CompassJimbo
Where’s Your North?
- Location
- The former Rubber Capital of the World
Best ship. Right next to Naka/Harder.
Kant-O-Celle Quest [a Kantai Collection game, transcribed from 4chan]
- Thread starter Trace Coburn
- Start date
BB-61 (by feelthyHornet)
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
BB-61 - Iowa
Her eyes snap open. Her body convulses on the deck.
She coughs, her chest heaving as she gasps her first breath, her second. Everything feels heavy; movement feels wrong. She knows she was not meant to move like this, but she also knows that she must move.
She tries to rise and learns that she has feet, attached to long and shapely legs. Fingers connected to hands, connected to arms. Clothes ridiculous in appearance, yet somehow real to the touch. Her first laugh, tentative and filled with worry, echoes off the walls and machinery.
'I know this place.'
This is one of four boiler rooms — one of *her* four boiler rooms. Everything around her is illuminated as though she is the source of that light, but it is rapidly fading. It is suddenly dark, too dark.
She tries to stand, her legs wobbling as she finds her balance. The light returns. She marvels at her ability to walk, at the feeling of her hands brushing against anything and everything in reach. Everything around her is *changing*: to how they had been for decades, not how they just were — how they should be. How she remembers it best. Paint peels back to reveal a new coat underneath, fresh warning labels on equipment. Warped railings straighten.
'I know who stood here.'
She sees old friends: her crew scrambling around her, through her, as though she is not present. Some acknowledge her with knowing smiles. They understand, somehow.
She misses them all terribly. She wishes they were here.
Men did their jobs aboard this ship — aboard her — long before she earned peace. She remembers every single sailor who ever served aboard her, their names and their faces. She remembers conversations about loves, about families and friends. About home.
She understands home. It is where she is right now.
There is a rumbling in the air, faint, reverberating through the hull and bulkheads. Her ears buzz with something electric—and not.
'I know these sounds.'
Air raid sirens in the distance. Another rumble. The world sways and tilts beneath her feet. Balance comes natural, even as another shock — much closer — rocks the boiler room. Lights flicker, but stay lit.
'I know this smell.'
Oil. It's a pleasant smell, one she hasn't enjoyed in too long. The stench permeates everything. It tells her that she is ready. She does not know what for, but she knows that She Is Needed. Her country, her world, needs BB-61. USS Iowa must sail.
A torch, burning brightly, hovers next to the woman, the shade holding it nodding and smiling warmly at her. Instinct bids her to take it from her engineer. A chorus of tiny, excited voices fills her ears as she plunges the torch into the nearest boiler, and the whole ship shudders. Behind her, the other boiler hisses to life. Gauges that have not moved in decades rattle, needles moving towards acceptable levels. She feels a hand slap down on her shoulder, an old chief flashing a thumbs-up before disappearing through the bulkhead.
'Eight boilers hot, ma'am.'
The ship's heart beats once more, and Iowa's heart beats with it.
-
Everything is new and different and amazing.
Iowa runs down the corridors of herself, shades of old crew flashing in the corners of her vision. The air brushing against her skin brings back memories of being at sail, but there is no chilling spray of water across her deck—and she feels grateful for that.
Her dress flutters around her thighs with each step, her high-heeled shoes (hers!) clatter against the metal floors. Her heart pounds, her lungs burn with each breath. With every clack of her heels to the deck, her ship transforms. Ancient anti-aircraft weapons — long replaced by modern forms of hate — flash back into place, as though they'd never been removed.
Each porthole she passes, Iowa looks to the outside world, trying to see more, to understand why she is here. She catches a glimpse of her reflection in the glass, her skin pale, eyes dark. The dress is a deep, uniform blue. The thigh-highs that itch like nothing she has experienced are white. Her hair is long, black, and shimmers in the ambient light with every step. She cannot help but smile. Somehow, this is right. She knows it is, deep in the same place that knows that she is here for a good reason.
An explosion flashes through the portholes. The ship lists to one side, then the other. Iowa stumbles, arms pinwheeling as she fights to maintain balance. A shade catches her as she falls, helping her upright. The crewman nods and points silently down the corridor. He points towards the bridge, to Where She Needs To Be.
He vanishes without a word, and something deep within her chest hurts. Something warm burns its way to the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. She blinks the blurriness away and runs as though her life depends on it.
Her crew had run through these same corridors, just as she does now. People who had relied on the power of her guns, the strength of her hull, had scrambled for their very lives just like this. It had been an understanding she has longed for since she first cut through the seas.
The spirits of men who served and protected her, just as she protected them, run with her, past her. One by one, they reach their stations—and vanish.
The USS Iowa continues its transformation, decks and bulkheads rippling in her wake.
-
Excitement and wonder have become grief.
She has seen Hell on Earth, been the cause for it personally. But that was the past. She had fought for, and had earned peace. Her life had become one of vigilance, with just sparks of anger scattered among memories of long cruises with no war, no fighting. She sailed until her people did not need her, left her to slowly but surely rust.
Her final duty was that of a monument in memory of the GIs of the Army, the men of the Marine Corps, and the sailors of the Navy that BB-61 had stood watch over: a reminder of something the common person should not be subjected to. She slept content of her life, her service. Someday, she simply would no longer be. For her, that was acceptable.
And while she slept, a silent and impotent guardian to millions, Hell had come from the Abyss and visited its wrath on the innocent.
She is wide-eyed, standing on her deck, for the first time truly exposed to the elements as a person. For the first time, she is crying.
'Why?'
Smoke and flame rise from Los Angeles. Gouts of mud and concrete rise from coastal neighborhoods. The sounds of cannon fire echoes a second later, punctuating the horror.
The dock behind the Iowa erupts into flame, the blast-wave disintegrating structures hundreds of feet around the epicenter. Her home is being reduced to rubble. The people who worked there, who maintained her, are gone.
She smells oil burning, smells blood—and the explosions only continue. She sees freighters — SHIPS THAT CANNOT FIGHT — broken, dead, dying. She sees men and women floating in the water, clinging to anything that can keep them afloat. Others cling to nothing, lifeless bodies guided by the currents.
She hears screaming in every direction, and she remembers: the roar of anti-aircraft batteries, planes with a hated symbol painted on their wings diving at her sisters, prayers from her crew.
'WHY?'
She whirls on the deck, facing a sea that burns, seeing for the first time a storm That Should Not Exist. Voices are calling contacts. Her eyes, burning with blue flame focus on one.
DDG-76. USS Higgins.
Once, she must have been beautiful. Now she is mauled, facing down death. Iowa marvels at the small size of the vessel, comparing it to the blackened monsters bearing down upon it. A woman, shining in brilliant light, stands at her prow, arms outstretched towards the enemy. Splashes bracket the destroyer and she is gone, water washing over the twisted forward deck. The bridge is torn wide open, flames licking out of the mangled tower.
The Higgins lists badly to port, five-inch gun barking helplessly against the ironclad beast. Streaks of fire leap from tubes, from undamaged cells in the decks.
Iowa has seen ships die, but not like this.
The destroyer shakes, water and fire shooting up from the hull aft of its tower — torpedo strike. There is a long, mournful wail, drowned out by another fusillade. Higgins shudders once more, another group of missiles shrouding the ship in gray smoke. Robbed of her voice, only Higgins' weapons speak for her, and soon even that will be silenced. Her gun continues to fire, a rhythmic thump rolling over the waves, answered by high pitched CLANGS and whistles as the shells bounce useless off the ironclad's hull. She will die, and die knowing that she failed to protect so many, despite giving everything she had.
The tears stop, and Iowa feels another familiar emotion take hold.
'No more.'
-
Every captain she has ever known awaits on her bridge, standing at silent attention.
She staggers past towards the nearest man, the one she remembers with the most clarity. He vanishes with a salute. One by one, they salute and fade to nothing as she passes them by, until only Her First stands resolutely at the center of the bridge, his back facing her.
'Captain...'
The older man spins on his heel with military precision, snapping off a perfect salute. There is a plaque mounted on the bulkhead directly behind him, just below the observation windows.
OUR LIBERTIES WE PRIZE, OUR RIGHTS WE WILL MAINTAIN
His mouth moves, but Iowa hears no words. It is enough, she understands.
'This ship is mine.'
The spirit nods wistfully at the woman, motioning her to step closer. She feels an arm wrap around her shoulders as she obeys her Captain. His other hand sweeps towards the sea before Iowa, and then he, like all the others, is gone. She knows she will never again see them all like this.
The battleship lurches forward. Stressed metal groans, followed by a high pitched whine, a SNAP. Iowa is free of her moorings, surging forward from the dock. She feels the propellers spinning in the water, feels the ship shift beneath her feet as engines claw towards their limits.
And then she is distracted.
-
Iowa can 'see' the man clinging to one of her broken moorings. It's as though she is hovering next to him, watching him gamely struggle to climb onto her deck. She hears his gasps for air and his curses as his hands cut themselves on the line, his feet kicking helplessly against her hull.
She reaches out to him, for his shirt collar, wanting to help him. She cannot touch him, but the thought is apparently enough. He climbs faster, grunting and shouting incoherently each time he pulls himself further up the line. One of his hands claw firmly onto a railing the moment it is within reach, and after several short hisses, he bellows and yanks himself firmly aboard.
She knows he is a marine before seeing the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, before seeing U.S. MARINES stenciled across a patch on his chest; the haircut is more than enough to identify him. He is clearly exhausted, waterlogged, and extremely pissed off. Even as he lays on the wooden deck, trying to catch his breath, his eyes are open, scanning in all directions, looking for something to take the fight to.
Iowa remembers men like him. They served aboard her and she protected them, either within her hull or with her weapons from afar.
'Get up, Lance Corporal.'
He doesn't hear her words, but he staggers to his feet anyway, dumbly staring at the mooring partly wrapped around his right leg and then at the impossible sight around him. The Marine stumbles back several steps, almost tripping over the wire, mouth agape as he tries to pull the rest of the line out of the water.
That isn't where she needs him.
The Marine drops the line to her deck. Unconsciously guided by the shade of an old Gunner's Mate, cursing every time his hurt foot comes down on the wooden planks, he half-runs, half-limps to the lone twenty-millimeter anti-aircraft battery at Iowa's prow.
She has a crew of one Marine now. It will be all she needs.
-
Iowa stands alone on her own bridge, arms crossed, ignorant to the azure fire that burns around her.
Before her the Higgins burns. Surrounded, beaten down. Men and women aboard her are dying, if not already dead. Around her, people have died, while she had lain silent. Perhaps she cannot save them all, but she can avenge them. She knows she can.
She glares at the nearest of the monsters: the Monitor floating lazily among burning corpses of defenseless ships and people, its guns spitting at anything in reach. She hears the almost melodic hum of her two forward batteries shifting into place as they follow her gaze. The Y turret is on target faster than the other, as though it is more eager to do what it was built to do, after years of being unable to do anything at all.
She remembers this anger. She remembers how it was given purpose. One hand sweeps across the black sea just beyond the breakwater, across every nightmarish hull that plagues HER SEA, and her mouth opens to speak for the first time.
"Wipe these bastards from my sight."
Six sixteen inch shells explode from Iowa's forward batteries, wreathing her bow in fire and smoke. The Monitor seems to buckle in on itself, coming to a dead halt in the water. Iowa can see the face of her enemy, a slip of a woman standing red-eyed on her own deck, mouth opened in a silent scream. And then she and the Monitor are gone, fiery pieces of oily black debris skipping off the roiling waters, a massive funeral pyre of water and fire marking her final resting place.
Despite herself, Iowa smiles; this is what she was meant for.
-
The Ironclad is next.
Iowa bears down upon it, sweeping past the battered Higgins. For a brief moment, she sees the ghostly woman on the destroyer's prow, looking up at Iowa with amazement, with relief. She knows there are more of the black ships in the water, but they are not her concern. Her sister and her crew need Iowa. They need the Ironclad to sink if they are to survive. There is nothing else in the world but the churning sea, the Iowa, and the Ironclad.
"Look at me," Iowa snarls.
Her forward batteries roar once more, augmented by the secondaries she brings into play. The salvo sails just wide of the Ironclad; the beast comes about with impossible speed, forgetting the Higgins. Iowa's hands ball into fists.
"LOOK AT ME."
A scream, inhuman and high-pitched, sounds from the Ironclad. It is a scream of terror, of recognition. It knows it cannot win, cannot survive. It knows what comes for it.
Voices in her head ring in alarm: torpedoes in the water.
She remembers the destroyers, turning her gaze upon them as a triplet of starshells pop in the skies overhead, scattering them like cockroaches under the illumination. Her starboard five-inch batteries engage them in afterthought, shells chopping through the waves and their hulls, barrels glowing hot as they fire again and again and again.
Iowa grits her teeth, ignoring the fire she feels building all along her right side, a searing pain. She looks upon the Ironclad once more, her forward batteries shaking the whole ship as they unleash Hell. Her heart pounds as she watches the shells fall short. The gun-ports on the Ironclad flash in mocking defiance, its own shells splashing uselessly far from Iowa.
The Ironclad must sink.
There is nothing else that matters, nowhere she can turn to escape. The torpedoes are too close: no amount of will can force her hull out of harm's way.
She hears a familiar roar in the distance. She knows this sound, knows that it belongs to fighter jets of her country. Too far out to save her from the torpedoes, or the Higgins from the Ironclad, but close enough that even if she is gone, they might be able to save Los Angeles from further damage.
The Ironclad MUST SINK.
Through the forest of her forward batteries adjusting onto their target, she can see the Marine on his guns turning onto the incoming torpedoes. She hears him speak throughout the din of battle.
"Alright, that's how you want to play this, I got your back."
Somehow, Iowa knew he would understand.
-
Iowa watches herself as she continues to close in on the Ironclad thousands of yards distant, watches the Marine as he swivels the turret to engage the closest torpedo. Long seconds pass, tracers fizzling into the water just above the deadly lance—
The explosion is enough to make even Iowa turn away, a column of water rising high into the night sky, followed by a second, a third. The Marine keeps shooting, tracing fire over to a fourth torpedo.
The Ironclad is now little more than a distraction. The Marine and his fight for both their lives is her focus. A third salvo from her forward batteries clips the Ironclad's stern, a fire glowing behind the gun-ports trained on the Iowa. The pressure wave from the gunfire almost throws him off of the gun, but he tenaciously holds on, firing and screaming obscenities until his voice grows hoarse.
Five, six, seven torpedoes down. They are close enough that Iowa can feel the detonations through her hull, through her body.
The Marines remains at his post even as Iowa's guns deliver more fire onto the Ironclad. Hot shell casings spill around him, onto him. She turns the ship into the torpedoes, giving him a better angle, allowing him to claim three more. Water engulfs him and for a terrifying moment he is gone. The gun stops firing.
He reappears, still screaming, steam rising from the gun barrels as he resumes firing. Eleven, twelve down.
"It's enough," she calls to him.
The Marine doesn't think so.
"Run!"
He refuses.
The detonations are ever closer than before, close enough that Iowa 'hurts' when a shock-wave rattles her hull. Only two left, far too close.
"Don't do this."
She is pressed against the glass of her bridge, watching her newest and only crewman die. Before she could even speak with him, understand who he is, what motivates him, he will be gone. Like everyone else she failed to protect today. He is throwing his life away for her and neither understands why this has to be.
One torpedo left — it's going to hit. One survivable hit, a hit she can fight through easily.
"You didn't have to," she sobs, finger nails scratching the glass.
The Marine stays on the gun until he manages to hit the last torpedo less than fifty feet from her bow. He is flung from his seat and Iowa screams as his body ragdolls through the air, coming back down against one of her forty millimeter emplacements. He tumbles to her deck lifeless, out of her sight.
She feels his blood on her decks, feels his pulse fade to nothing.
The glass of the bridge shatters all around her, bouncing off her exposed skin like stones thrown at armor plate.
She sees only red.
-
Starshells illuminate the whole bay, clearly defining the Ironclad and Iowa. The last two major combatants. Soon, there will be only one.
A horrific buzz tears through the night, streams of tracers leading back to a pair of F-15Es flying dangerously low over the violent sea, waves licking at them as they strafe the Ironclad. Bombs fall away from their hard-points and skip off the water into the Ironclad's side. She hears panicked radio chatter from the pilots, from what remains of the Higgins, witness to the spectacle of The Grey Ghost closing the gap on her enemy. Close enough that even the Ironclad could hurt her, if it was allowed the opportunity.
Iowa's guns center one last time on their target.
'Sink.'
The salvo of sixteen-inch shells rips the Ironclad wide open, half of the ship's armaments gone in an instant. Iowa's five inch guns dig deep beyond the cavernous wound, angry flames spewing out from the endless black within the hull.
'SINK.'
Thirty seconds later, the six guns of the forward batteries speak, almost tearing the stern completely away from the rest of the beast. Lightshafts break through the storm swirling above and envelop the stricken ship, as though the world itself is guiding Iowa's wrath.
"SINK!"
The smoke from the shots partially obscure the Ironclad as it breaks in half, a column of fire rising into the sky and a banshee's wail sounding from within. The halves point upwards and within seconds begin slipping under the waves.
Iowa fires again, and again, and again, until there is nothing her guns can hit. She sails through the floating remains, through the flames, pieces of black iron and wood splintering against her hull. Turning towards the Pacific, Iowa brings her primary batteries to bear on something only she can see, coming to a stop at the center of the bay.
Behind her, Higgins limps to port, Los Angeles burns. Around her, sailors fight to stay afloat, to save who they can. Iowa stands guard, guns aimed at the abyssal Pacific. She waits for dawn.
feelthyHornet said:
Iowa sits on her bridge, her face buried against her knees.
She had a crew. Even if it was for a short while, even if it was just one Marine, it had been enough. It had been proof that people like him still existed. And now she has none.
Strike Eagles loiter overhead, unsure of what to think of the now-living museum ship. Destroyers surround her, sisters to the Higgins, attempting repeatedly to hail her. Hailing the USS Iowa, demanding to know who is in command, what they intend.
Nobody approaches. Nobody attempts to board. The voices she heard when she'd first awakened are gone. Her one crewman is gone.
She is utterly alone.
She is not worried about rest, not right now. She just wants answers, like the uncertain voices crackling over the radio. She wants to know why she awakened to all of this, why it could not have been sooner.
Most importantly, she wants to know why that Marine gave his life for her.
She can still feel him on her deck, unmoving, his blood pooling across the wooden planks. Men have died aboard her before, but this feels intensely personal. She relives his final moments in snapshots, far clearer than any life or death she can remember before his: manning the gun, defying the concussion from her two forward main batteries as they eviscerate the Ironclad, ignoring her pleas to save himself. She still sees his eyes tracking the final torpedo, the 20mm gun spitting tracers into the water, his expression frozen in one last roar of defiance. His body flung through the air, into a Bofors battery before falling out of sight.
It would have been if he'd simply vanished like all the other ghosts of her past.
This death hurts her more so than any other, and a part of her feels as though she is disrespecting those who'd served aboard her before him. Iowa has been commanded by men to take lives, has seen men serving aboard her die. She is a weapon of war, those things are part of who and what she is. Every sailor Iowa has known sacrificed for her in some way; this shouldn't feel any different, yet it is.
But the Marine... it is more personal than the forty-seven in her Y turret, the marines she'd seen carried onto medical evacuation ships from islands throughout the Pacific. She had compelled him to take on his responsibility. She wanted him on that gun, and he never questioned her. She knows that he could not. She knows with certainty that he died for her, spared her hull in exchange for his body: her final connection to decades of service—to who and what she truly is. For the first time, Iowa has ordered one of her own crew to fight and die.
That, she can't understand.
'How does any Captain deal with this?'
Iowa's head snaps up from her knees, and she angrily wipes at her face. She must go see him and pay her respects.
-
The sight of the broken Marine is almost too much.
She collapses to her knees next to his body, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she tries to hold back the fierce sobs wracking her. It only grows worse every time she tries to look at him. Every apology she rehearsed is forgotten.
She could save a city, save a sister warship in distress, scores of freighters, but she couldn't save the one person who had fought alongside her.
She is a failure.
She reaches for him, hands stopping just short of his chest. Blood seeps into her dress, stains her white thigh-highs scarlet. She cannot find his name anywhere on him, the patches torn away during the battle. His dog tags, the last possible source of information about him, are scratched and scarred by passing shrapnel—the same that are embedded all throughout his body. She only knows that he was a Marine, a Lance Corporal.
Despite his horrible wounds, his expression is one of peace. He knew what was going to happen, and chose to stay on the gun to spare Iowa from feeling the full effect of even a single torpedo. She wonders what compelled the man to do what he did, what compelled anyone to give their life in service to a higher cause. He could have been the first person to answer that, if he'd lived.
It takes a very long time before Iowa calms down. She forces herself to stop the tears, tells herself it resolves nothing. She thinks of all the other men and women who died during the fighting, and thinks of the Pacific, the unnatural storms she saw fading over the horizon at the end of the battle.
Iowa will need to fight again.
She stares at her Unknown Marine, steeling herself for what must come next. He deserves a proper burial.
"I'm sorry," she finally manages to say. "Thank you, Lance Corporal."
Her hands dig under the Marine to lift him from the deck, and that is when his eyes flutter open and meet hers.
-
"Valkyrie—" he whispers, eyes widening in time with Iowa's, "you're a Valkyrie..."
They stare at one another, unsure of what more to say or do.
Then he struggles in her arms. She can barely feel it; he's too weak from blood loss, from fighting. She does feel his heart beating, hard and rapid, his panicked breathing.
She makes a sound she herself can't understand and pulls away as though her hands are on fire. His body slumps back to the deck, and he actually cries out in pain.
"What... the... fuck?" he asks, eyes squeezed shut.
Iowa makes another sound, language forgotten, blinking at the Marine as he weakly reaches out with one hand. Fingers brush against the side of her face. She feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, feels her own heart raging for a path out of her own chest.
His eyes open and his expression changes. It is as though he has seen her again for the very first time.
"Y-You're..." Iowa manages to say before her voice catches.
His hand falls onto one of her knees. He tries to sit up, clearly unable to, but that isn't enough to stop him from trying. His breath is laced with a terrible wheezing sound, wheezing that dissolves into violent coughing. Red mist sprays from his lips.
"I'm dead," he groans.
She is crying harder than ever. She can't stop, and doesn't understand why she is crying when she is so happy. She holds onto him for a long while, her personal and very-much-alive piece of flotsam in a storm of emotions.
"No, y-you're not dead," she says.
"Huh." The Marine finally stops trying to sit up, his eyes rolling back as his head returns to the deck.
"You can't die on me," she says quickly, giving his shoulders a shake as she straddles over him. He doesn't respond. "You're... you're all I have right now, don't—"
Lazily, his eyes open once more. He starts to laugh, his voice rattling and wheezing until he begins coughing once more. He settles down, tearing up from the pain.
"Not like any fuckin' Valkyrie I've read about."
"N-not like any Marine I've seen."
They exchange another long stare. She finds herself smiling, despite everything.
"I'm..." the Lance Corporal points weakly to himself. "I'm all you have?"
"I don't hear them anymore," she sniffles. "Th-they're all gone. Somewhere. You're all the crew I have left on this ship."
"Weird..." The Marine chuckles. "Fuckin' weird."
"How do you think I feel? I d-don't even know if I'm s-supposed to be here!" She sobs and laughs with him. "C-Can you stand?"
"Tryin'... gimme a hand willya?"
She has to help him sit up, but that is enough to get him moving. He needs to lean against her to stay on his feet. He tries to brace himself with an arm around her waist, but even then his legs can barely support his weight. Strength is bleeding out of him through his wounds. She tries to carry him—the moment she does she can feel him resisting, and that is enough to convince her. The man wants to at least try to walk.
"I've got you," she tries to assure him, even as her voice wavers, "w-we're just taking a walk to..."
"Valhalla?" he asks quietly.
"... To sick-bay. I'm not choosing you to die. Not just yet, okay?" She tries to smile.
The Marine grumbles something to the effect of disappointment. The Ship squeezes him in the hopes of keeping him conscious.
"So. Who are you again?"
"I'm..." She pauses to draw in a breath. "I'm BB-61, USS Iowa. You saved me."
"Stop." The Marine manages to get her to stop walking by dragging his feet on the deck, pulling on the collar of her dress. He pulls himself up to her height, his bloodshot eyes drilling into hers, a gurgling growl sounding in his throat. "Sayitagain."
"I'm BB-61, USS Iowa."
"Th'fuckyousay."
"It's weird for me too," she admits.
He maintains his glare for a moment longer before his hands fall limp at his sides.
"I saved you?" He sounds incredulous.
"You did."
He shrugs at that, and immediately passes out.
-
The Marine weighs nothing, yet weighs more than any burden she can imagine. She wants to move slowly, to keep him from shifting so much in her arms. The sight of his blood soaking through his and her clothes urges her to move faster. She finds herself almost cursing her own design: there are so many pipes, railings, and hatchways her precious cargo can be accidentally bumped against; too many ladders she feels she almost drops him down. She tries to remember how the ship transformed around her after awakening, to remember if there was something she had done that was special. She wills the bulkheads around her to change, to make the path less difficult on the Marine, but nothing changes.
It is an agonizingly long walk to sick-bay.
She pushes her way through one final hatch, and is happy to discover that the medical ward is exactly how she remembers it being. She sets the Marine down as gently as possible on an empty bed and sets about scrambling to find the supplies he needs, trying not to look at the blood pooling rapidly beneath him on the mattress.
Memories of medics and nurses hurriedly making their way from patient to patient guide her. Everything she needs is exactly where it should be. Iowa is not confident about her skills as a doctor, but what she remembers from her crews is more than enough. Enough that she remembers to double-check his dog tags for his blood type. Enough to help her set up an IV after a several botched attempts, with profuse apologies after each mistake. He never responds, but she wants to believe he understands.
Opening his uniform shirt to dress his wounds is a different story.
She has seen injured, dying, and dead men before today. She remembers it all in a way only a ship of war like her could. This Lance Corporal should have died, spared only by luck or the will of something higher.
The shrapnel she has to leave in place. She does not trust her hands at all to even begin attempting to remove it all. It takes a full roll of medical tape and far more gauze than strictly necessary, but she is reasonably certain he will not bleed out.
He does not wake, does not stir even the slightest as she tends to his wounds.
She discovers, very quickly, that she is hungry. The sensation of a growling empty stomach is alien to Iowa, but she understands the moment she feels it. She knows there is food in refrigerators, in automated snack vendors, the last vestiges of her time as a floating museum.
But her Marine sleeps, and she does not want to leave him. If something happens, if he manages to wake up, she wants to be there for him. At least until help for him arrives. She moves her battleship to Terminal Island, assuming that her allies, if any, would find some comfort that the Iowa has placed herself in easy reach.
She calls for help via Morse code and signal flags flying from a mast atop her superstructure. She considers trying to use the radio, but in the end decides against it. She is unsure people would understand hearing her voice, or seeing her personally. As is, she knows she is being watched. Armed men have established a perimeter around her chosen anchorage, and at least two ships like the Higgins routinely patrol nearby. No one has tried to board the Iowa. She can't blame them, but she does worry for the Marine.
There is so much Iowa wants to know: about the world around her, about the America she knew and the America that is. If she is all alone, or if there are others like her, others like the monsters she put on the bottom of the bay.
She prays for her Marine, for the people she could not save. It is a simple act, but it gives her some comfort, some hope. She understands why her crews would pray.
He sleeps, and she watches over him the entire time, never once leaving his side.
-
"My head hurts..."
She is somewhere between sleep and consciousness, remembering battles fought and the souls of her crew, when she hears him groan. She's on her feet with a start, almost knocking over her seat, and stares expectantly at the Marine.
"You're still here?" he yawns, appraising Iowa with lidded eyes.
She brushes past the chair and wraps her arms around the surprised Marine. "Yeah, I'm still here."
"How 'bout that." He returns the hug cautiously, lightly patting her on the back. "You're real."
"Uh huh," she sniffles. "A-Are you hungry?"
"How long have I been out?"
"Two days. I've been here the whole time—"
"Fuckin—TWO DAYS?" The Marine sputters, and immediately tries to sit up. His eyes widen as he sucks down a breath of air, whimpering in pain as he falls back against the bed.
"Don't move you stupid jarhead!" Iowa wails. "Don't you even remember what you just went through?"
"My boat—" he gasps, "gotta get back to the Higgins—"
"You can't go ANYWHERE right now!"
"I got friends on that—"
"Higgins is as safe as she can be now." Iowa's expression hardens somewhat. "I made sure of it."
"Fucking—COME ON WOMAN! You can't just fuckin' keep me here like this!"
Silence rules the sick-bay after his outburst. Iowa remains calm, almost serene as she stares the Marine down. Anger fades from his eyes. His body relaxes.
"I'm sorry," he says, suddenly apologetic. "Fuck, I'm sorry. You just... you just got here and I'm—"
"You need better care than what I can provide." Her hands press against his shoulders as she tries to keep him in place. "I've called for help. Hopefully you won't have to wait long, okay?"
"I saw her, man. Higgins was in a bad way..." He looks away from Iowa just as the first hints of tears squeeze out from the corners of his eyes. "Y'know I dunno where any of my boys are, I'm the only one you fished out—f-fuckin' monsters—"
"I sunk every last one of those things." Iowa speaks firmly, proudly. "And I have you to thank for making it possible."
"Yeah," he snorts, nodding to himself as though remembering everything that happened. "Yeah, we fuckin' showed those bastards, didn't we?" He looks back at her, blinking rapidly. "A-And saved the Hig, right?"
"We saved her." Iowa leans closer to the Marine, her hands still on his shoulders. He's shivering from pain, from blood loss, but he stops trying to struggle against her restraint. Slowly, he allows himself to relax against his pillows.
"I promise. Nothing more will happen to the Higgins, to every ship in this bay, the port, the city. You have my word. This will never be allowed to happen again. I *won't* allow it."
"Alright, alright..." he nods again, turning away from Iowa. "Good to go, fuckin' good to go."
He doesn't believe her, she can tell that much, but he is trying.
-
"You're hungry," the Marine mumbles absently. It's the first thing he has said in an hour.
Iowa's stomach is noticeably growling louder than before. The alien sensation is accompanied by actual pain. Her hands are shaking as she tries to replace his IV bag.
"I guess I am." She finally manages to hang the bag correctly on a hook, and clasps her hands together, trying to stop the shakes. It doesn't work. "Ah... is it supposed to hurt?"
"Howzat?"
"To be hungry?" She shivers more, and another grumble issues from her gut. "I don't like it."
"It can..." The Marine tries to adjust himself in bed to get a better look at the woman. "Got anything to eat on this thing?"
"Yes," she replies distantly, 'seeing' the old vending machines abandoned by panicked tour guides and takers alike during her awakening.
The Marine begins to sit up yet again, pain rippling through his body and earning himself a sharp look from Iowa. He settles back against the bed, shivering.
"I was... thinkin' I could help us get—"
"I can get it!" Iowa insists, almost too loudly. The Marine rolls his eyes, but that is the extent of his protests. After making certain that he won't run away, or at least try to, she sprints for the sick-bay's exit.
She looks back at him one last time before she slips back into her own corridors, and catches him grinning.
-----------
She had a crew. Even if it was for a short while, even if it was just one Marine, it had been enough. It had been proof that people like him still existed. And now she has none.
Strike Eagles loiter overhead, unsure of what to think of the now-living museum ship. Destroyers surround her, sisters to the Higgins, attempting repeatedly to hail her. Hailing the USS Iowa, demanding to know who is in command, what they intend.
Nobody approaches. Nobody attempts to board. The voices she heard when she'd first awakened are gone. Her one crewman is gone.
She is utterly alone.
She is not worried about rest, not right now. She just wants answers, like the uncertain voices crackling over the radio. She wants to know why she awakened to all of this, why it could not have been sooner.
Most importantly, she wants to know why that Marine gave his life for her.
She can still feel him on her deck, unmoving, his blood pooling across the wooden planks. Men have died aboard her before, but this feels intensely personal. She relives his final moments in snapshots, far clearer than any life or death she can remember before his: manning the gun, defying the concussion from her two forward main batteries as they eviscerate the Ironclad, ignoring her pleas to save himself. She still sees his eyes tracking the final torpedo, the 20mm gun spitting tracers into the water, his expression frozen in one last roar of defiance. His body flung through the air, into a Bofors battery before falling out of sight.
It would have been if he'd simply vanished like all the other ghosts of her past.
This death hurts her more so than any other, and a part of her feels as though she is disrespecting those who'd served aboard her before him. Iowa has been commanded by men to take lives, has seen men serving aboard her die. She is a weapon of war, those things are part of who and what she is. Every sailor Iowa has known sacrificed for her in some way; this shouldn't feel any different, yet it is.
But the Marine... it is more personal than the forty-seven in her Y turret, the marines she'd seen carried onto medical evacuation ships from islands throughout the Pacific. She had compelled him to take on his responsibility. She wanted him on that gun, and he never questioned her. She knows that he could not. She knows with certainty that he died for her, spared her hull in exchange for his body: her final connection to decades of service—to who and what she truly is. For the first time, Iowa has ordered one of her own crew to fight and die.
That, she can't understand.
'How does any Captain deal with this?'
Iowa's head snaps up from her knees, and she angrily wipes at her face. She must go see him and pay her respects.
-
The sight of the broken Marine is almost too much.
She collapses to her knees next to his body, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she tries to hold back the fierce sobs wracking her. It only grows worse every time she tries to look at him. Every apology she rehearsed is forgotten.
She could save a city, save a sister warship in distress, scores of freighters, but she couldn't save the one person who had fought alongside her.
She is a failure.
She reaches for him, hands stopping just short of his chest. Blood seeps into her dress, stains her white thigh-highs scarlet. She cannot find his name anywhere on him, the patches torn away during the battle. His dog tags, the last possible source of information about him, are scratched and scarred by passing shrapnel—the same that are embedded all throughout his body. She only knows that he was a Marine, a Lance Corporal.
Despite his horrible wounds, his expression is one of peace. He knew what was going to happen, and chose to stay on the gun to spare Iowa from feeling the full effect of even a single torpedo. She wonders what compelled the man to do what he did, what compelled anyone to give their life in service to a higher cause. He could have been the first person to answer that, if he'd lived.
It takes a very long time before Iowa calms down. She forces herself to stop the tears, tells herself it resolves nothing. She thinks of all the other men and women who died during the fighting, and thinks of the Pacific, the unnatural storms she saw fading over the horizon at the end of the battle.
Iowa will need to fight again.
She stares at her Unknown Marine, steeling herself for what must come next. He deserves a proper burial.
"I'm sorry," she finally manages to say. "Thank you, Lance Corporal."
Her hands dig under the Marine to lift him from the deck, and that is when his eyes flutter open and meet hers.
-
"Valkyrie—" he whispers, eyes widening in time with Iowa's, "you're a Valkyrie..."
They stare at one another, unsure of what more to say or do.
Then he struggles in her arms. She can barely feel it; he's too weak from blood loss, from fighting. She does feel his heart beating, hard and rapid, his panicked breathing.
She makes a sound she herself can't understand and pulls away as though her hands are on fire. His body slumps back to the deck, and he actually cries out in pain.
"What... the... fuck?" he asks, eyes squeezed shut.
Iowa makes another sound, language forgotten, blinking at the Marine as he weakly reaches out with one hand. Fingers brush against the side of her face. She feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, feels her own heart raging for a path out of her own chest.
His eyes open and his expression changes. It is as though he has seen her again for the very first time.
"Y-You're..." Iowa manages to say before her voice catches.
His hand falls onto one of her knees. He tries to sit up, clearly unable to, but that isn't enough to stop him from trying. His breath is laced with a terrible wheezing sound, wheezing that dissolves into violent coughing. Red mist sprays from his lips.
"I'm dead," he groans.
She is crying harder than ever. She can't stop, and doesn't understand why she is crying when she is so happy. She holds onto him for a long while, her personal and very-much-alive piece of flotsam in a storm of emotions.
"No, y-you're not dead," she says.
"Huh." The Marine finally stops trying to sit up, his eyes rolling back as his head returns to the deck.
"You can't die on me," she says quickly, giving his shoulders a shake as she straddles over him. He doesn't respond. "You're... you're all I have right now, don't—"
Lazily, his eyes open once more. He starts to laugh, his voice rattling and wheezing until he begins coughing once more. He settles down, tearing up from the pain.
"Not like any fuckin' Valkyrie I've read about."
"N-not like any Marine I've seen."
They exchange another long stare. She finds herself smiling, despite everything.
"I'm..." the Lance Corporal points weakly to himself. "I'm all you have?"
"I don't hear them anymore," she sniffles. "Th-they're all gone. Somewhere. You're all the crew I have left on this ship."
"Weird..." The Marine chuckles. "Fuckin' weird."
"How do you think I feel? I d-don't even know if I'm s-supposed to be here!" She sobs and laughs with him. "C-Can you stand?"
"Tryin'... gimme a hand willya?"
She has to help him sit up, but that is enough to get him moving. He needs to lean against her to stay on his feet. He tries to brace himself with an arm around her waist, but even then his legs can barely support his weight. Strength is bleeding out of him through his wounds. She tries to carry him—the moment she does she can feel him resisting, and that is enough to convince her. The man wants to at least try to walk.
"I've got you," she tries to assure him, even as her voice wavers, "w-we're just taking a walk to..."
"Valhalla?" he asks quietly.
"... To sick-bay. I'm not choosing you to die. Not just yet, okay?" She tries to smile.
The Marine grumbles something to the effect of disappointment. The Ship squeezes him in the hopes of keeping him conscious.
"So. Who are you again?"
"I'm..." She pauses to draw in a breath. "I'm BB-61, USS Iowa. You saved me."
"Stop." The Marine manages to get her to stop walking by dragging his feet on the deck, pulling on the collar of her dress. He pulls himself up to her height, his bloodshot eyes drilling into hers, a gurgling growl sounding in his throat. "Sayitagain."
"I'm BB-61, USS Iowa."
"Th'fuckyousay."
"It's weird for me too," she admits.
He maintains his glare for a moment longer before his hands fall limp at his sides.
"I saved you?" He sounds incredulous.
"You did."
He shrugs at that, and immediately passes out.
-
The Marine weighs nothing, yet weighs more than any burden she can imagine. She wants to move slowly, to keep him from shifting so much in her arms. The sight of his blood soaking through his and her clothes urges her to move faster. She finds herself almost cursing her own design: there are so many pipes, railings, and hatchways her precious cargo can be accidentally bumped against; too many ladders she feels she almost drops him down. She tries to remember how the ship transformed around her after awakening, to remember if there was something she had done that was special. She wills the bulkheads around her to change, to make the path less difficult on the Marine, but nothing changes.
It is an agonizingly long walk to sick-bay.
She pushes her way through one final hatch, and is happy to discover that the medical ward is exactly how she remembers it being. She sets the Marine down as gently as possible on an empty bed and sets about scrambling to find the supplies he needs, trying not to look at the blood pooling rapidly beneath him on the mattress.
Memories of medics and nurses hurriedly making their way from patient to patient guide her. Everything she needs is exactly where it should be. Iowa is not confident about her skills as a doctor, but what she remembers from her crews is more than enough. Enough that she remembers to double-check his dog tags for his blood type. Enough to help her set up an IV after a several botched attempts, with profuse apologies after each mistake. He never responds, but she wants to believe he understands.
Opening his uniform shirt to dress his wounds is a different story.
She has seen injured, dying, and dead men before today. She remembers it all in a way only a ship of war like her could. This Lance Corporal should have died, spared only by luck or the will of something higher.
The shrapnel she has to leave in place. She does not trust her hands at all to even begin attempting to remove it all. It takes a full roll of medical tape and far more gauze than strictly necessary, but she is reasonably certain he will not bleed out.
He does not wake, does not stir even the slightest as she tends to his wounds.
She discovers, very quickly, that she is hungry. The sensation of a growling empty stomach is alien to Iowa, but she understands the moment she feels it. She knows there is food in refrigerators, in automated snack vendors, the last vestiges of her time as a floating museum.
But her Marine sleeps, and she does not want to leave him. If something happens, if he manages to wake up, she wants to be there for him. At least until help for him arrives. She moves her battleship to Terminal Island, assuming that her allies, if any, would find some comfort that the Iowa has placed herself in easy reach.
She calls for help via Morse code and signal flags flying from a mast atop her superstructure. She considers trying to use the radio, but in the end decides against it. She is unsure people would understand hearing her voice, or seeing her personally. As is, she knows she is being watched. Armed men have established a perimeter around her chosen anchorage, and at least two ships like the Higgins routinely patrol nearby. No one has tried to board the Iowa. She can't blame them, but she does worry for the Marine.
There is so much Iowa wants to know: about the world around her, about the America she knew and the America that is. If she is all alone, or if there are others like her, others like the monsters she put on the bottom of the bay.
She prays for her Marine, for the people she could not save. It is a simple act, but it gives her some comfort, some hope. She understands why her crews would pray.
He sleeps, and she watches over him the entire time, never once leaving his side.
-
"My head hurts..."
She is somewhere between sleep and consciousness, remembering battles fought and the souls of her crew, when she hears him groan. She's on her feet with a start, almost knocking over her seat, and stares expectantly at the Marine.
"You're still here?" he yawns, appraising Iowa with lidded eyes.
She brushes past the chair and wraps her arms around the surprised Marine. "Yeah, I'm still here."
"How 'bout that." He returns the hug cautiously, lightly patting her on the back. "You're real."
"Uh huh," she sniffles. "A-Are you hungry?"
"How long have I been out?"
"Two days. I've been here the whole time—"
"Fuckin—TWO DAYS?" The Marine sputters, and immediately tries to sit up. His eyes widen as he sucks down a breath of air, whimpering in pain as he falls back against the bed.
"Don't move you stupid jarhead!" Iowa wails. "Don't you even remember what you just went through?"
"My boat—" he gasps, "gotta get back to the Higgins—"
"You can't go ANYWHERE right now!"
"I got friends on that—"
"Higgins is as safe as she can be now." Iowa's expression hardens somewhat. "I made sure of it."
"Fucking—COME ON WOMAN! You can't just fuckin' keep me here like this!"
Silence rules the sick-bay after his outburst. Iowa remains calm, almost serene as she stares the Marine down. Anger fades from his eyes. His body relaxes.
"I'm sorry," he says, suddenly apologetic. "Fuck, I'm sorry. You just... you just got here and I'm—"
"You need better care than what I can provide." Her hands press against his shoulders as she tries to keep him in place. "I've called for help. Hopefully you won't have to wait long, okay?"
"I saw her, man. Higgins was in a bad way..." He looks away from Iowa just as the first hints of tears squeeze out from the corners of his eyes. "Y'know I dunno where any of my boys are, I'm the only one you fished out—f-fuckin' monsters—"
"I sunk every last one of those things." Iowa speaks firmly, proudly. "And I have you to thank for making it possible."
"Yeah," he snorts, nodding to himself as though remembering everything that happened. "Yeah, we fuckin' showed those bastards, didn't we?" He looks back at her, blinking rapidly. "A-And saved the Hig, right?"
"We saved her." Iowa leans closer to the Marine, her hands still on his shoulders. He's shivering from pain, from blood loss, but he stops trying to struggle against her restraint. Slowly, he allows himself to relax against his pillows.
"I promise. Nothing more will happen to the Higgins, to every ship in this bay, the port, the city. You have my word. This will never be allowed to happen again. I *won't* allow it."
"Alright, alright..." he nods again, turning away from Iowa. "Good to go, fuckin' good to go."
He doesn't believe her, she can tell that much, but he is trying.
-
"You're hungry," the Marine mumbles absently. It's the first thing he has said in an hour.
Iowa's stomach is noticeably growling louder than before. The alien sensation is accompanied by actual pain. Her hands are shaking as she tries to replace his IV bag.
"I guess I am." She finally manages to hang the bag correctly on a hook, and clasps her hands together, trying to stop the shakes. It doesn't work. "Ah... is it supposed to hurt?"
"Howzat?"
"To be hungry?" She shivers more, and another grumble issues from her gut. "I don't like it."
"It can..." The Marine tries to adjust himself in bed to get a better look at the woman. "Got anything to eat on this thing?"
"Yes," she replies distantly, 'seeing' the old vending machines abandoned by panicked tour guides and takers alike during her awakening.
The Marine begins to sit up yet again, pain rippling through his body and earning himself a sharp look from Iowa. He settles back against the bed, shivering.
"I was... thinkin' I could help us get—"
"I can get it!" Iowa insists, almost too loudly. The Marine rolls his eyes, but that is the extent of his protests. After making certain that he won't run away, or at least try to, she sprints for the sick-bay's exit.
She looks back at him one last time before she slips back into her own corridors, and catches him grinning.
-----------
BB-61, Part 3
---
The vending machine confuses Iowa.
It certainly wasn't standard issue from when she first went to sail, yet somehow it survived her hull's transition from its 'floating museum' state. There were a half dozen such machines all along her deck, near important entrances tourists would have passed through.
She remembers how people used the things. She remembers, only hours before 'awakening', a father lifting his daughter up so she could insert money into the coin slot. After an awkward pat-down of herself, she finds no convenient pockets on her dress containing money of any sort.
And so Iowa stares through her reflection on the glass standing between her and the food she and her Marine both need, her stomach still growling away.
Candy bars of all kinds are on display. Some of the names are familiar, most are not. She's not sure what to think of Corn Nuts, Funyuns, and the dozen other snacks on display. Near the bottom of the machine she can see bottles of water, green bottles called MTN DEW, and something else that glows bright red and is labeled "G" with a lightning bolt struck through the sole letter.
There is a sweet smell coming from the machine, clashing with the scents of saltwater, oil, and fire in the air. Another gurgle issues from her stomach, and she finds herself licking her lips.
She still doesn't understand why she has been born again in a woman's body, but she gets the impression that she could probably survive without food for a lot longer than a normal person could, much less a person as injured as her crewman.
Bracing her hands on either side of the machine, she squats slightly, grunts, and lifts it off the deck effortlessly. The wooden planks at her feet groan in protest for a second before splintering. She begins to walk towards the nearest hatch, the lights in the machine dying out the moment it is unplugged, wood crunching under her feet with each step.
She can't see where she's going, but she doesn't really need to.
This doesn't stop her from mashing her face into the glass of the vending machine when it fails to fit through the hatch, forcing a surprised yelp out of her.
Setting the machine down next to entryway, she frowns at the still out of reach snacks, hands pressing firmly against the glass.
"Well, it's for my crew," she says, balling her hands into fists and taking a step back.
After a short hiss of breath, Iowa's first punch goes through the entire vending machine, almost folding it in half around her right arm. Glass, metal, and cheap junk food explode in almost every direction, bouncing off her clothes and skin harmlessly.
"Oops..." Iowa mutters under her breath.
She withdraws her arm from the destroyed machine, shaking bits of it from her hand as she assesses the damage. Her cheeks feel warm, but she doesn't entirely understand why.
Surprisingly, much of the food and drink has survived Iowa's strike. She decides to not tell the Marine exactly how she acquired sustenance; somehow it seems like he wouldn't understand just how mean a right she was packing.
Using a bag that conveniently appeared next to the destroyed vendor, she gathers everything that looks remotely intact. She hopes this will last until help arrives.
She also hopes she can be gentler with the next vending machine.
-
The moment she pushes her way into the sick-bay with her haul, the Marine reaches quickly for a weapon that is nowhere near him by reflex. He sighs shakily when he identifies her.
"Old habits."
"You moved to a different bed by yourself..." she purses her lips, concern welling up in her eyes. "You should have waited, I could have helped you—"
"Had to, it's a little... wet."
"I—" There's a lump in her throat as she glances at the bed. The sheets are soaked almost completely through in a deep red stain, and she has to turn away from it. "I brought us something to eat..." She opens the bag to show off her 'catch'.
"Thanks," he mumbles, reaching into the bag and coming up with Snickers, a Glazed Sweet Roll, and one of the water bottles.
"I'm not sure this is any good for you right now—"
"Hey I'll eat a fuckin' ship right now, you're a life saverrrrrbnrbremmmf—" His voice becomes unintelligible as his teeth rip through the wrapper of the Snickers, stuffing the candy bar in his mouth with a huge grin on his face. "Ommmmmmmmmmfuuug im foh umgweee rai naoh!"
Iowa finds herself laughing as he tries to work through the candy bar, bits of chocolate on the corners of his lips. His chewing is loud, crumbs spill from his mouth, but she can't find it in herself to blame him.
"Urghuhwagaha," he grunts, pointing at her and motioning for the bag, all while clawing at the cap of his water bottle to unscrew it. He downs half of it in a single pull, still chewing at what remains of the Snickers. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah... feels like ages since I had this stuff..." He points at Iowa again. "You. Eat something."
With his orders given, the Marine finishes off the rest of the water, and then sets about mauling his way through the sweet roll's wrapper, spitting out bits of plastic before cramming the roll into his mouth. He manages to grin sheepishly at her. Somehow, that is endlessly amusing to Iowa. She laughs until he tears off a part of the roll and offers it to her.
"Thowwy abow thif, ree uggiun umgwee," the Marine vocalizes. "Uhm, you wamf fom off mai?"
"N-no, I couldn't deprive you."
"Fuu uhrfelf." The Marine shrugs and proceeds to stuff the rest of the roll in his mouth.
Iowa reaches into the bag to find her own sweet roll, and tries to read the contents on the wrapper; other than 'honey' and 'flour', the listed ingredients only confuse her to the point where she decides that she doesn't care.
"Uhm, here I go, I guess..."
The wrapper is surprisingly slippery in her fingers. It takes several tries before she can sink her nails through the plastic and free the bread from its imprisonment. She studies the roll closely, inspecting the syrup-glazed golden brown surface. After giving it a sniff, she looks to her crewman in hopes of receiving advice.
None is given. He's too busy with a bag of Gardetto's.
She sighs, and measures up the roll once more. Her first bite is small, carefully measured.
She can't even begin to describe the taste. There isn't a point of reference for her to work from. She can't liken it to taking on fuel oil or supplies; it's nothing like setting sail from port. All she knows is that she can't stop from grinning as she chews on the snack, and she understands why her Marine seems to enjoy the simple act of eating so much.
"Like it?" he asks.
Iowa nods her head, not wanting to speak for fear of the bread spilling out of her mouth.
"Wait'll you try some *real* food."
Iowa doesn't know how to respond to that, so she doesn't try. She spends the next ten minutes slowly picking away at the sweet roll, trying to savor the taste and the smell of every bite. At first she doesn't notice the Marine watching her eat, or the smile his cracked lips slowly reveal.
When she does notice, just as she pops the last bit of the roll into her mouth, she smiles back.
"So." The Marine says, quickly looking away and picking at his teeth with a dirtied fingernail. "Uh, let's... let's try this again. You're Iowa."
"Yes."
"THE Iowa."
"BB-61, USS Iowa."
"Fuckin' hell..."
"You can just call me Iowa, if that's easier."
"You can call me Hate."
"That's a name?"
"'Swhat they call me on the Higgins."
"Hmm..." She tilts her head to the side, running the name through her mind several times. "Lance Corporal Hate."
"Iowa. Pleasure's mine, ma'am."
-
Their meal ends an hour later. Wrappers litter the floor of the sickbay, and something inside of Iowa insist that she really should police all the garbage for the sake of being properly sanitary, but she doesn't want to move. She prefers sitting on the bed next to the Marine, oblivious to how he carefully positioned himself to be able to lie comfortably on the mattress while avoiding physical contact with her.
They hadn't spoken much once they really got started with the food. He was too hungry to maintain any real conversation. For Iowa, everything was too new; it all distracted her in some way. The only thing in the bag that she tried and didn't find overwhelmingly flavorful was the bottled water, and even that has some sort of quality to it that she liked.
Her gut no longer growls or hurts quite like it did before. She's not sure how to describe that either, but she knows she doesn't feel like eating any more.
Hate snores next to her, catching some badly needed rest. His contented expression as he sleeps makes her incapable of voicing any concerns. She's afraid to disturb him.
She's not afraid to lean over him in order to get a better look at his wounds. Her hair spills over her shoulders, brushing against the Marine's body lightly before she pulls it away. Her eyes wander along his chest, wincing in sympathy for the Marine when she sees the shrapnel still stuck in place throughout his body. She knows enough that it's all going to have to come out sooner rather than later, but doesn't want to be the one to bring that up.
She wishes they talked more during... lunch, she decided it was.
Iowa still hears 'reports' from various stations about the disposition of the forces surrounding her, occasional visions of those destroyers loosening or tightening their perimeter around her. Jets continued to make their regular orbits overhead, as they had since her awakening. Voices shout for her attention on loudspeakers every now and then, but she still can't bring herself to answer them.
"What should I do, Marine?"
Hate doesn't respond. Her head hangs tiredly towards his, and she fights the urge to yawn.
She desperately needs rest, but she fights the very real urge to succumb to her growing weakness. It feels like she would somehow be abandoning her post, her Marine, and all the people she knows will need her if those monsters reappear.
Her mind and her heart are screaming for her to keep her eyes open, to not give in. It's not enough. She can feel her strength failing, a sensation she finds almost terrifying.
"Can't sleep," she growls to herself, trying to summon the energy she'd first awakened with. "Not yet, not until I know he's—"
"'Sup?" Hate's eyes snap open as he tries to sit up again, and Iowa immediately retreats, startled by his sudden movement. She nearly falls off the bed as she scrambles back, yelping in surprise.
"You look like you wanna ask somethin'."
"I just wanted to make sure you're okay." She grimaces at her own words. If not for the IVs and the drip feed of pain killers, he would be very far from okay. "R-relatively speaking..."
"Still tickin', I don't hurt any worse than I've hurt before." He finally gets himself upright, resting his back against the bulkhead while crimson spreads across the bandages over his chest. "Dun worry about it, nurse, I'm—ow—good to go."
"If you say so..." She sighs shakily. A yawn follows, and she almost collapses against the mattress.
"You haven't gotten any sleep," he observes. "Not since you fought, huh?"
"I couldn't... you were in such bad shape—" her voice catches. "It wasn't going to happen."
"How about this," Hate proposes. "I take the next watch; you go rack out for a bit."
"R-rack out—" Iowa shakes her head wildly. "No! You still need help, you need me to watch over you!" She points to a place beyond her bulkheads. "Your people have no idea what just hit them, they don't even know about me! I have to be ready—"
"You're not helping anyone if you fall asleep on 'em." Hate points to a nearby bed, one not covered with his blood. "Get some rest."
"But you'll be—"
"Right here the whole time. It'll be fine, just fuckin' go already!" He points to the bed again.
Reluctantly, Iowa drags herself to her new resting place, feeling utterly worthless. Sleep was never an issue when she was a warship. Now it is apparently more important than anything.
What is worse is knowing how right Hate is. She totters on her feet, struggles to even keep her head held high, trying to meet Hate's eyes with her own.
"Okay..."
It takes two attempts to actually climb onto the bed. It's too small for her, her feet hang over the side easily, but it is surprisingly soft. Minutes after lying down, with her head sinking into the pillow, it's also incredibly warm.
It's so nice, she almost forgets about the world just outside of her hull, about the people that may need her in a moment's notice. Almost.
The bed feels as though it is swallowing her up. Darkness shrouds the edges of her vision even as she tries to look for Hate, tries to make sure that he's still close by.
"Hate?" she calls out, shivering through another yawn.
"Mmm?"
"...Do you know if there are...others like me?"
"Would be nice, but I think yer one of a kind though."
"Don't go anywhere," she says. "If...if you need me, just wake me up..."
"Sleep, Iowa."
"Not...not for too long..."
Her voice fails her, and soon after her body grows impossibly heavy. Hate is little more than a dark mass sitting on the bed next to hers. The world falls out from underneath, and she sinks deeper into darkness unlike anything she can remember.
And then there is nothing.
-
Iowa stands on her own bow as she sinks.
Turret Two leaks smoke from every seam, its three guns all aimed at wrong angles, at nothing. Turret One is broken wide open, angry fires roaring deep beneath cavernous, jagged wounds in its armor. The bridge burns, the entire superstructure engulfed in smoke that billows into a stormy night sky. Rain boils off her deck, off the surging surface of the water. She lists badly to starboard, threatening to capsize as water floods through her mauled hull.
To port, the Higgins slides beneath the waves in two distinct halves, dragging the shattered remains of her crew to the bottom. Oil, blood, debris, and chunks of meat swirl to the surface, a marker to her passing.
Los Angeles burns. The harbor burns. Everything that can burn, does.
Black ships dominate the bay, the Ironclad, the Monitors, the torpedo destroyers. They are joined by dozens, hundreds of dark shapes steaming over the horizon. Most she doesn't recognize, but there are those she does.
The silhouettes of New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin are all like hers.
Her sisters fire and fire and fire, and she cries for them to stop. When they finally relent, nothing on the coast remains. The air is filled with the screams of the dying, the banshee howls of the victors.
Iowa is the last ship that stands between the Abyss and whatever remains untouched by its wrath, and she is broken. She can do nothing. She has no crew. No Marine is there to rescue her.
The surrounding sea churns, a maelstrom rising around Iowa, black tendrils ripping apart the once proud battleship as they wash over and through it. She is pinned to deck as the bow points into the night, unable to move as two motes of azure flame *blink* down at her.
She feels something caress her face, feels something soft moving against her ears as she is dragged through her hull into the sea. Water fills her lungs. She tries to resist, tries to claw her way to the surface, but her body refuses to listen. She is surrounded by the Abyss.
The eyes in the sky blink once more.
"You..." a voice whispers, forcing her head to turn to the right.
The woman's skin is pale, her expression lifeless save for her eyes. Two hot coals that burn brighter as Iowa is forced to look into them. She almost passes for human, save for the horns that twist outward from her forehead, her cat-like irises. Hands wander where they shouldn't, claws slicing past her belly. Heat squeezes around Iowa's body, squeezes until her spine issues a series of muffled pops. She falls limp, unable to resist, utterly transfixed by this woman's eyes.
The Abyss opens her mouth, and it is nothing but teeth.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE REMAINED ASLEEP."
The teeth fall upon Iowa's neck, pressure builds around her head, claws digging into her skull.
Now, she is allowed to scream.
-
Iowa sits up gasping for breath, fresh tears running hot down her cheeks.
Her body shakes with lingering terror, with anger, the bed creaking under her shifting weight. She pats herself down, checking to see if she still has arms and legs. Her hands move to her neck, her heart pounding harder even as she finds the skin unmarred.
No blood anywhere, nothing is missing, yet she still *feels* where her back had been shattered, where her neck had been slashed. Where the fingers tore through her hair, into her head. She still hears her own last, strangled screams, air exploding out of her lungs as water rushed to fill them. Everything about her body is the way she remembers it before—
"Hate?" She calls out to her Marine, wiping her face dry with her fists. "Hate, please tell me you're still with me!"
He doesn't reply, and she begins to climb out of the bed to start looking for him when a hand falls on her shoulder. It's surprisingly firm, keeping her in place.
"I'm here, Iowa."
He looks worse off than before, apparently completely drained by the short walk from his bed to hers. But he is on his feet, at her side, concerned for her.
"You didn't—" She sniffles. "You shouldn't have gotten up..."
"You were begging something to stop. Screamin', really."
"...How long was I gone?"
"Dunno. Ended up sleeping too, tried not to, really."
"So..." Iowa collapses back onto her pillow. "So I woke you, didn't I?"
Hate doesn't immediately respond, as though he's carefully considering his next choice of words. That's enough for Iowa to roll to one side to avoid looking at him.
"Musta been pretty bad," he says after the long silence. He gingerly takes a seat next to her, grunting painfully as he collapses onto the bed.
"I'm sorry," she sniffles, curling up on the bed, her face buried in her knees as she tries to give Hate more space. "I'm really sorry."
"Can't always stop yer brain from cooking up some mean shit," Hate says tiredly. "I know."
"S-so this is normal for people?"
"More than you'd think."
For a long while, there is only the sound of their breathing, the distant hum of Iowa's boilers reverberating through the hull. She tries to forget the teeth sinking into her flesh, tries to forget her sisters bombarding the city they should have defended. She knows those things didn't happen. The knowledge brings no comfort.
She hugs her legs tighter to her chest, shivering in place on the bed. Her Marine stays at her side, never abandoning his post.
----
---
The vending machine confuses Iowa.
It certainly wasn't standard issue from when she first went to sail, yet somehow it survived her hull's transition from its 'floating museum' state. There were a half dozen such machines all along her deck, near important entrances tourists would have passed through.
She remembers how people used the things. She remembers, only hours before 'awakening', a father lifting his daughter up so she could insert money into the coin slot. After an awkward pat-down of herself, she finds no convenient pockets on her dress containing money of any sort.
And so Iowa stares through her reflection on the glass standing between her and the food she and her Marine both need, her stomach still growling away.
Candy bars of all kinds are on display. Some of the names are familiar, most are not. She's not sure what to think of Corn Nuts, Funyuns, and the dozen other snacks on display. Near the bottom of the machine she can see bottles of water, green bottles called MTN DEW, and something else that glows bright red and is labeled "G" with a lightning bolt struck through the sole letter.
There is a sweet smell coming from the machine, clashing with the scents of saltwater, oil, and fire in the air. Another gurgle issues from her stomach, and she finds herself licking her lips.
She still doesn't understand why she has been born again in a woman's body, but she gets the impression that she could probably survive without food for a lot longer than a normal person could, much less a person as injured as her crewman.
Bracing her hands on either side of the machine, she squats slightly, grunts, and lifts it off the deck effortlessly. The wooden planks at her feet groan in protest for a second before splintering. She begins to walk towards the nearest hatch, the lights in the machine dying out the moment it is unplugged, wood crunching under her feet with each step.
She can't see where she's going, but she doesn't really need to.
This doesn't stop her from mashing her face into the glass of the vending machine when it fails to fit through the hatch, forcing a surprised yelp out of her.
Setting the machine down next to entryway, she frowns at the still out of reach snacks, hands pressing firmly against the glass.
"Well, it's for my crew," she says, balling her hands into fists and taking a step back.
After a short hiss of breath, Iowa's first punch goes through the entire vending machine, almost folding it in half around her right arm. Glass, metal, and cheap junk food explode in almost every direction, bouncing off her clothes and skin harmlessly.
"Oops..." Iowa mutters under her breath.
She withdraws her arm from the destroyed machine, shaking bits of it from her hand as she assesses the damage. Her cheeks feel warm, but she doesn't entirely understand why.
Surprisingly, much of the food and drink has survived Iowa's strike. She decides to not tell the Marine exactly how she acquired sustenance; somehow it seems like he wouldn't understand just how mean a right she was packing.
Using a bag that conveniently appeared next to the destroyed vendor, she gathers everything that looks remotely intact. She hopes this will last until help arrives.
She also hopes she can be gentler with the next vending machine.
-
The moment she pushes her way into the sick-bay with her haul, the Marine reaches quickly for a weapon that is nowhere near him by reflex. He sighs shakily when he identifies her.
"Old habits."
"You moved to a different bed by yourself..." she purses her lips, concern welling up in her eyes. "You should have waited, I could have helped you—"
"Had to, it's a little... wet."
"I—" There's a lump in her throat as she glances at the bed. The sheets are soaked almost completely through in a deep red stain, and she has to turn away from it. "I brought us something to eat..." She opens the bag to show off her 'catch'.
"Thanks," he mumbles, reaching into the bag and coming up with Snickers, a Glazed Sweet Roll, and one of the water bottles.
"I'm not sure this is any good for you right now—"
"Hey I'll eat a fuckin' ship right now, you're a life saverrrrrbnrbremmmf—" His voice becomes unintelligible as his teeth rip through the wrapper of the Snickers, stuffing the candy bar in his mouth with a huge grin on his face. "Ommmmmmmmmmfuuug im foh umgweee rai naoh!"
Iowa finds herself laughing as he tries to work through the candy bar, bits of chocolate on the corners of his lips. His chewing is loud, crumbs spill from his mouth, but she can't find it in herself to blame him.
"Urghuhwagaha," he grunts, pointing at her and motioning for the bag, all while clawing at the cap of his water bottle to unscrew it. He downs half of it in a single pull, still chewing at what remains of the Snickers. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah... feels like ages since I had this stuff..." He points at Iowa again. "You. Eat something."
With his orders given, the Marine finishes off the rest of the water, and then sets about mauling his way through the sweet roll's wrapper, spitting out bits of plastic before cramming the roll into his mouth. He manages to grin sheepishly at her. Somehow, that is endlessly amusing to Iowa. She laughs until he tears off a part of the roll and offers it to her.
"Thowwy abow thif, ree uggiun umgwee," the Marine vocalizes. "Uhm, you wamf fom off mai?"
"N-no, I couldn't deprive you."
"Fuu uhrfelf." The Marine shrugs and proceeds to stuff the rest of the roll in his mouth.
Iowa reaches into the bag to find her own sweet roll, and tries to read the contents on the wrapper; other than 'honey' and 'flour', the listed ingredients only confuse her to the point where she decides that she doesn't care.
"Uhm, here I go, I guess..."
The wrapper is surprisingly slippery in her fingers. It takes several tries before she can sink her nails through the plastic and free the bread from its imprisonment. She studies the roll closely, inspecting the syrup-glazed golden brown surface. After giving it a sniff, she looks to her crewman in hopes of receiving advice.
None is given. He's too busy with a bag of Gardetto's.
She sighs, and measures up the roll once more. Her first bite is small, carefully measured.
She can't even begin to describe the taste. There isn't a point of reference for her to work from. She can't liken it to taking on fuel oil or supplies; it's nothing like setting sail from port. All she knows is that she can't stop from grinning as she chews on the snack, and she understands why her Marine seems to enjoy the simple act of eating so much.
"Like it?" he asks.
Iowa nods her head, not wanting to speak for fear of the bread spilling out of her mouth.
"Wait'll you try some *real* food."
Iowa doesn't know how to respond to that, so she doesn't try. She spends the next ten minutes slowly picking away at the sweet roll, trying to savor the taste and the smell of every bite. At first she doesn't notice the Marine watching her eat, or the smile his cracked lips slowly reveal.
When she does notice, just as she pops the last bit of the roll into her mouth, she smiles back.
"So." The Marine says, quickly looking away and picking at his teeth with a dirtied fingernail. "Uh, let's... let's try this again. You're Iowa."
"Yes."
"THE Iowa."
"BB-61, USS Iowa."
"Fuckin' hell..."
"You can just call me Iowa, if that's easier."
"You can call me Hate."
"That's a name?"
"'Swhat they call me on the Higgins."
"Hmm..." She tilts her head to the side, running the name through her mind several times. "Lance Corporal Hate."
"Iowa. Pleasure's mine, ma'am."
-
Their meal ends an hour later. Wrappers litter the floor of the sickbay, and something inside of Iowa insist that she really should police all the garbage for the sake of being properly sanitary, but she doesn't want to move. She prefers sitting on the bed next to the Marine, oblivious to how he carefully positioned himself to be able to lie comfortably on the mattress while avoiding physical contact with her.
They hadn't spoken much once they really got started with the food. He was too hungry to maintain any real conversation. For Iowa, everything was too new; it all distracted her in some way. The only thing in the bag that she tried and didn't find overwhelmingly flavorful was the bottled water, and even that has some sort of quality to it that she liked.
Her gut no longer growls or hurts quite like it did before. She's not sure how to describe that either, but she knows she doesn't feel like eating any more.
Hate snores next to her, catching some badly needed rest. His contented expression as he sleeps makes her incapable of voicing any concerns. She's afraid to disturb him.
She's not afraid to lean over him in order to get a better look at his wounds. Her hair spills over her shoulders, brushing against the Marine's body lightly before she pulls it away. Her eyes wander along his chest, wincing in sympathy for the Marine when she sees the shrapnel still stuck in place throughout his body. She knows enough that it's all going to have to come out sooner rather than later, but doesn't want to be the one to bring that up.
She wishes they talked more during... lunch, she decided it was.
Iowa still hears 'reports' from various stations about the disposition of the forces surrounding her, occasional visions of those destroyers loosening or tightening their perimeter around her. Jets continued to make their regular orbits overhead, as they had since her awakening. Voices shout for her attention on loudspeakers every now and then, but she still can't bring herself to answer them.
"What should I do, Marine?"
Hate doesn't respond. Her head hangs tiredly towards his, and she fights the urge to yawn.
She desperately needs rest, but she fights the very real urge to succumb to her growing weakness. It feels like she would somehow be abandoning her post, her Marine, and all the people she knows will need her if those monsters reappear.
Her mind and her heart are screaming for her to keep her eyes open, to not give in. It's not enough. She can feel her strength failing, a sensation she finds almost terrifying.
"Can't sleep," she growls to herself, trying to summon the energy she'd first awakened with. "Not yet, not until I know he's—"
"'Sup?" Hate's eyes snap open as he tries to sit up again, and Iowa immediately retreats, startled by his sudden movement. She nearly falls off the bed as she scrambles back, yelping in surprise.
"You look like you wanna ask somethin'."
"I just wanted to make sure you're okay." She grimaces at her own words. If not for the IVs and the drip feed of pain killers, he would be very far from okay. "R-relatively speaking..."
"Still tickin', I don't hurt any worse than I've hurt before." He finally gets himself upright, resting his back against the bulkhead while crimson spreads across the bandages over his chest. "Dun worry about it, nurse, I'm—ow—good to go."
"If you say so..." She sighs shakily. A yawn follows, and she almost collapses against the mattress.
"You haven't gotten any sleep," he observes. "Not since you fought, huh?"
"I couldn't... you were in such bad shape—" her voice catches. "It wasn't going to happen."
"How about this," Hate proposes. "I take the next watch; you go rack out for a bit."
"R-rack out—" Iowa shakes her head wildly. "No! You still need help, you need me to watch over you!" She points to a place beyond her bulkheads. "Your people have no idea what just hit them, they don't even know about me! I have to be ready—"
"You're not helping anyone if you fall asleep on 'em." Hate points to a nearby bed, one not covered with his blood. "Get some rest."
"But you'll be—"
"Right here the whole time. It'll be fine, just fuckin' go already!" He points to the bed again.
Reluctantly, Iowa drags herself to her new resting place, feeling utterly worthless. Sleep was never an issue when she was a warship. Now it is apparently more important than anything.
What is worse is knowing how right Hate is. She totters on her feet, struggles to even keep her head held high, trying to meet Hate's eyes with her own.
"Okay..."
It takes two attempts to actually climb onto the bed. It's too small for her, her feet hang over the side easily, but it is surprisingly soft. Minutes after lying down, with her head sinking into the pillow, it's also incredibly warm.
It's so nice, she almost forgets about the world just outside of her hull, about the people that may need her in a moment's notice. Almost.
The bed feels as though it is swallowing her up. Darkness shrouds the edges of her vision even as she tries to look for Hate, tries to make sure that he's still close by.
"Hate?" she calls out, shivering through another yawn.
"Mmm?"
"...Do you know if there are...others like me?"
"Would be nice, but I think yer one of a kind though."
"Don't go anywhere," she says. "If...if you need me, just wake me up..."
"Sleep, Iowa."
"Not...not for too long..."
Her voice fails her, and soon after her body grows impossibly heavy. Hate is little more than a dark mass sitting on the bed next to hers. The world falls out from underneath, and she sinks deeper into darkness unlike anything she can remember.
And then there is nothing.
-
Iowa stands on her own bow as she sinks.
Turret Two leaks smoke from every seam, its three guns all aimed at wrong angles, at nothing. Turret One is broken wide open, angry fires roaring deep beneath cavernous, jagged wounds in its armor. The bridge burns, the entire superstructure engulfed in smoke that billows into a stormy night sky. Rain boils off her deck, off the surging surface of the water. She lists badly to starboard, threatening to capsize as water floods through her mauled hull.
To port, the Higgins slides beneath the waves in two distinct halves, dragging the shattered remains of her crew to the bottom. Oil, blood, debris, and chunks of meat swirl to the surface, a marker to her passing.
Los Angeles burns. The harbor burns. Everything that can burn, does.
Black ships dominate the bay, the Ironclad, the Monitors, the torpedo destroyers. They are joined by dozens, hundreds of dark shapes steaming over the horizon. Most she doesn't recognize, but there are those she does.
The silhouettes of New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin are all like hers.
Her sisters fire and fire and fire, and she cries for them to stop. When they finally relent, nothing on the coast remains. The air is filled with the screams of the dying, the banshee howls of the victors.
Iowa is the last ship that stands between the Abyss and whatever remains untouched by its wrath, and she is broken. She can do nothing. She has no crew. No Marine is there to rescue her.
The surrounding sea churns, a maelstrom rising around Iowa, black tendrils ripping apart the once proud battleship as they wash over and through it. She is pinned to deck as the bow points into the night, unable to move as two motes of azure flame *blink* down at her.
She feels something caress her face, feels something soft moving against her ears as she is dragged through her hull into the sea. Water fills her lungs. She tries to resist, tries to claw her way to the surface, but her body refuses to listen. She is surrounded by the Abyss.
The eyes in the sky blink once more.
"You..." a voice whispers, forcing her head to turn to the right.
The woman's skin is pale, her expression lifeless save for her eyes. Two hot coals that burn brighter as Iowa is forced to look into them. She almost passes for human, save for the horns that twist outward from her forehead, her cat-like irises. Hands wander where they shouldn't, claws slicing past her belly. Heat squeezes around Iowa's body, squeezes until her spine issues a series of muffled pops. She falls limp, unable to resist, utterly transfixed by this woman's eyes.
The Abyss opens her mouth, and it is nothing but teeth.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE REMAINED ASLEEP."
The teeth fall upon Iowa's neck, pressure builds around her head, claws digging into her skull.
Now, she is allowed to scream.
-
Iowa sits up gasping for breath, fresh tears running hot down her cheeks.
Her body shakes with lingering terror, with anger, the bed creaking under her shifting weight. She pats herself down, checking to see if she still has arms and legs. Her hands move to her neck, her heart pounding harder even as she finds the skin unmarred.
No blood anywhere, nothing is missing, yet she still *feels* where her back had been shattered, where her neck had been slashed. Where the fingers tore through her hair, into her head. She still hears her own last, strangled screams, air exploding out of her lungs as water rushed to fill them. Everything about her body is the way she remembers it before—
"Hate?" She calls out to her Marine, wiping her face dry with her fists. "Hate, please tell me you're still with me!"
He doesn't reply, and she begins to climb out of the bed to start looking for him when a hand falls on her shoulder. It's surprisingly firm, keeping her in place.
"I'm here, Iowa."
He looks worse off than before, apparently completely drained by the short walk from his bed to hers. But he is on his feet, at her side, concerned for her.
"You didn't—" She sniffles. "You shouldn't have gotten up..."
"You were begging something to stop. Screamin', really."
"...How long was I gone?"
"Dunno. Ended up sleeping too, tried not to, really."
"So..." Iowa collapses back onto her pillow. "So I woke you, didn't I?"
Hate doesn't immediately respond, as though he's carefully considering his next choice of words. That's enough for Iowa to roll to one side to avoid looking at him.
"Musta been pretty bad," he says after the long silence. He gingerly takes a seat next to her, grunting painfully as he collapses onto the bed.
"I'm sorry," she sniffles, curling up on the bed, her face buried in her knees as she tries to give Hate more space. "I'm really sorry."
"Can't always stop yer brain from cooking up some mean shit," Hate says tiredly. "I know."
"S-so this is normal for people?"
"More than you'd think."
For a long while, there is only the sound of their breathing, the distant hum of Iowa's boilers reverberating through the hull. She tries to forget the teeth sinking into her flesh, tries to forget her sisters bombarding the city they should have defended. She knows those things didn't happen. The knowledge brings no comfort.
She hugs her legs tighter to her chest, shivering in place on the bed. Her Marine stays at her side, never abandoning his post.
----
The next time Iowa awakens, she doesn't remember ever falling asleep.
Something soft weighs gently down upon her, following the contours of her body. Her eyes flutter open, and she discovers the dark green blanket, a protective shield to the outside world wrapping around her. In some places soft, in others rough, clinging to her clothes and bare skin, the blanket feels like warmth given form. Here, it feels like the nightmares can't reach her. She is safe.
Hate is a blur, still sitting next to her ripping open a bag of Chex Mix.
"Mmmf..." She groans, settling under the blanket further. Static pops under the blanket as she shifts around for more comfort.
"You looked cold," he grunts, stuffing a handful of food into his mouth, loud crunching filling the air.
"How long—"
"Three hours, maybe." A smile is evident in his voice. "You were quiet this time."
She's reminded of her failure to carry the snack dispenser through the corridor, her face awash with heat.
He pushes off the bed without looking back at Iowa, limping over to his own waiting mattress and groaning with every step. The stand his IV bag hangs from clatters behind him unsteadily, the wheels uneven to the deck and in desperate need of grease to stop the high-pitched squealing. It takes even more of his strength to stop himself from just falling face first onto his pillows. Iowa wraps herself up in the blanket tightly, watching him try to settle in.
"Fuckin' shitgoddamn," he growls before finally letting himself just relax. "How're we feeling?"
"Better," she admits this carefully, as though this might somehow offend her battered Marine. "I'm not feeling so weak anymore..."
"Good to hear."
Iowa climbs out of her bed to move to her Marine's side, instinctively checking the arm the IV bag is jabbed into, then the bag itself.
"You switched it out on your own?"
"Couldn't wake you, had to."
"Sorry..." Iowa's eyes wander along the length of his body, stopping at his chest. One her slender fingers brush lightly against a piece of shrapnel sticking out near his sternum. "We're... going to have to do something about the sharp stuff soon, aren't we?"
"Seems that way," he grunts. "You a doctor too?"
"I remember... things, but—" She shakes her head. "I don't know how to explain it."
"Huh..." They exchange another long stare, studying one another.
"I don't hear them anymore," Iowa mumbles. "When... When I woke up, in the boiler room, I heard everyone. My old crews right to the last man, manning every station at once, of every rank, in every role. Everywhere I went, I could hear them all. Lighting my fires, loading my shells... Now there's just you." Her vision grows blurry, her voice tinged with fear. "I didn't know what was going on at first, didn't understand until I saw them, saw the Higgins, saw everything was burning—"
She is yanked out of her rambling thoughts by Hate, grasping onto one of her wrists with surprising strength. He starts to speak, but no words come out of his mouth.
"A-anyway, the voices are all gone, mostly gone. Sometimes I... hear things. Updates on target disposition, radio messages, damage control updates..." Her voice drops into monotone, the sheen of her eyes vanishing. "DDG-111 USS Spruance, DDG-100 USS Kidd, currently on station three miles east of current position, two high-speed fixed wing craft designated Thumper Fight current altitude angels five bearing—" She shakes her head rapidly.
Hate stares at Iowa like she's grown a third arm, pushing himself slightly away from her.
"So that's a thing."
"Yeah... We're, um, surrounded." She smiles sadly at Hate. "I've scared a lot of people, haven't I?"
"Probably, yeah."
It hurts to hear him say that.
"Ah—"
"Don't take it personal, we don't even know what the fuck to call all of this..." He gestures to the sick bay all around him. "I mean, what do we even call you?"
"I'm okay with Iowa," she suggests, surprised by the question. "You know, the name I was christened with—"
"I mean, you, the person-ship-thing."
"Well, I was called The Big Stick back in—"
"You're not a stick, way too curvy." Hate grins at that. Heat flushes over Iowa's face once more. "Look, I'm trying to—fuck—I mean WHAT you are, not who you are—" His eyes widen. "I got it."
"Got it? Got what?"
"Shiplady," Hate says, pointing at her chest. "Boom."
"Shiplady? Really?"
"Well, you're a ship, and you're a lady. Shiplady." Hate's grin only grows wider. "One of a kind, like I said."
"One of a kind," Iowa repeats, bitterness tinging her voice. "How about that..."
-
Her hands have become the most fascinating things in the world as she sits next to her ailing Marine. She makes fists, watching the joints of her fingers grow pale as the skin stretches around bone. She feels her knuckles pop, then lets her hands relax, moving each finger individually. The creases in her palms make her think of sea charts.
With a wave of these hands, her batteries had swept across the sea. With a thought, fire erupted from every barrel pointed at the enemy again and again, until her sixteen inch rifles glowed red hot, the muscles in her arms burning in sympathy. Her body tensed with pain, quaked with fear as torpedoes detonated closer and closer to her hull.
Before 'awakening', her hands had been her gun batteries, radar her eyes and ears, her screws and her boilers her legs. Now those things feel alien and unreal, separate from who she actually is, nothing like the body she now possesses.
Her crewman is at her side, but Iowa feels alone.
-
"Hey!" Hate snaps his fingers, getting her attention. The sound startles her, she looks up with a bewildered expression.
"Wha—"
"Don't be fuckin' emo," Hate snorts. Iowa glares. He shrugs and digs into his bag of Chex Mix once more, chewing purposefully and obnoxiously as loud as he can manage. "Besides, it's not like we know that—"
There's a flash of movement from her arms and the bag of Chex Mix is suddenly in her possession.
Hate blinks at her, and then reaches behind himself, slowly producing a second bag from beneath his pillow. Smugness visibly radiates off of him as he calmly opens the bag, never letting his eyes leave Iowa's—and that's when another flash of movement starts and ends with the new bag in Iowa's possession, exchanged for the old one. The Smug noticeably falters, and Iowa grins in victory, popping some of the mix into her mouth.
"Like I was saying—" Hate clears his throat, "it's not like we know fer sure you're the only one."
"You think so?"
"Call it a hunch." He leans back against his pillows. "We fucking needed a miracle, and you showed up. Can't be all there is. Can't be."
"I don't feel like a miracle..." she mumbles.
"What *do* you feel like?"
-
For all the truly impossible things that have happened, her very existence, the appearance of ships hostile to anything human, and her single-handed destruction of them all, 'miracle' is not how Iowa can describe herself. A miracle might have spared Los Angeles, the Higgins, and so many more from the black ships' wrath.
Simply thinking about the word only brings back the visions. A city in flames, the dead in the waters around her. The final shriek from the monitor, just as it vanished from sight in a flash of light and ball of flame.
Iowa is not a miracle; she is a ship that was activated to fight, nothing more or less. That her body is different, that she can command her hull with a wave of her hand to deliver judgement upon her foes chances nothing. That she has hands at all chances nothing. Her harbor was attacked, her 'crew' responded to the attack, and she surged from her moorings to meet the enemy head-on.
Iowa is not a miracle; she is a woman who does not understand who and what she is. She does not know what she is truly capable of, why she even possesses the body she does. Things like taste and touch are as alien to her as the ship she somehow knows so intimately, that she controls with mere thoughts and gestures.
She does not see how she can be both. She must choose, wisely and soon.
She hopes that her Marine is right, at least about her.
-
"Worried," Iowa finally answers. "Very, very worried."
"Makes two of us—"
"You called me a miracle, but I just can't see it. I see a ship. I see a girl. There are things I know, but I've never experienced like this them before, so how can I know them? Like this—" She stands up abruptly, pacing next to the bed. "I can walk. Walk! Like you! Like anyone else!" Her arms flap for emphasis. "It's completely natural, like breathing, like eating, things I've only ever observed I know how to do like I've always known how! I have a body, it feels like I've always had one, I know things about it like I've read them from a book, like I've always BEEN a woman, but I KNOW that isn't true because I woke up two days ago and the world was on fire all around my ship!"
"I remember everything about myself—my old self. Every single day of it, the battles I fought, the battles I watched from afar. I remember the people who served aboard me, how some of them never got to see their homes again. I can remember conversations they had, about families, friends, loves. The prayers they said before battle, before sleep. I remember a flash, a fire, and forty seven souls who perished in it, a battery that would never fire again. I can remember wishing I could have done more for every single sailor, every last Marine I fought in defense of, but I know that can't be right because I KNOW I was just a ship, I said nothing, I thought nothing, so how can I be so certain that I actually—"
"Stop," Hate growls. "Fuckin'—okay, look, track with me here: Who are you?"
"I'm—I'm BB-61, USS Iowa—"
"Nice to meet you Iowa." Hate reaches out to take one of her hands, giving it a vigorous shake. "I'm Lance Corporal Hate, United States Marine Corps. Thanks fer fishin' my fuckin' ass out of the water. Thanks for saving my ship." He tries to scowl at her, but his heart isn't feeling it. He manages a frown. "That's all that matters right now—"
"Aren't you going to ask me why you took on that gun?" She is shouting now, unable to understand how cavalier he is about her. "Doesn't that bother you? Doesn't that frighten you?"
Hate seems to freeze in place as he remembers. She can see it in his eyes as they dart about, his mouth moving in silence as he retraces his steps.
"You put me there," he says. "That's what you're gonna say."
"I did," she confirms. "I wanted you on that gun, and you went there. And you nearly died because of it."
She watches Hate carefully, taking a step away from his bed, waiting for the anger to set in. Waiting for a look of outrage, a punch she would barely feel. Something.
Something that wasn't him suddenly bursting into howling laughter. She tries to get him to stop, worried about the blood seeping through the bandages on his chest as he continues to laugh, but he pays that or her no mind. Only after he descends from laughter into a coughing fit does he eventually settle down.
"Well," he snickers. "I guess you asked nicely enough."
"You can't just brush aside—"
"Sure I fucking can." He starts to tick off points on one hand. "I fucking woke up half-dead next to a woman on the deck of a ship that shouldn't fucking be combat capable, after firing guns it shouldn't fucking have after you used brain lasers to make me do it, at fucking torpedoes that shouldn't have ever been launched at it, while said ship was firing its sixteen inch guns, and we ended up saving the day for it."
"But—"
"Now, either this is a good fucking thing, or I'm dead and dreaming, or you're still a boat and dreaming. Whaddya want from me?"
"To tell me why you stayed on the gun when I wanted you off of it."
Hate remains silent, and Iowa learns what fear truly looks like on the man.
-
She has always known it, from a detached perspective. She remembers the tension among her crews before every battle. She remembers Leyte Gulf, the enemy just within range of her guns, only to be denied her combat as word passed that her sister ships off Samar faced imminent destruction, the Marine beachheads exposed. Things her task force should have been in place to defend, lives that were being lost.
She remembers the Katori, standing against two of the most powerful warships in the US Navy, and sinking in thirteen short minutes. She remembers the shots the broke her. She remembers the wails from her surviving crew as Iowa and New Jersey steamed past. She knows fear, knows what it means to be the cause of it.
This is different. This is personal. She sees the fear in her Marine's face, how the irises of his eyes widen, how the stubble on his face bristles from his skin. How his eyebrows raise, his breath catches, the stink of it filling the air. It reminds her of the snacks they shared, the blood he'd spilled on her deck. He leans back as she draws closer, silently demanding his answer.
Here, less than foot away from Iowa, the Marine shows more fear than he'd displayed as the torpedoes closed in.
-
"Why do you want to die, Lance Corporal?"
Hate maintains his silence; his eyes plea for Iowa to follow his example.
"I begged for you to run. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you didn't hear it. But I begged you. I would have been fine, Hate. You'd done enough."
She leans closer to him still, and she can see his pulse quicken, hear it a portion of his neck throbbing madly. Her long black hair spills down the sides of her head, gliding against his body. With a frown of disappointment she backs off, and Hate relaxes, slumping against the bulkhead with an audible sigh of relief.
"I would have survived," Iowa says, pacing once more next to his bed. "I know I would have, and so did you. Am I wrong?"
"I'm a Marine," Hate begins, the first snarling hints of true anger directed at Iowa. "You know what we fucking do, when shit starts flying—" his voice raises to a shout, "we fucking catch!"
"Answer my question, Marine!" Iowa shouts back, his service branch a curse on her lips. "What kept you on that gun?"
"Why's it so fucking important to you?"
-
Now it is Iowa's turn to wallow in silence.
She sits back down on Hate's bed, once more enamored by the sight of her very own hands moving just the way she wants them to. She kicks her legs out idly, feels the muscles under her skin at work. She breathes in deeply, and a cool sensation fills her chest. Her dress, somehow cleansed of all the blood, plays across her skin, as smooth and soft as it was the day she first opened her eyes.
These small things feel like miracles to her.
A ship, to her, is engineering. Skillful engineering, an understanding of how things *work* that culminates in a design meant for a specific purpose. In her case, she was to be the ultimate warship ever to set sail. She was meant to fight.
All the marvels of engineering resulting in her creation could not have worked without a crew. Without people, she could have done nothing. She simply would not exist. For her, these people are the miracle. Working as a team, they in turn made *her* work, and simply by being she protected them.
From the moment she had awakened, she wanted to speak to someone, anyone, about herself, about her ship. She wanted so badly to learn, to understand how any of this was possible. The shades told her nothing she didn't already understand by instinct, they told her nothing about people.
The attack had run off all her maintainers and curators, her visitors spirited away, hopefully alive and safe. The voices were gone. All she had was knowledge and experience she'd been born with, a battle brewing just outside her own dock. She was her own crew.
And along comes this Marine.
-
Hate realizes that he has said something wrong. He reaches out to Iowa, but his hand stops just short of her right arm. He settles for pounding that hand against his head.
"I'm just worried for you," Iowa whispers, looking down at her knees.
"You got other things to—"
"Stop," she snaps. "Don't tell me I have other things to worry about. Right now, my concern is my crew."
"One dude who manned a *gun*—"
"—stopped torpedoes from striking MY hull—" she looks over her shoulder at Hate, "and you're asking why it's important to ME?" She turns fully to face him, crawling closer.
"I did what anyone else would've done—"
"You put me before yourself," She rests a hand on one of his shoulders, giving him a gentle shake. "It has been a long time since anyone has done that for me."
Hate has nowhere to retreat to as Iowa draws closer. He is effectively pinned in place, transfixed by Iowa's serene expression, her calm tone of voice. She smiles, flashing perfect whites at the stunned Marine, and then turns her attention to the bandages wrapped around his body.
"These need to be changed."
"Do they really?" he asks, hoping she's wrong.
-
"You know, my first battle with a hostile vessel was against the IJN Katori and her escorts." She speaks conversationally, trying to keep the Marine calm as she begins loosening his bandages.
"Y-yeah?" Hate shivers, trying and failing to maintain an air of indifference.
"Uh-huh. She didn't stand a chance, wasn't ready for me or my sister. I can't even remember if they managed to scratch me. After that, well, the second World War was a lot of shore bombardment, a lot of anti-aircraft work for me."
Hate suddenly hisses as Iowa continues to pull at his bandages, his skin sticking to the moistened gauze. Iowa stops, looking up at him intently. He grits his teeth and nods for her to continue.
"It's not like the danger wasn't there, its war. I understand that—" She has to lean in closer to reach around behind Hate. Her hand follows the curves of his ribcage, fingers trailing towards the center of his back, still pulling his bandages free. "I was spared a lot of what my brothers and sisters at arms had to go through. I guess I was lucky, and my crew was spared."
"Luck," Hate mumbles quietly, sitting upright, allowing Iowa to reach behind him with her left hand and reach the loosened cloth bundled in her other hand.
"Physics and tactics aren't luck, Hate. Luck didn't matter to Turret Two. Those men didn't have a chance, or a choice. Physics chose for them—"Hate grimaces in obvious discomfort. "Sorry about that..."
"Morphine—" Hate growls through his teeth, hands clawing at the bedsheets. Iowa shakes her head; he's already had a dose, if he's still hurting there isn't much more she can do except to stop, and she can't. Silence rules the air for the next few minutes, punctuated by the occasional gasp or snarl of pain from Hate as she picks away the scraps of bandage that have stuck to one of the larger pieces of shrapnel and skin.
Eventually, Iowa succeeds in removing all the bandages. Infection hasn't set in, but the need for proper surgery is apparent. She could easily rip out the largest piece of shrapnel, but she is certain that Hate wouldn't survive it.
The Marine's head lolls forward, and for the first time he sees the extent of the damage.
"Wow. I feel as terrible as I look."
"I, ah..." Iowa bites her lower lip. "I'm going to need to disinfect this."
"Fuck's sake..."
-
Finding basins for warm water was simple. The moment she thought to look for them, she walked a mere dozen steps away from Hate and found a pair, filled to the brim, steam rising slowly from their rippling surfaces. Six towels were stacked next to each basin. Next to one of the basins is a bottle of yellowish anti-septic, still three quarters full, explaining the water's discoloration.
Carrying what she needs back to Hate, she begins soaking the first towel. She wrings out some of the excess before approaching him. She appraises him with pursed lips, shaking her head sadly.
"You're a real mess, Lance Corporal."
"It...was worth it, I'd do it again—" He winces the moment the towel makes contact with his skin, near the largest of his wounds.
She has known Hate for little more than three days, and she knows that this is not sarcasm.
She does not understand.
-
They soon learn that a number of his ribs are indeed cracked in the worst way possible, when she begins pressing a washcloth around a jagged piece of her own hull embedded in his side. That is when he finally does scream. That is when she sees real tears in his eyes. He tells her later that it wasn't her fault, she couldn't have known. To Iowa, knowing that with her own hands she caused this man undue suffering is horrifying.
He writhes at her touch, bites back cries of pain. Curses of increasing length and color are shouted at the roof of the sick-bay as her clumsy efforts to wash away the dried blood move closer to the worst of his wounds.
All she can think of is a day in April of 1989, and the screams that echoed through her hull then. Nearly four and a half decades after the most destructive war mankind had ever waged, she experienced the things her brothers and sisters at sea had suffered through. Like she'd said to Hate before, it was physics. The conditions needed to facilitate the event were met, and so it happened.
She'd seen the dead and dying from afar, on occasion they were brought on board. Until that day in April, it had never been HER people. It had always been another ship, another crew. A shoreline far away, an island, an enemy-occupied port.
Seventy three years after the end of World War II, she stood on her own bridge and watched Lance Corporal Hate choose to make the ultimate sacrifice for her. Nobody in her crews had ever been forced to make that choice quite like he had.
-
"Again?" she asks, her voice brittle.
"It was you, the Grey Fucking Ghost, the Big Fucking Stick... or me, the Marine. Big gun versus little gun. Made sense then, makes sense now." With trembling hands, he pushes the towel away, trying his best to ignore the utterly crestfallen look she gives him. "God, Iowa, *you've* done enough."
Iowa lets the towel drop to the floor.
"It was that simple for you?"
"Of course it was." Hate's response is without hesitation, full of cruel confidence. "I'm not worth a battleship. I'm not worth a cruiser, a frigate, a tank, a whole squad of—"
"You don't have to be worth any of those things, Hate."
"Worth isn't the point! The point is a city filled with millions of people, dozens, hundreds of vessels, that only YOU could have—"
"I think I understand what your problem is."
Hate flares up, a portion of his strength returning as he forces himself to sit up straight, a sharp intake of breath more reminiscent of a cobra seconds before striking—But his response is smothered before it can even begin, venomous, well-chosen words stuffed back into the darker corners of his mind.
Iowa lunges onto the bed, straddling his legs, hands slamming into the bulkhead on either side of his head as she leans in dangerously close to the Marine, the corners of his mouth twitching as the woman's eyes bore into his.
"You compared yourself to a weapon, Lance Corporal," Iowa says heatedly, pounding the wall for emphasis. "You are the furthest thing from it. You are just a man."
She waits for his response, waits for him to react. She waits for the fear to return to his face, for the surprise at how fast she moved on him. She waits for him to squirm, to try to force her away.
He does nothing, save swallow loudly. She has his attention.
"A weapon doesn't get to make the choice on how it gets used, or why. It doesn't get to consider the consequences of its actions. It doesn't get to decide who lives, and who dies. It doesn't get to explain why. A weapon works because a person makes it work."
With a sigh, she sits at his side, allowing Hate to lean on her shoulder for support. For his part, Hate remains silent, staring straight ahead.
"I know what being a weapon is like, Hate. You don't want that, not really. You can't make any decisions at all. You only do what others make you do. It's not at all like following orders from a superior officer, not even close." She drapes an arm carefully over Hate's shoulder, trying to avoid upsetting the wounds on his neck while pulling him tighter against herself.
"Before that battle, I'd never had any say in what I did, where I went, what I turned my guns against." Iowa shivers, remembering the things she saw the moment she made it to her own deck. "I made mistakes... I was angry at everything, angry at myself. I let them line up that torpedo spread, I bored in on targets without thinking about my surroundings..."
"Yeah..." Hate finally manages to speak, his chuckling a hollow rattle. "Yeah you did screw up. You needed me."
"I needed you to save me, I didn't need you to die for me." Gently, she pulls Hate closer to her, forcing him to look at her. "I think you've been lying to me, Lance Corporal."
"That's what you think, huh?"
"You said that you chose to do what you did for good reasons, but I saw the look on your face just before you caught that last torpedo. You weren't thinking about the Higgins. You weren't thinking about your squad mates. You weren't thinking about me. You weren't thinking about the city. You didn't look worried about anything at all."
His lips move, but the only sound is the sickly moist wheezing from his punctured lung.
"Was it easy?" She asks, her voice raw with emotion.
"Very." The reply is without hesitation, his tone cold and unsentimental; his eyes are anything but.
"Why?"
"I don't know."
-
It is only right that Marines go to retrieve a Marine.
That it is four days after The Battle of Los Angeles means nothing. The USS Iowa returned to Terminal Island on her own power, with nary a hint of crew running the ship. Her guns were now trained out over the Pacific's horizon, searching for the black ships.
The Morse code signals she emits say there is a Marine aboard, alive but in critical condition. They will get him back, regardless of the risk.
The United States hadn't been the only country to suffer from the surprise attacks. Reports were still coming in of attacks on port cities and coastal areas around the world, some attacks on going simply because there was nothing in place that could stop the attackers. In the worst cases, the military response had been crushed outright.
The enemy had not limited itself to stationary targets. Commercial shipping and military targets were finding new homes at the bottom of the world's oceans. The slaughter was indiscriminate, and oftentimes thorough. The Abyssals, as they were now being called, did not take prisoners.
They come from the sea, on occasion preceded by unseasonable, violent weather. Sometimes they come from beneath the waves, giving them their name. However they decide to appear, it always ends with many, many dead. Panic grips the sealanes. Any nation with a coastline finds itself on the defensive. Nobody knows what provoked the attacks, what crews the ships rising from the depths.
However, buried deep within days of bad news, there is the story of the USS Iowa breaking its own moorings to punish the Abyssals that struck her port city. Nothing else is confirmed, but it is becoming apparent that she is not alone. Around the world, something, someone, is helping humanity fight back.
The ride from the USS Kidd is remarkable in how unremarkable it actually is. The approach to the Target Vessel is smooth, the sea unnaturally calm around it for hundreds of yards. They are the point of the stick poking at the hornet's nest. More are set to follow. This does little to reassure the VBSS team assigned the dubious task.
Drone boats are sent in ahead of the Marines, a test to see if and how the target would react. The swarm circles close to the vessel before turning on it as one, making for its hull. In response, every gun that could have pointed anywhere near the drones found an angle away from them. When one of the drones suffers a temporary loss of signal and brushes against the target's hull, a rope ladder tosses itself off the side of the warship, dangling in excited greeting.
"What the fuck." A sergeant observes.
The drone buzzes off as soon as control is restored. The ladder droops sadly towards the water, hoping the drone changes its mind. Someone on the VBSS boat laughs.
-
"Were you happy with your 'final' decision?" Iowa asks.
Hate only nods, his eyes squeezed shut. She finds it impossible stop her arms from wrapping around him, pulling him into a hug that she knows he desperately needs, and he trembles in her embrace. Weakly he tries to return her gesture, one arm looping around her back, hand clenching onto her right shoulder for dear life.
"It would be easier," he speaks with effort, "if you'd just... stop asking about it."
"Okay." She nods jerkily, tightening the hug for a brief moment before releasing him. Hate exhales with relief, and something else. Everything in her mind wants to keep pressing. She wants to know what drove her Marine to be what he is.
As the man collapses back against the bulkhead, she knows that today is not when she will get those answers.
-
The USS Iowa stands tall in the still waters where she has taken anchor. This would have made boarding from the sea difficult had there been any amount of chop, and if the rope ladders hanging over the side of the ship actually acted like rope ladders. They are as stiff and unyielding as steel, barely shifting under the weight of each man as he makes his way onto Iowa's deck.
Discipline and training bids each man to take up a defensive position as soon as they leave the ladder, scanning for hostiles, M4 SOPMODs at the ready.
They are the only people they can see on the ship, fortunate as there's little cover available that allows good sightlines on probable threats. The deck shows the effect of main battery fire, wooden planks scored black by flash burns. Gunpowder smoke still hangs in the air, shell casings near the anti-aircraft emplacements jingle as a light breeze passes.
"LT, I see something near Turret Two," a Corporal calls out. He sounds as scared as everyone else actually feels, but he's the first to vocalize it. It is and isn't appreciated. Rising as one, the VBSS team briskly moves in pairs to the LCPLs discovery.
Blood, lots of blood. The biggest stain is on the deck proper, the pool still wet at its center. There are signs that someone once lay atop it, someone else had knelt next to them. More signs of dragging, with two pairs of bloody footprints leaving the pool. One set of prints disappears as they reach an open hatch leading deeper into the ship.
The team follows the footsteps until they find the vending machine next to an open hatch, folded on itself, stripped almost entirely bare of anything it once contained.
"So where the fuck is this guy supposed to be, and can we get him out of here before whatever did this finds us?" The Corporal asks once more.
"Oh my God, shut the fuck up Price."
-
Hate clears his throat, looking over at the woman still at his side. He remembers vividly how Iowa felt, pressed against him as she was. Soft in the right places. Warm, almost too warm. The pain wracking his body seemed to melt away in that moment. Despite everything, it had been years since he'd felt so comfortable around anyone or anything.
He wonders if she knew what she'd done.
Words have failed them both. They haven't spoken since the awkwardness happened, keeping their jumbled thoughts to themselves. As he'd begged/asked, she stopped trying to pry into what made him tick, what made him decide. There were things she didn't deserve to have dumped on her. Things that somehow, she made it easy for him to want do just that.
Neither is bored, or at the very least they have done well to hide this from one another. Hate has found the largest piece of shrapnel in his chest to be of great interest: He is certain that it is shaped like North Carolina. Iowa has taken to inspecting... herself. She makes fists, occasionally flexes an arm, and tries to hide a smile when her biceps firm up. She idly kicks her legs out over the side of the bed, sometimes quickly, other times slowly; she wants to watch how they work.
Sometimes, they catch the other watching them; their eyes almost meet, and they quickly find something else to pay attention to.
Hate isn't an idiot. He knows that he has hurt her, in some way that she isn't letting on. She wouldn't be the first woman he has done this to.
Somehow it feels worse than the others.
He is happy with the silence, he thinks. This is fine. It gives him time to think about how he can apologize later, if there is a—
"So..." He begins. "Nice guns."
"Uh huh." She grins up at him openly now. "Well, I am the nameship of the Iowa-class. It's only fitting, right?"
"Yeah." He looks down, considering his next words carefully. Iowa leans closer in anticipation, and for a moment he wonders if she can read his thoughts.
"So hey, fuckin'—Alright, I'm pretty bad at this but—"
Iowa sits up with a surprised, high-pitched yelp, her eyes wide but focused away from Hate. She scratches at the side of her neck lightly, then checks the hand that did the scratching.
"They came for you," she whispers with disbelief, shivering as she scratches at her dress just above her breasts. Her eyes brim with tears. "They're here. They're here for you." She grabs his hands happily. "They heard me! They listened!"
"...Huh."
-
The blood leaves a trail that is easy to follow, made easier by every possible light that could also lead the way shining brighter than any others. Even if they hadn't spent hours poring over old construction diagrams of the Iowa, it seems that someone would have told them where to go.
The team isn't taking any chances, however. As helpful as the ship wants to be, it is unsettling that whenever a man tries to look down a corridor that isn't the designated path to check corners, the lights in that direction abruptly turn off.
As such, the Marines move slowly, their guns pointing at shadows every step of the way. Nobody is happy to be here.
-
The second hug is more forceful, but joyous. Hate pats Iowa's back numbly, not quite believing the timing.
"You're going to make it," she says. "You're going to be okay."
"Yeah..."
Iowa almost leaps off the bed, landing with what could be considered practiced ease on her high heels. She's focused on the port-side entrance to the sickbay. That is where the rescue team is coming from, heavy footfalls echoing from the corridor. They had minutes, maybe.
"What are you going to do, Iowa?"
She whirls back to him, and again at the door.
"Who do I report to? The Admiral of the Navy? The President?"
Hate shrugs unhelpfully. Where does the living personification of a battleship fall in the chain of command? He remembers how upset she'd been when the subject of being the only one of her kind came up. He wonders if she even should make her presence known.
"Maybe there are more gir—shipladies like you," he offers. He hopes it's true.
She ventures a step closer to the door. The boots sound closer now.
"I don't know what I should do," she says plaintively.
"What if... this is enough for now?"
-
The Lieutenant in the lead hisses, holding up his hand in a fist. The whole team stops, hugging one side of the passage, guns at the ready. The Sergeant at his back pats the officer on the back, motioning that he should take the lead in the formation. The butterbar shakes his head slowly.
'What do you hear?' the Sergeant mouths.
"A woman, I think?" The El Tee whispers back.
-
"What if," Hate says slowly, "you take some time to figure out what you want to do?"
"I'm a battleship, I know what I'm supposed to do!" Still facing the door, Iowa steps back from it, back towards her lone crewman.
"I don't think you're just a battleship."
"Shiplady, right..." She takes another step back to him.
"For one, battleships don't look quite like you do. You're not quite as... boxy."
When she turns back on him, she is blushing again, but she is also smiling.
"Figure things out, hmmm..." She makes her way over to Hate, leaning close to him once more. "I suppose there is a lot of history I need to catch up on."
"Well it's been like, what—"
"Don't mention my age."
"I wasn't going to, I was just gonna say—"
"A lot of things to figure out." One of her hands pats him gently on the side of the face, scratching against three days of unshaven stubble. "Like your real name, for one. Hate is not a very good nickname."
"Didn't get to choose it, ma'am."
"We'll come up with something better."
She walks away from her Marine, one foot in front of the other as she makes for the exit opposite to the one the rescuers are approaching. He watches every step she takes, still feeling where her hand had been seconds before. The blue dress swirls in her wake, hips swaying with every step, heels clacking against the metal floor.
And when she looks back at Hate, she knows she has his undivided attention.
She likes that.
"Technically since I outrank you, Marine, I can issue you some orders can't I? You are my crewman, after all."
"Technically, yeah," his voice thick with annoyance, mostly acted. "I guess you can issue some fu—"
"I'm glad you agree." She calls back lingering at the door she intends to escape through. "I'm going to... figure things out, like you said, protect this city in the meantime. As for you..." One foot is out of the door, one still in the sickbay. "You're ordered to stay alive until I see you again. So I can help you."
When the Marines breach the sickbay, they find Lance Corporal Hate saying his name at the door opposite to theirs, reaching for someone who is long gone.
-
She stands alone on the bridge of her Self, watching the rescuers depart. She watches them take Hate away.
He's being questioned, again and again by his fellow Marines. She doesn't know what is being said, their tiny boat is too far away from her to listen in, but she can see them with perfect clarity. He nods, shakes his head, or yells angrily at the medic tending to him. He's going to be alright.
Through it all, he never stops looking back at the USS Iowa. Looking back at her. And she stays on the bridge, watching him until he disappears into the USS Kidd. She takes a breath she didn't know she was holding back, and sighs with relief.
Just as she turns to leave, she spots lights flashing from the Kidd and her sister, the Spruance. The lights continue flashing for a minute, then repeat:
- .... .- -. -.- / -.-- --- ..- / ..-. --- .-. / . ...- . .-. -.-- - .... .. -. --. / ..- ... ... / .. --- .-- .- .-.-.- / .-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- . / -... .- -.-. -.- .-.-.-
Smiling, Iowa turns her back to her two sisters, her own search lights flashing back a response. As she reaches one of the hatches leading off the bridge, she finds a blue parasol leaning against the heavy door. It's a perfect match for her dress. She wonders where it has been this whole time.
Los Angeles spreads out all around Terminal Island, and the afternoon sun still hangs overhead. She'll need this where she's going.
Something soft weighs gently down upon her, following the contours of her body. Her eyes flutter open, and she discovers the dark green blanket, a protective shield to the outside world wrapping around her. In some places soft, in others rough, clinging to her clothes and bare skin, the blanket feels like warmth given form. Here, it feels like the nightmares can't reach her. She is safe.
Hate is a blur, still sitting next to her ripping open a bag of Chex Mix.
"Mmmf..." She groans, settling under the blanket further. Static pops under the blanket as she shifts around for more comfort.
"You looked cold," he grunts, stuffing a handful of food into his mouth, loud crunching filling the air.
"How long—"
"Three hours, maybe." A smile is evident in his voice. "You were quiet this time."
She's reminded of her failure to carry the snack dispenser through the corridor, her face awash with heat.
He pushes off the bed without looking back at Iowa, limping over to his own waiting mattress and groaning with every step. The stand his IV bag hangs from clatters behind him unsteadily, the wheels uneven to the deck and in desperate need of grease to stop the high-pitched squealing. It takes even more of his strength to stop himself from just falling face first onto his pillows. Iowa wraps herself up in the blanket tightly, watching him try to settle in.
"Fuckin' shitgoddamn," he growls before finally letting himself just relax. "How're we feeling?"
"Better," she admits this carefully, as though this might somehow offend her battered Marine. "I'm not feeling so weak anymore..."
"Good to hear."
Iowa climbs out of her bed to move to her Marine's side, instinctively checking the arm the IV bag is jabbed into, then the bag itself.
"You switched it out on your own?"
"Couldn't wake you, had to."
"Sorry..." Iowa's eyes wander along the length of his body, stopping at his chest. One her slender fingers brush lightly against a piece of shrapnel sticking out near his sternum. "We're... going to have to do something about the sharp stuff soon, aren't we?"
"Seems that way," he grunts. "You a doctor too?"
"I remember... things, but—" She shakes her head. "I don't know how to explain it."
"Huh..." They exchange another long stare, studying one another.
"I don't hear them anymore," Iowa mumbles. "When... When I woke up, in the boiler room, I heard everyone. My old crews right to the last man, manning every station at once, of every rank, in every role. Everywhere I went, I could hear them all. Lighting my fires, loading my shells... Now there's just you." Her vision grows blurry, her voice tinged with fear. "I didn't know what was going on at first, didn't understand until I saw them, saw the Higgins, saw everything was burning—"
She is yanked out of her rambling thoughts by Hate, grasping onto one of her wrists with surprising strength. He starts to speak, but no words come out of his mouth.
"A-anyway, the voices are all gone, mostly gone. Sometimes I... hear things. Updates on target disposition, radio messages, damage control updates..." Her voice drops into monotone, the sheen of her eyes vanishing. "DDG-111 USS Spruance, DDG-100 USS Kidd, currently on station three miles east of current position, two high-speed fixed wing craft designated Thumper Fight current altitude angels five bearing—" She shakes her head rapidly.
Hate stares at Iowa like she's grown a third arm, pushing himself slightly away from her.
"So that's a thing."
"Yeah... We're, um, surrounded." She smiles sadly at Hate. "I've scared a lot of people, haven't I?"
"Probably, yeah."
It hurts to hear him say that.
"Ah—"
"Don't take it personal, we don't even know what the fuck to call all of this..." He gestures to the sick bay all around him. "I mean, what do we even call you?"
"I'm okay with Iowa," she suggests, surprised by the question. "You know, the name I was christened with—"
"I mean, you, the person-ship-thing."
"Well, I was called The Big Stick back in—"
"You're not a stick, way too curvy." Hate grins at that. Heat flushes over Iowa's face once more. "Look, I'm trying to—fuck—I mean WHAT you are, not who you are—" His eyes widen. "I got it."
"Got it? Got what?"
"Shiplady," Hate says, pointing at her chest. "Boom."
"Shiplady? Really?"
"Well, you're a ship, and you're a lady. Shiplady." Hate's grin only grows wider. "One of a kind, like I said."
"One of a kind," Iowa repeats, bitterness tinging her voice. "How about that..."
-
Her hands have become the most fascinating things in the world as she sits next to her ailing Marine. She makes fists, watching the joints of her fingers grow pale as the skin stretches around bone. She feels her knuckles pop, then lets her hands relax, moving each finger individually. The creases in her palms make her think of sea charts.
With a wave of these hands, her batteries had swept across the sea. With a thought, fire erupted from every barrel pointed at the enemy again and again, until her sixteen inch rifles glowed red hot, the muscles in her arms burning in sympathy. Her body tensed with pain, quaked with fear as torpedoes detonated closer and closer to her hull.
Before 'awakening', her hands had been her gun batteries, radar her eyes and ears, her screws and her boilers her legs. Now those things feel alien and unreal, separate from who she actually is, nothing like the body she now possesses.
Her crewman is at her side, but Iowa feels alone.
-
"Hey!" Hate snaps his fingers, getting her attention. The sound startles her, she looks up with a bewildered expression.
"Wha—"
"Don't be fuckin' emo," Hate snorts. Iowa glares. He shrugs and digs into his bag of Chex Mix once more, chewing purposefully and obnoxiously as loud as he can manage. "Besides, it's not like we know that—"
There's a flash of movement from her arms and the bag of Chex Mix is suddenly in her possession.
Hate blinks at her, and then reaches behind himself, slowly producing a second bag from beneath his pillow. Smugness visibly radiates off of him as he calmly opens the bag, never letting his eyes leave Iowa's—and that's when another flash of movement starts and ends with the new bag in Iowa's possession, exchanged for the old one. The Smug noticeably falters, and Iowa grins in victory, popping some of the mix into her mouth.
"Like I was saying—" Hate clears his throat, "it's not like we know fer sure you're the only one."
"You think so?"
"Call it a hunch." He leans back against his pillows. "We fucking needed a miracle, and you showed up. Can't be all there is. Can't be."
"I don't feel like a miracle..." she mumbles.
"What *do* you feel like?"
-
For all the truly impossible things that have happened, her very existence, the appearance of ships hostile to anything human, and her single-handed destruction of them all, 'miracle' is not how Iowa can describe herself. A miracle might have spared Los Angeles, the Higgins, and so many more from the black ships' wrath.
Simply thinking about the word only brings back the visions. A city in flames, the dead in the waters around her. The final shriek from the monitor, just as it vanished from sight in a flash of light and ball of flame.
Iowa is not a miracle; she is a ship that was activated to fight, nothing more or less. That her body is different, that she can command her hull with a wave of her hand to deliver judgement upon her foes chances nothing. That she has hands at all chances nothing. Her harbor was attacked, her 'crew' responded to the attack, and she surged from her moorings to meet the enemy head-on.
Iowa is not a miracle; she is a woman who does not understand who and what she is. She does not know what she is truly capable of, why she even possesses the body she does. Things like taste and touch are as alien to her as the ship she somehow knows so intimately, that she controls with mere thoughts and gestures.
She does not see how she can be both. She must choose, wisely and soon.
She hopes that her Marine is right, at least about her.
-
"Worried," Iowa finally answers. "Very, very worried."
"Makes two of us—"
"You called me a miracle, but I just can't see it. I see a ship. I see a girl. There are things I know, but I've never experienced like this them before, so how can I know them? Like this—" She stands up abruptly, pacing next to the bed. "I can walk. Walk! Like you! Like anyone else!" Her arms flap for emphasis. "It's completely natural, like breathing, like eating, things I've only ever observed I know how to do like I've always known how! I have a body, it feels like I've always had one, I know things about it like I've read them from a book, like I've always BEEN a woman, but I KNOW that isn't true because I woke up two days ago and the world was on fire all around my ship!"
"I remember everything about myself—my old self. Every single day of it, the battles I fought, the battles I watched from afar. I remember the people who served aboard me, how some of them never got to see their homes again. I can remember conversations they had, about families, friends, loves. The prayers they said before battle, before sleep. I remember a flash, a fire, and forty seven souls who perished in it, a battery that would never fire again. I can remember wishing I could have done more for every single sailor, every last Marine I fought in defense of, but I know that can't be right because I KNOW I was just a ship, I said nothing, I thought nothing, so how can I be so certain that I actually—"
"Stop," Hate growls. "Fuckin'—okay, look, track with me here: Who are you?"
"I'm—I'm BB-61, USS Iowa—"
"Nice to meet you Iowa." Hate reaches out to take one of her hands, giving it a vigorous shake. "I'm Lance Corporal Hate, United States Marine Corps. Thanks fer fishin' my fuckin' ass out of the water. Thanks for saving my ship." He tries to scowl at her, but his heart isn't feeling it. He manages a frown. "That's all that matters right now—"
"Aren't you going to ask me why you took on that gun?" She is shouting now, unable to understand how cavalier he is about her. "Doesn't that bother you? Doesn't that frighten you?"
Hate seems to freeze in place as he remembers. She can see it in his eyes as they dart about, his mouth moving in silence as he retraces his steps.
"You put me there," he says. "That's what you're gonna say."
"I did," she confirms. "I wanted you on that gun, and you went there. And you nearly died because of it."
She watches Hate carefully, taking a step away from his bed, waiting for the anger to set in. Waiting for a look of outrage, a punch she would barely feel. Something.
Something that wasn't him suddenly bursting into howling laughter. She tries to get him to stop, worried about the blood seeping through the bandages on his chest as he continues to laugh, but he pays that or her no mind. Only after he descends from laughter into a coughing fit does he eventually settle down.
"Well," he snickers. "I guess you asked nicely enough."
"You can't just brush aside—"
"Sure I fucking can." He starts to tick off points on one hand. "I fucking woke up half-dead next to a woman on the deck of a ship that shouldn't fucking be combat capable, after firing guns it shouldn't fucking have after you used brain lasers to make me do it, at fucking torpedoes that shouldn't have ever been launched at it, while said ship was firing its sixteen inch guns, and we ended up saving the day for it."
"But—"
"Now, either this is a good fucking thing, or I'm dead and dreaming, or you're still a boat and dreaming. Whaddya want from me?"
"To tell me why you stayed on the gun when I wanted you off of it."
Hate remains silent, and Iowa learns what fear truly looks like on the man.
-
She has always known it, from a detached perspective. She remembers the tension among her crews before every battle. She remembers Leyte Gulf, the enemy just within range of her guns, only to be denied her combat as word passed that her sister ships off Samar faced imminent destruction, the Marine beachheads exposed. Things her task force should have been in place to defend, lives that were being lost.
She remembers the Katori, standing against two of the most powerful warships in the US Navy, and sinking in thirteen short minutes. She remembers the shots the broke her. She remembers the wails from her surviving crew as Iowa and New Jersey steamed past. She knows fear, knows what it means to be the cause of it.
This is different. This is personal. She sees the fear in her Marine's face, how the irises of his eyes widen, how the stubble on his face bristles from his skin. How his eyebrows raise, his breath catches, the stink of it filling the air. It reminds her of the snacks they shared, the blood he'd spilled on her deck. He leans back as she draws closer, silently demanding his answer.
Here, less than foot away from Iowa, the Marine shows more fear than he'd displayed as the torpedoes closed in.
-
"Why do you want to die, Lance Corporal?"
Hate maintains his silence; his eyes plea for Iowa to follow his example.
"I begged for you to run. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you didn't hear it. But I begged you. I would have been fine, Hate. You'd done enough."
She leans closer to him still, and she can see his pulse quicken, hear it a portion of his neck throbbing madly. Her long black hair spills down the sides of her head, gliding against his body. With a frown of disappointment she backs off, and Hate relaxes, slumping against the bulkhead with an audible sigh of relief.
"I would have survived," Iowa says, pacing once more next to his bed. "I know I would have, and so did you. Am I wrong?"
"I'm a Marine," Hate begins, the first snarling hints of true anger directed at Iowa. "You know what we fucking do, when shit starts flying—" his voice raises to a shout, "we fucking catch!"
"Answer my question, Marine!" Iowa shouts back, his service branch a curse on her lips. "What kept you on that gun?"
"Why's it so fucking important to you?"
-
Now it is Iowa's turn to wallow in silence.
She sits back down on Hate's bed, once more enamored by the sight of her very own hands moving just the way she wants them to. She kicks her legs out idly, feels the muscles under her skin at work. She breathes in deeply, and a cool sensation fills her chest. Her dress, somehow cleansed of all the blood, plays across her skin, as smooth and soft as it was the day she first opened her eyes.
These small things feel like miracles to her.
A ship, to her, is engineering. Skillful engineering, an understanding of how things *work* that culminates in a design meant for a specific purpose. In her case, she was to be the ultimate warship ever to set sail. She was meant to fight.
All the marvels of engineering resulting in her creation could not have worked without a crew. Without people, she could have done nothing. She simply would not exist. For her, these people are the miracle. Working as a team, they in turn made *her* work, and simply by being she protected them.
From the moment she had awakened, she wanted to speak to someone, anyone, about herself, about her ship. She wanted so badly to learn, to understand how any of this was possible. The shades told her nothing she didn't already understand by instinct, they told her nothing about people.
The attack had run off all her maintainers and curators, her visitors spirited away, hopefully alive and safe. The voices were gone. All she had was knowledge and experience she'd been born with, a battle brewing just outside her own dock. She was her own crew.
And along comes this Marine.
-
Hate realizes that he has said something wrong. He reaches out to Iowa, but his hand stops just short of her right arm. He settles for pounding that hand against his head.
"I'm just worried for you," Iowa whispers, looking down at her knees.
"You got other things to—"
"Stop," she snaps. "Don't tell me I have other things to worry about. Right now, my concern is my crew."
"One dude who manned a *gun*—"
"—stopped torpedoes from striking MY hull—" she looks over her shoulder at Hate, "and you're asking why it's important to ME?" She turns fully to face him, crawling closer.
"I did what anyone else would've done—"
"You put me before yourself," She rests a hand on one of his shoulders, giving him a gentle shake. "It has been a long time since anyone has done that for me."
Hate has nowhere to retreat to as Iowa draws closer. He is effectively pinned in place, transfixed by Iowa's serene expression, her calm tone of voice. She smiles, flashing perfect whites at the stunned Marine, and then turns her attention to the bandages wrapped around his body.
"These need to be changed."
"Do they really?" he asks, hoping she's wrong.
-
"You know, my first battle with a hostile vessel was against the IJN Katori and her escorts." She speaks conversationally, trying to keep the Marine calm as she begins loosening his bandages.
"Y-yeah?" Hate shivers, trying and failing to maintain an air of indifference.
"Uh-huh. She didn't stand a chance, wasn't ready for me or my sister. I can't even remember if they managed to scratch me. After that, well, the second World War was a lot of shore bombardment, a lot of anti-aircraft work for me."
Hate suddenly hisses as Iowa continues to pull at his bandages, his skin sticking to the moistened gauze. Iowa stops, looking up at him intently. He grits his teeth and nods for her to continue.
"It's not like the danger wasn't there, its war. I understand that—" She has to lean in closer to reach around behind Hate. Her hand follows the curves of his ribcage, fingers trailing towards the center of his back, still pulling his bandages free. "I was spared a lot of what my brothers and sisters at arms had to go through. I guess I was lucky, and my crew was spared."
"Luck," Hate mumbles quietly, sitting upright, allowing Iowa to reach behind him with her left hand and reach the loosened cloth bundled in her other hand.
"Physics and tactics aren't luck, Hate. Luck didn't matter to Turret Two. Those men didn't have a chance, or a choice. Physics chose for them—"Hate grimaces in obvious discomfort. "Sorry about that..."
"Morphine—" Hate growls through his teeth, hands clawing at the bedsheets. Iowa shakes her head; he's already had a dose, if he's still hurting there isn't much more she can do except to stop, and she can't. Silence rules the air for the next few minutes, punctuated by the occasional gasp or snarl of pain from Hate as she picks away the scraps of bandage that have stuck to one of the larger pieces of shrapnel and skin.
Eventually, Iowa succeeds in removing all the bandages. Infection hasn't set in, but the need for proper surgery is apparent. She could easily rip out the largest piece of shrapnel, but she is certain that Hate wouldn't survive it.
The Marine's head lolls forward, and for the first time he sees the extent of the damage.
"Wow. I feel as terrible as I look."
"I, ah..." Iowa bites her lower lip. "I'm going to need to disinfect this."
"Fuck's sake..."
-
Finding basins for warm water was simple. The moment she thought to look for them, she walked a mere dozen steps away from Hate and found a pair, filled to the brim, steam rising slowly from their rippling surfaces. Six towels were stacked next to each basin. Next to one of the basins is a bottle of yellowish anti-septic, still three quarters full, explaining the water's discoloration.
Carrying what she needs back to Hate, she begins soaking the first towel. She wrings out some of the excess before approaching him. She appraises him with pursed lips, shaking her head sadly.
"You're a real mess, Lance Corporal."
"It...was worth it, I'd do it again—" He winces the moment the towel makes contact with his skin, near the largest of his wounds.
She has known Hate for little more than three days, and she knows that this is not sarcasm.
She does not understand.
-
They soon learn that a number of his ribs are indeed cracked in the worst way possible, when she begins pressing a washcloth around a jagged piece of her own hull embedded in his side. That is when he finally does scream. That is when she sees real tears in his eyes. He tells her later that it wasn't her fault, she couldn't have known. To Iowa, knowing that with her own hands she caused this man undue suffering is horrifying.
He writhes at her touch, bites back cries of pain. Curses of increasing length and color are shouted at the roof of the sick-bay as her clumsy efforts to wash away the dried blood move closer to the worst of his wounds.
All she can think of is a day in April of 1989, and the screams that echoed through her hull then. Nearly four and a half decades after the most destructive war mankind had ever waged, she experienced the things her brothers and sisters at sea had suffered through. Like she'd said to Hate before, it was physics. The conditions needed to facilitate the event were met, and so it happened.
She'd seen the dead and dying from afar, on occasion they were brought on board. Until that day in April, it had never been HER people. It had always been another ship, another crew. A shoreline far away, an island, an enemy-occupied port.
Seventy three years after the end of World War II, she stood on her own bridge and watched Lance Corporal Hate choose to make the ultimate sacrifice for her. Nobody in her crews had ever been forced to make that choice quite like he had.
-
"Again?" she asks, her voice brittle.
"It was you, the Grey Fucking Ghost, the Big Fucking Stick... or me, the Marine. Big gun versus little gun. Made sense then, makes sense now." With trembling hands, he pushes the towel away, trying his best to ignore the utterly crestfallen look she gives him. "God, Iowa, *you've* done enough."
Iowa lets the towel drop to the floor.
"It was that simple for you?"
"Of course it was." Hate's response is without hesitation, full of cruel confidence. "I'm not worth a battleship. I'm not worth a cruiser, a frigate, a tank, a whole squad of—"
"You don't have to be worth any of those things, Hate."
"Worth isn't the point! The point is a city filled with millions of people, dozens, hundreds of vessels, that only YOU could have—"
"I think I understand what your problem is."
Hate flares up, a portion of his strength returning as he forces himself to sit up straight, a sharp intake of breath more reminiscent of a cobra seconds before striking—But his response is smothered before it can even begin, venomous, well-chosen words stuffed back into the darker corners of his mind.
Iowa lunges onto the bed, straddling his legs, hands slamming into the bulkhead on either side of his head as she leans in dangerously close to the Marine, the corners of his mouth twitching as the woman's eyes bore into his.
"You compared yourself to a weapon, Lance Corporal," Iowa says heatedly, pounding the wall for emphasis. "You are the furthest thing from it. You are just a man."
She waits for his response, waits for him to react. She waits for the fear to return to his face, for the surprise at how fast she moved on him. She waits for him to squirm, to try to force her away.
He does nothing, save swallow loudly. She has his attention.
"A weapon doesn't get to make the choice on how it gets used, or why. It doesn't get to consider the consequences of its actions. It doesn't get to decide who lives, and who dies. It doesn't get to explain why. A weapon works because a person makes it work."
With a sigh, she sits at his side, allowing Hate to lean on her shoulder for support. For his part, Hate remains silent, staring straight ahead.
"I know what being a weapon is like, Hate. You don't want that, not really. You can't make any decisions at all. You only do what others make you do. It's not at all like following orders from a superior officer, not even close." She drapes an arm carefully over Hate's shoulder, trying to avoid upsetting the wounds on his neck while pulling him tighter against herself.
"Before that battle, I'd never had any say in what I did, where I went, what I turned my guns against." Iowa shivers, remembering the things she saw the moment she made it to her own deck. "I made mistakes... I was angry at everything, angry at myself. I let them line up that torpedo spread, I bored in on targets without thinking about my surroundings..."
"Yeah..." Hate finally manages to speak, his chuckling a hollow rattle. "Yeah you did screw up. You needed me."
"I needed you to save me, I didn't need you to die for me." Gently, she pulls Hate closer to her, forcing him to look at her. "I think you've been lying to me, Lance Corporal."
"That's what you think, huh?"
"You said that you chose to do what you did for good reasons, but I saw the look on your face just before you caught that last torpedo. You weren't thinking about the Higgins. You weren't thinking about your squad mates. You weren't thinking about me. You weren't thinking about the city. You didn't look worried about anything at all."
His lips move, but the only sound is the sickly moist wheezing from his punctured lung.
"Was it easy?" She asks, her voice raw with emotion.
"Very." The reply is without hesitation, his tone cold and unsentimental; his eyes are anything but.
"Why?"
"I don't know."
-
It is only right that Marines go to retrieve a Marine.
That it is four days after The Battle of Los Angeles means nothing. The USS Iowa returned to Terminal Island on her own power, with nary a hint of crew running the ship. Her guns were now trained out over the Pacific's horizon, searching for the black ships.
The Morse code signals she emits say there is a Marine aboard, alive but in critical condition. They will get him back, regardless of the risk.
The United States hadn't been the only country to suffer from the surprise attacks. Reports were still coming in of attacks on port cities and coastal areas around the world, some attacks on going simply because there was nothing in place that could stop the attackers. In the worst cases, the military response had been crushed outright.
The enemy had not limited itself to stationary targets. Commercial shipping and military targets were finding new homes at the bottom of the world's oceans. The slaughter was indiscriminate, and oftentimes thorough. The Abyssals, as they were now being called, did not take prisoners.
They come from the sea, on occasion preceded by unseasonable, violent weather. Sometimes they come from beneath the waves, giving them their name. However they decide to appear, it always ends with many, many dead. Panic grips the sealanes. Any nation with a coastline finds itself on the defensive. Nobody knows what provoked the attacks, what crews the ships rising from the depths.
However, buried deep within days of bad news, there is the story of the USS Iowa breaking its own moorings to punish the Abyssals that struck her port city. Nothing else is confirmed, but it is becoming apparent that she is not alone. Around the world, something, someone, is helping humanity fight back.
The ride from the USS Kidd is remarkable in how unremarkable it actually is. The approach to the Target Vessel is smooth, the sea unnaturally calm around it for hundreds of yards. They are the point of the stick poking at the hornet's nest. More are set to follow. This does little to reassure the VBSS team assigned the dubious task.
Drone boats are sent in ahead of the Marines, a test to see if and how the target would react. The swarm circles close to the vessel before turning on it as one, making for its hull. In response, every gun that could have pointed anywhere near the drones found an angle away from them. When one of the drones suffers a temporary loss of signal and brushes against the target's hull, a rope ladder tosses itself off the side of the warship, dangling in excited greeting.
"What the fuck." A sergeant observes.
The drone buzzes off as soon as control is restored. The ladder droops sadly towards the water, hoping the drone changes its mind. Someone on the VBSS boat laughs.
-
"Were you happy with your 'final' decision?" Iowa asks.
Hate only nods, his eyes squeezed shut. She finds it impossible stop her arms from wrapping around him, pulling him into a hug that she knows he desperately needs, and he trembles in her embrace. Weakly he tries to return her gesture, one arm looping around her back, hand clenching onto her right shoulder for dear life.
"It would be easier," he speaks with effort, "if you'd just... stop asking about it."
"Okay." She nods jerkily, tightening the hug for a brief moment before releasing him. Hate exhales with relief, and something else. Everything in her mind wants to keep pressing. She wants to know what drove her Marine to be what he is.
As the man collapses back against the bulkhead, she knows that today is not when she will get those answers.
-
The USS Iowa stands tall in the still waters where she has taken anchor. This would have made boarding from the sea difficult had there been any amount of chop, and if the rope ladders hanging over the side of the ship actually acted like rope ladders. They are as stiff and unyielding as steel, barely shifting under the weight of each man as he makes his way onto Iowa's deck.
Discipline and training bids each man to take up a defensive position as soon as they leave the ladder, scanning for hostiles, M4 SOPMODs at the ready.
They are the only people they can see on the ship, fortunate as there's little cover available that allows good sightlines on probable threats. The deck shows the effect of main battery fire, wooden planks scored black by flash burns. Gunpowder smoke still hangs in the air, shell casings near the anti-aircraft emplacements jingle as a light breeze passes.
"LT, I see something near Turret Two," a Corporal calls out. He sounds as scared as everyone else actually feels, but he's the first to vocalize it. It is and isn't appreciated. Rising as one, the VBSS team briskly moves in pairs to the LCPLs discovery.
Blood, lots of blood. The biggest stain is on the deck proper, the pool still wet at its center. There are signs that someone once lay atop it, someone else had knelt next to them. More signs of dragging, with two pairs of bloody footprints leaving the pool. One set of prints disappears as they reach an open hatch leading deeper into the ship.
The team follows the footsteps until they find the vending machine next to an open hatch, folded on itself, stripped almost entirely bare of anything it once contained.
"So where the fuck is this guy supposed to be, and can we get him out of here before whatever did this finds us?" The Corporal asks once more.
"Oh my God, shut the fuck up Price."
-
Hate clears his throat, looking over at the woman still at his side. He remembers vividly how Iowa felt, pressed against him as she was. Soft in the right places. Warm, almost too warm. The pain wracking his body seemed to melt away in that moment. Despite everything, it had been years since he'd felt so comfortable around anyone or anything.
He wonders if she knew what she'd done.
Words have failed them both. They haven't spoken since the awkwardness happened, keeping their jumbled thoughts to themselves. As he'd begged/asked, she stopped trying to pry into what made him tick, what made him decide. There were things she didn't deserve to have dumped on her. Things that somehow, she made it easy for him to want do just that.
Neither is bored, or at the very least they have done well to hide this from one another. Hate has found the largest piece of shrapnel in his chest to be of great interest: He is certain that it is shaped like North Carolina. Iowa has taken to inspecting... herself. She makes fists, occasionally flexes an arm, and tries to hide a smile when her biceps firm up. She idly kicks her legs out over the side of the bed, sometimes quickly, other times slowly; she wants to watch how they work.
Sometimes, they catch the other watching them; their eyes almost meet, and they quickly find something else to pay attention to.
Hate isn't an idiot. He knows that he has hurt her, in some way that she isn't letting on. She wouldn't be the first woman he has done this to.
Somehow it feels worse than the others.
He is happy with the silence, he thinks. This is fine. It gives him time to think about how he can apologize later, if there is a—
"So..." He begins. "Nice guns."
"Uh huh." She grins up at him openly now. "Well, I am the nameship of the Iowa-class. It's only fitting, right?"
"Yeah." He looks down, considering his next words carefully. Iowa leans closer in anticipation, and for a moment he wonders if she can read his thoughts.
"So hey, fuckin'—Alright, I'm pretty bad at this but—"
Iowa sits up with a surprised, high-pitched yelp, her eyes wide but focused away from Hate. She scratches at the side of her neck lightly, then checks the hand that did the scratching.
"They came for you," she whispers with disbelief, shivering as she scratches at her dress just above her breasts. Her eyes brim with tears. "They're here. They're here for you." She grabs his hands happily. "They heard me! They listened!"
"...Huh."
-
The blood leaves a trail that is easy to follow, made easier by every possible light that could also lead the way shining brighter than any others. Even if they hadn't spent hours poring over old construction diagrams of the Iowa, it seems that someone would have told them where to go.
The team isn't taking any chances, however. As helpful as the ship wants to be, it is unsettling that whenever a man tries to look down a corridor that isn't the designated path to check corners, the lights in that direction abruptly turn off.
As such, the Marines move slowly, their guns pointing at shadows every step of the way. Nobody is happy to be here.
-
The second hug is more forceful, but joyous. Hate pats Iowa's back numbly, not quite believing the timing.
"You're going to make it," she says. "You're going to be okay."
"Yeah..."
Iowa almost leaps off the bed, landing with what could be considered practiced ease on her high heels. She's focused on the port-side entrance to the sickbay. That is where the rescue team is coming from, heavy footfalls echoing from the corridor. They had minutes, maybe.
"What are you going to do, Iowa?"
She whirls back to him, and again at the door.
"Who do I report to? The Admiral of the Navy? The President?"
Hate shrugs unhelpfully. Where does the living personification of a battleship fall in the chain of command? He remembers how upset she'd been when the subject of being the only one of her kind came up. He wonders if she even should make her presence known.
"Maybe there are more gir—shipladies like you," he offers. He hopes it's true.
She ventures a step closer to the door. The boots sound closer now.
"I don't know what I should do," she says plaintively.
"What if... this is enough for now?"
-
The Lieutenant in the lead hisses, holding up his hand in a fist. The whole team stops, hugging one side of the passage, guns at the ready. The Sergeant at his back pats the officer on the back, motioning that he should take the lead in the formation. The butterbar shakes his head slowly.
'What do you hear?' the Sergeant mouths.
"A woman, I think?" The El Tee whispers back.
-
"What if," Hate says slowly, "you take some time to figure out what you want to do?"
"I'm a battleship, I know what I'm supposed to do!" Still facing the door, Iowa steps back from it, back towards her lone crewman.
"I don't think you're just a battleship."
"Shiplady, right..." She takes another step back to him.
"For one, battleships don't look quite like you do. You're not quite as... boxy."
When she turns back on him, she is blushing again, but she is also smiling.
"Figure things out, hmmm..." She makes her way over to Hate, leaning close to him once more. "I suppose there is a lot of history I need to catch up on."
"Well it's been like, what—"
"Don't mention my age."
"I wasn't going to, I was just gonna say—"
"A lot of things to figure out." One of her hands pats him gently on the side of the face, scratching against three days of unshaven stubble. "Like your real name, for one. Hate is not a very good nickname."
"Didn't get to choose it, ma'am."
"We'll come up with something better."
She walks away from her Marine, one foot in front of the other as she makes for the exit opposite to the one the rescuers are approaching. He watches every step she takes, still feeling where her hand had been seconds before. The blue dress swirls in her wake, hips swaying with every step, heels clacking against the metal floor.
And when she looks back at Hate, she knows she has his undivided attention.
She likes that.
"Technically since I outrank you, Marine, I can issue you some orders can't I? You are my crewman, after all."
"Technically, yeah," his voice thick with annoyance, mostly acted. "I guess you can issue some fu—"
"I'm glad you agree." She calls back lingering at the door she intends to escape through. "I'm going to... figure things out, like you said, protect this city in the meantime. As for you..." One foot is out of the door, one still in the sickbay. "You're ordered to stay alive until I see you again. So I can help you."
When the Marines breach the sickbay, they find Lance Corporal Hate saying his name at the door opposite to theirs, reaching for someone who is long gone.
-
She stands alone on the bridge of her Self, watching the rescuers depart. She watches them take Hate away.
He's being questioned, again and again by his fellow Marines. She doesn't know what is being said, their tiny boat is too far away from her to listen in, but she can see them with perfect clarity. He nods, shakes his head, or yells angrily at the medic tending to him. He's going to be alright.
Through it all, he never stops looking back at the USS Iowa. Looking back at her. And she stays on the bridge, watching him until he disappears into the USS Kidd. She takes a breath she didn't know she was holding back, and sighs with relief.
Just as she turns to leave, she spots lights flashing from the Kidd and her sister, the Spruance. The lights continue flashing for a minute, then repeat:
- .... .- -. -.- / -.-- --- ..- / ..-. --- .-. / . ...- . .-. -.-- - .... .. -. --. / ..- ... ... / .. --- .-- .- .-.-.- / .-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- . / -... .- -.-. -.- .-.-.-
Smiling, Iowa turns her back to her two sisters, her own search lights flashing back a response. As she reaches one of the hatches leading off the bridge, she finds a blue parasol leaning against the heavy door. It's a perfect match for her dress. She wonders where it has been this whole time.
Los Angeles spreads out all around Terminal Island, and the afternoon sun still hangs overhead. She'll need this where she's going.
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Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
I just realized. The CVL Goto has is none other than RJ. Summmabitch.
meganeshounen
*tips glasses*
- Location
- Far East Asia
... And the good thing is, I tihnk feelthyhornet made that Iowa snippet a two-parter.
Expecting moar Iowa musings in the future warmly.
Expecting moar Iowa musings in the future warmly.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Slight error here, Hate's rank is LCpl. in the flash back.
I should know I spent 3 and half years as one.
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
... are the rules about abbreviations for Marine ranks that strict? I thought 'L/Cpl.' was an accepted notation for 'Lance Corporal'. Or am I (mis)remembering a British/Commonwealth notation?
I mean, I'm more than happy to make the fix, I just... didn't realise that particular detail of Marine protocols and regulations.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Yeah, it's LCpl. The Brits do it slightly differently. I can give you the full rundown if you want, had to memorize 'em in Boot.... are the rules about abbreviations for Marine ranks that strict? I thought 'L/Cpl.' was an accepted notation for 'Lance Corporal'. Or am I (mis)remembering a British/Commonwealth notation?
I mean, I'm more than happy to make the fix, I just... didn't realise that particular detail of Marine protocols and regulations.
And yeah it is kinda strict like that. God's mercy be with you if you abbreviate Sergeant as SGT (Which is the Army's abbreviation).
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Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
I think I'm good, for now. That said, I might want to pick your brain about various other Marine Stuff at some future juncture. Is that OK?
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Fine by me, I wasn't combat arms but I know a few.I think I'm good, for now. That said, I might want to pick your brain about various other Marine Stuff at some future juncture. Is that OK?
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
Hate/Iowa is OTP tier.
That said Settle's grumblings about the SM-2 annoy me. 300 lbs is smaller than the Harpoon's 488 lbs warhead but not that much and a one ton missile slamming into your hull at Mach 2 and spreading fuel fires everywhere is still going to hurt like fuck. And it's not like a 300lb blast frag warhead is useless against ships; the Maverick also carries a 300lb blast frag warhead and the Navy considers that adequete for antishipping work. Hell, the new Harpoons are moving to 300lbs warheads too! (Admittedly Harpoon is a penetrating blast warhead.)
That said Settle's grumblings about the SM-2 annoy me. 300 lbs is smaller than the Harpoon's 488 lbs warhead but not that much and a one ton missile slamming into your hull at Mach 2 and spreading fuel fires everywhere is still going to hurt like fuck. And it's not like a 300lb blast frag warhead is useless against ships; the Maverick also carries a 300lb blast frag warhead and the Navy considers that adequete for antishipping work. Hell, the new Harpoons are moving to 300lbs warheads too! (Admittedly Harpoon is a penetrating blast warhead.)
Sarpedon
Knight Errant
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@Trace Coburn Just so you know Feelthy's pastebin has a sizeable amount of porn on it so you should probaby just link the Iowa bit directly.
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
IT's only what, 5 fics (at least, last I checked) I don't think that's sizeable...?
(Then again my definition of sizeable is warped, to say the least.
)Isn't this the SM-2 ? which is a 137 pound warhead and entirely warranting grumbling as a 137 pound fragmentation warhead isn't going to do anything near what a 488 point penetrating warhead is going to do. They also seem to only have proximity fuses which I would not expect to help them much.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
See adequate is not as good as good.
The Harpoon also is a top down strike, generally hitting the weaker deck armor. Not sure about the Maverick's attack profile but I don't think it's the same. And the SM-2 is mainly an anti air/anti missile missile, it's less blast more frag.
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
Hmm. I'd remembered reading somewhere that the SM-2 had a pretty hefty warhead, but either my source was wrong or I was wrong.
Damnit Whiskey.
*shrug*
AFAIK, by nature of the fact that it's an air-launched missile, I'm going to hazard a guess that the Maverick is going to attack from above, or at least that's how the flight sims I've played have modeled it
(F/A-18 Hornet 3.0, F/A-18 Korea, Falcon 4.0, Wings Over Europe). It's equipping P-3 squadrons for the antishipping role alongside the Harpoon, and IIRC the Iranians had some good success with Mavericks in the antishipping role.On the other hand, it does appear that fuel fires aren't as big a concern for Abyssals compared to normal ships.
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
@Whiskey Golf : I think you may be mis-remembering the SM2's warhead because someone along the way mistook its 135-pound weight for 135 kilograms, then converted it back into pounds (135kg being about 300lb).
Regarding the SM-2, @Aldon seems to be onto the main problem: the Mk125 warhead on later blocks of SM-2 is designed to trash high-speed but fragile targets like aircraft or missiles, so trying to use them to rip up a warship — especially one with actual armour, which seems to include the majority of the Abyssal fleet observed to date — is like taking on an Abrams tank with 40mm grenades. You can wreck most of the surface stuff with blasts or shrapnel, but you'd need the most golden of BBs to actually kill the thing.
If you want to really hurt or hard-kill a warship, your warhead has to go off inside the hull. Doing that with a missile requires a delayed detonation — I think they call it 'penetrating-blast' fusing? — and I don't believe that the majority of SM2s in inventory have that option. Plus there's the matter of attack-profile that @Dirtnap points out. Most purpose-built AShMs like the Harpoon pop up, then plunge down through the deck to detonate inside — which makes them a great hard-kill option if they don't miss, if they aren't shot down, and if they successfully punch through the deck without being wrecked or rendered dud in the process (not a sure thing against decks armoured to withstand 6" shell-fire). AFAIK, the anti-ship Maverick has a penetrating-blast warhead, but it works like Exocet in that it flies straight in at the target, so it'll hit the side of the ship; against armoured hulls, that's bug-on-a-windscreen time.
Regarding the SM-2, @Aldon seems to be onto the main problem: the Mk125 warhead on later blocks of SM-2 is designed to trash high-speed but fragile targets like aircraft or missiles, so trying to use them to rip up a warship — especially one with actual armour, which seems to include the majority of the Abyssal fleet observed to date — is like taking on an Abrams tank with 40mm grenades. You can wreck most of the surface stuff with blasts or shrapnel, but you'd need the most golden of BBs to actually kill the thing.
If you want to really hurt or hard-kill a warship, your warhead has to go off inside the hull. Doing that with a missile requires a delayed detonation — I think they call it 'penetrating-blast' fusing? — and I don't believe that the majority of SM2s in inventory have that option. Plus there's the matter of attack-profile that @Dirtnap points out. Most purpose-built AShMs like the Harpoon pop up, then plunge down through the deck to detonate inside — which makes them a great hard-kill option if they don't miss, if they aren't shot down, and if they successfully punch through the deck without being wrecked or rendered dud in the process (not a sure thing against decks armoured to withstand 6" shell-fire). AFAIK, the anti-ship Maverick has a penetrating-blast warhead, but it works like Exocet in that it flies straight in at the target, so it'll hit the side of the ship; against armoured hulls, that's bug-on-a-windscreen time.
CompassJimbo
Where’s Your North?
- Location
- The former Rubber Capital of the World
Forget Arizona. Iowa is best battleship.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Best BB Nagato I will fite you.
HarakoniWarhawk
Striking from the Skies
- Location
- Holy Terra
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I eagerly await the next part of Iowa's interlude.
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
@Trace Coburn The solution, therefore, is raaaaaaaaaailguuuuuuuunsssssss.
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
You should totally do fight that out in WoWs.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
>20+km range for IowaYou should totally do fight that out in WoWs.
>Thicker armor
>better speed
>more AAA
Yeah nah.
SKsniper128
22050 kg of ordinance per minute
Hey I faced worse odds, Killed a full heath North Carolina in my New Mexico. That girl had a full flotilla escorting her and I still got away with 50% of my health left.
-SK