Another little add-on to A Girl's Name:
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A Girl's Name: Ataru Does A Summons
by Fred Herriot
Yuki no Shingun (1895), composed by Nagai Kenshi.
Based on Kantai Collection, developed by Kadokawa Games; The Seventh Carrier, created by Peter Albano; Koihime Musō, created by BaseSon; and Urusei Yatsura, created by Takahashi Rumiko
Including characters and situations from Belated Battleships, created by theJMPer; Greatest Generation, created by sasahara17; Urusei Yatsura: The Senior Year, created by Mike Smith and Fred Herriot; and Phoenix From the Ashes and Shipgirl Samurai and Super-Ninjas, created by Fred Herriot
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United States Fleet Activities Sasebo, a day in mid-April...
"...whole of Tomobiki-chō is in shock today after the incredible sight of a building being launched like an intercontinental ballistic missile through a SPACE WARP into the midst of a large number of alien warships akin to the Kashin, the flagship of Redet Invader, the Oni warlord who led the 'invasion' on Earth a year ago that was averted virtually at the last minute by Moroboshi Ataru. While many of Ataru-san's former peers from Tomobiki Senior High School here in town are adamant in declaring what happened here to be his fault — though again, as has happened many times before, such accusations are without any sort of concrete evidence to support such claims — the older generations are all now confronting Invader-san's daughter Redet Lum on the front lawn of the school demanding answers. Given the size of the explosion as filmed by local residents during that event, experts from the Self-Defence Forces declare that whatever was inside that building concluded that it had an explosive power many times greater than the Soviet Union's Car'-bómba from 1961..."
The mute was tapped. "Way to go, Onē-san!" the so-called "cancer of Tomobiki" mused as he sat back in his chair in his private office, shaking his head. "Poor Lum. Can't run away from all the garbage that you ultimately caused..."
He then smirked as a warm arm wrapped around his shoulders to allow him to receive a hot kiss from his current companion. "You must be pleased at THAT particular birthday present, Teitoku," Kirishima mused as she snuggled against him.
"Of course!" he said as he warmly squeezed her waist. "Anything that makes people realize how single-minded folks in Tomobiki can be at times, the better. I'd swear, if they keep charging flank speed ahead like they've done before, somebody from the Middle East or some loon elsewhere will go over there with a bomb-vest to make them ashes in their family crypts!" He shook his head. "I can't protect them, Isabel. I don't WANT to protect them anymore! My responsibility for protecting those idiots came to an end at the Tag Race when I tagged Lum's horns!" A lethal smile then crossed his face. "Now it's time for Lum and all her friends to realize that they're not as wanted here on Earth as they've been led to believe before..."
"About time," she noted, nodding in agreement as she watched the muted wall-mounted television, displaying a scene at Tomobiki High School, where a certain Oni warlord's daughter was being scolded by dozens of older people.
Smirking on seeing her host's mother standing near her would-be daughter-in-law screaming — the fourth of the Kongō-class battleships could lip-read; she knew Ataru's mother was trying to make people realize that everything was Ataru's fault, that Lum didn't deserve that abuse and that Moroboshi Kinshō again wished she never had Ataru in the first place — Kirishima smiled as she embraced her "special boatswain's mate" around the waist. Much that Ataru hadn't allowed the emotional pain from the abuse he had suffered because of Lum's declaring that they were married at the end of the Tag Race a year ago, the woman known better to Ataru as "Chihaya Isabel" knew deep down how much he still hurt. Uncaring parents, a would-be girlfriend who had literally abandoned him when he needed a friend the most, other "friends" who would stab him in the back if it gave them a chance with Ataru's so-called "wife", said "wife's" many friends from other planets with all their problems...!
Kirishima shuddered with delight as Ataru tilted her head up so they could kiss...
...just as his iPhone rang.
Moaning, he gazed on the caller ID there, then he sighed. "Great timing, Onē-san!" he hissed before he tapped the button to answer the call. "What is it, Onē-san?! I'm a little busy with Isabel here!"
"It is time, Ataru," a cold woman's voice called back.
Hearing that made both of them blink...
****
Far eastern Siberia, an hour later...
"...much better than flying..."
Ataru chuckled as he walked hand-in-hand with a slightly shuddering Kirishima towards the ice-clogged entrance of a small cove located on the Arctic shoreline just to the east of the local village of Neškán, over 150 kilometres from the eastern end of Eurasia; they had been teleported up from Sasebo thanks to a cloaked starship holding polar orbit over Earth. Fortunately, even if the sky was still dark because this was some distance above the Arctic Circle and it was early spring, the weather wasn't too cold; Ataru felt quite warm wearing a parka and fur-lined boots over his track suit. "Amazing that even after all the interest our galactic neighbours show in our planet, they don't bother scanning around for other ships parked in orbit."
That made the fourth of the Kongō-class battleships giggle in delight. As Ataru's primary shipgirl "adjutant" at Sasebo, Kirishima was aware of what he and his adopted sister Negako had been doing behind everyone's backs in Tomobiki. In response to the National Diet and the United Nations declaring Nishitōkyō a "special exclusion zone" akin to Dejima in Nagasaki years before — where alien visitors were allowed free reign without any sort of legal controls over anyone who came to visit Earth — the Imperial Palace had Negako move to forge alliances with those powers that opposed the Urusians and their allies. Primary among them were the Noukiites, who controlled one of the largest known star kingdoms in the local cluster. That act had paid handsome dividends, especially when it came to the shipgirls and their war against the Abyssals.
"Venerable Ataru! Revered Lady Kirishima!"
Kirishima blushed as Ataru smiled, then he pulled his hand away from her to render a left fist-in-right open palm salute to the smiling Noukiite major approaching him, appearing like a fair-skinned Klingon from Star Trek in more flowing robes than body armour. "Heaven's most sincere blessings to you, Lord Major," the Terran tag race champion said. "Where is my sister?"
"The Most Venerable Negako is currently with the Revered Ladies Yamato, Musashi, Shinano, New Jersey, Enterprise and Gángut beyond the barrier to view the wreckage of the Yonaga," the major stated as he waved them to accompany him to a large tunnel drilled into a solid sheet of ice many metres high. "The preparations for the summoning ceremony to call upon the spirit of Yonaga's house angel is ready to commence. It requires your presence as you are of the blood of one of her crew."
"Moroboshi Kyōsuke, my great-grand-uncle. He was a navigation officer. His older brother was Onē-san's host at the time."
The major nodded as the three made their way through the tunnel to the other side, then they stopped on seeing an ice-caked mass of rusting steel secured in the cove, listing slightly to starboard and slowly settling by the stern into the deep lagoon it had been hidden in for over seven decades. Seeing the unmistakable shape of the hull which indicated this great vessel had been a Yamato-class battleship before it was converted into the largest aircraft carrier conceived during World War Two, Kirishima bowed her head as her eyes teared in horrified sympathy while she recalled what Negako had told her about what had befallen the Yonaga prior to the start of Operation Z, depriving the Kidō Butai of a seventh landing deck and a whole air flotilla of fighters and bombers that could have unleashed a greater level of impact on the Greater East Asia War.
As the Noukiite officer formally saluted the wreck of the great carrier, Ataru sighed as he walked over to where a small group of people were standing close to a hemp rope gangway that led to Yonaga's old weather deck below the overhang of the flight deck. As his feet echoed on the crushed ice and bare soil, people's heads turned around. "Hey, Ataru!" New Jersey called out with a jaunty salute as Gángut grinned in delight, Yamato and Enterprise demurely smiled, Musashi gave a wolfish smile and Shinano shuddered in anticipation of having the fifth of her class brought back as a kanmusu. "Caught you in the barracks?"
"Funny, Kathy! Real funny!" Ataru teased back as he walked over to embrace the older female version of himself in the black martial artist's gi with pleated hakama trousers. "Hey, Onē-san! Is Yoiko-chan still being a sleepyhead?!"
"She is worried," Negako stated in her normal toneless voice. "Kyōsuke was the last of the crew to fall, about a decade ago. Since the Abyssals are trying to draw in the spirits of slain sailors to power their campaign, Yoiko has concentrated all her efforts to ensure the spirits of her crew were not seduced by the power of the Abyssals." Here, Earth's first true artificial intelligence addressed the long-missing and totally unknown fifth member of the Yamato-class warships by the human name Ataru chose for her, "Itō Yoiko". "Even if she has no physical body now, she has earned a very ugly reputation among them." As the others gazed upon the ninjutsu grandmaster, a ghost of a smile appeared on Negako's face. "The Angry One."
The other shipgirls gaped on hearing that. "That's the one shipgirl even the most powerful installation types, such as what Hoppō could have become, fear above all others," Enterprise noted. In her human identity as Lieutenant Commander Yvonne Swanson of the United States Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence, America's most successful warship had led the mission that had rescued the child-like Abyssal that had arisen on the island of Unalaska from being forcibly transformed into monsters like the one destroyed at Midway by Japan's shipgirls two years ago. Yamato — to Ataru, Itō Yasuko — had been involved in that mission while Musashi and Shinano — Itō Mutsuko and Itō Shimizu respectively — had helped keep the supplies flowing into Japan from North America, normally alongside New Jersey. The second of the Iowa-class battleships had been given the human name "Katherine Hyde" by Ataru...though, hopefully soon, that would change to "Katherine Crowling" once a certain English literature professor finally got off his duff and proposed to her. "Given the capabilities you learned she has from the Yonaga no Tenshi and the blueprints they held onto all these years, she'll probably be the best carrier Japan's ever fielded."
"Even better than you, Swanson!" Musashi sniped.
The pin-up model American blonde, blue-eyed carrier stuck her tongue out at the ash-haired super-battleship with the brown eyes behind reading glasses. Seeing they were about to launch into another insult session — one that had been ongoing since Yamato and Enterprise had shocked the world by announcing they were dating after they had successfully rescued Hoppō from Unalaska and the Grey Ghost's existence was finally revealed to the world — Shinano shuddered. "Onē-san! Yvonne-san! Stop that! That's not the proper impression to make before Onē-sama! You should be ashamed of yourselves!"
Gazing upon the tall and curvy carrier with the pony-tailed black hair and the dark eyes behind glasses on a very childlike face, both Musashi and Enterprise blushed as they looked away from the other. As Jersey whooped in laughter and Gángut snickered at the continued comedy of errors that seemed to always haunt the most legendary warships of two nations, Negako sighed. "You best go aboard," she then bade her brother and last host, holding out a beautiful tantō.
He nodded as he effortlessly drew the beautifully-crafted dagger from its sheath, then effortlessly bounded up the rotting rope gangway to the deck of the wrecked carrier, uncaring that he might actually snap the lines and go for an icy swim. Once he was on the slightly listing weather deck, Ataru took a deep breath, then he relaxed himself as he allowed recently-awoken ki senses to reach out and scan the intact parts of the ship. He was quick to feel a powerful nexus of ki aft, thus making him turn and walk down to an open hatchway that led into the vast hangar deck of the Yonaga. Peering inside, he felt grateful at the fact that the ice that had amassed on the flight deck over the years had collapsed most of the structure, allowing the evening twilight to shine into the space. Noting there were many parked aircraft stowed perfectly there, Ataru then blinked on seeing what appeared to be a Shintō temple of some sort nestled at the forward starboard end of the large space.
Walking towards it, he stopped before slipping the tantō into the belt of his parka. He then clapped his hands to announce to the kami contained within this shrine that he had come in peace, then he stepped inside.
Shed the blood...!
Ataru jerked on hearing that voice echo from all over, then he crouched slightly.
Shed the blood, nephew...free her...!
"Do as Kyōsuke just bade, Ataru!" Negako's voice echoed from outside.
Realizing that he was within a hair's breadth of finally freeing the spirit of the seventh carrier of Operation Z, Ataru drew the tantō out, then allowed it to make a slight cut in the palm of his left hand, the blood dripping to the deck...
"Yuki no shingun, kōri o fun de.
Dore ga kawa yara, michi sae shirezu.
Uma wa taoreru sutete mo okezu.
Koko wa izukuzo? Mina teki no kuni..."
He then jolted as he felt something slowly form behind him...
"Mama no daitan ippuku yareba,
Tanomisekuna ya tabako ga nihon.
Yaka nu himo no hi han hi e meshini,
Namaji inochi no aru sono uchi wa..."
Turning around, he looked...
...then smiled. "Welcome back, Yoiko-san."
The exceptionally tall woman dressed in the dark green kimono and grey hakama trousers that had not been standing there mere seconds before lightly smiled. "Teitoku," Yonaga breathed out...
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Tomobiki, the Moroboshi home, nightfall...
"...dare he abandon his poor wife in her time of need?! I wish I never had him!"
"Bastard! Once we find him, we'll torture him for hours...!"
Shuddering as he tried to tune out the screaming people now crowding his living room, Moroboshi Muchi could only shake his head as he tried to concentrate on the evening edition of the Yomiuri Shinbun. As the members of Lum's Stormtroopers and Mendō Shūtarō continued to conspire with each other as to what would happen when they got their hands on Lum's errant "husband" and finally drag him back to Tomobiki, the salaryman could only shake his head. While he had done his best to ignore the insane antics that seemed to cloak his last surviving child, he couldn't ignore what had happened when he and his wife were transported back to Earth a month ago after a forced stay in a hospital on planet Uru after SOMEONE had blasted the roof of the Onishuto Cathedral onto everyone's heads just as Ataru had managed to escape the building.
As to the "who" and "why", no one had any idea...
With Ataru currently missing and no one having idea where he was, the people who had nearly died that day — all the alien guests to the wedding as well as Ataru's parents — had no chance to really learn what had happened save for the fact that all of Ataru's classmates and whatever school staff had been there had been safely teleported back to Earth within a day.
Again, as to the "who" and "why", no one had any idea...
KK-KRASH!
People screamed out as the front door was blasted in with the force of a cannon shot, then heads snapped over...
...before howls of mortal terror escaped all the people there save Muchi as a terror in white and black walked into the room, stopping to look into the living room with eyes that glowed crimson. "IT'S AN ABYSSAL!" Miyake Shinobu shrieked.
The others screamed just as a whole squadron's worth of bombers and fighters raced in after their princess, weapons blazing...
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Downtown Tomobiki, minutes later...
Ataru smiled in contentment as he heard the distant thunder of bombs and machine guns go off from the direction of his old family home. As people nearby all whispered in terror as they looked towards the Moroboshi home, then gazed upon the man now surrounded by what had to be a small fleet of shipgirls, he could only shake his head.
"A most interesting tactic, Teitoku. My compliments."
Ataru gazed up at Yonaga's slender yet well-shaped face, which reminded him a little of Kaga in a way. Given that the seventh carrier of Operation Z and the fifth (by builder's number) of the Yamato-class warships — Yonaga was, by service length, the eldest of the group as she had been "commissioned" as a naval auxiliary to the infamous Unit 731 over six months before Yamato had been commissioned in the wake of Pearl Harbour — had been effectively manned by her crew until the last of them had died a decade before, she seemed as aged and wise as the older battleships such as Warspite, Gángut or Kongō.
"It was necessary," he said with a sad sigh. "Because the people who had to react to the Urusians' 'invasion' wanted to keep the aliens from interfering with the war against the Abyssals, a news blackout backed by magical 'notice-me-not' fields was set up around Tomobiki. Atop that, since the Men in Black weren't available to help keep things under some sort of control, people like Lum thought they could do anything they wanted to do here. After Onē-san made Kaep' understand what was really going on here, the Noukiites rescued me from my 'wedding' and moved to close off the planet to aliens. Lum managed to get back there thanks to Oyuki-sama's damned warp chamber, but after Hoppō-chan gets through with her..."
The other shipgirls chuckled as the people around them gaped in disbelief and mute horror on sensing how far Ataru was willing to go to forever get rid of his "wife". An amused chuckle then escaped the demure young woman seated nearby, two of her Kuroko bodyguards kneeling nearby as their mistress enjoyed some late evening tea. "Oh, Ryōko-chan," he called out to the younger sister of his chief "rival". "I've got a message to pass on to your grandfather."
"What is that, Moroboshi-sama?" Mendō Ryōko asked.
"Tell him the Promise of Bunka-gonen is fulfilled. Onē-san is her own person."
Ryōko's eyes went wide, then she smiled. "I'll do that..."
Fin...For Now
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As for Yuki no Shingun, here's a link to a video with the translation:
