in reply.

"You attacked Fubuki-chan!" the girl exclaims.

"Yeah, well..." he looks up at the ceiling, searching for an answer. "... deal with it."

"I'll deal with YOU if yuuuuu..." her voice trails off as the aviator's slide down just enough to reveal two huge, piercing, hateful eyes boring holes through the hapless girl, whom you presume is another destroyer from Fubuki's division.

"Oh, yeah?" he asks, his voice dangerously soft, but the steel in it cutting clear across the room. "You think so?"

"U-uh-uhhh-"

"You reeeaaally really think so? Huuuh? HUUUH?" The officer advances on the hapless destroyer-girl forcing her to backpedal rapidly.

"Hey!" someone else objects, springing up from their table with a clatter of tableware. This one's hard to miss – a slender brunette in an orange uniform. Another shipgirl; the orange ones are... you shake your head and go for another sip of joe, only to find the bare bottom of your mug.

Once again you are humbled by the deep and abiding wisdom of Marines. You rise to get another cup as the orange-clad one carries on behind you - "-may be an idol, but I won't let you bully my sub-ordinates!"

"Oh yeah, toot-sweet? What'cha gonna do about it?"


The orange-girl seems to falter at this – for a moment. "I'll – I'll discipline you properly!"

"OH YEAH?" the officer shouts across the room as you mix in your cream and sugar, making two mugs worth this time. "GO FOR IT, FLUSH-DECK-TAN!"

"What did you call me!?" Orange-girl fumes, taking a few steps towards the offender.

"Yeah, try it," the officer shouts back. "You ain't got shit bitch, you got what, seven guns? You're just a destroyer to me, only easier to hit because dat displacement is FAT-"

"YOU SNIVELING LITTLE YANKEE DREDGE-"

"DO IT!" the officer shouts back. "DO IT, FAGGOT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT FAGGOT! DO IT FAGGOT DO IT FAGGOT DO IT FAGGOT-"

You sip at your coffee as you watch the scene unfold, and a vague sense of responsibility whispers that you might want to intervene, here....

… on the other hand, you did just give Kaga a somewhat-subtle warning of what could happen if she goes sticking her nose in old memories, and if that light cruiser takes one on the chin, it might be a great demonstration.

>intervene
>stay out of it


>intervene

You're almost done with your first mug of coffee when something the destroyer said circles round to itch at your noggin. Harassing Fubuki... the destroyer-girl from yesterday...

"I WON'T BE BAITED!" the CL snaps back.

A truly smug grin spreads across the young officer's face as he tilts his head forward to peer at the ship-girl from the narrow band between his hat-brim and the aviators. " PUUUUUUUSSSSSYYYYYYY-"

The identity of the young man penetrates your sleep-addled skull just as the cruiser-girl starts stalking towards him. You lunge into that loping gait forced by your bad leg, your cane lying forgotten at your table. With anyone else you'd have let it happen – a bruised ego might do everyone some good – but nobody hits harder than Harder.

You're almost within range when the orange-clad cruiser gal finally loses her temper and breaks into a headlong charge. Putting on a final burst of speed, you bolt forward and promptly trip as your gimp leg refuses to keep up, sending you sprawling on the floor in front of Harder. The orange girl tries to brake, but she only manages to scuff the flooring before her toes catch on your side and she goes flying over you with a brief scream.

>what say


>"Harder, what the fuck are you doing."

"Harder," you groan from the floor. "Harder, god dammit." You laboriously pry yourself off the floor, dusting at your uniform shirt. "Harder, what the HELL is wro-"

You look up to find Harder's face frozen somewhere between shock and alarm, his aviators knocked askew. The orange-clad cruiser is clutching his waist with a death-grip, her toes still planted where she first tripped over you. Harder stares for a second longer, his hands still gripping the girl's shoulders where he caught her, before he notices your notice and realizes what he's doing. He doesn't help her up so much as fling her upward and drop her on her heels, but she doesn't seem to notice. In fact, she seems to have found something fascinating on the floor, and Harder is tilting his skipper cap's brim right past "rakish" and into "concealing."

You blink.

You blink again, hoping you can un-see what you just saw.

Nope, still there.

Deep breath, wide stance – authority.

"Harder, an officer and a gentlemen-" does what he just did, actually - "-should not conduct conduct unbecoming a submar- I mean, an off- a ship- er, boat... man?"

Deep, deep breath, as Harder fixes his aviators and comes to parade rest before you, his face safely hidden.

You take a few more seconds to organize your thoughts, line them up into neat sentences, and then you pitch all that shit in the bin.

"Harder, get the fuck out of here."

37846787 - wait, did [Harder] catch her from falling on her face?
demetrious - She grabbed him to keep from falling. He most certainly did not catch her, in front of a room full of witnesses, and in fact it was only the Admiral's outcry that prevented him from ramming a fist down her throat as she fell.
That's totally, totally what happened guys. Totally.
37846980 - Is... is... Harder... TSUNDERE for ASW ships?

Click to shrink...

You manage to limp back to your seat without looking at anyone else in the entire damn room, a horrible icky feeling creeping across your skin. The very... *everything* of these... entities is terrifying unsettling enough to contemplate already, much less whatever the hell *that* was. You slump over the table, holding your head in your hands, and slap your cap back on to help shut out the damn world.

Your watch says it isn't even 7:45 yet. God help you.

As if in reply, your phone begins ringing. You snatch it up eagerly. "Hello?"

"Admiral Settle?"

"Tis he. Goto?"

"Yeah," the Japanese Admiral replies.

"How can I help you?"

"Don't get in between them next time. I almost put money on it."

You look up and pan around the room. Kaga's tapping her foot impatiently while Akagi ever-so-slowly cleans her plate; a little cluster of destroyer girls are creeping after the orange CL, who's walking rather stiffly towards the door. You see Wille D peeking around the doorframe just in time to see the CL and her train coming and vanish, the tip of her braid flicking about with the speed of her departure. And there, peeking over a windowsill, is the Admiral. He fingerguns at you, then beckons at you with one finger.

"C'mere."


You quit the mess as fast as humanly possible, actually happy for the damn cane for a change; people give you wider berth when they see it so navigating the flow of incoming patrons is easier. Except for one – Wille Dee damn near knocks you over as she comes bolting through the door, her braid almost hovering in air behind her. Chasing her towards the bar is Hate, or rather his cold, terrifying gaze, propelling Wille Dee towards the food line like a cutter carried on a swell. He hovers there until she reaches the buffet, then fades slowly, his half-full carafe the last thing to vanish past the doorjamb.

You meet Goto outside, where he gives you a slight smirk.

"How was breakfast?"

You give him a look that says he damn well fucking knows how breakfast was, then another that asks if-

"Oh, it's not always that bad," he replies airly. "I mean, it WAS, and worse, and then things settled down... and THEN, some~one brought us the god-damned Hornet and ARIZONA!"

You fling your hands up in surrender.

He sighs; a miserable, defeated sigh. "Yeaaaaah." Wiping a hand over his face, he rallies himself. "Anyways. How'd you like some conventional problems for a damn change?"

"That," you reply, "is just what I want right now."


"I don't know what I want," you mutter, glaring down at the big map of the Pacific sprawled over the conference-room table.

The air-conditioning in the command center is effective, but dry, making your throat itch. You consider stepping out to the vending machine for a Pepsi, but when you get back those little red pins will be waiting for you again. You glare at them over your folded hands as you weigh the unknowns against the knowns. The wrong end of the scale almost makes an audible clack as it hits the figurative tabletop.

"So," you say, nodding at the black pins in the map. "Three attacks in the Luzon strait. They weren't sunk?"

Goto shakes his head. "Two merchants managed to keep ahead of them long enough for the Taiwanese to scramble air cover, and the third one was chased by a bigger-looking one into a heavy squall. Chinese container-ship; had better seakeeping, so it wasn't overtaken too fast and the swells seemed to play hell with the abyssal's gunnery. The deck cargo set off most of the shells that hit until some Chinese all-weather planes showed up and it bugged out."

"Sheer dumb luck," you say, and he nods in agreement, before pointing out the next pin on the map – this one a bright, angry red; planted in the north of Luzon, on the coast of Pasaleng Bay. "And then, this shit."


You both glower at the pin, needing no further elaboration. The severed body parts and flaming wreckage of the beach-side resort already aired on the news; and the official intel report had little to add.

"So," you say, tapping the Philippines. "East coast, or West?"

"Dunno," Goto replies with a shrug. "Though they're probably heading for the Celebes sea to attack shipping there; they probably know they wore out their welcome in the strait. We could just lay for them there."

You sigh. Tracking abyssals is a pain in the ass. Modern air/space reconnaissance doesn't help much, because they just... show up, emerging from the depths when they damn well feel like it, even though their overall movement speed seems as limited as an actual ship. They tend to coincide with less-than-natural weather patterns too; dark, brooding thunderheads and squalls that hide them from satellites... sometimes. Often they show up on radar – sometimes as girls, sometimes as actual ships; an electronic ghost of the hull they used to be, and sometimes they don't show up at all. Finding them isn't as much a problem as being close enough to punish them when they turn up.

"Right. Those freighters get a good look at them?"


"That's the good news," Goto says, handing you a folder. You flip it open to find grainy, but serviceable pictures of the ships in question – the merchant mariners that exposed themselves to take these photos, while under shellfire, in poor weather conditions must've been some brave sonsofbitches. You peer closely at the indistinct lines of the monstrous entities in the photos, reading the hints of form closely as possible. The best giveaway is the turret layout, usually, and you spot right away that they're pre-dreadnaught. Consulting the notes, they seem to have made moderate, but not phenomenal speed, and the shell hits on the container ship suggested six to eight inch munitions.

"... cruisers, then," you conclude. "Old cruisers."

"Yuh," Goto says, not so much smoking a cigarette as chewing on it. Smoking indoors is strictly forbidden, and these days nobody seems to give a shit – especially today, with the sundered bodies scrolling across CNN's 24/7 channel. "Problem is, we never got a real good look at them, and transit time to the bay from the strait could be their max speed, or faster ships at cruising speed..."

"... which means we don't know if they're protected cruisers, or armored cruisers," you say sourly.

"Ayep," Goto says, frowning around his cigarette.


This is no small problem. "Protected cruisers" incorporated a proper armored deck that protected the vitals of the ship from shellfire without significantly lowering their speed – essentially equivalent to general-purpose cruisers of the modern era; doing the best they could with the armor of their time (and against the weapons of the era, more than enough.) Armored cruisers, however, had the full armored deck-and-belt systems of proper battleships, in an era where armored plate was very heavy for the protection it offered. The weight slowed them down; they were essentially cut-down battleships and performed similarly.


A four-ship heavy cruiser task-force could blow the shit out of protected cruisers, and is fast enough to scout around fairly well... but if they're armored cruisers, the CAs will get ripped up badly. Heavy weather is moving towards the Philippines, the first inklings of monsoon season; carrier operations are all but hopeless – and heavy seas put your destroyers at a serious disadvantage, too. Against the heavy quick-firing, close-range batteries favored in the pre-dreadnaught era they'll get ripped up if they try to close in against protected cruisers – but armored cruisers are slow, the Japanese destroyer's Long Lances have great reach, and torpedoes tend to run well no matter what the weather on the surface. The light cruisers (like the orange lass you just saw tripping about) carry plenty of those too – and they're pretty fast, though the heavy weather could change that in a heartbeat.

And then, of course, you do have battleships. They've got the most accurate gunnery in rough seas, and can pretty much crush anything flung at them, probably from beyond the enemies effective range. But if you commit them, you might get caught short if more powerful abyssals show up somewhere else. Worse, one of them will have to be the Arizona – the Japanese only have one available, between battle damage and other sorties (it's all they can do to hang onto the Sea of Japan, the situation is so bad,) and you never send battleships out alone, if you're sane. And Arizona is rather slow... though, given likely sea conditions, you're not sure that will matter as much.

You glower at the table.

>Send a light cruiser leading a destroyer flotilla.
>Send a four-ship heavy cruiser division.
>Send a two-ship battleship taskforce with four destroyers in escort.
>Ask Goto for his input.
>Other?


>Ask Goto for his input.
>Send a two-ship battleship taskforce with four destroyers in escort.

After a few minutes thought, you look up at Goto. "You first."

He smirks at that. "Battleship task force, I'd say." He taps the other parts of the map. "The weather should be clear enough further north for the carriers to handle things, but we don't want to thin out their escorts too much by sending all our light elements into heavy seas where they'll do fuck-all anyways. You'll have air cover from the Filipinos, and scouting from shore-spotters and their Coast Guard choppers, so speed isn't too vital. More importantly, if they keep going for shore bombardments, you should be able to catch them from the sea and pin them against the land, so they can't make a straight run for it."

You muse on this for a minute, and then nod. "Just as well. Arizona still hasn't said a single word, but you can tell she's chomping at the bit." You and Goto share a silent look – nobody knows what a seriously unhappy ship-spirit can do, and neither of you wish to find out just yet. "Could you free up a few CLs to send along as escorts, though? I know they've got torpedoes to spare, and they'll handle better in heavy seas all-around."

Goto nods. "That's a good idea. They're no good as AA ships, anyways." He sighs, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette. "Sure wish you Yanks would scare up an Atlanta-class or three – we could really use them."

"Yeah," you agree. "The resistance is starting to slip, I think. And god forbid, if THAT-" you jerk your thumb at the muted TV behind you "-is gonna help it slip faster, I think." You turn back to the table, and dig out a notebook. "So, which BB do you have ready?"

He gives you a lazy grin. "Kongo."

>... isn't that the odd one?
>Wait, I thought you said "battleSHIP" not "battleCRUISER."
>other?


>Wait, I thought you said "battleSHIP" not "battleCRUISER."

"Wait," you say. "I thought you said battleship, not battlecruiser."

"No bully," he retorts as he rips open a vending-machine pack of beef jerky and tosses you a piece. "She ghat upghraded y'knah," he points out as he bites into his prize.

"Well, there's that," you admit. Kongo's armor belt is thin – by battleship standards, but it'd be more than enough to rebuff the armament of even an armored cruiser; assuming they even get close enough to fire. The real problem is Arizona's low 21-knot speed, compared to Kongo's 27 – but as Goto pointed out, with the wealth of eyes watching the Philippine coast, that shouldn't be as big an issue.

And really – they're all you have right now. "Well, sounds good to me."

"Great," Goto says, finishing his jerky. "Lets go... make introductions, then."

You nibble on your jerky, but the look on Goto's face has, quite suddenly, killed your appetite.

NEXT TIME ON SHIPSLUTS: UNSTOPPABLE DITZ MEETS IMMOVABLE WRECK! COMBAT IS JOINED OFF THE PHILIPPINES, AND EVERYTHING GOES TO FUCKING HELL! MORE OF THE ADMIRAL'S PAST IS REVEALED! CORPORAL HATE IS HATEFUL AND GLOWERS AT PEOPLE!

ALSO SWQ ON SATURDAY GIT HYEP

Click to shrink...

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-COLLE QUEST - HOW DO YOU EVEN PRONOUNCE THAT FUCK JAPAN OMG​

You're standing in a handsome wood-paneled office; the walls hung with photographs old and new; the heavily-decorated uniforms of the figures therein the only overt clue that the room hosts one of the most powerful, high-ranking men in the JSDF's navy. One in particular catches your eye; a grainy black-and-white shot; almost a postage stamp compared to the rest – and it's hung almost out of sight, behind the modern Japanese flag in the corner. It seems familiar, in a dusty sense; like something glimpsed in a textbook. You slide your eyes towards Admiral Goto, who's been acting... catlike, slinking through the hallways of the administrative building since you both settled on the operational plan for running down the Abyssals attacking the Philippines. He's reclining so far in his comfortable-looking leather chair that, from the doorway, his head is barely visible over the neat little "Adm. Goto Hitoshi" nameplate on his desk. He reaches lazily for the phone, and you catch him eyeballing the distance between you and the door before he picks it up.

Arizona may be a silent stoic, but she's not above trading a subtle Look with you, her expression blanker than normal.

"Send in Kongou," Goto says miserably.

>STAND YOUR GROUND
>Sliiiide behind Arizona
>Other?


>STAND YOUR GROUND

The words have hardly slipped from Goto's lips when thundering footsteps sound in the hallway outside; the headlong charge of someone barreling towards the door with terrifying momentum. Cane be damned, you turn and face the doorway square (as Goto's chair sinks out of sight with a muted hiss,) bracing your broad shoulders to receive the charge head-on, whatever horrors the headfucked-reanmiated-ghost-spirit-JESUS-CHRIST-THEY'RE-REALLY-GHOST-SPIRITS-CAN-THEY-SMELL-FEAR-FUCKFUCKFUCKFU-

- the door fairly explodes open, slamming into the wall hard enough to make every picture frame on it rattle alarmingly. The barely-visible blur of pale skin and paler cloth charges right for you and -

- "YIP!"

- *bounces* right-fucking-over you like springheeled goddamn jack, as you look up and twist to follow her amazing leap as she somersaults right over you, clearing the back of the edge by inches and landing square in Goto's lap.

At least until her momentum is fully transferred, and the chair goes flying over backwards. Then she's sitting on his belly, her hands planted on his shoulders, beaming down at him.

"Are you playing hard to get, Admiral?"

"Fuh," he replies; his face slack with shock.

>Applaud
>Rescue
>Abide


>Applaud

You stare at the tableau, still trying to process it as Kongou leans down and begins her assault in earnest. "Chu~Chu~Chu~Chu~"

Goto flings his crossed arms over his face, guarding against her pecks as he stammers in Japanese. After a moment or two he collects his wits enough to press back against her, pushing her up – a little. She's gripping his shoulders firmly now and using them as anchors to pull herself closer, clearly having a ball.

That's when you begin to clap. A slow, slow clap.

"That," you say with complete seriousness, "was amazing."

"Desu?" she exclaims, shooting bolt upright and turning to look at you. "Oh, hello!"

"Get her OFF of me!" Goto snarls at you.

You look down at him. "No."

"Admiral tried to hide behind you," Kongou says knowingly, releasing his shoulders to strike a tough pose with her arms, sliding her old-fashioned sleeve back off her bicep. "But Kongou-chan's BURNING LOVE knows no bounds!"

"Yes," you say, letting a small, smug smile slip onto your face. "Yes, he did."

Goto lets his head flop back on the floorboards with a groan, and just points at Kongou. "Can you BLAME me?"

"Oooooh yeah," you mutter, turning to Kongou again. "Hello, uh-"


"Kongou is fine!" she exclaims, springing off Goto's battered form to strike (another) pose in front of you. "I was built in England, so I'm comfortable with all sorts of English expressions and cultural forms! I'm at the forefront of the JSDF's co-operative efforts in this new age!"

You blink. "You... you actually read those pamphlets?"

"That's right!" she says, spinning in place, the hem of her sleeves almost smacking you in the face before she slams her foot into the floor to halt herself in (yet another) pose; arm flung out in front of her dramatically, picture frames rattling once more. "My English reading skills are the finest in the fleet!"

"Oh," you say in a very small voice. "That's... neat."

"And I'm always practicing!" she says with pride, thumping her fist into her chest. "I even found a story written about me!"

Goto, currently staggering up off the floor, seems to freeze at that mention – as do you. Even Arizona's eyebrow twitches.

"... a hist-"

"No, it was new, and it had really good drawings of me looking AWESOME!" she exclaims, pumping both her fists in the air. "But the English in it was kind of odd, every sentence ended with a question mark and the Admiral got really upset and t-"

"THANK you very MUCH Kongo that is VERY HELPFUL," Goto growls as he grabs the edge of his desk for support, "but we kind of need you to focus on business, right now."


"Right!" she says, taking a moment to straighten out her uniform. "What does my Admiral need?"

Goto tilts his head at you, so you take a step forward. "I'm Russel T. Settle, Rear Admiral, United States Na-"

"Admiral!" she exclaims, grabbing your proffered hand in both of hers and shaking it up and down vigorously enough to make you wobble unsteadily. "I'm so glad to meet you! I heard you're bringing all sorts of American ships with you to help us!"

"R-right," you say, recovering your hand with a little difficulty. You almost place it on Arizona's shoulder to shove HER forward as the sacrificial lamb, but you think better of it. "Kongou, meet the USS Arizona. She's being assigned to a two-ship BB task force with you to patrol the Luzon strait."

"Oooh, I remember you!" Kongou exclaims loudly. "You were laid down ten years after me, so – that makes me your onee-chan!" She thumps her chest proudly. "I'll take you under my wing and teach you everything there is to know about operating in the South Pacific!"

Arizona just stares at her.

"Onee-chan means older sister!" Kongou declares. "Aren't you excited to be going into battle with a new onee-san?"

Arizona stares.


"But Arizona-chan hasn't introduced herself yet!" Kongou pouts, her mouth going all wavy in an undeniably cute fashion. "Maybe she doesn't respect me as a battleship?" She brings her fist up in the already-familiar stance, and the air almost seems to ripple around her as she puts her all into a fierce look of determination. "Arizona-chan, my armor may be thinner, but my guns are just as big – and there's no ship fleeter in the fleet!" She thrusts a finger at Arizona. "If you doubt my skill, have at me – I'll show you that speed is armor!"

Arizona blinks, and tilts her head ever so slightly as Kongou waits, tense, poised and perfect.

Arizona raises one hand one-quarter inch.


Kongou's flowing attire becomes a whirling blur as she leaps into a backwards somersault away from Arizona, completing two full revolutions before hitting the wall behind her feet-first and springing off it. She grabs the ceiling fan on her way over, which survives just long enough to translate her momentum into a swinging motion before it comes ripping out of the ceiling, dangling by a single screw. Kongou's already released it, hitting the floor behind you and throwing herself into a forward roll followed by a spin as she leaps upright again, hands thrown wide in what looks like a fighting stance.

Behind you, the ceiling fan falls to the floor with a loud, brittle crash.

Arizona turns on one heel, swiveling around to face the Japanese BB with the mechanical surety of purpose more common to her main battery turrets. Kongou is almost visibly vibrating with barely-constrained energy.

Arizona reaches out again, very, very, VERY slowly, moving so cautiously that Kongou can't possibly regard it as a developing attack. Still, she focuses on it with intense scrutiny. As the slender, delicate-looking hand reaches her face, Kongou's eyes cross, her forehead almost wrinkling as she tries to stare it down.

And then Arizona simply brushes aside one long lock of hair, and withdraws with a small, bright-colored emblem in her hand. She hands it to you. You accept it, feeling the scratching of velcro on the back of -

- "God damn you, Hate," you mutter under your breath. It's the Corporals, well, Corporal insignia, two chevrons over crossed rifles. "Kongou, where did this come from?"

"I found it on the sidewalk," she admits. "It looked really neat, but then I found out it sticks to stuff, sometimes, if you stick it on things!" Her eyes light up with glee. "The future is so NEAT!"

You look down at the patch.

You look at Arizona.

You look at Admiral Goto.

"I changed my mind," you tell him seriously.


You stumble out of the administrative building, not so much using your cane as leaning on it, your brain still struggling to process exactly what you just saw. Goto was making muted noises about the four light cruisers being assigned to escort them; noises you simply nodded at as you backed out of the room. Arizona'd sent you a particularly narrow look as you fled; the eyes of a warrior berating a fleeing coward, but seriously, FUCK her, that shit in there, that was, what, is, even, no.

Just, no.

And then, of course, there's the matter of Hate. He's been surreptitiously (and not-so-surreptitiously) swapping out his proper insignia with his old Lance Corporal patches; to the point where you've instructed your staff (you have one of those now, a concept that's hard to get used to) to keep a supply of proper patches on hand to re-adorn him. It's proper, and correct, but more importantly it seems to annoy the hell out of him, which is what really counts. Hate regards his promotion as one long step away from actual combat duties (which it is,) and loathes it with unconcealed fury. At least the patches for his plate carrier and such are Velcro-equipped, making-

... plate carrier.


You look up just in time to see Corporal Hate from a distance, vanishing around a corner with what looks like a large storage crate for 40mm grenades. You give chase at your best hobble, suppressing a brief, violent urge to smash that fucking cane against a nearby decorative tree and keep smashing it when the tip slips on some fresh-cut grass strewn across the sidewalk. You almost go down again while rounding a corner, and this time you DO snarl, your sorely-tested patience giving way at last, sending that fucking cane bouncing off a landscaper's oak with a throw your dad's golfing buddies would've been proud of.

Quite unexpectedly, you hear a muffled squeak of fright emerge from behind some of the bushes, followed by a poorly-stifled whimper.

>WE MUST INTERCEPT HATE AT ALL COSTS
>oh god, shipslut down, must investigate


>oh god, shipslut down, must investigate

You limp into the landscaping, cursing quietly as the short bushes pull and tug at your uniform trousers. Something rustles not-so-quietly in the bushes as it tries to make its pitiful escape. You pick up your limp and manage to close within a few feet of the mysterious sniffler when she makes a break for the open.

"WILLE DEE!" you bellow. The diminutive destroyer girl freezes mid-flight, seeming to vibrate in place a bit.

"Wille Dee, were you hiding in the bushes and crying just now?" you demand.

She turns towards you slowly, her face a tear-stained mask of blank terror. She makes a tiny little sound that mewls and dies on the hot sidewalk between you.

You limp a few steps closer. "I can't hear you, sailor."

"Mrrmrrrmrrmm," she manages, her lower lip quavering a little bit.

You hover over the short girl, and lean over just a bit to crowd her. "Sailor, are you lying to me?"

"Mmmmmuuuuuuuuh," she manages, her watery eyes jittering up to glance at you in terror.

"... oh, good," you relent, rocking back on your heels. "So, Willie, what's up with you today?"

"nuthin," she says very quietly.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"nuthin."

"So you've been wasting the whole day?" you ask her, which kicks her into a higher tremor frequency. "N-n-no!"

"So you were..."

"I went to g-g-gunnery practice!"

You check your watch, very slowly, and then dig out your smartphone to go through the day's schedule. You shade the screen with your hand to get a better look in the noonday sun -

"Stand still, sailor."

Willie freezes, her diminutive sideways shuffle halted firmer than if you'd nailed her feet to the concrete. You peruse the schedule for a minute or two longer, then slide your phone away again.


"According to this, you should *still* be at gunnery practice – and you need the practice," you tell her. She says nothing, but that last bit makes her slender chest quaver dangerously, as if she's on the verge of sobbing. "Why did you leave?"

"... someone gave me an errand," she says very quietly. "So I went."

You take your time looking over your shoulder into the little mini-park you found her in; a triangle between three major sidewalk paths. "What was the errand, sailor?"

Willie Dee seems to have fixed her gaze on the third button of your uniform shirt. Her little fists are balled up, white-knuckled against her thighs as she stands at rigid attention. "To fetch some paint to mark targets."

You squint at her. "What kind of paint, sailor?"

The girl isn't vibrating now so much as she seems to be *buzzing* with barely restrained... something. "Checkered paint, sir."

You take a second to absorb that information as you study the little destroyer in front of you.

>... I take it you know about checkered paint?
>... this is a serious violation of acquisition protocol, Willie Dee. I'll need the names of whoever put you up to this.
>... oh, that's all? That's special-order stuff. Go wait in front of Administration and I'll send someone over with a can.


>... this is a serious violation of acquisition protocol, Willie Dee. I'll need the names of whoever put you up to this.

It's clear from the way she crawled into the bushes to cry her little Fletcher-Class heart out that Wille Dee's no fool, which is more than you can say for some sailors (and commissioned officers) you've worked with during your career. For a moment you're tempted to console Willie Dee; to rub her head affectionately and tell her about the asshole LT you regaled with tales of the North American Deck-Pecker so many years ago when he pitched a little autism-fit over something nobody fucking cared about...

… but the way she's standing ramrod-straight, fighting with all her might to keep her misery from quavering to the surface, you just can't bring yourself to do it. She's been called upon to serve her country once more as a warship, and she's taking that duty seriously – more seriously than Kongou seems to, at any rate. She deserves better than patronization.

Thus, you let your eyes bore through the poor destroyer for long moments before you frown. "This is a serious violation of protocol, Willie."

Her apprehension seems to shift sideways into confusion. "S-sir?"

"Checkered paint is kind of hard to manufacture," you inform her seriously. "In fact, back in your day it was regarded as a joke, I think, just like 'when pigs fly'."

She blinks. "S-s-s-sir...?"


"Welcome to 2018, kid," you say. "Ships fight with missiles that can hunt down one unlucky son-of-a-bitch three hundred miles away and stuff a warhead right up his ass; ships are equipped with radar that can pick up a sparrow at twenty miles and hit it with a Sparrow," (this draws a twitch from Willie's eyebrows, but you plow on,) "-and modern manufacturing can make paint that absorbs said radar emissions. Paint that absorbs *radar,* Willie. Checkered paint ain't shit. It's still expensive though, and even the cheap stuff requires proper forms." You sigh and pull out your cell phone. "Someone was trying to skip that by using you as their proxy thief. This needs to be dealt with. Who put you up to this?"

Willie stares at you for a second longer, utter astonishment evident on her features. You stare back at her with the annoyed look of a high-ranking man who's patience with his subordinate is rapidly running out, a look you've honed to a razor's edge over the years. The Skipper Stare, as it's known, is always effective. Willie Dee swallows her spit and your bullshit in one lump and stammers a reply. "I d-don't know their n-names, sir, everyone's new, but they w-w-were the only ones wearing g-green-"

"Aaaaah, that's enough, thank you," you say. You punch the quick-dial and hold the phone to your ear, bumping the volume button up enough to guarantee the conversation won't be private.


"Goto here," you hear the Admiral's voice rasp.

"It's Settle. We just had a disciplinary problem with one of my destroyers and a few of your cruisers."

You can feel the utter, savage hate rolling off Goto right through the phone; the very silence before he speaks is terrifying in itself. "Elaborate."

"I've got Willie Dee right here; she tells me those two broccoli-colored torpedo cruisers of yours sent her away from gunnery practice to fetch a can of checkered paint from inventory. No forms, no requisition request, not even a goddamn quartermaster's memo."

You can almost hear the air rushing into your phone as Goto's rage cools and contracts into a thoughtful pause. "That's a problem. They need it, yeah, but they've been flaunting protocol for too long, now. Swing by my office, I'll give you the forms they need to fill out. I'll write an order for it, too." Goto pauses for a second, probably to let that shit-eating grin creeping into his voice loose into his office, because when he resumes, his tone is once again the perfect picture of the put-upon administrator. "They probably wanted her to steal it from US Navy stores, if they picked her. I can write a letter of a-"

"-that won't be necessary, Admiral," you reply sternly. "Things are... difficult, right now, and our charges are catching up to a new era. No need to get all picky about it."

"Very well then," Goto replies, with an edge in his voice that promises nothing good for his own wayward charges. "I'll have that paperwork for you in a few minutes."


"I'll send Willie over for it," you reply. "Bye." The call terminates with a *beep,* and you turn to look at your thoroughly confused little destroyer. "You know where Admiral Goto's office is, right?"

"... yes," she replies. "Sir! Yes, sir."

"Go along, then," you instruct. "Wait outside of Administration, I'll send someone with the paint."

After Willie Dee scurries off (waiting till she think's you're out of sight before wiping at her face with her shirt-tails,) you swear and curse some more as you dig through the bushes for your damned cane. Thus equipped, you hobble straight towards the maintenance area; flagging down a passing sailor on a motorized cart and commandeering his services to cover ground quicker. You find Corporal Hate in one of the larger workshops, hovering over an empty paint can. He's taken the time to stencil "Checkered Paint" onto it, and even covered over the "color" image on it with actual checkering. You hobble up behind him as he begins pouring, very, very carefully, into the can from another, using a small funnel. He's taken the checkered cardboard divider which secures 40mm grenades snugly in their case and carefully trimmed it to fit inside the larger can. You wait till he's filled the first square with white paint and set it down to reach for a can of black primer.

"Thin your paints!" you shout over the cacophony and clash of mechanics actively servicing a large truck engine behind you. Corporal Hate almost jumps, but he's gotten used to your talent for, as he puts it, "bird-dogging me like an asshole-sniffing Basset hound.... asshole." He gives you an extremely unamused look and turns back to his task. "Hey, skipper."

"She'll be waiting in front of Administration," you tell him, and before he can make reply, you spin smartly on your cane and hobble away, feeling very, very pleased with yourself.


>Several hours later

Dinner, as it turns out, is meatloaf.

The Navy doesn't always do things right, but at least they don't fuck up meatloaf too often – especially in the officer's mess. You load your plate up high, making sure to add some ketchup, and pick your seat to allow LOS to the evening's show – two green-uniformed torpedo cruiser girls who are staring hollow-eyed at several sheets of inexplicable paperwork laid out in front of them.

Goto, the glorious son-of-a-bitch, provided them with JSDF standard forms... in English. And from what you saw as you "casually" passed by their table, he ran it through Google Translate for good measure.

You're just polishing off your cornbread with gusto when your phone rings. Glancing at it, you see it's from Goto.

Ten minutes later, you're hobbling into the command center, almost galloping sidelong again with urgency. Goto's already there, tapping a forgotten clipboard against his knee idly. "Hey."

"They made contact already?"

"The abyssal made contact with them," he replies.

You check your watch, and frown. Engaging a few hours before sundown has always been the traditional tactic of a force looking to bloody the enemy while ensuring a relatively easy getaway after dark, from Eurybiades at Artemisium, two thousand years ago, right up to the early years of WWII. You sling yourself into a chair and lean back a bit.

"Righto. Lights, cameras, so forth."

The CnC comes alive around you.


Huge sixty-inch TV screens come to life with live feeds of every sort – one screen has an overlaid real-time satellite intel feed, another, data from a U2 orbiting over the Philippines. Both of them are displaying red dots indicating heat/radar signatures of detected ships, since the damn abyssals showed up beneath a squall again; dark thunderheads roiling out of the west. Still more cameras are piping you real-time feeds from local craft; two high-angle views from drones, a third from a Philippine Navy coast guard cutter shadowing your task force from a few thousand yards back, and two more -

"-Goto, did you put fucking go-pro's on our ships?"

Goto just shrugs noncommittally and sinks back into his own chair. "You have the bridge, cap'n."

"... I only have one ship in this fight."

"And it's the first one, too," he says. "And if YOU were staging out of OUR base I'd be singing a different song, but-" he waves his hands to indicate the whole base. "Divided command is a recipe for disaster, anyways."

You nod, acknowledging the man is very good about talking his way around putting you on the spot to test your abilities. You clip the microphone to your shirt collar and speak into it cautiously, feeling like Ender fucking Wiggin – and not in the good way.

"Hello?"


"KONGOU-SAN READY TO DELIVER OUR BURNning justi-" you hastily adjust your speaker's volume knob.

Next is two mike-clicks – Arizona.

"Tenryuu reporting, ready to kick ass and take names!" the next girl shouts in angry-sounding Japanese.

"Tatsuta reporting and please forgive Tenry-"

"FUCK YOU!"

"That's incestuous, Ten-"

You slide a poisonous look towards Goto, who just gives you a shit-eating grin as he reclines in his chair.

"Naka-chan here, be sure to give me top billing!"

"Are you fuckers for real?" you say.

"Y-your mike is voice activated, Admiral Settle," Tatsuta's elegant voice says.

"I know."

There's an awkward silence, and the last ship (a Sendai-class cruiser) decides to confirm with two mike-clicks as well.


With your communications technically functional, you settle down to the task at hand. From your various sensors, there seems to be three cruisers – armored or protected, you can't tell – about fifty-thousand yards away from your task force, in hot pursuit, with a screen of four or five lighter ships in front of them. The task force could run circles around them but for Arizona; her 21 knot speed keeps them from outrunning the enemy – though you could detach her and let Kongou and the cruisers run amok, should the situation warrant.

The seas are rough, and visibility is relatively poor, favoring your cruisers chances of closing to torpedo range without getting shot up, but working against your battleships and their long-range advantage. The immediate problem seems to be how to clear out the enemy escort screen with your four cruisers, who's firepower is no great shakes compared to any allied CL.

>Fuck it; let the cruisers at 'em. They know what they're doing.
>Have the cruisers screen the battleships with smoke; pretend like you're fleeing; only to double back on them before they realize you've tricked them into overtaking the BBs.
>Start a running gun-battle and see if you can't pick them off.
>Have Kongou rush the bastards with the cruisers behind her; she can take anything mere escorts can dish out.
>Other? Specify.


>Have the cruisers screen the battleships with smoke; pretend like you're fleeing; only to double back on them before they realize you've tricked them into overtaking the BBs.

You transmit your orders swiftly, making sure you've been clearly understood, and then sit back to watch the battle unfold.

First the battleships tack sideways enough to bring their full broadsides to bear. Girls whom you can shake hands with, in person, don't seem like they'd put out the terrifying and awe-inspiring broadside of a massive battleship, but from the go-pros and the drone cams, they certainly live up to the historical spectacle. The go-pro cams vibrate violently with each salvo as both battlewagons cut loose with their 14-inch guns around twenty-five thousand yards; fairly long range even in clear weather, and a right crapshoot in heavy seas against escorts. The battleships turn sidelong, the cruisers stringing out in a second battle-line between them and the charging escorts, their shorter-ranged guns silent. Long minutes pass as the battlewagons thunder away, clouds of burnt propellant vanishing in the wind and sea spray aft as towering columns of water erupt around the small hostiles; Kongou's shots colored a brilliant red.

Arizona, you recall, was sunk before she could be assigned a dye color.

When the enemies have closed to around fourteen-thousand yards, you have the operators fine-tune the drone visuals, and you get your first close look at the escorts.

Destroyers.

Abyssal destroyers.


Nothing quite fits style to function as well as their destroyers do. Their battleships are... well, everything the shipgirls are, but in a – no time to think of that now, and the cruisers are the most fucked-up Lovecraftian LSD trip things you might care to imagine, but the destroyers, now, look exactly like what they are – sleek, fast weapons, but possessing a heavy and savage look that communicates their power. They slice through the water at thirty-plus knots, erupting through the towering columns of spray as they chase salvos, expertly dodging each incoming concentration as they close the distance as fast as possible. The cruisers are not far behind them, perhaps five-thousand yards (and eighteen or nineteen from your task force, now,) but they're not slinging anything larger than 6-inch – however, with their sheer rate of fire, it's only a matter of time before they start landing one or two hits. The Graf Spee was nibbled to death like that off of Savo, and that's what you're counting on.

The first hit comes from a destroyer; a phenomenally lucky shot given the range and the attacker's maneuvering. It whistles in low and bounces off Kongou's belly, flipping end-for-end over her shoulder before exploding in the air far behind her. The second one probably came from one of the cruisers, hitting Arizona square amidships. Flames flicker and eat at her uniform for a few moments before the sea-spray extinguishes them.

"Okay," you say, "Division Two, lay smoke, Division One, turn away under smoke."


The BBs oblige, turning their sterns to the enemy as their smoke generators fire up. In the wind and spray it'd hardly be effective, but with a battle line of four cruisers laying a screen for them, they're able to vanish from the enemy rangefinders. You wait a few minutes, then order the cruisers to execute a simultaneous turn, putting them line-abreast, and within a few minutes they're weaving back and forth to spread their smoke evenly between the battleships and the enemy line.

With your battleships displaying predictably abysmal gunnery in the awful sea-state before trying to break contact, the abyssals smell blood. You watch carefully as the destroyers turn sidelong, tacking to reduce their closure speed as their cruisers catch up, slipping into accurate gunnery range. With your cruisers forced to stay behind and screen the battleships trying to break contact, the abyssals sense an opportunity to smash them apart, piecemeal. The cruisers begin tacking just enough to bring their broadsides into play; the insanely heavy batteries of 5 and 6 inch quick-firing guns putting out a hail of fire the little Japanese Cls can only dream of. They, at least, benefit from proper fire-control systems; high-mounted rangefinders linked to their guns, but sheer weight-of-fire will soon decide the fight.


The heavy seas turn white around your four CLs as a hail of shells tears into the ocean around them. Hits begin to register as the cruisers close to fifteen thousand yards, coming on as directly as they dare. The destroyers – a full squadron of five, you can now see – are still chasing salvos like bloodthirsty terriers on PCP, abandoning accurate gunnery in favor of closing to torpedo range. Nobody, neither the ships or Goto, say anything, but the tension in the room is clearly climbing towards the breaking point.

"Division Two, steer bearing one-three-three, reform column. Fire torpedoes as soon as you've got a solution," you inform them.

"We're not gonna hit destroyers at this range, you idiot!" Tenryuu snarls at you.

"Don't need to," you reply. "Division One – now."




The abyssal destroyers are only eleven thousand yards distant, closing rapidly on their maximum torpedo range when Kongou and Arizona emerge from the smokescreen, charging directly for the center of the abyssal line. Their fore turrets speak almost as one; each battlewagon singling out one destroyer with their primary batteries and another one with their secondaries – on each side.

"Tenryuu, Tatsuta, keep abreast of Arizona; she's going to keep you updated on her primary rangefinder's solution and you're going to fire using that. Naka and, uh, Quiet-chan, you do the same with Kongou."

"But Arizona doesn't-" the complainer is cut off by what is unmistakably morse code coming through the radio link. "... right."

The abyssal destroyers were close enough to see the CLs launching their Long Lances; giving them two options – charge in headlong, or put their sterns to you. They opt for the latter, hoping to open range from the battlewagons; they only need survive for a minute or two before the battleships will have to deal with the cruisers.

They don't make it. One is still heeling over in an emergency turn when a Long Lance catches it in the side; the abyssal destroyer vanishing in a thunderous explosion so violent the drone feeds jitter as the shockwave reaches them. The remaining four launch their torpedoes around eight-thousand yards and try to split up in both directions, but Arizona and Kongou are already bow-on to them, and their torpedoes are visible enough in the heavy seas; sometimes they even fly right out of one swell and into another, betraying their track. Kongou kicks her screws into high speed, pulling ahead of Arizona a bit as she guns for all the maneuvering speed she can.


The remaining four split up two and two; with the torpedo spreads past they're free to sail almost perpendicular to the battlewagons; presenting a narrow target to your ships as one group sails north, and the other south - an effort to split your fire.

But the range has already closed to seven-thousand yards; letting your battlewagons put both port and starboard secondary batteries to good use. Kongou and Arizona seem to vanish in clouds of horrendous violence, the sheer concussive blast of their full batteries surrounding them with vaproized sea spray from the heavy swells crashing over their, erm, 'decks.'

You shake your head and re-focus the drone's camera as Goto snickers behind you and fuck him too. Things are going well; Division Two has fallen back out of the abyssal cruiser's range, and the destroyers are having the shit shot out of them. One catches a 14-inch shell on the tail, or the, er, fantail or whatever, and promptly loses it entire; the ship cracking in half and settling in the water as it's 30-knot momentum rapidly vanishes, before it sinks stern-first in the water. Another has slowed to about fifteen knots and is settling rapidly; its surface covered in flames and hideous-looking scars from the secondary batteries of the battleships and the light cruisers salvos. The other two are making a clean getaway, but they're unlikely to bother you for the rest of the fight.

"Division One," you instruct, "do your thing."


And they do. Kongou and Arizona swing full broadside to the enemy cruisers and they reciprocate, both sides squaring off in classic battle-lines only eleven-thousand yards distant from each other. On a clear day, it'd be close to point-blank range, but in the awful weather conditions things aren't quite as punishing... on big ships that make steadier gun platforms, at least. The hail of six-inch fire starts splashing around the lead ship, Kongou, as she swings her primary battery to bear.

"TAKE THIS! she cries, flinging her splayed hand out at the enemy. "BURNING JUSTICE; FOURTEEN-INCH PENETRATORS! KONGOU-SAN'S FINAL WORD!"

"I really have to monitor her internet usage," Goto growls behind you as she commences fire. Despite the bad weather, she brackets the lead cruiser with the fourth salvo and straddles with the fifth. Kongou reels off the range data to Arizona, and after another terse two mike-clicks, both ships straddle the enemy's lead – what you hope is the flagship – at the same time. You zoom the camera in; your drone close enough now to see a 14-inch AP shell punch clean through its bow.

"Good shooting girls," you reply. "Switch to HE for now; these fellows aren't armored cruisers at all. We've got it in the bag."

That's when you see it.


Goto makes a noise just as you pan the drone's camera to the cruiser's stern – it's laying smoke; not very thick, not nearly thick enough to blind its fellows in-line behind it, but enough. The ship behind it is laying smoke too; thicker, and tail-end charlie's is the thickest; a thin, white smoke, hard to tell apart from the spray and the haze.

You pull the camera's view out and start scanning the ocean behind the cruisers, flicking your eyes to the satellite and U2 feeds. They don't show anything definitive, but that doesn't count for shit, NOTHING counts for anything when you're fighting evil spirits that come from dimensions unknown.

The first thing you see is the flash – four of them, and – no , eight. Eight.

"AAAARGH!" Kongou screams. "I've been- I'm okay! It t-takes more than that to stop me!"

"What the fuck!?" Goto says, on his feet, staring hard at the screen.

The ships seem to fade into view; their outlines coming into hazy definition. Hulking, angry-looking vessels; broadsides bristling with small quick-firing batteries – and two heavy turrets, two guns apiece, one fore, one aft.

"Kongou, Arizona, new contacts, thirteen-thousand yards, right behind the cruisers. Battleships!"

And that's it for tonight, folks! We'll be angling for a SWQ thread later this week or early next week; conclusion of SEAN QUEST!

SEE YOU THEN!

>>37987907
>I don't know anything about Kantai Collection. What is that?

Pre-dreadnaught battleships - they almost all use two two-gun turrets, one fore, one aft, and a lot of broadside-mounted light quickfiring guns.

tl;dr you're outnumbered now.

Click to shrink...

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-COLLE QUEST - SHIT JUST GOT REAL EDITION​

Through the smoke-haze and sea-spray come the Abyssal battlewagons, their primary batteries thundering in unison, four-gun salvos punctuated by the bright flashes of their secondary mounts, their own long barrels and thunderous reports easily visible through the haze. The spray kicked up by their muzzle-blasts wafts over and around the nothing cutting through the heavy swells fifty feet ahead of the diminutive black-clad humanoid forms; the ghostly outline of the warships they once were roughly matching the hazy outlines from the U2's infared sensor; dark, cold voids cutting through the warm tropical waters, their decks lit by the tremendous thunder of their primary batteries.

And they've already found the range.


A heavy shell cuts past Arizona's superstructure, cutting a wisp of blonde hair from her head. She doesn't register the hit, her eyes steady on the distant mark as her turrets fine-tune their solution. Kongou and Arizona launch their first reply as the enemies third salvo straddles them with huge, towering gouts of spray, the guns ripple-firing from the left, lances of flame marching down their broadsides in almost perfect unison; striking just short of the abyssals. Four Battleships; the greatest concentration of destructive power ever built by the hands of Man, given animation by forces incomprehensible – and now they're squaring off in battle-lines only thirteen-thousand yards distant, their incredible weaponry swiftly zeroing in on each other.

"They're pre-dreadnaughts," Goto says, his voice low and hot. "They can saturate our superstructures, but at this range you just can't miss, even in these seas." He says nothing more, just staring through the displays with a cold intensity in his slate-gray eyes.

He thinks you should press the attack.


"Admiral!" a harsh voice cuts in quickly. "Requesting permission for close attack!" You recognize the voice – Tenryuu.

"You've shot your wad," you reply tersely.

"Only half, Admiral," Tatsuta replies coolly. "We carry over thirty."

Which means they've only half to use now – and these seas are rough on light cruisers. You switch cameras to the Philippine patrol boat shadowing the battle; giving you a good look at the abyssal shells as they skip and tumble a little before exploding in the foam and swells behind Division 1, their secondary batteries shooting almost as flat as the primaries. You don't know who or what they are; from whence or when they've come – or how much it matters weighed against their eldritch natures.

The Knight's Fork – or Nagumos. Now it's Settle's, to settle one way or another.

So you do.

[ ] Let the battlewagons slug it out - you're not sure what you're dealing with yet.
[ ] Don't hold back - strike with your full strength!
[ ] Other?


[X] Let the battlewagons slug it out - you're not sure what you're dealing with yet.

"Division Two, close to optimal range from the enemy cruisers and commence fire. Flank speed; try to circle in front and cross their T if you get a chance."

"Acknowledged, Admiral," Tatsuta replies a touch too quickly, followed by a few seconds of static as she keeps her mic depressed for some reason. The three abyssal cruisers can't be ignored, and Division One's secondary batteries aren't going to cut it, either – but your four CLs are fragile and the only escorts you've got. It's time to mass firepower, as the enemy has, instead of rushing into the teeth of an unknown foe with a half-load of torpedoes.

Fourth and fifth salvos now, the vapor-trails of heavy shells barely visible in the heavy rain before they impact; both sides straddling their targets now. Both your battleships are almost lost in a sea of shell-splashes as the abyssal cruisers pour out a withering fire from their broadside quick-firing batteries; bright sparks and flashes appearing on your girls as the shells find superstructure or go skipping off their impenetrable armor. The close range suits you in that regard; though the abyssal's rain of steel might shred your ships rangefinders to hell, at this range it won't cost you much, and they'll never manage a truly debilitating hit. And before they're trashed, they'll take a toll – your BB's secondary batteries are giving good account against the cruisers; smoke and shrapnel and fire spouting from the abyssal's hulls as five-inch hits smash superstructure and put their poorly-protected guns out of action. The CL's fire joins the fray soon after as they close to more accurate range.


You zoom in on the abyssal battleships, your heart squeezing into a tight stony lump as the drone's high-resolution camera catches the unholy eldritch light of their eyes, a horrible radiance that seems to glint and shine all the brighter in the awful conditions, lingering in the seaspray and swells. You swallow nothing and compress your focus higher, just a little higher, on the lead ship's head as the seventh exchange of fire lands about them; the abyssal crashing face-first through the column of spray that narrowly missed her face. Her headgear – her superstructure – splays wide a strange latticework reminiscent of radar antennas; but the fine mesh seems to whip and waver in the wind, like ropes rather than wire mesh; and the tall mast atop her head is absent of rangefinders, but does have a crow's nest of sorts, and –

"Fuck," you hiss nastily, zooming the camera out. "We fucked up, we fucked UP-"

- the field of view widens just in time to see Kongou's diminutive humanoid form lurch and crumple as something hits her in the belly; seven more gigantic splashes tearing apart the heavy swells behind her. They're focusing fire on her, of course; firing at known-range at a too-slow target through open sights, not sweating the shell-splashes; which won't do their primitive fire-control much good – and they need to even the firepower disparity quickly, they well know.

You're opening your mouth, an order on your lips, when another shell catches Kongou in the shoulder as the abyssal's secondary battery salvos rain into the sea around her. Bright light stings your eyes as something explodes in a blazing cordite flash.

"Lost a s-secondary turret," she wheezes. "Other one fetched up against a bulkhead; I'm good!"

"What," Goto says, his voice not quite snarling.

>How order?
[ ] Maintain speed and heading our superior FC will silence their guns fast.
[ ] Attempt to split their fire.
[ ] Go for the gold – identify the hostile flagship for a bonus.

demetrious -
>people actually voting for solve the puzzle instead of solving the puzzle
fuck and shit um how do I count these votes gimme a moment

38318585 - People took it as the HIGH RISK HIGH REWARD option rather than an actual puzzle.

demetrious - Okay, that works.

Click to shrink...

[X] Attempt to split their fire.
[X] Go for the gold – identify the hostile flagship for a bonus.

"Division Two, close at best angles as fast you can!" you order swiftly. "Launch torpedoes at your discretion; target the cruisers!"

The trailing abyssal battleship rocks as Arizona scores with two 14-inch shells; one below the waterline. The "girl" leans over to clutch at her leg, listing slightly, but her fire hardly slackens. The division leader, the abyssal with the strange bridge-wings and fighting top doesn't flinch, even when Kongou's eight salvo finally scores; a spray of black blood bursting from her shoulder as the miniaturized 14-inch shell punches clean through her superstructure, shredding her back with shrapnel and flame. She simply turns her eyes heavenward, unblinking in the stinging salty spray.

Finding the drone, diminutive against the overcast, she stares right into your eyes; a small, satisfied smile haunting her lips.

And then she fires.


Kongou seems to be melting rapidly under a rain of steel and fire; the three cruisers focusing their remaining guns on her. Blood runs down the battlewagon's pretty face as five and six-inch shells rip through her clothing and dent her skin, burning red splotches on her bared midriff as they deflect from her belt armor; scorching red blisters tearing down her slender white arms as others skip off her decks.

Goto is almost vibrating in his chair, a slight quaver in his cheek as his jaw ratchets a few notches tighter. "If Arizona was faster – "

"If Kongou was tougher-"

"But-"

Kongou's guns are halfway through a fresh salvo, the thunderous reports marching down her flank when you see a gout of water explode nearly under her feet.

"Kongou, status-"

"Penetration below the waterline," she replies, her breathing ragged and hot and furious. You flick your eyes at the monitors, drawn by the belated flashes of the trailing abyssal."They're penetrating my belt but they're being decapped and defuzed. I'm o-"

A twelve-inch shell doubles her over as it punches into her belly, another one plunging into the ocean and exploding, kicking Kongou's slender heel out from under her, the shattered remains of her rudder flying into the stormy skies behind her. She almost goes over, but manages to keep her 'footing' and stagger upright – just in time to meet the intermediate battery salvo; the heavy eight-inch shells punching into her legs and outstretched arm; digging deep grooves in the flesh that'd repelled the cruiser's fire.

"How?" Goto asks. "How are they penetrating her decks-"

"Intermediate batteries," you reply. "Eight inchers, not peashooter shit."

"They're Royal Navy?"

"No," you say tersely, turning back to the drone's camera feed; locking your eyes with the still-staring abyssal; the enemy who's sensed your presence on the battlefield across hundreds of miles. "BB-4. USS Iowa."


Goto snaps open like a switchblade, suddenly on his feet. "Settle," he rasps, barely constraining his voice. "Settle, her damage-control-"

You half-nod, already speaking. "Kongou, disengage and turn away under smoke, best speed! Division Two, CLOSE ACTION, NOW!" The wakes kick up behind your CLs as they charge bow-on for the hostile cruisers, dispensing with weight-of-fire, racing for the enemy to come to grips at point-blank range.

"I can't, Admiral," Kongou replies steadily, an odd tone in her voice. "I've lost a rudder and I'm taking moderate flooding. Smoke generators offline; aft boat deck afire – it's too late for half measures."

"Best speed?"

"Twenty-eight knots-"

"MAKE IT!" you snap. "Steer with your screws, dammit, you've got the speed, use it while you still have it."

"Aren't we doing any damage?" Goto asks, one hand flexing into a white-knuckled fist.

"Not fast enough," you reply. Your battlewagons are tearing the abyssals apart; heavy batteries striking with superior accuracy. Both hostile ships are listing slightly from penetrations below waterline; their speed slacking significantly – but their primary and intermediate batteries continue to bellow; their well-protected main guns untouched; their incredible impenetrable citadels withstanding even fourteen-inch direct hits even as their sterns and bows are shot to pieces. Kongo's secondary turrets are all smashed; fires raging along her decks and her old-fashioned flowing outfit, flames licking at bloodsoaked silk. Her face is set in a rictus of pain, black blood trickling from a hole in her cheek through which white teeth gleam as her primary turrets continue to speak with telling effect, continuing her duel with BB-4, USS Iowa reborn – and very, very fucking angry.


She's pulling ahead of Arizona; already heeling off to the right, away from the enemy battleline, when her aft turret suddenly slews wildly, the guns elevating far too high.

"Aft boiler penetration;" Kongou says steadily, no hint of pain or panic in her voice anymore. "I've lost power. Switching to manual traverse."

A second of shock bolts across the room; only the cooling fans on the computer equipment stirring.

"Admiral Goto," she says softly. "Admiral, I-"

"What's she doing!?" Goto barks suddenly. "What the hell is she doing-"

"Her job," you say tersely, a part of you suddenly angry with Goto for flaking on you at the worst possible-"

"Not her, HER!" he snarls, leaping forward to jab his finger at another monitor and wiggle it about like a sword. "WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING?"

Arizona is swinging her bow away from Kongou's stern – and directly towards the abyssal flagship. That the cruisers lie between her and them doesn't seem to factor in – she makes no attempt to change course even as the lead cruiser heels about to bring its unmolested port broadside to bear.

[ ] Politely ask Arizona what the FUCK she's doing.
[ ] Focus on Divison Two's fight – this is the fight Arizona was built for.


[X] Focus on Divison Two's fight – this is the fight Arizona was built for.

Your consciousness seems to drift away, hovering above reality higher than the U-2 hovers above the steel-torn seas off eastern Mindanao as you watch the USS Arizona turn her bow to the enemy and charge headlong for the center of the enemy battle-line.

Neither Arizona nor Kongou are true "fast battleships" like their WWII brethren; Kongou was a battle-cruiser, and despite upgrades and a new designation her armor was never a proper match for another proper battleship in a close-range slug-fest. Especially not the pre-dreadnaughts, built around a central armored citadel that could keep the vessel afloat even if both ends were riddled like swiss cheese; like a pillbox with a ship stuck on either end as an afterthought. Kongou can't stand in a brawl like that, and if you don't seize the initiative soon; they'll finish her off before she can limp away. Arizona can't run at all, her anemic 21-knot speed tying you down to this patch of sea.

But Arizona doesn't need to run; and she knows it. Her belt is fourteen inches thick; with eighteen on the turret faces – like BB-4, she was slow and powerful, built to stand and deliver.

And she intends to do so now.

Division Two catches up to Arizona as she closes on the screening cruisers, then slide past her with their fifteen-knot advantage, black smoke pouring from their stacks as they push their turbines to their limit. Tenryuu is in the lead; her forward guns silent; saving her ammo for the close action. The protected cruiser's starboard broadsides were well thrashed in the duel with the battleship's secondary turrets; so they're heeling about as one, a simultaneous turn to unshadow their port guns. Their bows swing towards your charging ships for long seconds; increasing the closure rate... and hold there; the cruisers mindful of your torpedoes.

The cruisers cross each other's paths and erupt in muzzle flashes almost as one.




"Pair off by class, pair off by class and focus fire!" you command, and to their credit they stick to it as long as possible. The heavily-damaged protected cruisers unleash a hail of lead almost unbelievable to behold; the broadsides of the ship vanishing in a nonstop flurry of muzzleflashes, the white cordite smoke concealing their sterns as they tear into the Japanese CLs. Tenryuu keeps closing bow-on; offering the enemy the smallest possible target; her knees smashing through the tops of heavy whitecaps as she charges in, her battle-fury clear clean through the drone's raindrop-obscured lens. As she approaches the towering hulk of the cruiser it seems to quaver, to fade, and then it's blowing away in the rain, melting into the cordite smoke of her own guns as something dark and human-sized comes wheeling about, lowering its head to barrel towards Tenryuu even as the Japanese ship leans steeply into an emergency turn; her heels cutting wide wakes in the water. The Long-Lance torpedoes leap from their tubes in jets of compressed air that blow away the sheets of rain; climbing high into the air, too high; before meeting the side of a steep swell at just the right angle and arrowing towards the charging abyssal bow from two thousand yards.


You switch to the U-2s feed quickly; the multi-million dollar sensor package includes magnetic resonance scan equipment that could find submerged subs from low-orbit if it wanted. You both follow the track of Tenryuu's spread till it meets the abyssal's bow halfway through an evasive s-turn; the blast blinding the thermal camera for a few seconds till the filters adjust. The hulk has hardly begun sinking when its mates come charging in; their unshadowed broadsides ripping the sea around Tenryuu apart as she begins chasing salvos desperately; but with the number of light guns focused on her, it hardly helps. Tatsuta swings broadside and looses her own spread; doing nothing but forcing the remaining cruisers to split formation to either side; dividing their cohesion. Tenruyuu manages to cut across the lead ship's bow and to her savaged starboard side, where she's got some parity of firepower. Tatsuta-


"TATSUTA HARD TO PORT HARD TO PORT," you fairly scream and she heels over obediently, leaning hard into the emergency maneuver just as Naka-chan and her orange-clad companion swing broadside, the torpedo tubes on their legs -

- explode.


The flash blinds your cameras for a moment, and when the image resolves again you see Naka lying face-down in the water, a pool of burning oil spreading around her. Her quiet companion is sailing circles around her, screaming; clutching at her hair as the oncoming cruiser focuses fire on her.

"Arizona, unshadow your guns and -" but the battlewagon is already blazing away with her secondary batteries; enemies on both sides; her forward guns trading shots with the enemy battleship line not six or seven thousand yards distant; their meager four-gun salvos struggling to strike Arizona's narrow frontal profile. Her rear turret is slewing around, only a few degrees shy of having a solution on the cruiser bearing down on the crippled Naka. You switch main-feeds to the Philipine cutter's for a view closer to Arizona's level for a better vantage on the angles -

- and can see nothing for the blinding muzzle flash of the cutter's 76mm rapid-fire bow gun, plugging away from a scant few thousand yards; the Coast Guard cutter slicing through the heavy seas with the narrow bow of a patrol vessel and the phenomenal acceleration of modern jet turbine engines. Her single gun is slinging more steel than three or four of the light cruiser's guns can in the same time. You see the diminutive dot of the hostile cruiser's humanoid form as the ghostly outlines of a ship fling the spray and smoke away before the scarred, jagged hull breathes into existence between one heartbeat and the next; the gun-ports lighting up -

- the camera feed vanishes into darkness.

[ ] Order Tenryuu and Tatsuta to circle the wagons around Naka and that Filipino cutter – focus fire on that cruiser; to hell with the other one.
[ ] Order Tenryuu and Tatsuta to leave that fight and flank Arizona; she's going for a point-blank duel and needs all the help she can get.
[ ] Say nothing. Everyone in that bloodstained sea is a warrior, and they know their jobs.


[X] Order Tenryuu and Tatsuta to circle the wagons around Naka and that Filipino cutter – focus fire on that cruiser; to hell with the other one.

"Tenryuu, Tatsuta; reform on Naka and Quiet-Chan!" you say tersely. "Force that cruiser to withdraw!"

"But I've-"

"DO IT NOW, YOU BITCH!" you snarl with real wrath burning in your voice. "MEN ARE DYING OUT THERE!" Her class, like the Sendai-class before them were obsolete and undergunned ships when their first war began; with the Long Lance torpedoes spent you'll need to focus your fire to achieve results swiftly. Tenryuu and Tatsuta heel around in tight circles to obey your command, and you turn your attention to -

"Quiet-chan, do you read me?"

The girl gives no response, still sailing zig-sags before the drifting, burning, unconscious Naka; laying down a smokescreen for what good it'll do; seemingly oblivious to the shell-splashes around her. "Quiet-chan? Sendai-class, come in, god dammit!" But there's no answer, just a terrified sobbing. The abyssal cruiser seems entirely occupied with the oncoming Philippine cutter; its insane rate of fire seeming to saturate the air with projectiles; but every shell the cutter's single cannon fires finds its mark; the computer-aimed, gyro-stabilized gun wreaking havoc on the hostile's hull; air-burst rounds sweeping gun crews from the deck (does it have any?) and shattering breeches and ammo hoists.

A new cacophony of sound and fury draws your eyes away from the cruiser melee – Arizona has finally swung her broadside to bear; and she's slugging it out with the two enemy battleships alone, under seven-thousand yards and closing.


The world takes a deep breath and holds it as the battlewagons square off; the discarded heroes and the unbloodied weapon, finally fulfilling their purpose – the sum total of millions of dollars, thousands of tons of steel, hundreds of thousands of man-hours and thousands of living, breathing, loving human souls that built and repaired and sailed and fought and *lived* in those colossal weapons now compressed into an impossibly tiny volume.

As both sides commence main-gun salvos, you truly know what it means to be awestruck.

Even at this bitterly close range, Arizona's vitals prove impregnable against the abyssal's 12-inch main batteries; their mighty guns merely bouncing clean off Arizona's turret faces and belt armor. But her less crucial areas are hardly immune this close; and even the enemy's eight-inchers are scoring penetrations. USS Arizona seems to melt before your eyes, her odd boxy hat being carried clean away by a shell; her rich auburn hair scorched and soot-marred; blood pouring from her shrapnel-ripped flesh as fires break out across her body and "superstructure" of her steelier limbs. The abyssal battleships are slowing to barley ten knots in the water now; Arizona's mighty 14-inch salvos putting two or three shells on target with each broadside; the bows and sterns of the trailing ship holed by the AP rounds that smash clean through both sides of the ship like it isn't there; breaching below the waterline. The focused fire of sixteen heavy guns is ripping Arizona apart; her battered frame barely visible through the smoke and fire and shell-splashes. Penetrations near her bow slacken her speed, and you see her slowly lurching back upright as she begins counter-flooding to keep an even keel for gunnery; slowing her even more.

This was the fight Arizona was built for; a no-holds barred brawl. A clash of titans.

And against all odds, Arizona is winning.


One by one the abyssal's guns fall silent. Arizona's secondary batteries are shattered within seconds of the second exchange beginning; but every time her awesome main guns bellow an abyssal regrets it. The trailing hostile takes a 14-inch shell to one of the intermediate turrets that ride on her shoulder; punching it inward and utterly obliterating it in a gout of cordite flash and flame as the ready ammo detonates. Three or four salvos later, a shell manages to penetrate its citadel without being decapped; the projectile detonating in the abyssals guts. Dark oily smoke roils from her gasping mouth as the eldritch light in her eyes dims, but even as she slows she keeps firing with her main weapons, the two turrets topping her pauldron-like shoulder guards. She turns away under smoke, but Arizona keeps scoring hits; another shell falling just short and going off underwater lifts the abyssal out of the sea foam by a foot and sends her staggering for her 'footing.'

That's when the Iowa puts a 12-inch shell directly into Arizona's forehead.


Your heart freezes for two long beats, and aches in frozen agony for a third and fourth as the smoke clears and you see Arizona's face has been shredded; sheets of blood pouring over her delicate features and soaking into her blouse and tie. Her headgear has been shattered; and even the go-pro cam feed from her is blank. Even this rictus of horror is barely visible through the sheets of flame and smoke consuming your girl alive as the multiple fires ravaging her sundered superstructure begin to rage unchecked; little sparks and pops wreathing her as the tertiary and AA deck ammo lockers cook off one by one. Through the crimson mask of blood pouring over her face you see her eyes are closed, a serene, almost disconnected look on her face as she sails on, unwavering, her arms falling to her sides.

A direct hit to the bridge – or the conning tower – her primary and backup rangefinders have been obliterated, as well as the pilothouse, the radio shack – everything. Were she a real vessel, a steel hull swarming with delicate humans; she'd be a flaming pyre now as the survivors conned her from deep inside the armored conning tower, or the backup positions in the sweltering and fume-filled engine room. The primary turret crews would seal their ventilation and dog their hatches, and with their own small rangefinders on each turret roof they would wage their own private battle on Local Control, alone in their tiny armored cells – fighting to the death in the rudderless hulk of their burning warship.

Just as Arizona does now, her eyes closed in silent endurance as she's buried under a storm of shot and shell – her guns still firing, firing, firing.


X turret begins to engage BB-4, Iowa, in the lead, while Y and Z continue engaging the tailing ship. Iowa's further ahead, presenting more of her stern aspect to Arizona's X turret – which lays a beautiful straddling salvo on her from only five-thousand yards. You can see the water's surface ripple with the violence of the passing shells as they rip past the Iowa on each side – but the middle gun catches her square in the face of the rear turret; setting off the ammo on her hoist in a chain-reaction that blows her turret roof clean off.

Iowa begins laying smoke, like her compatriot.

Arizona is slowing in the water; but even so the heavy swells can barely rock the mighty ship and her incredible weight of armor plate and interior machinery. X and Y turrets continue chasing the tailing battleship as it tries to crawl away from the fight; outmatched; exposing the more vulnerable ends of her armored citadel. At such short range the shells skip rather than splash; you see the sea torn open in a long streak of white foam to the abyssal's left, another, closer, and the third smashes clean through her chest.

She falls to her knees; already sinking lower into the water, and in the instant before the explosion in her guts draws a draft of flame through the shell-hole and into her breached aft magazine, she looks up at the zoomed-in camera of the drone, gazing at you across the gulf of time and distance with eyes empty of any malice or hate, empty of anything and everything, eyes that just... are.

And then she's blown in half.


Someone's giving orders; a flat, heavy voice that falls upon the battle-fury of the hot-blooded warships, still circling for something to pounce on, and reins it back into the crucial second stage, the one where the margin of victory is often found – survival. The Philippine cutter took a pounding; her bridge is shattered and smoking and her foredeck is pockmarked; but she survived unscathed and is already coming alongside Naka; her rear-deck small-boat crane straining mightily to lift the apperently-massive weight of the bleeding ship-girl from the heavy swells as quiet-chan circles anxiously nearby. Tenryuu is coming alongside Kongou to play firehoses over her superstructure; already laughing and starting to close in on the flustered BB like its poolside horseplay, her blood still up. Tatsuta is stationary in the water; preoccupied with what looks like first-aid; she caught the brunt of the other cruiser's assault -

- and of them, nothing can be seen but a single cruiser limping away to the west, almost lost in the heavy swells.

It's over. It's over, and it sinks into your head a few minutes later, as does the chill of sweat upon your brow underneath the room's AC vents. It's over, and you're over, and everyone came through.

Everyone's alive.

Except for the trailing ship; the distinctive headgear that clicked like a misaligned spine being stomped on when the blank eyes hit you;

everyone

except

BB-3

...

..

.

AND THAT'S IT FOR TODAY! If this thread dies in under 20 minutes I'll put up a second discussion thread for the questions people have and answer them as best I can.

you're not weaseling out of this one you shitburger, you know who you are

Click to shrink...

38323660 (demetrious) -
>>38323519
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=BB-3

>What's up with the weapons systems?
Every Abyssal ship seems to perform as well as it would've in its own time period; if it was a top-of-the-line battleship in its day, it hits like one when it manifests; technology gaps be damned.

However, that cuts both ways; if a modern frigate is a top-of-the-line combatant by the standards of modern warfare; it will blow the shit out of an abyssal just fine. As the Flip cutter demonstrated, conventional weapons work just fine against abyssals. How do you think Admiral Settle got his limp?

>>38323527
>Are all the Russian ships shipboys?
None have been seen yet

>>38323542
BB-3 and BB-4 were the enemy battleships being engaged. BB-4, the first USS Iowa, was the lead ship of the enemy battle-line, the flagship. She escaped with a destroyed aft turret. BB-3, the Oregon, was the tailing battleship that Arizona managed to nail in the aft magazine as she tried to disengage.

USS Arizona LIVED, guys.

>Even at this bitterly close range, Arizona's vitals prove impregnable against the abyssal's 12-inch main batteries; their mighty guns merely bouncing clean off Arizona's turret faces and belt armor.

GUYS
GUYS
US SHIPS DON'T DIE TO NON-VITAL HITS, NOT EVEN IF THERE'S A LOT OF THEM. WHAT DO YOU THINK SHE IS, A JAPANESE CARRIER?

Click to shrink...

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANCOLLE CRAP RIDES AGAIN: THE QUESTENING​

Twitter: twitter.com/planefriend
ARCHIVES: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Kant-O-Celle Quest

Night is falling on Yokosuka as you stumble out of the administrative building, your shirt collar undone to admit the cool night air. You limp towards a bench – you forgot your cane again – and slump over it, hands braced on the backrest. Your lungs burn, like you just released a breath you didn't know you were holding, and your head feels like a boiler; pressurized and hot. The aftermath of the engagement is still jangling through you, but one prickly barbed thought rises above everything else.

[ ] BB-3. BB-4. Our own ships-!
[ ] I almost lost one of my girls. I almost lost Arizona.
[ ] I should've been there – not here, in an air-conditioned bunker, staring at screens.
[ ] Other?


[X] I almost lost one of my girls. I almost lost Arizona.

Arizona.

Saturated in steel rain, her superstructure torn asunder; rangefinders smashed, wading in for a point-blank slugfest while outnumbered two-to-one. It was the kind of fight she was built for, and she did it – but you let her.

You let her.

Head bowed like the fucking martyr on the cross as she sailed into that lopsided fight alone. She proved worthy of it, she stood and delivered as she was built to do, but you can never be sure how an abyssal will match up with a real ship, much less a ship-spirit; the unknowns are too great. And you rolled the dice, with...

With Arizona. The slender auburn-haired girl, blank-faced, cold eyed and stiff-shouldered, her old Navy dress uniform hat tipped down over her eyes, collar of the old-fashioned Navy peacoat turned up.

The girl who never speaks.


One morning Pearl Harbor woke up and found her standing in the middle of her own memorial, staring down at her own rusting hulk. She'd be there for two days as the media exploded and panic raced like wildfire through the Navy. No vessel who's remains weren't four miles deep had yet to Awaken, and nobody knows from whence these spirits rise – or why. The only inescapable conclusion is that they share an origin with the abyssals – and nobody knows what causes them to rise as one or the other, as friend or foe.

Or for that matter, if their nature and allegiance is fixed – if at all.

It was an old man who called her home, a teetering gray-hared little guy who rattled right up to the railing, past all the cameras and guards and Important Personages – one of her last four living survivors, and he brought a flashlight. He gave her a simple order, and she obeyed it; cruising across the water to an unoccupied pier. While all the President's Admirals and all the Navy's psychologists pondered the portents of her appearing at her own gravestone to silently watch her still-bleeding corpse, while all the world wondered and speculated and hoped and feared...

... it turned out USS Arizona was simply reporting to her assigned berth.


She's returned from the void. She breathes the free air for the first time in seventy years – and yet she's willing to die for you, on your order, because you've got the right flag on your shoulder. The very thought makes your stomach churn in fear and misery – you can ask that of a crew sailing with you, men who will join hands with you and fight to the death. You can do that on the bridge of a fighting ship,prepared to follow her to whatever fate – even if it's two miles straight down.

But you don't know how to be worthy of that from Arizona. You're not sure you can.

[ ] I should have stopped her. I – we owe these... whatever they are better than this.
[ ] There was no choice but to trust her. Only she knows why she came back, and I can't second-guess that – not when I don't even understand what she really *is.*
[ ] I don't have time to think about this. There's work to do; recovery, reports; follow-up pursuits. I have to get back to work.


[X] There was no choice but to trust her. Only she knows why she came back, and I can't second-guess that – not when I don't even understand what she really *is.*

You force your hands open, releasing the bench's backrest. You stand up straight, recovering your military bearing, and pull yourself the fuck together – you're a goddamned Admiral now, after all.

And you know you won't – can't – bring this up with Arizona. At the end of the day, her reasons for returning are known only to her; and if you wish to respect them, you'll trust her when she decides to pursue them. As a military asset, as a martyr seeking redemption – it's none of your goddamned business, in the end. You don't even know what Arizona *is,* not really – is she the combined souls of the men who died on her? Simply a chimera created by their unfulfilled fears and desires? Do men give a ship a life and soul of its own by living on them, or are the ships literally made *of* them?

You don't have a fucking clue. The greatest minds and philosophers of humanity have had sixteen months to bicker and ponder, and they've done no better. And as your superiors have impressed on you many times, poking around and asking about those traumas might... nobody knows what it might do. All they know is the status quo; these ships on OUR side, and the only safe thing to do is to preserve it. Your last briefing from the CNO, just before you left the 'States, had ended on that exact note.

"Don't rock the boat," he'd said.

He hadn't smiled.

You have your orders. You'll follow them. It simplifies things... for now. But something still twinges deeper in as Arizona's serene, shrapnel-shredded, blood-shrouded face flashes through your mind again.

You might not know what they are, but – they don't deserve to be feared.

[ ] Time to get back inside, see Goto, face the musical chairs.
[ ] Take a walk, cool down, unfuck yourself before you embarrass yourself. It's gonna be a few hours before the transport planes return with the task force, anyways.


[X] Take a walk, cool down, unfuck yourself before you embarrass yourself. It's gonna be a few hours before the transport planes return with the task force, anyways.

Yokosuka is pleasantly warm now, the summer night alive with crickets and cicadas, a cool sea-breeze stealing away the oppressive heat of the day. You go limping down sidewalks, letting things fall back into place. The hardest thing for a Captain to do is "nothing;" there's usually so *much* to be done that you feel a sense of programmed anxiety when you're without an urgent task – or ten.

At least you're not alone. You don't know what Goto's history is, but he's hardly better off, you can tell. He's a little more used to it, but he doesn't *understand* it any better than you do. And neither of you know what curveball the depths will vomit up next, so... you just have to wait.

Your musings are interrupted by the all-too-familiar sound of loud, high-pitched yipping and the clatter of tiny nails on concrete. Ahead, you see some Corgis – four of them, to be precise – surrounding a full-grown maple tree planted next to the sidewalk. The little dogs are staring up at it intently, hopping up on their hinds and barking ferociously at periodic intervals, pausing to let their tongues loll out – they're panting like they've recently concluded a hard chase.

You limp up to the little tableau, studying the corgis inquisitively. Then you turn your eyes towards the thick, concealing canopy of the tree.

>Ping for contacts.
>"HOW'S THAT FLEET IN BEING GOING EH CHAMP?"
>"Did you drop your barrels?"
>Other?


>Ping for contacts.

The corgis are excitable little bastards, and just like their historical namesakes they'll attack damn near anything – anything bigger than a raft was fair game, and large rafts were in the danger zone. But even the corgi's usually decline an extended chase – the real boats had three V-12 Allison aero engines growling and prowling in their guts, and they could make an absolutely insane speed; but they guzzled fuel like Akagi guzzles potato cakes.

You could even say-

"-they have short legs," you mutter to yourself, filing that one away for later. Hate will "love" that one, you know. Someone must've pissed these little buggers off right proper – either that, or they have a History.

You glance down at the dogs. "PT-109?"

All four corgis cock their heads at you quizzically, then turn their attention back to the tree.

"Well, can't be Amagiri," you mutter. Must be a sub – she went quiet and went deep to escape, and its a hard habit to break. Smoking her out will be hard. You pause and think for a moment, then clear your throat with a cough and walk up underneath the tree. Fishing out your smartphone, you pull up google, and a few seconds later you've found the sound file you need.

"PING~"

The phone's tinny little speaker makes the sound higher-pitched than it ought to be, but it's close enough. You listen carefully for the sounds of a sub shifting positions in the canopy, but you get nothing.

You change locations.

~PING~

Nothing.

~PING~

"Yuudachi?" a voice cries out. "Is that you!?"

The corgis go absolutely fucking apeshit, their loud yips drowning out the tremulous voice as the dogs go running in a tight circle around the base of the tree, almost a blur of thwarted bloodlust. "YUUDACHI, RUN FOR IT, THEY'LL GET YOU TOO!"

[ ] Tell her you're here to help.
[ ] PING PING PING PING PING
[ ] Fuck this shit. Help one of the corgis into the tree.


[X] Tell her you're here to help.
WRITE-IN: [x] Tell her you're from the US government and here to help

You pause for a long, confused moment, trying to figure out what the hell ~PING~ has to do with Yuudachi. Then you pause for another moment as you brutally suppress the urge to hoist one of the corgis into the canopy – as amazingly cathartic as it'd be.

Instead you opt to do your goddamn job, like the watch-wearing pencil-pushing dildonic lamemaster they have enslaved you to be by pinning that goddamned star on you. You sigh, cross your arms, and address the tree. "No, it's not Yuudachi. But you look like you're in a bit of trouble."

There's a sad rustling from the tree, and then a whimper of acknowledgment. "W-who are you?"

You hesitate – identifying yourself as a USN Admiral might not help much, considering it's USN PT boats that treed her like a a damned cat. But Yokosuka is a US base, so she shouldn't be surprised by encountering those authorities.

"I'm from the US Government," you reply, "and I'm here to help."

The scream that rips through the air develops a doppler shift as the girl bolts from one side of the tree to the other, a shower of leaves exploding outward as she runs right out of the canopy and hits the sidewalk twenty feet away already running. The corgis unleash an adorable, high-pitched, well-synched hunting howl before their tiny little legs vanish into a blur, pursuing their unfortunate quarry around a fence-corner. You barely have time to glimpse the girl before they're both lost to sight.

Well, that was... something.

[ ] Well We Tried. Get a goddamn nap or something before the transport plane comes in.
[ ] Let Goto field this one, you don't give a shit.
[ ] ... why weren't those corgis rounded up, anyhow? Best get Hate on this.


[X] Well We Tried. Get a goddamn nap or something before the transport plane comes in.

Two hours later, you're slouching near the VIP helipad, waiting for the transfer flight from the airbase. Your back's against the pole that supports the windsock, and you're nursing a Pepsi and a headache.

Goto's standing next to you, keeping metronome time with the tip of a cigar dangling from his mouth, flicking his polished zippo open and shut as he waits. Neither of you really feel like speaking, it seems – all thoughts are bent on your ships. Units. Girls. Whatever.

Shortly you hear the low, heavy WHOPP WHOPP WHOPP of heavy-lift helicopters coming in. A Chinook appears from the night sky; a faint outline lit by the glow of navigation nights as it settles over the helipad. To your surprise, something in a sling's actually dangling underneath it from one of the cargo hitches. Two seabees run forward with a clattering ordinance dolly to collect it, gently guiding it onto the dolly and signaling the chopper to cut the tow lines. They set themselves behind the handles and their muscles bulge as they try to push the load, but nothing happens. Tossing your Pepsi over your shoulder, you go limping across the tarmac to assist, Goto close at hand.


You and Goto set your shoulders behind the handlebars of the dolly and soon your combined force manages to set the cart rolling. As you clear the helipad, the chopper gingerly sets down behind you, the rotor wash growing more pronounced and horizontal as it lands. Some of it catches the canvas tarplin covering the slung load and flings it back to reveal-

"Arizona!" you shout automatically. She looks even worse up close. Her "outfit" is gone, the turrets and bulkheads absent; but her wounds -

- Jesus Christ what the fuck -

Her pale, fine features are still unrecognizable under the mask of blood, but you can clearly see the huge, concave DENT in her goddamn forehead, a little blood pooling in it. The cuts and gashes in her cheeks and forehead and arms reveal not raw, torn flesh beneath the rents, but ragged metal that flashes brightly in the helipad's bright floodlights. She must've heard your outcry even over the winding-down rotors, because she reaches out for you blindly. You move to take her hand-

"NO!" One of the seabees jerks you back by the shoulder. "Don't touch her. We've got to turn her over to EOD as soon as we're off this tarmac!" He points towards the access road, where, sure enough, there's a bomb disposal truck and suited men waiting to receive her. "She's got live ords in her still, sir."

[ ] Put that in a memo titled SHIT I DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT, sailor.
[ ] Then that's my ride, too.
[ ] Let it go – you've got to see to Naka, too. She's not 'yours' but she was nearly blown asunder following your orders.


[X] Then that's my ride, too.

"FINE," you yell over the rotorwash. "I'M RIDING ALONG, THEN!"

"WHATEVER!" the engineer replies. "JUST GET IN THE CAB!"

You help Goto and the engineers wheel the dolly to the EOD truck's back, where you all struggle mightily to heave the sling upwards the inch or so needed to slide Arizona's solid-steel bulk into the armored blast compartment. Goto slumps against the truck's armored rear for a moment as he catches his breath, the engineers sprinting for the cab. You simply step over the bomb dolly, into the blast compartment and try to pull the doors shut, but there's no handles on the inside. Goto gives you a funny look for a moment before swinging them shut himself. There's a rattling clank as Goto bolts the door, and then the vehicle is off.


You flop down next to your charge, bracing your good leg against the opposite armored wall to reduce the bouncing a bit. The night sky's visible through the hole in the ceiling, designed to let bombs vent their destructive force. "Arizona?"

She turns her blinded eyes to you and tries to open them, but the blood's dried into a crust that she can't break. She feels gingerly for her eyes – and then covers her face with both hands when her fingertips discover the nasty steel rents in her... hull, you suppose. Right now, it's a hull.

"They told me you've got live ords in you?" you ask, and she nods. "Where at?" She points down, towards her midsection, but all you see there is a horrible oily splotch dripping off her ruined white shirt.

"Okay," you tell her. "Lemme find it, here." You dig through your pocket and come up with your folding knife and a small penlight; two things any Flight I boat's officer gets into the habit of carrying pretty quick. You click on the light and gingerly lift her shredded shirt with the tip of your blade before something cold and hard clamps onto your wrist like a handcuff. You look down and find Arizona's slender, pale hand restraining you. She stares blindly at the stars and shakes her head once.

[ ] Save the martyr complex for the pencil-pushers, kid – I'm a sailor first, and I don't afraid, as they say in the vernacular.
[ ] Midship engineering spaces ain't anything I haven't seen before, kiddo. Don't be shy, now.
[ ] I was skipper of a Flight I, babe – rust'n'ragged edges don't faze me none, trust me.

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-COLLE QUEST - ROLL FOR SAN LOSS​

[X] Midship engineering spaces ain't anything I haven't seen before, kiddo. Don't be shy, now.

"Midship engineering spaces ain't anything I haven't seen before, kid," you say to her with a smile she can hear. "Or... or intestines, for that matter. Can't see much for the oil anyways, so don't worry."

You tug gently at her hand, but she won't release you, just shaking her head like you missed the point.

"Come on," you chide her. "You used to have fifteen hundred horny stupid sailors living on you and you're gonna get all shy now?"

Arizona tilts her head just a little, as if quizzical – and then her hand flies up to cover her mouth in a reaction too instinctive to mistake.

She... probably wasn't even thinking about that. Until now. Now she's definitely thinking about it. Yep. Great move, there.

But, she *has* let go of your hand, and that's what's important, so you gingerly peel back her shredded shirt with the tip of your knifeblade and shine the penlight on the entry wound. The bright white LED light glares on the ragged, bent-in edges of Arizona's armored belt – and inside -

- inside -

- you see a fucking ship.

There's no other word for it but "ship." Thin pipes that snake about and branch off in a disordered tangle, like veins and capillaries. A curiously organic steel support member – much like a bone (the hip?) And even what looks like the side of a kidney... but for the uniform curve of the steel. If its anything, it's a damned bulkhead.

And fetching up against it is a miniature 12-inch shell, its penetration cap intact. It's about the size of a large bullet, and it just seems to be lying in a deep dent it left in the armored bulkhead, itself as thick as Arizona's primary armor belt. You're angling the light for a better look when something inside looks back at you.


You close your eyes, squeeze them tightly, and focus on counting to three – you spent enough months on those fucking four-hour watch shifts to learn how to fight off hallucinations. You open your eyes and find the hallucination looking right back at you – a tiny little *person* with a head too big for its body giving you that "the fuck are you doing in the Sovereign Nation of Engineering?" look common to every Chief Engineer you've ever known.

You turn off the penlight.

The EOD truck rocks slightly as the brakes squeak gently, and you feel the weight shift as the crew pile out of the cab. You're still staring at the blank armored wall when the doors clank and creak open to reveal the two seabees and two men in bomb suits, bulky helmets tucked under their arms.

There is a long second of very, very awkward silence.

"What," one of the EOD men say, "the fuck, are you doing."

>Following the advice of a famous Marine: DON'T NOBODY TOUCH NUTHIN.
>Getting into Gynecology. The fuck does it look like, Marine?
>Give their suits and the truck a once-over, and just laugh. Just fucking laugh. Just laugh and laugh and laugh, because they don't even fucking know, do they? They don't have a fucking clue.


>Give their suits and the truck a once-over, and just laugh. Just fucking laugh. Just laugh and laugh and laugh, because they don't even fucking know, do they? They don't have a fucking clue.

You look at the thick armored sides of the truck, designed to straightjacket blasts from anything up to and including heavy mortar shells. You play your gaze over the bulky armored and kevlar-lined blastproof suits of the EOD team. And then you think of that tiny 12-inch shell and the even tinier people that are ministering to it, the tiny people, the TINY TINY LITTLE PEOPLE -

"Aaaaah," you say quietly. "Aahahahah." You give the EOD team and their enthusiastic "equipment" another glance and the giggles finally consume you, erupting into full-out laughter. The tech with chevrons Velcro'd to his armor takes about one-point five seconds to size you up and just flings his kit at you before taking off into the night like a kenyan chasing a running hamburger. This only makes you laugh harder, the way he has to bound and roll in the bulky suit reminding you of a panda trying to run; made all the more adorable by the charming, naive delusion that there's any fucking escape from this. You keel over to one side, your head bopping the steel floor of the detonation bay as your vision goes dizzy, lungs aching. Your sides haven't just hit orbit, they've begun their fucking third-stage restart and TLI burn.

The best part is, they think you're a crazy motherfucker. But that just makes it even funnier, because being crazy can't hold a fucking candle to being sane right now. Sane people can make sense of things' And there's a comprehensive, awful, twisted, brainfucking sense to this situation that's truly marvelous to behold, but also brain-warpingly horrifying in direct relation to proximity; like watching Russian artilleryman loading an ammo trailer.


After a few minutes your muscles ache to much to keep giggling, and you're able to fight down a few breaths. A job. A job to do. Live shell fetched up against a bulkhead. You need it out of the damn boat, and you need it gone now.

This, you can do – as long as you don't think about *anything else*.

You click on your penlight and look into the rent in Arizona's flat belly. Arizona herself seems to be lying in quiet mortification, both hands clapped over her face.

"Sailor," you rasp, and bite down on the giggles JOB TO DO JOB TO DO - "you there?"

There's the glint of EYES – and you close yours as you feel the world start to go grey around the edges. "Okay. Okay. You understand me?"

From within Arizona comes a muted little sound that's reminiscent of a miniature snort.

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT SHIT SAILOR!" you roar, your eyes still squeezed closed. "I'M YOUR FUCKING ADMIRAL AND IF I GET ANY MORE SHIT FROM YOU, CHIEF, I WILL LITERALLY FUCKING EAT YOU!"


Absolute silence.

"Now," you say hoarsely. "You're gonna go to the nearest goddamn turret and get the man who sets fuzes, and you're gonna get his ass down here on the double."

A diminutive affirmative sound floats up from below.

"Get him to inspect that shell. Ask him if he can unscrew the fuze without setting it the fuck off. Unless you've got ords specialists on your DC team, you listen to that guy. He knows those particular fuzes better than EOD themselves do, because if he fucks up, the whole ship goes with him, starting with the magazine under his ass."

A stronger, more confident affirmative.

"And when he inevitably tells you that the shell struck water, tumbled, and smashed through under the primary armor belt, damaging the fuze via warping, then you tell me and I cry because it's going to get hairy in here."

Silence.

"YOU UNDERSTAND ME, CHIEF?"

The tiniest, most microscopic desu floats up from below. You take what you can get.


A few minutes later, the sad confirmation comes, and you tell them what's needed. Arizona shivers and almost yelps a few times in pain as the minute sound of pneumatic hammers, and torches fill the air with tinny sounds of destruction – they're widening the breach in Arizona's side. During this time you studiously look away from the wound, not wanting to make... make *eye* contact with... with the Little People.

You didn't make it, did you? You died on that bridge, and you got sent to Hell, which is full of Marines and shit they think is funny. It'd explain fucking everything, wouldn't it? Nice and neat. Even Hate – your HIS hell; he just doesn't know it yet. Still thinks he's got one up on the ol' skipper, he does. He-

- your desperate mental flight is halted rudely by a sound from within Arizona – a tiny bosuns whist- "Jesus Tiddlywink Christ this can't be happening," you wheeze miserably as you reach out and grab the wire-thin steel hauser loops poking out of Arizona's body. A joke about playing Surgery strikes you and you take a few deep breaths to fight off any mad giggles – and then you LIFT.


And it *is* lifting – the thin cables draw blood as they cut into your fingers; it feels like they're anchored to Obama's ego as your arms strain to raise the live shell. You feel the load shifting slightly as … someone... carefully helps guide the shell out of the breach.

And then, finally, its out. You slowly swing it off to one side, well-wrapped in a sling of steel cable that looks like minute silver thread, and lower it with the same careful consideration you lifted it with. The multi-inch thick hardened steel plate under your knees actually flexes a little as the inches-long projectile is laid upon it. It's remarkably intact; the shattered edges of the ballistic cap visible around the pristine armored penetration cap beneath – an AP shell, thank god, thank fucking God, for all the good it's going to do anyone. You note the base is badly deformed, almost squished, confirming your suspicions – Arizona's not the first ship to get lucky like this.

About this time another part of your brain speaks up and kindly informs you that live fucking ordinance is best appreciated through telescopes. You slide your arms under Arizona, praying to every dark deity you can think of that the cosmic mystery that is the Ship Girl will work as you hoped – and thankfully, she does. At least enough for you to stagger out of the bomb disposal truck with Arizona's still-incredible weight bleeding in your arms.

You get about twenty staggering steps before the suspension of the truck squeals loudly. Your hair stands up on end as you hear the leaf springs groan miserably, expecting your lamentably short existence to be wiped out in a titanic blast capped by a cloud that spells out SETTLE IS A FUCKING MORON like those educational propaganda cartoons that previewed full-length features during The War.

That, however, does not happen.


Arizona's lightened up considerably by the time you reach the road – the truck was parked atop a barren hill overlooking Yokosuka bay. You find the EOD tech talking into a cell phone underneath a lonely lamp illuminating a dilapidated bus stop, his compatriots kicking turf nearby.

"-fucking shitlicking psycopathic fuckwad shit-spittle dipwad holy FUCK where do they find these lunatic fuckers?" he finishes with an eloquent flourish. The voice on the other end says something curt. "Fuck YOU, Crab! That fucker's probably got some of Higgin's decking still stuck in his fucking head. You want your truck back, you-"

Shifting Arizona into a fireman's carry, you reach out with your freed arm and pluck the phone right out of his hand before he knows you've come up behind him. "Ords in your truck," you tell him. "Send an ambulance to your disposal site, I've got a bleeding girl here." You terminate the call and hand the phone back to the bewildered technician.

You lay Arizona on the bench, and are moving to peel off your bloodstained shirt when the seabeeas gently pry you away from her and open up a proper first-aid kit. One of them guides you to a bench, and you can feel yourself dozing off even before your ass hits the wood.

But you're still awake enough to start laughing again when you hear the technician's scream float over from the vicinity of his truck.


Operation" is a Milton-Bradley game for poorfags.

Settle went to Annapolis. He played Surgery Simulator as a kid.

SETTLE IS ABOUT TO PASS THE FUCK OUT. WHAT DOES HE DREAM ABOUT?

>Love
>Hate
>War

38667536 - So wait, did the ordinance enlarge to a full sized shell or something in the truck?

demetrious - Yes.

Yes, it did. Pic related - note the scale.

Twelve-inch shells at a filling factory.​

A 12-inch naval shell transforms the truck meant to contain the blast into more shrapnel. There is no containing a 12 inch shell. There is no running from a 12-inch shell. There is only horrified contemplation of its fell and terrible power.

Click to shrink...

>War

This time, you dream of the Coast Guard cutter's pilot.

The sizzling and popping of his fat is the worst part, but thankfully you can only smell smoke and charred insulation – but that doesn't stop the images, so beautifully clear, of the flame that eats into his cheeks and sears away his lips to unshadow a rictus grin; the fat and flesh bubbling and boiling off the long fingerbones gripping the wheel. The burning skeleton in the flaming pilothouse as the structure of the cutter is engulfed in death, burning men leaping from her decks, the foreward gun still firing. The rooster tail of spray as the flaming skeleton guns the gas turbines for max acceleration; the sharp swift bow of the cutter smashing into the ironclad with a horrific rending tearing SCREAM of metal a SCREAM of skeletal laughter, laughing, laughing, laughing like teeth rattling in a cup amplified in a cavern echoing over the flames reflections dancing in the oil-slick water.

>Do it. DO IT. HE'S GIVEN YOU YOUR CHANCE, DO IT NOW!
>Wake up. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP.
>Other?


>Do it. DO IT. HE'S GIVEN YOU YOUR CHANCE, DO IT NOW!

You press the black phone to your ear, its sharp shattered edges cutting your hand. "Alpha strike," you instruct. "Alpha strike. Empty the cells!"

And empty they do; your vision vanishing as pillars of fire erupt before your eyes, stabbing into the sky on blinding contrails of smoke. One after another, rippling right-to-left before your eyes, drawing a screen of smoke and flame across your vision – and just as they clear you see them raining down upon the entagled ships, the ironclad and the cutter. Both vessels vanish in flame, the shredded bodies of human sailors flying into the night like little flaming pinwheels as the skeletal pilot laughs, and laughs and turns to you, your vision telescoping across the hundreds of yards to come eye-to-flaming-eye-socket with the pilot and he screams YOU FUCKING KILLED US A-


-nd then its over.

Your jaw creaks as you bite the life out of that fucking dream, every muscle in your body screaming with pain as they clench and cramp. You focus on the breathing, on the room, the soft off-white paneled room and your body slowly slumps again, the agony fading as bloodflow resumes.

Except your wrist. You lift it experimentally and find it still handcuffed by a small, dainty hand, warm and soft to the touch. You follow the arm down to the slender auburn-haired figure of Arizona, fast asleep in bed.

"We couldn't pry her off of you."

You look up to find Goto leaning against the doorframe, his eyes on a manilla folder in his hands. He shuffles some documents around, still glancing over the contents. "I was just about to wake you."

You raise your captive wrist and crane your neck to peer at the dial of your watch on the underside. 0830, or thereabouts.

"Well," you say blearily. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing much," Goto says, shaking his head briefly to clear his own cobwebs. From the circles under his eyes, you can tell he hasn't been to bed yet. "Naka's stable – she was already on conventional life support when they brought her off the chopper."

"... conventional?" you ask, your brain still not up to speed.

"Yeah." He nods at Arizona, who's hooked to an IV and looks for all the world like an ordinary human girl – and feels like it, too. Her wounds have been stitched or glued shut, there's a bruise on her forehead instead of a dent, (her entire face is nothing but ugly bruises, in fact,) and she's... human. No jagged steel. No...

... *little people.*


"We're not sure how it works, but..." Goto shrugs. "From what happened with you last night, it seems they just... change, at some point."

You pull your head to one side and wince as your spine sounds off like a firecracker. "I thought you had more experience with this?"

"Some," Goto says. "But nothing like... nothing like that, yesterday. Never had two battleships square off with us, that's for sure."

"She okay?"

"She's fine," Goto says. "Docs gave her the OK a few hours ago."

You start gently prying at Arizona's fingers, easing her grip off your aching wrist. "Okay. What about Naka?"

"She's alive," he says, wiping weary sweat off his forehead with one sleeve. "Pretty bad, though. She'll be in ordinary for a while. That last shell nailed her Long Lance tubes just before she could fire. If she'd still had a full load..." he shrugs. "And that was just bad luck." He sighs, and slaps the manilla envelope closed. "Just... bad fucking luck." He straightens up and gives you a crisp salute that briefly returns his usual sturdy bearing to his slumped frame. "I'm going to find a rack for a few hours. All the fires are out, though, so... get breakfast."

You return the salute as best you can from the chair, and Goto slides out.

>You're in the hospital, apparently. May as well visit Naka.
>Best not to bother the girl. Check the news.
>Pull out your smartphone – check your e-mail.


>You're in the hospital, apparently. May as well visit Naka.

After gently prying Arizona's fingers off your wrist – and shaking it a little to get the blood back into it – you go looking for Naka. It was a freak hit, to be true, but she was under your command at the time – it's your job.

You're spared the effort of asking after the wounded ship-girl by the boisterous sound of Kongou's voice echoing down the hallway. You limp towards it (you don't even remember where you left that damn cane, now) and soon find the right wing. Kongou is... not quite skipping, but she's not quite walking either.

"Hey, Admiral Settle!" she cries exuberantly, waving at you. One arm's in a sling, and she's got a few band-aids on her face... and what looks like a leg brace.

"Kongou," you mutter blearily. "Kongou," you repeat, a little clearer. "How are you?"

"I'm fine!" she says with a smile that doesn't quite sit right on her face. "Arizona-sempai got between me and those abyssals before anything really serious happened!"

The word "sempai" goes drifting through your brain searching for something to connect with, and comes up empty. Must be one of those britbong things, like tweve-bong or tiddlyscotch and shufflepush and hoopstick. Fencing was your sport at Annapolis; you don't really follow anything with a ball, bat or board. "R-right," you say. "You been tended to, then!"

"Yep!" she exclaims. "I just paid Naka-chan a visit."

"Where is she?"

"In there," Kongou says, pointing to the first room around the corner. You make for it, bidding Kongou goodbye, and backtrack a few steps after she goes off down the hall. She waits till she's sure nobody's watching, and then her limping pseudo-skip ceases, and her chin droops.

On that less-than promising note, you enter Naka's room.

Calling it for the night - I literally can't keep my eyes open any more, and I'm starting to make a lot of spelling errors in excess of my usual sad total! When SHIPSLUTS returns we'll have a nice chat with NAKA, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY IDOL GIRL OF THE FLEET!

Click to shrink...

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-COLLE QUEST - IDOLMASTER EDITION​

Twitter: twitter.com/planefriend
Archives: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Kant-O-Celle Quest

The room is dark; an interior ward without a window. The TV is silent; only the muted hum of a tiny cooling fan fills the sterile air; sharp with the acrid undertone scent of disinfectant and bleach, the universal, uncomfortable smell of hospitals. In the stark blue-white glow of the inextinguishable night-light over the bed, you see Naka's outline under the sheet.

She looks awfully small, and with the hem up over her face, it looks like -

"Naka?" you say firmly, stepping towards the bed, but she neither stirs nor makes reply. Fighting the quick scream of panic that shrieks through your nerves, you reach out with one steady hand and pull the sheet off her face.

The light cruiser Naka, once a sleek four-stack light cruiser of five-thousand tons displacement, now stares at the boring vanilla ceiling tiles with vacant brown eyes. At first you think her asleep – or just well-drugged – until her eyes twitch to you.

"What."

>Congratulate her on the battle's outcome.
>Ask her how she's doing.
>Other (Specify)

demetrious - >all these people voting for both
Vote for one please; that's the thing you say *first.*

Click to shrink...

>Ask her how she's doing.

"Came to see how you were doing," you tell her. "You got hit pretty bad, after all-"

"It was just two-thousand pounds of torpedo warheads," she says, her eyes flicking back to the ceiling. "Nothing a light cruiser can't take."

"Apparently so," you say with a smile you don't feel. "Your sister ship was worried si-"

"Quiet-chan?" she supplies softly.

"Y-yeah, I didn't catch her n-"

"I guess," she cuts you off. "How's Arizona?"

"She's fine-"

"Really?" Naka says, her eyes flicking back to you – focused and piercing, now. "I'm not fine, and she took it worse than me."

"She got the shit shot out of her superstructure, but her armor stopped any hits to her vitals. She'll be up and about soon enough."

Naka regards you with a blank, resigned expression – and then flings her sheet away, revealing her midriff; lost somewhere under a huge swath of bandages and wrappings. "Well, I can see why everyone went running to her first, then."

You suck in a breath as her disdain slaps into you. "Naka-"

"Why don't you fuck off, Settle?" she says, drawing her sheet up over her face again.

>She had a live shell lodged in her, Naka. She wasn't out of danger yet.
>She knows more about being blown in two than you do, sweetheart.
>Oblige her wishes.
>Other? (Specify.)


>She had a live shell lodged in her, Naka. She wasn't out of danger yet.

"If you'd had a live shell still stuck in your belly, I would've run to you first," you reply evenly. You didn't know about the shell till you'd reached Arizona, but Naka doesn't need to know that.

"To wring your hands and cry for my fate?" she says, rolling her eyes.

"I lifted it out with my own two hands," you say, showing her the tape on your fingers where someone tended to the cuts in your fingers while you were asleep. "Those itty bitty steel cables hurt like a bitch when they dig in." You place your hands on your hips and lean over her, giving her your best Admiral Glare. "I don't know how much you remember after you were hit, but when you went down that Filipino Coast Guard cutter moved in and engaged – to cover *you.*" You straighten up and cross your arms. "They're the ones that hoisted you out of the drink before you sunk, too."

She pulls the sheet down far enough to give you a wretched look, her eyes shiny. "Is that supposed to make me feel better, Settle?"

You frown. "The fuck do you want, sailor? A ticker-tape parade?"

"Why are you using us?" Naka says quietly. "Why use us at all, when you've got those amazing ships with self-guiding rockets and radar-guided guns that never miss?"

She lets that hang in the air between you. She knows damn well that you know why – those amazing ships cost millions of dollars, and every time they're damaged, living, breathing human crewmen die.

"I failed," she said, "and because of that, lives were put into danger."

"Naka, it was a fluke," you reply. "It could've been anyone. If HMS Hood shows up, I'm sure she'll give you an earful on fluke shots."


"Tell it to Mogami," she snorts. "She made it out of Midway by jettisoning those fucking Long Lances. But I can't. They're the only firepower I've got that's worth a damn." She sighs, then glances at the light spilling through the open door and lowers her voice to a bare murmur. "Eight torpedoes. Seven guns. All the firepower of a destroyer at only twice the displacement." She gives you an apologetic smile. "I'm... I'm sorry, Admiral Settle. I was obsolete in my first war, and I'm obsolete now. I don't rate the attention due a battleship, I know that, it's just..." she jerks in a breath and turns her face to the opposite wall. "Do you know about idols, Admiral Settle?"

"Idols" in the Japanese sense have gained some strange sort of popularity on the West coast in the last several years, though you'd hesitate to say you really understand the appeal. "Yes."

"They're always happy," she says softly. "And always completely shallow. Just a cute face and a pretty voice. And that's all anyone expects of them." She draws the sheet up over her face again. "Thank you... for visiting, Admiral. And please..." her voice begins to quaver at this, "-don't tell anyone about this, I – I said too much."

>Say farewell. You need to prepare before you go running through this minefield.
>She's underestimating humans – she underestimates them badly!


>Say farewell. You need to prepare before you go running through this minefield.

Sharp objections spring into your mouth, pointed and hot – but you hold your tongue. If you uttered them, you'd be the one 'saying too much.' You can't fix issues this deep, even by speaking the truth.

"I won't, Naka. Get well soon." You back out of the room and close the door behind you, hanging the "do not disturb" sign on the outside knob for good measure. You check both ways for nurses – they don't give a flying fuck about the insignia on anyone's collar – before pulling out your smartphone and wearily paging over to the calendar app. An Admiral's job is never done, after all. You see Hate won't be available for a chit-chat on the Naka issue – he's going to be running range practice for cruisers in about twenty minutes, then a session for destroyers and escorts. You'd like to see that, all right – but you should also debrief the other ships involved in the op; Kongou (to take her mind off Naka) and quiet-chan (who was so distraught over Naka) and especially the two other light cruisers, who you don't really know yet. If Goto's going to be putting you in charge of entire task forces of *his* ships, you'd best get to know them better. The trust works both ways, and he's apparently spent the morning doing the after-engagement paperwork for you.

Speaking of, you could probably get on that for him, let the poor bastard catch some sack time. It'd also be nice to get his opinion on your performance – he put you on the spot to test you, you're sure. You'd like to know how you measured up.

Or you could get breakfast, and maybe borrow a cane on your way out of the damn hospital – but that's for mortal men, not Admirals.

>Go to the range practice.
>Start writing that report - the PR people will need solid information to craft their spin for the news at noon.
>Debrief the other shipgirls from yesterday's op!
>Go find Goto; the poor bastard's been covering for you.
>Actually get some goddamned breakfast – you're feeling more mortal by the second.


>Debrief the other shipgirls from yesterday's op!

You decide on debriefing the other participants of yesterday's battle first – Goto will share his opinion with you later, Admiral to Admiral, and he's probably found a rack by now. The ships, on the other hand – there's no guarantee that they'll volunteer their opinion without solicitation, and a proper debriefing is something they'll expect of you. If you want to lead them, you've got to act the part good and proper.

You swing by your base apartment to tidy up first, and find your discarded cane thoughtfully hung on the doorknob for you. You leave it there as you get cleaned up, and are a little annoyed to find it still waiting when you emerge. Still, it's better to limp across the base than use one of those stupid-looking golf carts; your leg will never grow stronger without exercise.

It might never grow stronger at all.

A half-hour later you're seated in a meeting room, a Styrofoam cup of bad coffee cooling in front of you as you wait for the ships to arrive. A familiar thunder roars through the hall and Kongou bursts through the door, having apparently hit it with her shoulder, since one arm's still in a sling.

"HEYA!" she exclaims, and then her face falls. "Oh, it's you."

"Gee, thanks," you reply levelly.


"You're really neat, Admiral Settle~" Kongou says as she spins across the room, her good arm flung out dramatically - "but Admiral Goto is so... he's so..."

"Japanese?" you venture.

"Hmph!" Kongou says as she flops into a chair. "I was built in England, you know! I've got nothing against foreign men. But Admiral Goto..." she lets her cheek fall into one hand, staring into the distance dreamily.

"He's extremely patient with fools," a new voice says at your elbow. You twitch, but refuse to gratify the speaker by turning to look immediately. Instead you take a deliberately slow sip of the coffee and make a point of wincing worse at *that.* "Hello, Admiral...?"

You set down your coffee and look up at one of the light cruisers – she's hovering over you with a slight, amused smile. You offer her your hand without rising. "Settle. Ryan Settle."

She gives you a good, firm shake – graceful, but not weak. "Light Cruiser Tatsuta," she says politely. "nice to meet you." She takes a seat by your right elbow; pulling the chair out and flowing into it with what almost seems one smooth motion. She brushes her purple bangs away from her eyes and props her chin on the back of both hands, cutting her eyes to the side to study you... then pointedly sliding them towards the door. Following her gaze, you see an orange-and-black clad cruiser – Quiet-Chan, then, the other Sendai class ship – leaning around the doorjamb to survey the room cautiously.


"Jintsu-chaaaan!" Kongou bellows at her, waving enthusiastically. The girl nearly vanishes behind the doorframe for a few more moments before slowly edging into the room. She gives you a tentative look – which instantly turns rather sharp – before dropping her eyes to the floor. She's still standing there, edging towards a seat, when the door behind her flies open. She cries out in shock as the hollow-core door thrumms from the impact, windmilling her arms to keep from being bowled over.

"HA!" the newcomer shouts, seizing her by the back of her shirt and hauling her upright so vigorously she damn near topples over backwards, instead. The newcomer – another purple-haired girl in a black outfit, with a patch over one eye – towers a head over the sendai-class. She immediately starts laughing and slaps the orange-clad girl in the back, sending her windmilling for balance yet again. "Jeez, Jintsu. Maybe you need your gyrocompass checked?"

"Tenryuu," Tatsuta says gently, "could you please sit down before you knock that poor girl down?"


"Sure, sure," she says flippantly, kicking a chair with one foot so it spins around, then hopping into it to rest both arms atop the backrest. "What's up, pop?"

"Tenryuu," Tatsuta says, her voice honeyed and very, very patient – "this is Admiral Ryan Settle, of the United States Navy."

"No shit, really?" Tenryuu says, widening her one eye in feigned shock. "I thought he was Spanish!" Behind her, at the far end of the table, Jintsuu buries her face in both hands and shakes her head.

"Si si," you reply. "Como estas?"

Tenryuu's eye widens again – and her mouth drops open. "Holy shit, you really are!?"

You hear Tatsuta take in a long, deep breath for exactly three seconds.

"No."

She glowers at you. "Whatever. Are we handing out kills or what? I've got a claim on one of those cruisers, you know!"

>Yeah, we're handing out kills.
>I was just wondering what you all thought of my performance as Admiral – did I employ you all effectively?
>I was wondering what you thought of your first time fighting with Arizona.
>Other?


>Yeah, we're handing out kills.

"Sure, sure," you say evenly. "Arizona did for the battleship, and Tenryuu-"

"Nailed that cruiser!" she exclaims, pumping her fist in the air. "Two for two!"

"Right," you say with a sigh. "Good torpedo run. Anyways...." you decide for an open-ended question, to see what they'll volunteer on their own. "What were your thoughts on that last battle?"

"We kicked their fucking ASSES!" Tenryuu exclaims exuberantly, slapping the table hard enough to make Jintsuu wince. "And you weren't afraid to commit us to close action when it counted, so you're okay in my book! Wish you'd done it sooner, though. We might've nailed that last cruiser before he got away."

Jintsuu's shy expression darkens into a scowl at Tenryuu's back. Tatsuta notices it too, because she tries to cut in. "Tenryuu, sometimes-"

"Admiral Settle, with light cruisers like us, you've got to be aggressive!" She scooches her chair closer to you, thrusting one fingergun out in front of her. "All our firepower's in our Long Lances! We've got to close in fast and hit them hard, before they've got a chance to shoot us up!"


Jintsuu is on her feet now, her face flushed red, hands balled into fists at her sides as she glares dirks and daggers at Tenryuu's back.

"We've got two inches of belt armor over our vitals, Admiral!" Tenryuu plows on, drowning out the tentative starts of Tatsuta near you. "You can risk us in attacks that destroyers can't-"

"SHUT UP!" Jintsuu screams. Tenryuu's eye widens in obvious shock, and she turns with clear disbelief to look at the girl behind her.

"... Jin-"

"I SAID SHUT UP!" she roars, her voice strained close to breaking. "WE *CAN'T* TAKE THAT KIND OF FIGHT, YOU STUPID – STUPID – YOU OBSOLETE SUICIDAL SACK OF TRASH!" Her stiff arms are starting to tremble. "We're glorified destroyers, all of us, fit to lead flotillas – we had no goddamned place in that fight! There's a REASON we engage at night! We didn't have the armor for it – not even Kongou did! But we had to stay and cover the retreat because of HIS-" she rounds on you, her eyes filled with hate - "fatassed slow-moving so-special Yankee battlewagon wasn't fast enough to fucking run for it, like we needed to! AND IT DAMN NEAR GOT NAKA-CHAN SUNK!"

A cold silence falls on the room; only the discreet rattle of the air-conditioner vent filling the air.

>... the force composition wasn't idea. Arizona had to charge in and place herself between you and those battlewagons, alone – that was our fault – my fault – for not picking a better force composition.
>... the force composition wasn't idea. Arizona had to charge in and place herself between you all and the battlewagons, which we didn't want, but Arizona and Kongou are all that we had available; and destroyers are too vulnerable and hard to handle in such heavy seas.
>Arizona put herself between you and those battleships – without my orders, I might add. If you want to hate someone, you save it for me.
>We'll reassign you to ASW and escort duties, then, if that's what your comfortable with.
>You're afraid to engage a superior enemy? This isn't the IJN I know.
>Other?

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-COLLE QUEST - IDOLMASTER EDITION​

>... the force composition wasn't idea. Arizona had to charge in and place herself between you all and the battlewagons, which we didn't want, but Arizona and Kongou are all that we had available; and destroyers are too vulnerable and hard to handle in such heavy seas.
>Arizona put herself between you and those battleships – without my orders, I might add. If you want to hate someone, you save it for me.

You lock your eyes on the fury-filled face of Jintsuu and wonder just how well she knows her sister ship Naka. If she suspects half of what that cruiser showed you forty minutes earlier...

"... the force composition wasn't ideal for engaging battleships," you say softly. "Which we didn't have a clue were in the area. There's only so much you can do against abyssals. As for pairing Arizona with Kongou, well, all of Kongou's sister ships were engaged, and none of our fast battleships have seen fit to surface yet. So to speak."

Jintsuu is having none of it. "You should've left her in port," she snarls. "She's a boat anchor in a fast-"

"She spent eighty years in port," you cut her off, your voice level and hard, "and yesterday she placed herself between the twelve-inch guns of those battlewagons and the people who put her in that harbor for eighty years *without* orders from me."

Jintsuu opens her mouth and does a good fish impression as she struggles for words. You stare her down, unblinking and not in the mood for any more bullshit. "We're having this *conversation* in order to learn," you say evenly. "To make sure no mistake is repeated twice."

Jintsuu glowers at you, defeated, and storms out of the room. When she slams the door, she tears the doorknob completely out of it. A second later it re-enters the room though the center of the door and embeds itself in the far wall.

You watch this without flinching, and notice Tatsuta watching you from the corner of her eye, chin still perched atop her hands.

"Now," you say evenly, drawing every face away from the savaged door and back to you. "Does anyone else have any input?"

Tenryuu gives you a funny look. "You got a death wish or somethin?"

>Got one foot in that boat already, sister – ask me if I give a shit.
>She's not angry at me. She's just working off the anger she's got, best not to bother her over it.
>I can handle myself, thanks.


>Got one foot in that boat already, sister – ask me if I give a shit.

You shrug. "I've got one foot in that boat already, sister. Ask me if I give a shit."

Tenryuu quirks an eyebrow. "What, you sick or somethin?"

"I'm getting there," you return, letting a little roughness creep into your tone. "Lets get back to the damn debriefing."

"Fufufufufufu~," Tenryuu says, a predatory grin creeping into her smile. She leans over the back of her chair enough to make it start creaking. "Are you trying to change the subject, Admiral?"

"You're the one that changed it," you reply sourly.

Tenryuu schooches her chair a little closer, her one eye boring into you intensely. Her head lowers a bit, like a dog preparing to lunge. "Maybe you're afraid of all of us. Maybe your command expects one of us to rip you apart any day now." Her grin grows a bit wider. "Is that why they only sent a one-star? See how long you last?"

You sigh, turning your wrist over and tugging your sleeve down to check your watch. "You're in the same boat I am, so to speak. Is that all you've got to say about the engagement, or...?"

Tenryuu's mouth curls into a frown, and she stands up – only to be halted by a sharp look from Tatsuta. "Yeah, I guess," she says, sitting in the chair properly (putting her back to you) and flinging her feet up on the table casually. "Least Goto wants to live."


"For now," Tatsuta says. "Someone's working on that."

You notice Kongou's mouth twitch at the corner, ever so slightly, but she just brings her fist down on the table for attention. "Admiral Settle!" she exclaims. "Arizona-san was AMAZING! I've never seen armor like that before! And her gunnery was top-notch! She must have German optics!" She punches a fist through the air. "Even when her rangefinders were smashed, her turrets just ripped 'em up!" Then, eyes closed, she splays her fingers against her own ample chest. "Of course, during night fighting, she'd to well to follow the fire data of her onee-san and her superior wide-aperture night optics~"

"Mmm," Tatsuta says. "Kongou's skill with big guns in night battle is unparalleled."

"Day or night, I'm the Admiral's girl!" Kongou says, thumping her chest with her good hand. "Tatsuta's guns might not be much in day battle, but she's a magician with those big torpedoes at night!"

".... noted," you say with a nod. "So you thought Arizona worked well with you?"

"She's quite professional," Tatsuta says. "I especially like the way she doesn't talk during operations. Very focused."

"She doesn't talk at all!" Kongou points out.

"Lets hope it catches on," Tatsuta adds evenly.

"... yeah, she's okay," Tenryuu says. "She charged right at those abyssals like she didn't give a shit and slugged it out up close. She don't look like much, but she's a tough bitch. I'd screen her any day of the week."

You nod. "Glad to hear it. Kongou, did I handle you well?"


She shrugs. "I would've done better if I was at full speed. Like I told Arizona-san, for me, speed is armor." She gives you a bright smile. "But it's okay. The abyssals hid themselves really well, so we didn't have a chance to determine range anyways."

"Yes, that," Tatsuta says, leaning her hands and chin towards you a bit, almost speaking into your ear. "Kongou and her sisters do best when they're exploiting their speed and big guns, Admiral – if she's able to use her full speed, she can usually determine range and put those big guns to use without risking herself. She's a lot tougher than most battle-cruisers, so plunging fire isn't a big concern, but at close range almost anything can get past her belt – or below the waterline."

"Understood," you reply. "We'll do our best to pair her with heavy cruisers or fast battleships, in the future. Anything else?" Silence greets your query. "Good. Now, before we go..."

>I know the Japanese are big into those team-building exercises, so lets do this thing where we all give each other a high five before we leave!
>I'd like to ask you all one more thing (write-in, specify, I will accept multiple ones)
>Just ask them to submit written action reports as usual – it's time for you to get going.


>[X] I'd like to ask you all one more thing:
>[X] "What the fuck is up with those god damn tiny people?"

"... I..." you rub the back of your head and glance at the door to make sure it's... closed. Well, what's left of it certainly is. "This might sound strange but... do you all know anything about..." you hold up your thumb and forefinger. "... little people?"

Tenryuu, Tatsuta and Kongou all give you wide-eyed stares.

"... you know about those," Tatsuta says quietly.

"Yeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I was really hoping you'd tell me I was hallucinating from stress and lack of sleep," you admit. "But nope, you just up and, yeah. That's a thing."

"We'd appreciate it if you kept it quiet," Tatsuta says. Kongou is very studiously observing the table, and Tenryuu seems to have stopped breathing. "We're not blind. We know people are... uncomfortable around us."

"Which people?"

Tatsuta grips your arm and leans in to whisper, her breath tickling your ear. "Pretty much everyone except Goto and one or two of the maintenance people. We... we don't really know what we are, ourselves. Or what – what *they* are. Just like you wouldn't know what your kidneys are if you didn't have a doctor to tell you. All we know is, they work – and we need them."

You let out a pent up breath as she releases you. "That... makes sense. Thanks." You clear your throat. "One more thing – how do you all resupply on extended operations?"

Kongou giggles. "You should ask Akagi-san about that."


You shrug. "Sure, I'm sure I'll see her soon. Well, that's all for now – just submit your written after-action reports as usual, and I'll see you around the base." You stand up straight and snap out a proper salute, which they all return in their fashion (Kongou giving it palm-outward, Royal-Navy style,) before they file out through the smashed-up door.

Your little procession barely makes it halfway down the hall before you bump into Kongou's back. All three of the shipgirls are standing stock still, staring at something in the hallway. You brush past them to find none other than Jintsuu embedded in a Jintsuu-sized hole in the drywall, staring down the barrel of an M-92F at the very, very bloodshot eyes of one Corporal Hate.

If the Corporal has noticed his new audience, he hasn't said anything.

>... remember that boat I was talking about, Tenryuu?
>Just an English lesson everybody. Move along. I'M GOING TO TEACH YOU TO SPEAK ENGLISH WITH THIS FUCKING GUN
>HATE. HEEL!


>... remember that boat I was talking about, Tenryuu?

"... remember that boat I was talking about, Tenryuu?"

Tenryuu tears her eyes away from the scene before you and slowly turns to regard you. You tilt your head at Hate. "It's a metaphor," you say helpfully.

"One more time," Hate growls at his captive. "What, exactly, are you going to do to the yankee pig if he doesn't get out of your way?"

"Aahaaowww!" Jintsuu moans around the barrel of the pistol.

"Y'see," you say to Tenryuu as her one eye stares wide enough for two, "I've known Hate for a lot longer than I've known you, so..."

Hate cocks the Beretta as slowly as possible, letting Jintsuu hear every click-clack. The cruiser-girls eyes cross as they focus on the barrel, shimmering with tears. You sigh, half-impressed that Hate's been carrying around an empty gun just for such an occasion (the day Hate doesn't carry cocked, locked and ready to rock is the day the Army supports a carrier purchase) and half-horrified by the same. You clap your hands together gently. "Hate. Heel."

"Again with the fucking dog jokes," he mutters, not taking his eyes off Jintsuu's.

"I've got my silver cross on," you warn him. "And a vial of holy water."


"Oh, a *devil* dog joke," he moans. "Noon already? I missed lunch."

"Me too. Care to get some?"

"Sure." He yanks the pistol out of Jintsuu's mouth, letting the girl slide down the wall to shiver uncontrollably.

"Shall we?" he says, offering you his arm.

"Lets," you say, slipping your arm through his. He matches strides with you, and you sail around the corner as the wind whistles through the mouths of four shipgirls. He releases you as soon as they're out of sight and makes a show of wiping off his elbow.

"Why are you using that old piece of shit, anyways?" you enquirer.

"Because I don't care about cleaning it after I shove it into some bitch's mouth, you know," he says casually, opening a cargo pocket on his fatigue pants – to reveal a pocket with the bottom cut out, allowing access to a thigh rig.

"Yeah, about that-"

>Was only a matter of time, I suppose.
>So yeah about that I was just wondering are you out of your fucking mind? Over the line, bro, over the LINE. We need to terrify with tact, you read me?
>You know you didn't have to wait around for a fucking audience, right? Word would've gotten out. Or not. Just her shaking every time you stalk past would've been enough. Subtlety, bro. Subtlety. Subtlety also means less direct witnesses to you being utterly bugfuck all the time, you know what I mean?


>So yeah about that I was just wondering are you out of your fucking mind? Over the line, bro, over the LINE. We need to terrify with tact, you read me?

"-are you out of your fucking mind?" you ask him politely.

"Dude," Hate says, slinging an arm around your shoulder and leaning on you heavily. "Bro. Guy. I joined the *Marines.* Out of HIGH school. I *believed the recruiter.*"

You give him a dim look.

"... okay, not that last one, but still."

You brush him off. "I just watched that girl rip a doorknob out of a door, before throwing it clean through the damn thing. It's still embedded in the far wall of the conference room we were in."

"What got her panties in a bunch, anyways?"

"Oh she was mad about you changing the fucking topic," you insist, letting Hate steer you both towards the officer's mess. "What makes you think a fucking handgun will even work on them?"

"Yeah yeah, we don't know nuffin, blah blah," Hate says, sounding bored. "Thing is, I don't think they do, either. "And from the way that one reacted, I don't think they're in a hurry to find out, either!"

"And if she'd bitten the damn thing off and spat it in your face?"

Hate shrugs. "I've got another one. And it's loaded, too."

You clap a hand to your face and groan freely. "Hate, you really gotta not fucking do this kind of thing. It's gonna cause trouble."

"That's not the tune you were singing back there," he points out.


"Always follow through with an attack some other dumbass started for you," you say. "Bock-el or whoever that kraut was... whatever, airdale shit. Dime, dozen, et cetera. I'm just saying, maybe, don't be carrying around an empty gun just for the express purpose of scaring the shit out of shipgirls, huh? And when you do it anyways, because you're fucking insane, do NOT wait around for a goddamn audience."

Hate opens his mouth, as if to deny it – and then closes it, thinking. "... sooo, as long as nobody sees it-"

"No," you growl as you gain the ramp to the officer's mess, smacking the end of your cane into the concrete to unleash your frustration. "No, no, no, I really do mean don't do this shit, but realistically, I'll take what I can get. Throw me a fucking bone here, Corporal."

Hate heaves an exaggerated sigh. "Again. With the fucking dog jokes."

"I'm the father you never had, Corporal."

"My father's still alive, skipper, and he's not nearly that big an asshole."

"Exactly," you say with honest pride, shouldering your way into the mess. An MP standing by the door eyes the non-com chevrons on Hate's uniform and moves to intercept, but you just wave your hand at him. "THE POWER OF THE STAR COMPELS YOU."

"This isn't the gyrene you're looking for," Hate intones along with you.

He gives you both a lidded-eye look and a sidelong smirk before falling back against the wall and doing his best to fall asleep standing up. You and Hate head for the chow line and begin loading up – cornbread and beans for you, and a little bit of fucking everything for Hate.

>So, how'd the training go? (Ask about the ships and their gunnery, ect.)
>So, how're those supplemental duties going? (Ask about Hate's day job.)
>So, what's the scuttlebutt? (Ask about the normal base personnel at Yokosuka, and let Hate ask YOU questions.)


>So, how'd the training go? (Ask about the ships and their gunnery, ect.)

"So how'd things go with the paint?" you ask him as you carefully fill two glasses with milk in your free hand, lifting the milk-machine's heavy metal knob with your forearm.

"I asked Goto that myself," he replies. "Fucker grinned like a gunny who heard someone say they're bored."

"Damn."

"He described their expressions as 'shattered'," Hate tells you. "And then he just strolled away in a haze of recollection."

"Serves 'em right," you mutter, setting your tray down at the chosen table. "Willie Dee knew what they were up to. I came across her crying her little heart out in the bushes."

"Fuckers," Hate replies. "She ain't bad."

"Didn't you threaten to rip her arms off and stuff them in her ears?"

"Legs," Hate replies. "LEGS. She muzzle-swept me."

"Oh."

"Five-inch gun. Nominally. She's lucky I didn't stuff her poop deck into her funnel or whatever-the-fuck."

"Guess so," you say around a mouthful of cornbread. "Sammy keeping herself entertained?"

"I introduced her to Xbox Live," Hate replies.

"Why the fuck would you do that?"

"No, no, skipper, you don't understand," he says, actually putting down his fork to gesture with both hands. "She's a fucking genius. Yesterday she tore into some fucking thirteen year old squeaker so hard he ran out of the room crying – and he didn't have earphones, so his mother hears, and SHE picks up the mic to sass back, and Sammy sent HER out of the room in tears." Hate has the air of a teacher proud of his pupil.

You stare at Hate, a sense of distant surreality stealing over you as you try to decide whether to be impressed or horrified.


"... Halo?"

"What else?"

"What's her favorite weapon?"

"Plasma pistol and punch." He illustrates. "She just goes running around screaming toooooOOOOOOOOOOOOORPEDO!" He punches his hand into his palm at the crescendo to illustrate. "They think she's hacking."

You take a sip of milk to give yourself time to think. "So what's the scuttlebutt around base?"

"Well, everyone's talking about you pulling a shell out of Arizona with your bare hands."

You choke on your next draft of milk, pounding your chest to clear it. "Wait, the fuck?"

"Just what I heard. What happened with that, anyway?"

You briefly contemplate trying to explain the faeries to Hate, and decide against it. "Uh. I just provided some muscle, there."

"Muscle? With munitions?"

"Yeaaah," you continue. "The... professionals... handled all the actual fiddly shit. You know how the Prince of Wales took a 15 incher from Bismark below the waterline, right?"

"Vaguely," he says, shoveling a spoonfull of... everything into his mouth and nodding as he chews, signaling for you to continue.

"Same thing happened to Arizona. Most shells-" you spin your finger in air - "they flip when they hit water and stabilize base-first, unless they're designed for underwater penetration. The yawing motion at two thousand feet-per-second almost always fucks the fuze, though. And just like Wales, it feched up against a bulkhead?"

Hate swallows. "How'd they get that out?"

"Wales? They put her in drydock and actually cut holes in the decks below the shell so they could lower it straight out with a dock crane into a launch." You shrug. "I was basically the dock crane. Heavy little fucker, though – lines cut me." You wiggle your bandaged fingers to illustrate.


"Yeah," Hate says. "Not so little anymore, or so I heard."

"How DID you hear all this shit?" you say sourly. "There's supposed to be OPSEC in place concerning these girls."

"I'm pretty sure it was the EOD team," Hate says innocently. "They seem kind of pissed off about that 12 inch shell in the back of their truck. They've got no fucking idea how they're gonna get it back without jiggling that shell overmuch. Someone named Crab is fixing to eat your ass."

You muse on that one. "Is he a two-star or higher?"

"Non-com, I guess."

"Cool," you reply. "Then he can go fuck himself."

"Can I quote you on that?"

"Hold up," you say, plucking a pen from your vest pocket. "Hand me that napkin-"

"Right, right, gotcha," Hate says. "So, skipper, can I ask you something?"

"Mmmm," you say with a shrug as you devour another square of cornbread.

Hate leans over the table and hisses at you: "Is there any possibility of me getting something to fucking DO around here?"

>You mean something that doesn't involve you completing whatever the fuck you're up to with that AR lower that went missing from the armory yesterday?
>Why, what's wrong with what you're doing now?
>Yeah, actually – a sneaking mission.
>Wait, back up. People are talking about me, now? What else don't I know?

Since it's late as fuck and everyone who's halfway sane is bailing - CALLING THE THREAD FOR THE NIGHT! We'll continue with >SO ABOUT THAT MISSING LOWER next time on shipsluts - which shouldn't be too long from now! Goddamn it's good to be running till damn near 4AM again!

Click to shrink...

 

[Trace Coburn]

KANT-O-CELLE QUEST: DON'T SAY THE B WORD​

Twitter: twitter.com/planefriend
Archives: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Kant-O-Celle Quest

>You mean something that doesn't involve you completing whatever the fuck you're up to with that AR lower that went missing from the armory yesterday?

You steeple your fingers and stare over them at the oh-so-innocent face of the alleged Marine Corporal sitting in front of you. His chevrons say he's a corporal, at least, but you know damn well that a tiger never, ever changes their stripes. Nor do Lances.

"You want something to do around here," you repeat to him.

"YES," he says emphatically, gesticulating with his-"

"Hate, is that a spork?"

"Mmm," he confirms as he shovels more food into his mouth. You peer at it.

"A... metal spork?"

"Hrm?" he queries with a half-shrug as he continues to inhale his plate.

"Did you... *bring* that? Your own metal spork?"

"Hrmrmr?" he says defensively as he chews, rolling his shoulders in a so-what? motion.

"... right, uh, anyway," you say, forcibly rerailing the conversation. "Are you looking for something to do which *doesn't* involve that AR lower that went missing from the armory?"

To his credit, Corporal Hate doesn't flinch a millimeter – not that you were expecting him to. "What went where now?"

"The AR lower that went missing from the armory," you repeat.

Hate picks up his glass and gives you the kind of shifty look only Marines can manage over the rim as he takes a long drought. "Yeaaaah," he says slowly as he sets it down. "See, maybe something went missing from the armory. And maybe it didn't. And maybe it did, but nobody knows about it and you're just depth-charging blind, playing the odds." He sloooowly takes another sporkful of... everything and ladles it into his mouth, chewing with satisfaction.


Hate's right, of course – you're shooting blind, but judging from his reply, you hit the mark. Lance Corporals (and their equivalents) are the soothsayers of any base; the wizened sages who consult tea leaves, SMS messages, facebook rumors, the way birds sit on a wire and the way PFCs chitter and jitter when they see chevrons walk through a door. From these auguries they usually know what's coming down the pipe before the damned commissioned officers do. Hate already knows there's an e-mail in circulation; he just doesn't know if YOU know yet.

But that's okay, because you're angling at a slightly different point. "Lets just call it... Shrodinger's Marine," you say easily, bracketing air between your hands to determine the box you're about to put him in. "We leave him in a box, which happens to contain an 'orphan' lower."

A silence stretches between you both, and Hate finally raises an eyebrow.

"That's it," you reply. "There's nothing in that box but the lower."

"Then that's not Shrodinger-ish at all," Hate replies instantly, "because there's only one... oh."

"Yeah," you reply.

"Well," he replies. "Yeah. Pretty... pretty much that."

You nod thoughtfully, thinking.

>Well, tag along with me today, and see if I can't find you something.
>I need you to give Willie some remedial lessons in breaking things. She's got that part down, but I'd like the wrath to be a little more directed, you know?


>I need you to give Willie some remedial lessons in breaking things. She's got that part down, but I'd like the wrath to be a little more directed, you know?

"So how's Willie doing?" you ask.

Hate shrugs as he continues to tuck in, already eying your plate dangerously. "Same ol. She's literally a fucking boot, you know?"

"Hate," you say patiently, "you're talking Marine again."

"Fukkin New Guy," he clarifies. "Willie's case, she's a fuckup and she knows it, and that makes her so shaky she can't not unfuck, I mean, she can't fuckup the-" he pauses, holding up a finger to ask for a moment. "She can't not fuck up," he says, "so she can't unfuck herself."

You nod – you're familiar with the problem. Moreso than you'd ever admit, in fact. "Y'think you could do anything about that?"

He shrugs. "Ahguess. She's okay but she drives me up the fucking wall sometimes, you know?"

You nod sagely, studying Hate closely. You can almost see his invisible antenna twitch as he realizes the wind has shifted. "Oh, Skipper, you're not gonna-"

"We have to do *something,*" you insist. "Unless you wanna start cutting up a box worth of grid squares and spooling up some goddamn shore line to go with that paint."

Hate quirks his mouth, conceding the point – pranks like that have steeply diminishing returns, and that sounds dangerously like work.

"So we either need to bolster Willie's confidence in her performance somehow, or at least teach her how to hold her own against those damn torpedo cruisers," you say, tapping your fork on the table in annoyance. "We've already got enough damn problems to deal with already, bringing American ships into Japan and expecting them to work together – and I can't fight their battles for them. She can play it prison-rules style or Elegant High-Class Bitch style, but either way, she's got to fight back."


Hate murmurs inaudible agreement. He's sitting up straight now – this is business. "Well, I could teach her some shit, no lie..." He sighs. "Dunno about combat drills, though. The dipshit starts shaking the instant she enters the range – only good thing to say is, she hardly ever muzzle-sweeps. She's got a hard time focusing on surface targets when she transforms and rolls out or whatever. Keeps watching the sky." He frowns. "Do we really need her combat-ready?"

"Hate," you tell him seriously, "there hasn't bee a war yet where the Admirals had half as many destroyers as they needed, much less wanted. And she's a Fletcher class – she's more modern and better-built than half those Japanese ships strutting around here. Yeah, we need her."

Hate sighs with resignation, and you see him summoning his full strength. You can almost see a sketchy aura around him as he readies one last gambit to avoid this future that he asked for.

"I can give her some one-on-one or whatever," Hate says slowly, "but... I was assigned to look after Sammy today."

A cold stone of dread sinks through your stomach.

"... is this the true power of a Lance Corporal?" you say in meek awe, and Hate grins like the lazy motherfucker he is.

"She's been getting awfully antsy about meeting you, too," he says, twisting the knife. "She's bitching that all the big ships are getting the attention."

Which they are. And that's not her fault – it's yours. Because you really, really don't want to be in the room – or on the base – when the inevitable happens.


"Oooooorrrrrrr," Hate drawls, "you could start delegating authority, like you're supposed to."

"You-"

"You need more than a pet Corporal, skipper," he says dourly. "As fun as it is to have most of the responsibilities of a butterbar without the pay grade, there's more than two people can do."

"We've only got-"

"And how long is that gonna last?" he says. "Even if the CNO doesn't order us to start summonings... they're just showing up. The Corgis, for example."

You blanch. "How many, now?"

"That'd require me rounding them up long enough to count," he says, his eyes lidded with resigned loathing. "Sooner or later, skipper."

You sigh. "Well, what do you have in mind?"

"Put Harder in charge of teaching Willie-"

"Areyououtofyourfuckingmind!?" you exclaim. "That's almost as bad as putting her with Sammy!"

Hate's eyes widen... and then he strokes his chin thoughtfully.

"You can't be serious."

"Naah. Naah. Think about it."


... you think about it. Sammy, well escorting a destroyer is LITERALLY her job. They'd make a decent ASW team; not even Willie can fuck up depth charging too much, and she's too flighty to be an easy target for torpedoes. She seems to jump if the crickets sing too loud, even. And with Sammy at her side... yeah. She might not earn respect, but she'll stop taking shit really, really quick.

Harder is... marginally more sane. More importantly, he knows things about destroyers no destroyer can know – he might be able to teach Willie from a unique perspective, which might give her more confidence. He's newly manifested, though – there's lots of unknowns in there. He might teach her something... weird.

"Just remember, Skip," Hate says, watching you think. "I dunno who's gonna teach her High Class Subtle Bitchery. I'm a smoke-grenade-in-the-sealed-shitter kind of guy, you know?"

You give Hate a lazy smirk. "I've got that covered." You *did* graduate from Annapolis, after all.

>Have Hate teach Willie MEAN MARINE TRICKS
>Teach Willie SUBTLE TROLL TRICKS yourself
>Pair Willie up with Harder BETTER FASTER STRONGER
>Pair Willie up with Sammy.


>Pair Willie up with Sammy.

"Sammy," you say after several seconds of contemplation. A slow, wicked smile spreads across your soul as you contemplate the hidden genius of Hate. Yes. Sammy. If there's anything that can give Willie confidence in her strength, it's the ant that moved the rubber tree plant to a deserted back lot and then fucking burned it alive while calling its entire grove out as pussies. Sammy is also... problematic to pair with an uncertain girl like Willie. Sammy has certain expectations of destroyers; expectations Willie isn't going to match. But if Willie can hang onto the tail of that comet for just a little while, it'll do her a world of good.

And hell, maybe they'll even hit it off.

You snort at that, and shake your head. No chance in hell. You turn your attention back to Hate, who's waiting with an innocent look. "Go ahead," you tell him.

"Go ahead what?"

"Go ahead and do whatever you're being smug about."

"... smug!?" he says with entirely too much surprise. "But sir, I was just thinking about what other delegations of duty we might make to assist you. You might want to assign a secretary ship."

You sink into your chair as that entire impossible phrase soaks into your poor, benighted soul. "A what."


"Secretary ship," Hate says. "Goto's got one. 'Parrenlty they're so short on staff with security clearance for this crazy shit – that's also WILLING to work with 'em – that he had to assign a shipgirl-spirit-thangmobobber to handle some of the paperwork. I could interview candidates for you."

*That* snaps your attention back to reality. "Wait, just what-"

"Oooooh, yeeeaaaaaaaaaah," Hate croons under his breath, leaning far to one side, his eyes tracking someone in the room behind you. "Here comes a candidate now~" He pops out of his seat, slaps his cover on and double-checks it for a jaunty cock that shades his eyes just-so, and rollllllllls away from your table – it cannot be said that he was walking, for the speed of his footsteps seem to hold no bearing on his motive speed; like he's skating across the floor. In the distance you see Tatsuta and Tenryuu just approaching the food line as Hate closes in.

Smooth son of a bitch. Once upon a time – no, once upon a time you were a pencil-pushing, rank-climbing dildo, and now that it's lost the charm, you're too old to want that life, and not young enough to attract a wife. There's a french phrase for it, but you prefer the straight translation - "life is shit."

With a sigh, you pull your cell phone out of your pocket and consult the day's calendar, already updated by The Alleged Secretary... maybe Goto's, if what Hate said wasn't shiggidy shaboody gonna git that booty excuses. According to it, Sammy would be available very soon, Willie already is, and nothing's scheduled for an hour or so – discretionary time to let lunch settle, or something.

Time to get going.

>Track down Willie, bring her along and introduce her to Sammy before evening exercises begin.
>Visit Hornet first – we haven't seen her lately and you're worried about how much she broods.
>Do that thing you intended to follow up on earlier, but totally forgot about [Write-in.]


>Visit Hornet first – we haven't seen her lately and you're worried about how much she broods.

While scrolling through today's schedule, you see that the CVs have scheduled practice at their own dedicated range. Yokosuka has one of those rarest and valuable of training facilities; a torpedo range tucked away into its own corner of the harbor. In this seabee crews have added wooden pilings decorated with large targets; almost looking like a long-range rifleman's shooting range at which the CV's unleash their odd "flights" of aircraft.

You tap your phone against your leg thoughtfully, and decide to pay them a visit. You'd like to see how they all stack up skill-wise, and you haven't seen Hornet since you arrived on-base. You worry about how much she broods; it doesn't do to ignore any of your ships for too long.

You retrieve your (damned) cane, deposit your half-finished lunch and Hate's emptied plate in the proper receptacles and you're just limping towards the door when you spot a girl in an unusually dark outfit heading for the door – a destroyer, based on her height. Her head's on a swivel, and she's got a brown paper bag in her hands, the rolled top twisting in a nervous grip. She slides up to the door, glances around, and slips out silently.


She looks a little like the glimpsed streak of terrified ship you saw bolt out of that tree last night – apparently the Corgis still have her scent. You fumble for your phone and jot down a note before striding out into the bright noon sunlight.

The training range can be heard further than seen; the high-pitched buzz of tiny engines ripping through the air like swarms of pissed-off hornets. Exactly like pissed off hornets; that's really what they *are.* There's no rangemaster present for some reason; just three girls bending their bows at the distant targets. Hornet is the furthest from your vantage point behind the wooden divider that forms the makeshift archery shack put up for the CV's use. It was knocked together from whatever was on hand; and there's a large knothole near one corner that allows you a decent view.

Hornet is furthest from your vantage point; her dark braids contrasting with Akagi's long, flowing locks. Kaga's nearest, her eyes sharp and focused, studying the results of the last run.


At last, they reach for their practice arrows as one, nock, and release. The Japanese carriers move swiftly, almost fluidly – nocking the arrow with the bow above their heads, drawing and releasing in one motion as they come down. The arrows whistle away into the snarling buzz of practice planes as they repeated the smooth, well-rehearsed motion; moving with the grace of well-oiled machines honed to a razor's edge.

As their flights of miniature planes streak away towards the distant targets and mock-up ships painted on white boards, Hornet's aircraft follow – a straggling stream. As you watch she whips another arrow from her quiver. Unlike the Japanese CVs, she's holding her bow in front, turned at almost a 45 degree angle to one side. She nocks up, sighting down the shaft carefully before releasing. Her archery style is less formalized and rehearsed, and it shows in the poor cohesion of her launched strike.

The CVs stand silently as they watch their planes attacking. Kaga and Akagi's strikes hit their assigned targets perfectly, but Hornets trickle in, each of them attacking whatever the hell they see first. Kaga audibly sighs as she watches some of Hornets torpedo bombers bore straight in at a simulated ship – a small model anchored to the bottom – without bothering to split into two groups, or catch it at 45 degree angles. She glances at Akagi, who to her credit does not glance back.

Hornet stands stock-still, staring out at the targets. She's regal and quiet, but she's no Arizona – she can't hide her misery at the sorry display.

>Go out
>Keep watching


>Keep watching

You contemplate stepping out there immediately and heading off the trouble you can already see clouding Kaga's face, but an Admiral doesn't often get a chance to see his underlings interacting without his own shadow effecting things. So you stay put... and wait.

Kaga sighs, lowering her bow and leaning it against the back of the shed before striding past Akagi to face Hornet. Your girl doesn't turn – she just keeps staring downrange, watching her planes straggling in. A few of them have been out too long; exhausting their meager practice load of fuel; they go splashing into the drink as the rest begin orbiting the shed. She extends her flight deck on one arm, and lets them bounce and jounce to rough landings.

Kaga and Akagi have already retrieved theirs.

Once the task is complete – and only then – does she say something. "Yes, Kaga?" she asks, still fixing her stare downrange.

"You're not intending to sortie like that, are you?" Kaga asks bluntly.


Hornet doesn't react – much – but even from this distance you can see her lower lip tighten up a bit, and her dark almond-shaped eyes drop a little.

"I follow orders," she replies simply.

"Mass is key in carrier attack," Kaga says. "If you don't attack all at once, your strength is wasted; destroyed piecemeal. You should know that better than anyone."

Ah, that beautiful tactical-strategic irony disconnect – alive and well. Hornet doesn't point this out, however – she just lets her eyes sink a little further, though her shoulders are still square and firm in her archery stance.

"Speed of spotting is essential. Speed of launching," Kaga continues. "You can't be expected to match Carrier Group One, but this aiming business has got to stop."

"Kaga," Akagi says gently, taking her comrade by the arm. "Hornet-san's been working very hard, hasn't she?" It takes you a moment to remember what -san means; all the shipgirls seem to be capable of speaking any language they wish, but honorifics and other characteristics of their 'native' tongues seem to color everything they say, no matter what. You know this conversation's in English solely for Hornet's 'benefit.'

"The abyssals don't care how hard she's working," Kaga says cruelly. "She can't even match Group Five; if she can't contribute to a combined stri-"

"Kaga!" Akagi says sharply. "We're all working hard to learn how to work together. And that's hard on ALL of us."

Kaga visibly glowers at this – not very much; just a tightening in her face and shoulders; but given what little you've seen of her, it qualifies as a significant display. "I apologize. It's unreasonable to ask so much of you, so soon after your arrival. The situation has been very tense." She bows her head to Hornet in a formal apology. Hornet doesn't look at her – she just nervously fingers the tip of one arrow (that one, again) as she considers her words.


"I understand," she says softly.

"Thank you," Kaga says. "We're hard-pressed to defend the seas; and we desperately need every ASW escort we can find. Please join us in battle as soon as possible."

You feel your blood boil at that; a flash of heat that sings through your veins. Kaga's being a bitch, and you're pretty sure why, too. You straighten up – and nearly scream like a little girl when someone brushes your shoulder.

You find (yet another) shipgirl hovering right by your shoulder, having slid into position to peer through the knothole with you. She's still looking, her complexion turning ruddy with anger even as you watch. She straightens up to stand very, very stiffly, a bow clenched in one white-knuckled fist and her flight deck vibrating along with her thrumming muscles on the opposite arm. Even her twin pigtails seem to be vibrating.

The look on her face says it all – she's fixing to push Kaga's shit in, or at least thinking about it seriously.

>The Admiral Abides
>Head her off now. This is no time for escalation.
>Tell the newcomer to calm down; you want to talk to Kaga. Alone.


>The Admiral Abides
WRITE-IN: >offer her the cane as a beating stick

As much as your inner child wishes to race out there and defend the dark, lovely, willowy shipgirl's honor – Admirals should avoid that kind of thing, if at all possible. It's just not how you lead. You've got to show some trust; and not embarrass the pride of the ships themselves by making them think *you* think they need rescuing.

All the same – Kaga's not being fair. If you were Japanese, you might come up with some elegant and passive-aggressive way of sending a clear message to Kaga – but, alas, you are only an American, and the only politics you know are blunt and to-the-point.

So as the new carrier... (Zuikaku, your memory fills in after a moment-) moves to charge around the wall; you tug at her sleeve. She pauses long enough to let you hand her your battered wooden cane; some generic, ugly plastic-coated thing, true, but it has plenty of heft.

You wink at her, and fucking *fade.* She charges around the barrier at full-tilt, her eyes ablaze with outrage.

"KAGA!" her voice comes piercing through the rickety wooden wall. "Did you fall off the top of the bitch tree and hit every branch on the way down?"

"T-the what?" Kaga's voice comes, quite taken aback. "Zuikaku, why do you have a-"

"THIS," Zuikaku's bright voice returns, "is a branch from the humility tree. Just one branch, but if I beat you with it ten or fifteen times, it'll add up to a whole tree's worth."


"Zuikaku," Kaga replies with the soothing tones of someone who's not very worried at all, "please calm down before you do something you'll regret."

"You'll be regretting it more, sister," Zuikaku snarls.

The abortive sound of Akagi's attempt to intervene is sliced in two by the chilling sound of Kaga's razor-thin voice. "Are you threatening me, you second-rate divers-"

The CRACK! of your cane snapping against Kaga's anatomy is the most beautiful thing you've ever heard, you think. You limp away from the wooden shed as awful sounds of combat ensue; the hollow booms and clangs of metal slamming into metal. The bass percussion is so loud the wooden shack is shivering; and you know that those girls – right now – could throw each other through that wooden partition without noticing its there. Best to gain some distance.

You're only a few feet distant when Akagi's voice rises above the din, and a sudden lull falls.

"Not good enough," Kaga spits, her voice ragged and angry, blowing right through abortive sounds from Akagi trying to get her to shut the hell up. "You still can't land a solid strike, can you?"

"More than that yankee dog you keep comparing me with!" she snaps.

>Aaand that goes in our little black book.
>AWRIGHT THAT FUKKIN DOES IT-

39079989 - New thread [demetrious]!

39080272 (demetrious) - IT'S A COMIN
OH FUCK THIS UPDATE JUST WENT DARKER THAN I EXPECTED

39080289 (the fluffbringer) - Worry.jpg
39080299 - Ohhh shit.
39080393 - scared.jpg

39080548 (demetrious) - NOOOOO THREAD

Click to shrink...