And the next entry into A Girl's Name. This touches on a subject that, AFAIK, I don't think anyone's ever looked at when it comes to American shipgirls; the JMPer viewed something like it in BB, though.
****
A Girl's Name: Recruiting Admirals
by Fred Herriot
Based on Kantai Collection, developed by Kadokawa Games; The Seventh Carrier, created by Peter Albano; The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin; and Urusei Yatsura, created by Takahashi Rumiko
Including characters and situations from Belated Battleships, created by the JMPer; Greatest Generation, created by sasahara17; Urusei Yatsura: The Senior Year, created by Mike Smith and Fred Herriot; and The End of the Circus, created by Fred Herriot
****
United States Fleet Activities Sasebo, one Saturday morning in early May...
"Welcome aboard, Miss Inu. We're glad to have you here."
Blushing, the rather plain-looking woman — who still appeared quite attractive in the eyes of the shipgirls now standing in Rear Admiral John Richardson's office — grasped the officer's hand. Like her former classmate nearby, she was dressed in a white gakuran similar to the summer dress uniform of the Imperial Japanese Navy of old; this had been universally adopted by all civilian "admirals" born in Japan who had been asked to serve as special assistants to the kanmusu of the world. "I'm glad to be here, Richardson-shōshō," Inu Chigaiko said as she gave the admiral a firm handshake. "Please treat me kindly," she then added in the traditional way, which earned her approving nods from all the Japanese kanmusu present at this meeting.
People applauded as Moroboshi Ataru gave his once-former classmate a reassuring wink. "Were there any problems when it came to seeing Inu-san transferred here to attend school at North Sasebo High, Ataru-kun?" Mutsu then asked him.
"Mendō raised a stink about it once he finally clued into the fact that 'Yon-san' and her family were moving out of Tomobiki, Chiyoko-san," Ataru noted as Chigaiko laughed. "It took him a while to try to find out who she was; even after that curse was lifted when I transferred out, everyone couldn't be chuffed to remember her name. Even the girls on the basketball team."
"No doubt, given the universal attraction those stupid women have for the merchant's brat and how much he loved to play with their hearts in return, they were able to persuade him to concentrate on our new admiral and force her from her proper duties as mandated by the Heavenly Sovereign," Yonaga declared. "Fortunately, Teitoku anticipated such and ordered me back to that pit of treason to make the merchant's brat understand his wealth means nothing these days. He should emerge from sick bay in a month. The despair his 'fans' in Tomobiki felt at such a fate was poetic." As the shipgirls laughed, the Seventh Carrier of Operation Z known among Abyssals as the "Angry One" added, "Atop what Teitoku arranged concerning his sister..."
"The crazy one on Yiziba, Yonaga-san?" Chigaiko asked.
"No, the film replica from last September," Ataru noted. "I told you about what Onē-san discovered after she was able to take the chance and analyze what was really going on in Tomobiki ever since Redet came to be my 'wife'."
The other former student from Tomobiki Senior High School considered that before she nodded. "Oh, right! Somehow, all the ambient magic in town kept the 'souls' of those film replicas the Oni's camera created back in September intact. Once you got hold of some Avalonian bioroid bodies, you allowed them to 'live' again. Redet Danu went up to the asteroid belt to get rid of the Urusian spies that were based there, then have them replaced by Avalonians as well."
"Hai," he affirmed. "Permission to brief my friend in my office, sir?"
"Go ahead, son," Richardson bade.
Both former Tomobiki natives bowed, then they walked out of the room, Yonaga moving to follow them protectively; Kirishima was currently on a mission escorting a convoy from Shànghǎi to Hiroshima alongside her sisters. Reaching the corner office, they moved to relax themselves by the desk. "All the replicas made it through being 'disembodied' without their souls dispersing," Ataru then added. "Danu-chan and Saiko-chan — that's Shinobu's replica — went up to Ceres to take charge of the 'observers' that the Urusian Imperials put there to watch over us. Idiots like Rei's uncle Yethis think that they still can spy on us, but we got a sympathetic ear among the Oni who is willing to not be too snoopy when it comes to what goes on that satellite. The Stormtroopers' replicas and Mendō's replica Tachiko-chan will start attending Tomobiki High soon enough; Mendō's mother is tickled pink at the idea of having another daughter and the guys' mothers are just relieved of the fact that their sons' 'Lum-itis' will be cured one way or another. As for the replica of myself — she goes by 'Moroboshi Hiromi' now — she's with Obā-chan on Rishiri-tō learning how to be the next Matriarch of the clan."
"Rishiri-tō?!" Chigaiko asked. "I thought the Abyssals forced all the people on the island to evacuate to Hokkaidō when they started to really be pains in everyone's asses five years ago! Is your grandma's house still intact?"
"It had to get rebuilt, but people are on the island. With Onē-san's help, all the outer islands are being re-inhabited again."
"The dark sea yōma will be swept clean from the oceans, Teitoku," Yonaga sagely declared as she picked up her laptop computer to scan what was there. Chigaiko was quick to sense the frown on the tall carrier's face; no doubt, she didn't really care for the social and technological advances that had swept through Japan in the wake of the Greater East Asia War. Given her crew's total isolation from society for so many decades thanks to being trapped in northeast Siberia thanks to fallen glaciers, the carrier's Meiji era-like attitudes were easy to explain even if she was making efforts to adapt to modern realities.
Chigaiko shuddered as she gazed upon the reincarnation of the warship that her friend's great-granduncle Moroboshi Kyōsuke had served on as a junior navigation officer. Ataru watched this with a smirk. Unlike most of the other girls who had attended Tomobiki High School at the time Redet Lum was there, Inu Chigaiko hadn't fallen into the typical mindset that had been adopted by her peers when it came to the "cancer of Tomobiki" and all the weird things that happened there. Yes, such had been exacerbated because of the strange curse unleashed by accident thanks to the "Red Cloak" during a certain Hallowe'en party the previous fall, but Chigaiko had always been a far more sensible girl than even someone like Miyake Shinobu.
Atop that, there was an incident when they had been in kindergarten...
"So what exactly does it mean to be an 'admiral'?" she asked. "I mean, we're both in high school and I doubt we'll ever go to the Tōdai or Eta-jima. How can we be 'admirals' when we're not commissioned officers in the Self-Defence Forces...?"
Yonaga made a face. "Must you call the Heavenly Sovereign's forces THAT...?!"
"Yoiko!" Ataru gently teased as he gave the carrier a concerned look.
Yonaga tensed as a blush crossed her face, then she allowed the iron-hard discipline that ruled her crew for decades to settle on her. "We're special morale officers," he then explained as he gazed once more on Chigaiko. "We don't do anything to interfere with military operations; that's the responsibility of the people who were trained to do those jobs. But even if they are the reincarnations of warships from World War Two, they're also human girls, so we have to help them better adjust to being human beings. They're magically-created bioroids, no different than an Avalonian deep down. They have human feelings and desires. They go through puberty, believe it or not!" As she gaped in shock on hearing that, he smirked. "Even more so, Chiyoko-san's now pregnant with Richardson-shōshō's children; she'll be due in a few months."
Chigaiko blinked before her eyes went wide. She had been briefed on the "human names" Ataru created for the kanmusu; she also knew he preferred to address them as such even if the shipgirls only used those names in private among each other or with those humans they loved the most, just as Mutsu obviously did with John Richardson. "Mutsu-san?" she wondered.
"Indeed, Chigaiko-san," Yonaga stated. "Beings born of American pioneer passion and our own Yamato damashii. Once they're properly trained and prepared — if the yōma are still out there — they will be able to sweep the seas clean."
Chigaiko took that in, then she sighed. "Similar to the whole 'dawn of power' thing this other adopted sister of yours went through in her first life, you mean? Advancing human evolution in a way that would help us protect ourselves?"
"Hopefully not to go as crazy as it did when Tariko's first-self lived," Ataru noted before he gazed fondly on Yonaga.
Chigaiko blinked as the carrier suddenly blushed from all the attention, then she started to fidget as he walked over to sit down beside her. Taking the laptop and putting it aside, he then grasped her hands, which made her blush deepen as she seemed to shy away from him. "Yoiko-chan," he then gently teased, which made this living shipgirl samurai visibly quake before she slowly turned to face him. "Do you think Chigaiko-chan's ready to get her first assignment?"
Hearing that, the carrier blinked before the iron-hard discipline settled back upon her and firmed her hull. "Hai. I just hope that our new admiral wouldn't mind dealing with someone who appears to be of African descent..."
Chigaiko blinked in confusion...
****
In the base cafeteria, an hour later...
"Poi! She's beautiful!"
"Yeah! I hope Yonaga-sempai will teach her everything!"
"Is she being assigned to that new admiral?! The one Ataru knows?"
"Don't know!"
Shuddering as the gaggle of destroyers seated nearby whispered away at each other, the tall and slender shipgirl with skin the shade of dark milk chocolate, matching eyes and straight black hair that flowed down to a simple ponytail to mid-back could only blush before she turned back to nibble on the small meal that had been prepared for her. Seated across from her at this time was the third of the Yamato-class warships...even if she technically was the fourth by commissioning date given what happened to Yonaga when she had been administratively made part of the infamous Unit 731 to hide her from Western spies in 1940. "It's alright, Jefferson-san," Shinano stated. "They're just surprised to see someone like you."
The other shipgirl blinked before she sighed. "Still, it is very embarrassing," the fourth of the Midway-class of super-carriers stated with a voice possessing the cadences of antebellum Virginia. Planned as CVB-44, she would have been constructed at Newport News close to Norfolk on the Atlantic coast of the Commonwealth, though the end of World War Two and the lack of construction space forced the order to be cancelled in 1945, without a name being applied to her. When her spirit had been given human form at RTC Great Lakes, she had been christened USS Thomas Jefferson by President Josiah Bartlet in honour of the third president and the second born of the Old Dominion to serve as chief executive; much to the surprise of many, no aircraft carrier had ever been named after the Sage of Monticello throughout American history, so it seemed befitting.
She was at Sasebo to take operational training under the Seventh Carrier of Operation Z...and get her human name, of course.
"Jefferson-san?"
Both Shinano and Jefferson perked, then they turned...
...before they instantly shot up to their feet, bracing themselves to attention on seeing the girl in the white gakuran now standing nearby. "Teitoku!" Shinano called out as she bowed formally to the newest "admiral" of the base.
"Ma'am," Jefferson said as she saluted the newcomer.
Seeing that, Inu Chigaiko nodded as she tried not to pass out at the sight of someone like Thomas Jefferson. Almost as tall as Yonaga — any of the Midway-class ranged between any of the "normal" Yamato-class girls and their once-lost sister height-wise as a human being — the fourth of the Midway-class was a slender girl, though still well-formed in the right places; one wouldn't think of her as "flat" as some other carriers. She had a youthful face, almost as childish in a way as Shinano herself appeared to onlookers. Like American carriers built around the time of the Greater East Asia War, she was dressed in a racy version of the American Navy's khaki summer work dress uniform of the period, with hot pants in lieu of proper slacks to cover those wonderful legs of hers and the shirt not tucked into the pants. An ensign's golden rank bars were placed on her shirt collars. As she was an armoured carrier, she had garish thigh-high stockings layered with armoured plates, coloured blue over red with white stars over it, that bloused into calf-high armoured boots similar to what either of the Shōkaku-class carriers had; her hull number was over the outer flanks of the calves. A garrison cap with her rank was on the table nearby.
To Chigaiko, she was one of the most beautiful women she had ever met...
...and given certain circumstances when it came to the women who had gone to Tomobiki High School when Lum was there...
"When you're done your meal, report to me in my office, Jefferson-san," Chigaiko then ordered. "You as well, Shinano-san. You're both assigned to me by Richardson-shōshō, so I want to spend the evening with you both."
"HAI!"/"AYE-AYE, MA'AM!" both carriers chanted out.
As Chigaiko made a motion to let them return to their meals, the destroyers gaped before they began to chatter away...
****
An hour later...
"United States Ship Thomas Jefferson, CVB-44, reporting as ordered, Admiral!"
"Tennō Heika Gunkan Shinano, Kōkūbokan Yonjū-gō, reporting as ordered, Teitoku!"
Chigaiko sighed as she gazed up at the two nervous-looking carriers standing before her new desk; she had been assigned the office next to Ataru's as her work space. As she tried not to openly fidget at the thought of actually being given any sort of real power and influence over such incredible beings like this, the former basketball team star forward took a deep breath. "Shimizu-san. Sarah-san. Sit down," she then firmly stated, trying to keep her voice even.
Both shipgirls took their seats, the surprise on both their faces quite clear. "'Sarah'? Is that the name Admiral Moroboshi gave me, Admiral?" Jefferson then asked in a timid voice, which made Chigaiko gape at her.
Holy shit! She's just as nervous about this as I am! Chigaiko mentally exclaimed before she took a deep breath. "Hai, Ataru-kun came up with the name after he got news of your reporting to duty at Great Lakes," she said as she got up and walked around the table to sit on it before the two shipgirls. "I heard there was quite the stink in certain circles when you showed up as an African-American. I know that some other shipgirls from your nation wound up the same way."
"Hai, Teitoku, it happened," Shinano noted. "It got Jersey-sempai and Enterprise-sensei really mad when they found out about that sort of thing. All the girls who look Japanese like Iwo Jima-san and San Francisco-san weren't treated that way!"
"I can understand it," Jefferson admitted as a sad look crossed her face. "Relations between the races weren't very nice back in those days, even aboard Navy ships. Normal humans looking like me were segregated from the other crew and couldn't serve in combat positions on Navy ships, so they never go as many chances to fight like their friends in the Army and Army Air Force did." She then gazed on her new admiral. "I heard that Admiral Moroboshi has the habit of basing names of ships who are named after people with their family names, ma'am. I assume I'm 'Sarah Jefferson' now."
"'Jane Sarah Jefferson' is the full name," Chigaiko stated. "Ataru-kun doesn't care for that sort of racist nonsense whatsoever even if he's now slightly turned off dealing with aliens thanks to Redet. Given what sort of nosy bitch his 'wife' was over the last year or so, I can't blame the man." She took a deep breath. "I know about the whole controversy surrounding Jefferson-daitōryō's relationship with one of his slaves; that's the reason Ataru picked 'Sarah' as your middle name since it's pretty obvious that your namesake fathered her children even if some disagree with that conclusion. Given what humanity's gone through because of the Abyssals and the aliens, it's time to let the old hates go and move forward."
Jefferson considered that, then she smiled. "I like it."
"I think it's cute!" Shinano noted.
"Okay, then," Chigaiko breathed out. "Now, I know that Ataru-kun is happy to be quite intimate and passionate with..."
Both carriers' cheeks instantly flared as bright as nuclear bombs.
"Um...forget what I just said," the former basketball team forward muttered...
Fin...?