So, I had a plotbunny. I started writing it. This is a horrible idea because:
a) College is about to start again.
b) 95% of my knowledge of Kancolle is secondhand
c) All of my knowledge of the crossover verse is secondhand
Without further ado, 4.3k words, provisional title of "Don't Feed Her."
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Sendai hated boring patrols. Honestly, she'd love to pick up a few destroyers on her radar, but the only thing she'd picked up so far was a fishing boat that had probably just drifted loose from a bad mooring. The only sign of the enemy was the constant, thin layer of fog that marked this water as Abyssal territory. Not that they seemed to be bothering to enforce it.
DesDiv 19 was almost falling asleep on their screws, and Sendai was tempted to call off the patrol half an hour early. But then Goto would chew all of them out and then dole out some punitive measures. Alternately, she could complete the northward leg of her patrol, and then pull into port in her namesake city instead, cutting a few hours off the patrol so Ayanami, Uranami, Shikinami, and Isonami could get some more sleep. Then they could catch a military train back to Yokosuka in the morning.
Except wait… weren't the garrison ships at Sendai City going to be relieved soon? Would Goto just assign them as garrison replacements? On the one hand, it might be good to see limited deployment for a while. On the other hand, it would be so boring. Unable to decide now, Sendai decided she'd wait until she was passing Kinkasan Island on the way south to make the decision.
That determination was made moot ten minutes later when a bright bluish flash flared over the horizon, followed shortly by a clap like thunder. The destroyers all jolted awake at that.
"Yokosuka, Yokosuka, this is Patrol-1-9-actual. Over." She spoke, broadcasting over her radio.
"Patrol-1-9, this is Yokosuka. I read you. Over." Katori had the night shift as radio officer tonight.
"Yokosuka. Observed bright flash followed by loud boom. I estimate the position of the flash to be 3-7 degrees 5-0 arcminutes North, 1-4-2 degrees 0-5 arcminutes East. Patrol-1-9 will perform reconnaissance. Over."
"Yokosuka copies. Good luck. Over."
"Alright! Uh, out." Sendai said, then cut the channel. "Hear that, girls?"
"Hmm." "Ah… yes." "Yep!" "Gotcha!"
"Great, let's get there soon! Increasing speed to 35 knots!" Sendai ordered as she accelerated, and several dozen meters away the destroyers followed suit. With the origin of the flash firmly in Abyssal territory they'd rather not dally. But at the same time, Sendai wanted to keep a bit of speed in reserve… and maybe also didn't want to get yelled at by Akashi about her props.
Ten minutes later, thicker fog curling around her ankles and calves, and Sendai's radar picked up a surface contact.
"Surface contact ahead, 10 klicks!" She announced to the destroyers. "You see it?"
"Not yet." Ayanami said. "Probably too much interference."
"Um… are your air radars picking up anything?" Isonami asked.
"Which direction?" Sendai asked immediately.
"Ah, East, bearing 87." Isonami said.
"Right." Sendai said, and fired up her fire control radar, aiming it in that direction. Ah. Oh, geez. There were a few dozen planes in the air. "Ayanami, Shikinami, keep on eye on the bogeys, tell me what they're doing."
And then her surface radar cleared up enough for her to get a good size reading on the unknown. At least 500 meters long. That, or multiple contacts. But Abyssal formations usually just looked like huge blobs because of how shipgirl radar worked, rather than what was definitely, sans interference, a straight line.
Geez, she's a big ship. Are there any ships that are 500 meters or longer? Maybe an American one? But Sendai couldn't figure out why an American capital ship would show up right 80 kilometers off the coast from her namesake city- last she'd heard, all of the old American battleships and carriers had been showing up in American ports. Also, there was something different here, she knew. They'd picked up stray ships before - the half-dozen Fletchers at Sasebo proved that - and there had never been that weird flash.
"It looks like the Abyssal craft are heading towards the unknown." Ayanami said.
"Load flak." Sendai said.
"Eh?"
"Our contact is massive. We're not going to sink her with anything besides torpedoes, because our shells will just pinprick her. What we can do is shoot off her radars and directors. Hopefully we won't need to, and it'll just be the aircraft we're fighting. Which is what the aircraft are suggesting. We've never seen Abyssals transfer aircraft before."
"Right."
A minute later, and Shikinami spoke up.
"Sendai. Looks like the aircraft are being shot down."
"By our unknown?" She asked. "But she's 40 klicks away."
"Maybe." Shikinami said. "Or it could be another shipgirl we can't see."
"Well, we'll know in a few minutes." Sendai said.
Several minutes, and Sendai had slowed down to a near-docking speed, her full-hull shadow overlapping with the unknown's just ahead.
"I'm turning off my radar, so keep an eye out for me, alright?" She asked. A shipgirl's radars would produce returns based off other shipgirl's full-hull shadows, not their human body. While useful for spotting Abyssals, it also meant an instant headache to turn on the radar from inside another ship's shadow. This was why shipgirl formations tended to be as large as full-hull formations.
"Right!" The destroyers chorused.
Sendai marched up to the figure, knee-deep in fog.
She was tall, as expected from someone with such a massive radar signature. The first thing Sendai noticed was the peaked cap that integrated into an opaque visor, hiding her eyes from view. A couple of antennas stuck out from the cap, and a chinstrap held it in place firmly, but Sendai hardly paid those any attention. What was visible of the shipgirl's face was as still as stone.
Her rigging seemed to consist of a pair of wings, each made of five massive, blocky feathers. Blocky fins stuck out from the ends of the wings and from behind her shoulders. In one hand she carried a polearm, a trident but with four identical prongs.
She was dressed in blue-grey fatigues, with a slitted chestplate for protection. Additional bits of armor covered more of her body, most of them painted a deep blue. A thick collar wrapped around her neck. A sling went across her shoulder to hold a set of metal canisters at her waist. Sendai couldn't look at her feet because of all the fog, but she would have guessed that the other shipgirl didn't have much under her heels.
And she was absolutely not moving.
"Hey!" Sendai greeted.
The shipgirl didn't move, still looking somewhere to Sendai's starboard.
"Hello?" Sendai asked. "You there, miss, uh?"
The shipgirl continued not moving.
"Do you have a name?" Sendai asked.
The shipgirl continued not moving.
"Hey, anyone home?" Sendai shouted, waving a hand in front of the shipgirl's face. She didn't dare touch her right now. That tetradent looked like it would go through her hull even with her rigging up.
The shipgirl continued not moving.
"Hey! Listen!"
The shipgirl continued not moving.
"Look, we're knee-deep in fog here." Sendai said. "So that means that sooner or later an Abyssal is going to come looking around here. Which you will probably want to avoid. So, are you going to follow us or not?"
At this, the shipgirl turned to face Sendai. Sendai paused and blinked.
"So you are paying attention to me. Good. I'm Sendai. What's your name?"
The shipgirl remained silent.
"Can you even talk?"
The shipgirl remained silent.
"Sendai!" Ayanami shouted. "More fighters incoming! A lot more! Way too many more!"
"Right." Sendai growled. "Come with me if you want to live." With that, she turned and fired up her screws again. A moment later, she heard the splash of water, and turned her head to see that the other shipgirl did in fact follow her.
"We're going straight back to Yokosuka right now!" She shouted.
"Right!" Her destroyers yelled, already moving as well.
There was a rushing sound from behind her, and one of Sendai's fairies chirped in her ear.
"AA rockets?" She muttered, still picking up speed. "I don't know any ships that would summon with those." Isuzu had gotten RAM launchers recently but Sendai hadn't gotten to see her use them yet.
The strange shipgirl dropped back as Sendai sped up. She did not want to leave her behind to get sunk or, worse, captured, but she couldn't do much. Actually…
"Diamond formation!" Sendai shouted. "Ayanami, take center next to our guest! I'll take point!" She got a chorus of affirmatives in response, and pushed her speed even higher. She was already past 20 knots and the stranger was still keeping up. Her escorts circled around, careful to keep from getting in the massive shadow of the new shipgirl, who kept launching wave after wave of missiles.
Strangely, the moment the girls started moving into formation, the stranger dropped back to hang even with Ayanami. But she kept herself halfway between Isonami and Ayanami rather than right next to Ayanami as was standard in the formation. Still, with the shipgirl no longer shadowing her radar, Sendai fired up her arial search radar.
And promptly bit back a swear. "Ayanami! You should have told me three princesses decided to play with us!" There were over 400 planes after them. Why? Maybe if Yura had been leading the Akizuki sisters they could have handled this,
Wait. The first group that they had seen hadn't been the first group. Scouts or fighters had investigated the initial flash. Then, when those had been shot down, half a carrier's worth of planes had been sent in to deal with the problem. So then rather than risk losing lots more planes via attrition, the Abyssals had sent an overwhelming wave of three princesses worth of planes. And presumably, there were plenty of ships following behind the planes. Not that she'd last long enough to fight them with this many aircraft.
Also, she didn't trust the destroyers to make it back on their own.
And enough talk, time to channel Yura or Isuzu. Her guns swung back and elevated, before belching out smoke and shells. Or even Naka, she's better at handling planes than I am. Clouds of smoke and shrapnel blossomed overhead and behind, lit by the explosions of missiles and burning aircraft.
"What kind of fighters are they?" Sendai quietly asked her fairies. "Ah, skull-types? Good, volleyball is better than skeet." The massive cross-sections those had made them a lot easier to hit. "Wait, flagship grade?" And then a final chirp. "Dodging now!"
Sendai danced, hostile torpedoes going every which way around her feet. But for a shipgirl, a plane's torpedo was a viable stepping-stone, and Sendai used them in her performance of "You can't hit me." Rooster-tails poked from the fog everywhere as the attacks ran at surface level to hit shipgirl feet. Her radar screamed with contacts, and she kept firing.
But Sendai was well aware that they weren't focusing on her. No, they were focusing on the new shipgirl, the one with the missiles. She couldn't check how well she was holding up, and she didn't want to distract her charges while they needed to dodge as well.
Oh, and their guest had started to drop back out of formation. Either she'd gotten hurt or 31 knots was her top speed. Sendai didn't ponder the matter as her engine room leveled out her speed.
A few more moments, and Sendai was clear enough to glance back at the shipgirl.
She was a mess. Her wings were mostly fine, with only the top part being blackened, but her torso and head were charred like Hiei's cooking. Sendai couldn't see her feet under the fog but she'd be willing to bet her dessert privileges that they were a even more of a mess. She watched half a dozen dive bombers scream in at the shipgirl's wing. She looked away to focus on herself for a moment, balancing on her one heel for an instant to get through the mave of munitions cutting through the surface.
She looked back, finding the shipgirl barely looked any worse-looking. At least she can take the beating they're giving out. She watched her take a loaded dive-bomber crashing into her face with only a small black mark.
And nothing was stopping the missile barrages the girl was putting out in return. Four streams, one from each shoulder and each wingtip, blasted into the air before arcing around to destroy the massive orbs attacking the ships. It didn't look like she was prioritizing anything though. If the missiles were just plain heatseekers, then that didn't bode well for using her in fleet engagements.
Dozens of eternities later, the swarm of aircraft had thinned out, reduced from a fiery hail to a light drizzle of hatred.
Sendai frowned as her guns ran dry. The booming of cannon fire had mostly faded. Sendai looked around, seeing only Isonami and the strange shipgirl still firing. The Abyssal skull aircraft, deciding that they were going to die anyway, dove into a suicide run against the massive shipgirl. Isonami managed to pick a few off before they rammed into their target… who proceeded to not even flinch. Even completely blackened to a crisp and all her armor being bent in, she just didn't care.
"Well…" Sendai sighed. "That was one of the more interesting night battles I have ever participated in. Everyone okay!?" She called back to the rest of the formation.
"I-I got hit!" Ayanami said. "Magazine explosion."
"Can you make it back to port, or will we need to call for a lift?" Sendai reduced her speed a bit to check on her a bit closer.
"My hull held below the waterline, and my boilers still work. I can make it…" Ayanami said. Sendai could see the open wounds where her torpedo turrets had exploded.
"Alright, but don't hesitate to tell us if that changes." Sendai said.
"No damage." Isonami stated.
"Some paint got burned off." Shikinami reported.
"I got a bit cooked there." Uranami said. "Had a fire break out on the deck and lost a turret."
The final member of their formation remained silent.
"Well?" Sendai twisted around to look at her.
The shipgirl wasn't even looking at Sendai, instead staring directly ahead. Or presumably staring, since Sendai couldn't even tell if she had eyes. Or still had eyes, because that level of damage could definitely have destroyed them even behind a metal visor. With all the burns all over her body, she'd need a good long rest to heal.
The fog was down to her ankles right now. She could probably check in. She let out a yawn as the rush of adrenaline started fading.
"Yokosuka, Yokosuka, this is Patrol-1-9-actual. Over."
"Patrol-1-9, this is Yokosuka. I read you. Over." Katori responded after a moment, with only the slightest amount of static.
"Yokosuka, Patrol-1-9 has recovered one shipgirl, unknown class, unknown type, unknown nationality. Patrol-1-9 also confirmed the presence of heavy enemy carrier presence in area. No shipgirls lost. Over"
"Patrol-1-9, copy. Damage report."
"Yokosuka, reporting damage. Destroyer Ayanami suffered magazine explosion and hull breeches above the waterline, and lost weapons. Destroyer Uranami suffered minor damage and a lost weapon. Unknown guest took a lot of pounding. Over."
"Patrol-1-9, do you need a lift? Over."
"Negative. Our guest isn't even listing. See you in about two hours. Out."
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Two hours of weary sailing saw them in sight of Uraga Fortress. The stubby walls that protected Tokyo Bay were lined with lights and sensors more than weapons. Most demon- or princess-level enemies could simply bash through a lot of obstacles humanity could set up. The concept of a single inviolable layer of defence didn't work with them. Instead, the walls were set up more to prevent enemies from entering the bay undetected, and slow them down. This was usually augmented with a shipgirl adding her radar coverage.
And while they were slowed down, the coastal defense railguns could really go to work. Once through there, Tokyo Bay had already been mined. And the naval port had another layer of defences on top of that.
Of course, that also meant friendlies had to navigate through the defenses. First were the walls. Sendai signaled a full stop, and braced a hand on Ayanami's shoulder to stop her from tipping over. She'd trusted Isonami and Shikinami to keep an eye out with their radars while pulled aside Ayanami. Their guest had dropped behind Uranami when she did that, and Sendai had focused on the injured destroyer.
Following a radio exchange with the channel fortress, the formation compressed to approach a small door built into the wall. This door slid up, with barely enough displacement for the shipgirls to sail over it. Sendai turned to make sure their unknown follower was coming.
"What the?" She asked. When she said nothing, the destroyers turned to look.
"That- that's not fair!" Ayanami whined. For behind them, the strange shipgirl was perfectly pristine, armor shining like she'd never been attacked. Ayanami's damage control fairies had covered the holes in her legs with tarps and sealed them down to prevent spray from getting in, but she would still need repairs.
"Are we sure she wasn't replaced?" Sendai asked. A fight at the wall would be pretty bad, even if they won. And given that hundreds of aircraft hadn't put her down, she wasn't sure a time-on-target strike from all the railguns would deal with the shipgirl effectively.
"Pretty sure." Shikinami. "We had our radars on the entire time, so if she was replaced it would have had to be by a submarine with an identical radar profile surfacing right behind her and sinking her without us noticing. I think I'd notice that."
"Okay, okay." Sendai said. "Right. So she can apparently repair herself. And no one saw how she did it. Right. Let's dock and get some rest."
After traveling through half a dozen walls, over the minefield, and through the defensive perimeter of Yokosuka Naval Base itself, the group was greeted by Nagato, standing on the dock. A few human sentries were also stationed at the dock.
"Welcome back." She said.
"We're home." Sendai said, and patting Ayanami to indicate to her that she should go up on dry land first. Uranami, Shikinami, and Isonami all followed. Sendai waited for their guest, but the shipgirl was sitting perfectly still on the water behind her. Sighing, Sendai pulled herself up the steep stairs to the water and stepping off onto the pier itself.
Then the shipgirl sailed up to the stairs and climbed up.
Except she fell down two steps up, making a splash as she landed right on her back, her wings only making that worse.
"This is the mysterious shipgirl that you found?" Nagato said.
"Yeah…" Sendai said. "Not sure what's up with her." Nagato raised an eyebrow, asking her to continue. "She didn't talk at all, and while she can-" There was another splash as the shipgirl fell down again, "-understand us she really doesn't seem to… actually care that much."
Nagato hmmmed in response, and they watched the shipgirl attempt to climb up again, this time slipping forward and banging her wings against the stone of the pier, scratching the stone but looking intact herself.
"Wait a moment, we'll get you help." Sendai said. The shipgirl stood back up, but otherwise remained perfectly still after that. Nagato stepped forward, but Shikinami put a hand up to block her.
"She's close to 600 meters long. You're going to rip your arm out of your socket like that." Shikinami said. Shipgirls with their riggings deployed acted like women wearing fancy metal outfits when interacting with most things. The exceptions to that were other ships, including other shipgirls.
"Katō, Nobutaro." Nagato said, unwilling to lower her rigging around the unknown shipgirl unless she had to, "Help her up, would you?" The two sentries stepped towards the stairs and held out their arms for the shipgirl.
"Come on." Sendai said, when the shipgirl didn't respond. The shipgirl kept her unnaturally stationary stance.
"Move it." Sendai half-yelled, gesturing broadly, and the shipgirl moved. This time, with the help of the sentries, she made it up. She took a step forward....
And promptly started tipping forward, onto Sendai. Thinking quickly, the cruiser dismissed her rigging and caught the shipgirl, who promptly recovered.
"Does she know how to walk?" Nagato asked.
Sendai blinked. "That makes too much sense."
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Forty minutes later, Sendai was waiting outside one of the examination rooms, on the other side of the hall from her guest. The trip had taken three times as long as it should have because of the shipgirl's lack of walking skill. She'd already missed revellie, but a shipgirl had to be watching their guest, so Sendai had volunteered. This meant that she, as well as Navy Police Shoji and Ijuin were stuck waiting for the medical staff to show up. Her stomach growled, but hopefully she'd still be able to get something from the cafeteria.
"Hello, hopefully you weren't waiting too long." Akashi said as she rounded the corner, followed by Dr. Kure and a few nurses and apprentice shipwrights.
"It's fine." Sendai said, though the other shipgirl said nothing. Dr. Kure let out a little "hmpf" at the assumed snub. The medical team moved past them, opened the door, and headed inside to the chittering of drydock fairies.
Sendai followed, and then sighed when she realized the shipgirl wasn't following her.
"Come on, move!" She yelled back, and the shipgirl started walking. "Stand there." Sendai pointed to the center of the room, surrounded by fairy-scale lifts and scaffolds. The shipgirl made it halfway before tripping over a taped-down cable. Akashi, Dr. Kure, and Sendai all tried to catch her. Sendai had her rigging down, and was fine, but Akashi had hers up and went flying from the impact.
The shipgirl calmly stood up again, and continued walking to the center of the scaffolding. Kure huffed indignantly.
"I don't think she can talk." Sendai said.
"I'm okay!" Akashi said, then stood up and shook her head. "Alright, uh,..." She turned to Sendai. "What's her name?"
"Dunno." Sendai said. "She doesn't talk. Let's just call her 'Silent Blue' for now."
"She can't talk?" Akashi said. "Really?"
"I don't know about 'can't,' but she doesn't talk." Sendai said.
"Hmmm." Akashi pondered. "Hey!" She shouted at 'Silent Blue.' "You need to turn around."
After a moment in which she did nothing, Sendai marched up and started trying to manhandle the other shipgirl, but with her rigging off she massed maybe 55 kilos while the larger shipgirl had probably 170 with her rigging deployed.
"Come. On." Sendai said. "You need to move-" And promptly nearly lost her balance as the shipgirl started moving with her. She walked the shipgirl back, then turned her around once she was far enough back her wings wouldn't knock over the tall columns of scaffolding. Then she backed her into position and slipped out all sneaky-like between the scaffolds.
"Now stand there and wait until they're done." Sendai added.
"Alright, Silent Blue? Strange shipgirl?" Akashi asked. "I'm going to begin the checkup now."
There was no response. Akashi stepped over to the scaffolding, and hatches on her rigging opened, disgorging a small army of fairies. In addition, more faires swarmed from the toolkits lying around the room, and the dockyard fairies joined Akashi's fairies in investigating the shipgirl. Akashi pulled a tape measure out of her rigging pockets, placed it on the ground behind the ship, and grabbed a lift filled with fairies. The fairies grabbed the ribbon of the tape, and Akashi held the case down as the lift ascended.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kure grabbed her stethoscope and put it on before stepping up to the shipgirl's bow and placing the head on different parts of the girl's chest.
In the meantime, the lift of fairies hand reached the top of the shipgirl.
"That can't be right." Akashi said.
"What?" One of the shiprights asked, right next to her with a clipboard.
"This says she's 578 meters length overall." Akashi said.
"Wait, what?" "No way."
"That sounds about right." Sendai interrupted the exclamations of impossibility. "Her radar shadow was that big."
Akashi sighed, then motioned for the fairies to bring the lift down. "She's 578 length overall. Perpendiculars are… she doesn't have any." She put the blocky tape measure back in its pocket, then pulled out a sewing tape measure.
"I'm not hearing any turbine noises." Dr. Kure said, as Akashi started wrapping the tape measure around the shipgirl's waist.
"Goddammit." Akashi said.
"Couldn't her turbines just not be running?" Sendai asked.
"No." One of the nurses said. "That's called death. A shipgirl's turbines are her heart. If you were to listen to your own heartbeat it would sound like turbines."
"I can't hear anything, actually." Kure sighed.
"I'll take a listen in a moment." Akashi said. "Beam of 105."
"Fairly wide." Kure said, still trying with the stethscope.
"Overall height of 150." Akashi said, then adjusted the tape measure. Then she frowned and adjusted it again.
"More weird things?" Kure asked.
"Yeah, I'm trying to find her draft and I can't." Akashi muttered, and then frowned. She was broken by a fairy contingent on the scaffold chirping at her. "Go ahead." She said, and held out her arm. The fairies vanished under her sleeves, then returned, carrying saws and cutting torches. As they started back up the scaffold, Sendai got up from where she was leaning against the wall and walked over.
"What are you doing?" Kure asked Sendai, who was looking at the fairy team climb back onto the wingtip.
"Hey, pretty sure that's one of her missile hatches." Sendai said to the fairies. "You probably don't want to force that one open."
There was a few moments of silence, before everyone turned to the cruiser and stared at her.
"Why didn't you mention that!?"
"Was I supposed to? Normally it's the patient who's doing the talking." Sendai shrugged. Then blinked. "Oh right."
"Yes." Akashi glared at the cruiser. "So, what else do you know?"
"Top speed of 31 knots, four AA missile launchers, durable enough to take getting wailed on by flagship-grade bombers for about 20 minutes, capable of self-repair somehow, we didn't see how. I think that's it."
There was another moment of silence.
Then incoherent screaming.
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