Wait. Let me get this straight. Some poor sod has to run up and down the length of the entire submarine every 15 shots, holding live explosives in a maneuvering vessel? Whilst under fire a solid half of the time?
I wonder how a JRPG x Kantai Collection crossover would work? Like Hyperdimension Neptune because of random bit silliness or Final Fantasy for power leveling.
Wait. Let me get this straight. Some poor sod has to run up and down the length of the entire submarine every 15 shots, holding live explosives in a maneuvering vessel? Whilst under fire a solid half of the time?
Nope, they open a hatch to the forward torpedo room and lower the torpedoes one at a time and then stow them in racks on rollers in the torpedo room. That's when they're in port or tied alongside a submarine tender. They use the crews to roll the torpedo into the tube to load them for firing.
Nope, they open a hatch to the forward torpedo room and lower the torpedoes one at a time and then stow them in racks on rollers in the torpedo room. That's when they're in port or tied alongside a submarine tender. They use the crews to roll the torpedo into the tube to load them for firing.
To add to that, a submarine that engages anything bigger than an unarmed merchantman while being surfaced is basically dead since IIRC even bigger AA guns should be enough to seriously damage their hull.
And the 25mm Type 96 AA gun was a kinda bad AA gun, being based on a licensed French Interwar AA gun. The Japanese did try to reverse engineer the 40mm Bofors during the war, but I think by the time they had working prototypes their industry was already bombed into rubble so they never were able mass produced them.
The Battleship Iowa is streaming today with special guest Mario Mares, who from his destroyer covered USS New Jersey and USS Missouri during the 1980s! Join us at 3PM Pacific time at November Echo Papa Mike!
Wait. Let me get this straight. Some poor sod has to run up and down the length of the entire submarine every 15 shots, holding live explosives in a maneuvering vessel? Whilst under fire a solid half of the time?
I wonder how a JRPG x Kantai Collection crossover would work? Like Hyperdimension Neptune because of random bit silliness or Final Fantasy for power leveling.
Either the shipgirls BTFO everything in their way, or they find that they've been statted to a level in balance with the rest of the characters in the game, and now have to level up the same as everyone.
That's if you're going for a story where video game mechanics are central. If you're asking about a JRPG's setting/story getting a crossover with KC, then it should probably be treated like any other crossover.
Nope, they open a hatch to the forward torpedo room and lower the torpedoes one at a time and then stow them in racks on rollers in the torpedo room. That's when they're in port or tied alongside a submarine tender. They use the crews to roll the torpedo into the tube to load them for firing.
For our refined tastes, maybe, but it was normal for the time. Wikipedia for example gives the Gato class the same test depth. Also, test depth is not the same as crush depth.
It's a transport submarine, the torpedoes are there for the crew's morale and weird coincidences like suddenly appearing battleships and the like. Any reload torpedoes would mean less cargo, which was the reason for the sub's existence.
Plus pretty much all modern crew-served autocannons are still loaded by hand, although it's not so bad with guns like the American Bushmaster 25mm and Bushmaster II 30mm guns, since those are chainguns and are belt-fed, so you have a lot more than 15 rounds in the mag.
On the other hand you could be the RARDEN and have a 6-round clip. Yes, the RARDEN fires from a stripper clip. Otoh nobody in their right mind (save MoD's penny pinchers, perhaps) expects it to be an AA gun.
So, Some of Chapter 2 of Don't Feed Her. I've made some edits to Chapter 1, which is going at a spoiler at the top.
Don't Feed Her Chapter 1: The Silent Shipgirl
November 6, 2043
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 half-sleep 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 full-power 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. Their ability to hear each other at those distances, while documented, was thoroughly unknown.
"Right!" The destroyers chorused.
Sendai steamed 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, 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 a blue-grey bodysuit, with a slitted breastplate over her chest. 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 SAM 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. Still, this was fast enough that only light cruisers and destroyers could catch up with them now.
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.
"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 stray 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."
-----------
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. Tonight, that was Nagato.
And while they were slowed down, the coastal defense railguns would 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.
As they pulled up, Nagato and the sentries flashed spotlights at each of them.
"Hello, Patrol Nineteen." Nagato spoke up, her voice carrying across the water.
"Hello, Nagato!" Sendai shouted, waving her arm.
"Didn't you say that your guest was injured?" Nagato said. Sendai cocked her head, then turned around. Behind them, the strange shipgirl was perfectly pristine, armor shining like she'd never been attacked.
"Yes, yes I did." Sendai said quietly.
"That- that's not fair!" Ayanami whined. Ayanami's damage control fairies had removed the bomb fragments and covered the holes in her legs to prevent spray from getting in, but she would still need repairs.
"Are we sure she wasn't replaced?" Nagato 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, it was going to take a time-on-target strike from multiple railguns to put her down.
"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."
"Welcome back," Nagato said, nodding at the sentries. A section of the wall slid up, revealing a steep set of stairs.
"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 stepped off onto the wall 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 it bigger.
Nagato turned to Sendai and raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah…" Sendai said. "Not sure what's up with her." Nagato tilted her head slightly, 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."
-----------
An hour later, Sendai was waiting outside one of the examination rooms in the docks, 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. Or ability to handle stairs. 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 soon.
The Kantai Musume Medical Center, or "the docks," looked like an oversized Shinto shrine. The central building was huge, and the treasury, which contained the materials needed to summon, repair, and rearm shipgirls, was bigger than any warehouse in Tokyo pre-Abysstorm. Four identical outbuildings surrounded the main building. They were smaller than the main building but still about the size of battleship turrets. They had to be, to summon battleships. But aside from the sheer size of the complex, it was an ordinary Shinto shrine.
Well, aside from the machine shops, scaffolding in the examination and summoning rooms, and rolling toolboxes everywhere. The lighting was harsh halogen bulbs behind paper lanterns. The sliding doors had their paper support by metal trusses like dockyard cranes. Also, Shintoism suggested flooring materials besides concrete, but shipgirls liked concrete. They were born in concrete wombs, with scaffolding as their placentas. Concrete meant thousands tons of materials could moved about by heavy equipment. Concrete meant heavy industry to make and work with steel.
"Hello, hopefully you weren't waiting too long." Akashi said as she rounded the corner, followed by the shinshoku, Dr. Kure and a few nurses, mechanics, and priestesses.
"Please pardon our tardiness in meeting you." The doctor, priestess, and shipwright said with a bow. "I am Doctor Kure, head doctor here at Yokosuka and head priest of this temple." She addressed to the silent shipgirl.
"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. The moment Blue was in place, tiny high-intensity lights in the scaffold clicked on, throwing tons of light on her hull.
"Now stand there and wait until they're done." Sendai added.
"Alright, Silent Blue? Strange shipgirl?" Akashi asked. "I'm going to begin the stray sheet 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 pulled a lift filled with fairies over. 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.
"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 or generator noises." Dr. Kure said, as Akashi started wrapping the tape measure around the shipgirl's waist.
"Goddammit." Akashi said.
"Couldn't her generators just not be running?" Sendai asked.
"No." One of the nurses said. "That's called death."
"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 stethoscope.
"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.
-----------------
Chapter 2: The Noisy Naval Base
Admiral Goto looked at the "stray sheet." It listed the newly found girl's lengths, beam, draft, overall height, displacement, and other characteristics in a standardized form, along with armaments, sensors, control scheme and other important points to check.. Normally, that was.
For starters, the hull information was incomplete, with displacement listed as "300,000+," the draft value being scratched out and rewritten a few times before "20m" was put down, and perpendiculars being struck through. The armaments listing was woefully incomplete, with "4x AA missiles (type unknown)" and "10x large something (VLS??? we have no idea)."
The page on the interior was overwritten with a few extremely large characters, reading "hatches regenerate." Operational history only had two kanji: "brief" and "apocalyptic." Goto frowned and took a sip of his tea. If the priestesses only managed to get that…. The rest of the report was similar, with sloppy, incomplete, or outright missing sections. Clearly there was only option.
"Kongou?" He asked.
"Yes, Ad-mir-al?" She responded.
"Can you go to the docks and get an explanation for this?" He said, sliding over the paper.
"Oh, a stray shipgirl? Certainly!" Kongou bounced up from her seat and practically ran out the door before Goto could thank her.
Kongou stopped at the torii between the administrative building and the docks, pausing for a moment to look at the stray's sheet. A downright gigantic missile cruiser, apparently. And…. Kongou checked the "personal notes" of the sheet, only to find it screaming its silence. Even Fletchers had notes there when they got taken in as strays. Combined with the spotty notes elsewhere, Kongou definitely wanted an explanation for that.
--------------
Her laptop tucked under her arm, Sendai led Blue into the mess hall. It was almost 0800, and she wanted to complete her AA report and get some rest. The destroyers were probably all asleep by now. Ayanami had been dozing in the bath under the ministrations of the dockyard's fairies when Sendai had checked.
Sendai asked the kitchen staff for a battleship portion for Blue, and grabbed a light cruiser tray for herself. When the massive portion of food arrived for Blue, however, the massive ship simply stood there as she always did.
"Hey, grab that and come on." Sendai said, gesturing impatiently with her head. She was starving. Blue didn't move. "Pardon me a moment." Sendai said to the staff, then checked for carriers. With it apparently clear, she walked over to a nearby table, set down her tray and laptop, double-checked for carriers. This time, she noticed Shoukaku sitting down on the other side of the room. When she moved back to Blue, she kept an eye on the carrier.
"Blue." Sendai was pretty sure that the shipgirl didn't actually acknowledge the name. "Take your food and follow me." The shipgirl turned to Sendai at that.
"The tray of food. Supplies." Sendai said, pointing. "You need to eat."
There was a moment of silence, and then Sendai had a horrible realization. Her responses.... follow....
"Resupply." She said. The shipgirl did nothing. The guards following Blue looked at her curiously. "Load." At this the shipgirl picked up the tray, then turned back to Sendai, who blanched.
Sendai walked back to the table, barely noting that her food was still there. "Unload." She point to the surface of the table. Blue leaned over to put down her tray. And promptly nearly fell over. Sendai was getting quite good at catching her when that happened.
Still, she groaned and waved off the stares from the other shipgirls, as Blue righted herself. And how was she going to get her to sit down?
---------------
"Hey, Sendai, wake up." Jintsuu nudged her sister, currently laying on the floor of the cruiser lounge. "Uh, please wake up." She'd come back after her own patrol to find the lounge abandoned. Probably because of the new Kanmusu standing there like a statue. And probably slightly more creepy, especially with her eyes completely covered by a solid metal visor.
"Muuhhhhh...." Sendai sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Good morning, big sis. Morning Blue." She turned to the newly-dubbed 'Blue.'
"It's afternoon." Jintsuu said. "Ah, since you're awake, Goto wants to see you."
Sendai narrowed her eyes at that. "Well played." Then she backflipped onto her feet. "He say why?"
"No, just that it was fairly important." Jintsuu frowned. "By the way, what's she doing here?" She pointed to Blue, who hadn't even twitched.
"I'm keeping an eye on her because she's an unidentified stray. 'Silent Blue' is actually the name we picked out for her." Sendai shrugged. "I suspect that our Admiral wants to talk to me about her. If you really want to know more, I suppose you could eavesdrop."
"Ah, no, that's fine." Jintsuu said, nervously.
"Suit yourself." Sendai shrugged. "Come on Blue, follow me to the Admiral's office." At that Blue finally moved, taking precise, efficient strides toward them. What followed was a few minutes of walking through corridors, catching a lot of glances from everyone around them. Sendai told Blue to wait outside the office.
"Hello." Nagato greeted as they stepped into the office. "Jintsuu, do you have business with the Admiral?"
"No." She said quietly.
"Then I'll have to ask you to wait outside." Nagato said, sliding a chair over to Sendai. "We're going to be discussing some sensitive topics that'd we rather not have spread all over the base."
"Right." Jintsuu said, before exiting.
"Have a seat, Sendai." Goto said, crossing his hands in front of his face. "As the person who knows 'Silent Blue' best, I would like your opinion on the best course of action for her."
"We cannot send her back to her original fleet." Sendai said. "Not a chance."
"And why would you say that?" Nagato asked. "If it was found we were keeping another nation's shipgirl against her will, the backlash would destroy us. Those trade deals are critical for our industry."
"First off, I don't think she even has a will of her own. She's only been responding to specific command words, and she didn't know how to walk, eat, or even sit down. It took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to get her eat. I don't know what kind of treatment of the crew would produce a shipgirl like her, but I don't think any humane conditions could."
The admiral and the battleship took a moment to exchange glances. Then another couple more just for good measure.
"I see." Goto said. "Well then, there's no point in sending out an incomplete stray sheet. Besides, a transfer might be too risky. You don't think she looks Korean, Russian, or Chinese, do you?"
Sendai frowned. "With half her face covered I couldn't tell you anything."
"But surely you've met enough of their shipgirls that if she was, you would be able to tell?"
Sendai blinked. Ah. "No, I don't think she's from any of our closest allies."
"Good. With the difficulty of a transfer to a more distant nation, and the incomplete stray sheet, we shouldn't bother to inform anyone of her." Nagato said. "So now that we have that settled, do you believe she is combat ready?"
"Actually, probably not." Sendai said, tilting her chair back. "Even assuming that her wings are... operational, she doesn't have the… situational awareness? No, more like the… will to stand up in combat. But I think we may have to throw her into combat if nothing changes."
"Perhaps. We shall see." Nagato said.
"On to more ordinary matters," The Admiral said, grabbing a sheet of paper. "Due to DesDiv 19 being understrength for tonight, you will be patrolling with Sakawa and DesDiv 21. Starting tomorrow night, you and DesDiv 19 will be conducting reconnaissance in the area that you found Blue. Understood?" He held out the paper.
"Yes, Sir!" Sendai said, leaning forward in her chair to take the paper.
--------------
"-perhaps - Hello, Sendai." Shiratsuyu said, as Sendai entered drydock room three. The air smelled heavily of sea salt and rust, from all the repair formulas that were used there. The hum of pumps and vacuums issued from the tiny equipment around Shiratsuyu, who was being attended to by dozens of drydock priestess fairies. Most her hull along her left arm was gone, along with the hydraulics underneath. Her radial and ulnar beams were intact, at least.
A dozen or so coverall-and-hard-hat-wearing fairies were erecting scaffolding at the edge of the berth to work on her arm, while the miko fairies carried hoses around the damage, zealously attacking even the slightest speck of rust or dirt. A dozen more were cleaning the rest of her hull with tiny pressure washers and rags.
"Hello Ayanami, Shiratsuyu. How you doing?" Sendai replied.
"Aside from the holes in my legs, alright." Ayanami said. "How's our guest? Did you find out anything?" She was sitting on slightly curved wood blocks at the bottom of a destroyer-sized tub, with dozens of drydock fairies in the scaffolding that had been erected around her thighs. Given that her replacement turrets hadn't arrived Sendai guessed that her 0120 release time was unfortunately still accurate.
"She's… ah, as well as she was this morning." Sendai said. "And the only things we learned are things we'd rather not have learned."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Shiratsuyu asked, starting to pull herself up. This provoked serious chittering from the fairies attending her.
"Just be normal around her." Sendai said, giving Shiratsuyu a comforting wave. "Talk to her, ask questions even if she doesn't respond. Just… get her used to what we call, normal, alright?"
"Okay!" Shiratsuyu said.
--------------
"Alright, girls, our patrol tonight will have a special guest. I'm sure you all remember her from the last time we hosted her." Sakawa said.
"Ah. Her." Hatsuharu said. "We are not pleased with this."
"Sendai is a fine companion." Hastushimo said. "She get a bit enthusiastic, but she's hardly reckless."
"Hello there!" Sendai entered the conversation by barreling around the corner, feet skidding and arms waving. She couldn't slow down enough and hit the wall, before pushing herself and turning to the group. "Sorry about being late! Thank you for letting me sortie with you!" She said with a fast bow.
Sakawa resisted the urge to mention that the only reason she didn't refuse the request was because being known as "the reason the Night Battle Idiot spent the night on base" was very, very bad.
"Thank you for joining our patrol." She responded neutrally. "We're already late because of you-" Being late for a night patrol because of Sendai was not something she would have ever called, "-so let's get started."
They walked down the pier, returning the salutes of the sentries, and then hopped into the water.
"Alright! Flagship of Patrol-21, Sakawa, moving out!" The cruiser cried.
"Launching." Wakaba simply said.
"Hatsuharu, sallying."
"Time for a sortie!" Nenohi cried.
"Hatsushimo, braced for patrol!"
"Sendai, ready for YASEN!" The Night Battle Idiot cried as she followed the normal roster.
They passed through Uraga Fortress, then headed southeast along the coast. The first hour was peaceful enough, with them only calling in a potential that a nest could manifest at in the next few weeks. Aside from that, their hulls cut through the fog without concern.
"Sakawa." Hatsuharu spoke up suddenly. "We see something. Cruiser or larger, moving to intercept us from bearing 1-7-2. Five minutes to firing range."
"Call it in." Sakawa ordered. "We're maintaining course and speed until firing distance."
Two minutes later, Sendai spoke up. "Two contacts, bearing 3-0, three minutes to melee intercept. One cruiser, one destroyer. They must have been waiting underwater." Sakawa muttered something under her breath.
"Accelerate to combat speed. We'll take out the forward contact and then swing around to engage the other two." She ordered, even as she accelerated. She probed the forward contact with her radar, but couldn't get a clear shape. "Sendai, please I.D. our pursurers."
Several moments later, Sendai spoke up. "One Tsu-type, probably the flagship, one Ro-type."
"We'll be in firing range in ten seconds!" Sakawa shouted. "Get ready!" And then the forward radar shadow shattered.
"Six Ro's!" Hatsushimo reported. "Flagship third from left!" It was easily identifiable by its human-looking body.
Were these flagships in contact, prepared for us? Sakawa asked herself. It had to be. A shell whizzed past past her ear before exploding in the water behind her.
"Sendai! Hatsushimo! Nenohi! Take out that flagship Ro! Hatsuharu, Wakaba, with me!" She shouted.
She turned to port and opened up with her cannons at the Tsu. Hatsuharu and Wakaba added bracketing fire, trying to box in the cruiser to stop it dodging. And that might have worked on a non-flagship, but this one was smart enough to just bull through the lighter shells and take the scratches rather than the gouges.
Meanwhile, to her side, Sendai's shadow overlapped Sakawa's as she went to flank speed, a full 45 knots of excited cruiser charging towards the destroyer flagship. One of the other destroyers, a child-sized whale made of pure suffering, kicked in its own turbines and tried to intercept Sendai.
Sendai met the beast with a grin, her arms pushing down on the top of its jaw. There was the flash of a shell explosion from behind its teeth, and then Sendai used it as a jumping platform. The couple thousand tons of hatred was crushed under the fifteen thousand tons of cruiser, keel snapped and hull torn open as Sendai leapt over the torpedo salvo the flagship had fired. The pale figure's mouth gaped for a moment, before the flagship opened up with her guns.
Bits of Sendai's armor flaked away under the impact, but Sendai started firing the moment her hull touched the water again, and the destroyer was losing the duel. Sendai charged in at 105% motor output, then she pulled a torpedo from her wrist magazine, grabbed the facsimile of a child by the cord coming from its stomach, and buried the Mark 47 in her enemy's bridge.
When she switched on her radar again, she only saw two other destroyers around. "Ah… thanks for covering my flanks." She said sheepishly.
"Not a problem!" Nenohi, 300 meters off her starboard, said.
"Yeah, let's go help our friends." Sendai said.
Five minutes, hundreds of shells, and 23 Mark 47 torpedoes later, the Tsu-type flagship finally ghosted out of existence, its radar shadow fading away as it sank again.
"Everyone all right?" Sakawa asked as they finished.
"We're a bit cooked." Sendai gestured at herself and Nenohi, who had a couple of burn marks on her leg. "But we shouldn't need to take a break to run proper DamCon."
"Alright, let's go find that nest." Sakawa said. "First possible location is about twenty kay from our current location, bearing 8-8." With a bearing established, the formation was established and headed out.
Meanwhile, several pink-haired, orange-dress-wearing fairies climbed out of Sendai to begin the exterior parts of damage control. Nenohi's burns were already being swarmed by pink-haired fairies in white uniforms. A EOD-suited fairy poked her head out of one of Sendai's hull breaches before tossing an unexploded shell into the water. Meanwhile, her other breaches were being covered with cotton-and-steel bandages that were epoxied to her hull.
It took only a few minutes for the two injured shipgirls to patch themselves up, and a minute after that for them to reach the first possible nest location. Which was empty.
Another delay, and a second possible nest location was eliminated. Midway between the fourth and fifth possible locations, something showed up on their radar. Large, fairly flattish, and definitely Abyssal.
"I think that might be it." Sakawa said. "Hatsuharu, can you ping your sonar? Check for the underwater section of the nest?"
"We can do that." The destroyer said, and moment later they all heard the echo on their own passive sonars. "It appears to be two smaller nests partly merged together. No wonder those flagships cooperated to attack us. Also, three Yo-type submarines are present. We do not believe any of them is a flagship."
"Good." Sakawa said. "Everyone get depth charges ready. We're going to throw them at a line 50 meters ahead of us." The patrol members reached into their pockets and pulled out a few metal capsules the size of peach pits.
"And right about…" Sakawa said. "Strike~!" The tiny depths charges went flying. A couple seconds later, and the charges splashed into the water, sinking to the depth of the enemy subs before exploding. Two the subs burst open from nearby explosions, but the third made it through.
It streaked under Sakawa, who made a "pyaa!" noise, heading for Sendai at the back of the formation. Sendai tried to strafe out of the way, but the beast was determined enough to catch her ankle. There was a shriek, whether from Sendai's skin or lungs no one cared.
Sendai was back upright in a moment, but the sub was pulling her down. Water splashed over. The cruiser flailed for an instant.
"Torpedoes!" Hatsuharu shouted calmly, launching two of her own at the Abyssal. The sub howled, a gastly, disturbing noise that grated on everyone's ears.
Then Sendai suddenly looked down, grabbed the almost-empty depth charge rack that her fairies had shoved out her pocket, and dropped it in the sub's mouth. A second later, the sub burst, spraying Sendai with gore.
"You okay?" Hatsushimo asked, approaching her.
"Yeah I -" Sendai said, wincing as she tried to return to formation.
"Hold it!" Sakawa shouted. "Don't move until your DamCon has checked over your leg. If it hurts, that means don't use it."
"Fine...." Sendai grumbled, before sticking her hand into her pocket again and pulling out two larger cylinders. "Here, ta-"
"Do not throw your nestbusters!" Sakawa screamed. "Pyaa, why do they even entrust those to you? I am going to come over there and you will hand them off to me. Explosives are not toys."
After collecting Sendai's nestbusters, Sakawa retrieved her own and steamed up to the nest. After orbiting it to locate the mouths, Sakawa blasted one mouth open, tossed in one of the bombs, then repeated that around the black, lumpy structure.
Once the last bomb was tossed, she turned on her heel and steamed away at flank speed, getting her clear of the pressure wave.
"Alright, thoroughly gone." She said, after the explosives went off. "Now, how bad is it, Sendai?"
Sendai shiftily looked off to the side. But from the way she was holding that leg out of the water, that told Sakawa all she needed to know.
"Is it just holing, or did you suffer drivetrain damage?"
"Eh… two of my props are just gone, and some of the shaft bearings are wrecked. My shaft itself is fine, at least." Sendai said, always ashamed to be crippled like that.
"Gotcha." Sakawa said. "I'll call in for a medivac as soon as the fog clears up a bit."
Five minutes later, the fog was only faint tendrils on the surface, and Sakawa radioed back to Yokosuka for Sendai's pickup.
-----------
Kongou narrowed her eyes at the shipgirl sitting across from her. She didn't mind doing Sendai a favor and watching Blue - no, she did, she just wasn't going to hold it against Sendai. But the silence was just awkward.
"So, Blue." Kongou said, setting aside her laptop for a moment. The dozens of forms she still had to fill out could handle less than her full attention. "Tell me about your admiral."
"Man or woman?" She asked politely, tapping away at her keyboard. She gave Blue a few moments to answer.
"Hmm." Kongou said, as if Blue had responded. "So, what were they like? Were they bold, daring, efficient, calm?"
Blue hadn't answered. But the silent lull that had settled over the room had been lifted, and Kongou kept chattering away as she worked.
" and Goto may be a bit cuter, but he's nowhere as aggressive as even Mikawa. It has been nearly three years since the Bering Strait was last open, and while two months ago we could have committed enough forces the Russians wouldn't…"
"...and they expect me to sign off on this? What were they thinking? This is the…"
"There is one more thing on the docket, and it is… Sendai's AA report? Did she get back already?" Kongou opened the email.
[Hi Kongou!
Sorry about this, but I won't be able to take back Blue when I thought. I'll be in drydock until 1415. If you can't watch her until then, please tell me who you've handed her off to. Getting her to eat is tricky, so I've attached a quick writeup on that.
Sincerely and thank you
Shipgirl Second Class, Light Cruiser Sendai, JMSDF]
Attached were a few files: the AA report itself, a record of Sendai's drydock time, requisition for the replacement hydraulics she had gotten installed before being turned over to the fairies, and the writeup on how to handle Blue.
"Hey Blue, why don't we visit Sendai in the docks?" Kongou asked. "Not right now though, I know Sendai and like most shipgirls she falls asleep in drydock. She probably made a mistake somewhere in the paperwork somewhere." Then she opened the files and took a look at them.
---------------------
Sendai growled as the character on her laptop missed the ledge, falling off the bottom of the screen. "GAME OVER" appeared as the rest of the screen turned black.
She mashed the key to restart, then hesitated. If she kept this up, drowsy from the docks and with one arm surrounded by scaffolding, she'd do something she'd regret, like applying all 150,000 of her horsepower to the laptop, or breaking the scaffolding around her body. With a sigh, she closed the game, turned off the laptop, closed it, and settled down in the bath for some sleep.
When she woke up, it was to fairies removing the scaffolding around her. She yawned, stretched, and then reached down to remove the scaffolding around the rest of her body.
"Standing up." She warned the remaining fairies, who quickly clung to her skin to avoid falling to the concrete floor of the bath. Now on her feet, she removed the wooden blocks that supported her during the repair and placed them to the side, which the fairies had left clear for that reason.
Then she grabbed her clothes and got dressed, carefully tucking her dress around the mounts for her torpedo turrets. She stopped for a moment to examine her shoes. All the props had been repaired, thankfully. The arrangement of the props, the sculpting of the treads, the tip of the toes, reflected a full-hull that was never designed and might not even work. But with it, Sendai could run down even the fastest Abyssal destroyers, or flee from anything that could threaten a destroyer division using only her diesel generators.
After slipping into her shoes and wrapping her scarf around her, there was one last thing for Sendai to do, and she actually required some help for this. Three headset-wearing fairies poked their heads out from her scarf, and she handed them the pieces of her radar suite to replace correctly.
"Here you go." She said, as the sensor fairies went to work. Her targeting radar was clipped over her left eye, her surface search radar tied off some of her hair on the left, and her air search radar mirrored that on her right. Once finished, the fairies vanished into her hair.
She turned to the collection of dockyard fairies and gave them a bow. "Light Cruiser Sendai, fully armed and operational! Thank you all." With that, the final step in the repair process began with the sound of a hazard klaxon, and then the drydock flooded with seawater. Sendai stepped off the water onto solid ground, just as the door opened.
"Oh." Kongou said. "This is a disappointment, it is. We hoping to be able to surprise you." Behind her Blue stood quietly.
"Thank you for coming over anyway." Sendai said, grabbing her laptop. "I take you managed to eat already? I'm going to go replenish, if you want to join me."
-----
So, thoughts? Comments? Questions? Things that make you want to smack me?
Edit: Also, borrowed the human Ro design from dan-heron here.
Working on something with one but it's more about a Wo, her Re Buddy and a CV Oni and CV Hime as gotta go up the chain of command to get see if the Wo's worthy to become a Flagship. A sortie after that and proof that the Wo may not be onto something...
Of course the war's devolved into a stalemate. Borders might move a little bit and some random ass islands might flip between the sides but it's mostly become static. Humans got most of their major shipping lines back. And with how many decades it's been. Humanity is tired.
But they don't know it's true. The raids keep coming but never the great offensives that pushed the Abyssals back those years ago.
The Wo, Flames of Dusk, hasn't known a world before the siege started and it's not even known if any of those original Abyssals who started the war even live anymore. Some may know of them but never were the ones to pull the trigger to start the war.
It's honestly a really melancholy story which I'm struggling through as I'm an awful writer and pushing beyond my Complexity limits from before.
Couple of recs i wanted to make here, and apologies if they were made already and I didn't notice
First is on SB
Into The Abyss (Kancolle) INTO THE ABYSS
First is a story about a Reincarnated would be ShipGirl, drawing the attention of a group of abyssals... it shows interesting view of abyssal POV and got a adorfiyying (adorable-horrible) scene of abyssal side of 'cute girl doing cute thing'.
Second is on AOOO, though also crossposted to SB and FFN
Crossover with 'Kimi no na wa'. Kimi no Na Iowa - Chapter 1 - WarpObscura - 君の名は。| Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name. [Archive of Our Own] Kimi no Na Iowa
AU/Continuation, unavoidable spoilers. The story didn't end when the two finally got together. When dark forces emerge from the depths to threaten mankind, one will learn that she is more than who or what she thought she was. For when it was said, years ago, that one might encounter something not quite human at twilight, all present might be forgiven for not considering that the entity in question might be oneself. OC x natural born Pacific!Iowa
good story, that goes a bit AU from the KanColle games, through a more thorough exploration of the supernatural, rather then just the origin of ShipGirls and Abyssals, and breaks the stereotype of Iowa rather well. Also accompanied with music parts and commissioned images in the SB and AOOO versions.
I think a Kantai Collection x Fate Grand Order crossover would go over well depending on what angle your going over. For example for a slice of life one would have the MC summoning one of the younger looking ships like destroyers in modified ritual to see what would they get and how would they interact with the other Servants. Or you can have summon something much stronger like a battleship to fight assist the Servants to see how would they stack up compare to them.
I wonder how a JRPG x Kantai Collection crossover would work? Like Hyperdimension Neptune because of random bit silliness or Final Fantasy for power leveling.
Second is on AOOO, though also crossposted to SB and FFN
Crossover with 'Kimi no na wa'. Kimi no Na Iowa - Chapter 1 - WarpObscura - 君の名は。| Kimi no Na wa. | Your Name. [Archive of Our Own] Kimi no Na Iowa
AU/Continuation, unavoidable spoilers. The story didn't end when the two finally got together. When dark forces emerge from the depths to threaten mankind, one will learn that she is more than who or what she thought she was. For when it was said, years ago, that one might encounter something not quite human at twilight, all present might be forgiven for not considering that the entity in question might be oneself. OC x natural born Pacific!Iowa
good story, that goes a bit AU from the KanColle games, through a more thorough exploration of the supernatural, rather then just the origin of ShipGirls and Abyssals, and breaks the stereotype of Iowa rather well. Also accompanied with music parts and commissioned images in the SB and AOOO versions.
Blargle.... Okay, more of DFH. I'm not happy with the conference scene and I have no idea how to do the next scenes. But...
Here:
Sendai frowned as she sat down at the table. Kongou had sat next to her. And on the other side, Blue sat, her wingspan preventing anyone else from sitting on that side. Sendai had grabbed a heavy cruiser tray, because she was starving after her sortie and then her repair.
Neither Kongou nor Blue had any food, though, since they had already eaten. As Sendai dug in, Kongou asked a question.
"Are you planning to take Blue off the base soon?"
"Mm-nnn" Sendai shook her head, and then swallowed the chunks of tofu in her mouth. "I'm on recon duty until we take out that group of carriers. And then after that, we'll have the post-operation resummoning and reupgrade mess. So I'll probably not be free until mid-December." She shrugged, then turned to Blue. "Hopefully by then you'll have figured out how dismiss your rigging."
"And speak, too." Kongou added. "Though going around with your rigging out isn't that big a deal."
"Actually, I kinda like going out like a normal human girl. There's this arcade I found where there's a bunch of girls from different schools hanging out, so walking in towing a shipgirl would definitely blow my cover."
"What about your name?" Kongou asked.
Sendai gave her a flat look. "Kongou, I've met seven other Sendais there in the past year. And five of them have younger sisters called Naka and Jinstuu. I've also met twelve Kongous, thirty-one Nagatos, and fifty-eight Yamatos."
Kongou blinked a couple times. "Really?"
"Yes, not kidding." Sendai said. "You have no idea how popular IJN ship names have been since the Abysstorm. I've met maybe two dozen girls who don't have ship names. It used to be four dozen, but then I found out about Shinano."
"Wow, I've been out of touch with the population lately." Kongou said. "I guess it's my celebrity status?"
"If you're worried about Imperialists, none of the kids I've met show any signs of that." Sendai said, after scarfing down another few mouthfuls of curry. "Of course, maybe that's because the most public advocate of that stance got a car thrown at him by Nagato."
"Wait, when was this?"
"Unyou, remember?" Sendai said. "About… sixteen years ago?"
"Oh, that." Kongou sighed.
"Yeah…" Sendai muttered. Then she perked up. "So, there's this new cabinet that showed up a couple years ago. It's an American game, but apparently it took a while to localize. It's doing some thing kinda like an MMO, where there's a storyline advanced by everyone playing it. We actually ran out of story six months ago, even though it isn't finished. And we can't get the next part of the story because, well, Bering Strait."
"Hmmm." Kongou said.
"So…" Sendai kept talking.
------------------
On November 7th, 2043, at 1430 in the afternoon, the Admiralty Board of the JMSDF's Shipgirl Corps started a teleconference. It had actually been quite some time since they'd last needed to discuss anything in real time, with much of what they were handling ordinary matters that only required the attention of the relevant fleet's Admiral.
"Hey, Foobs, Kumo." Himura Goto greeted his two fellow Admirals.
"Hey, brat." Fubuki said with a grin..
"Hey, fish-idiot." Murakumo said. "So, what's so important that we have to discuss this now?"
"On the morning of November 6th, Patrol group 19 returned with a stray."
"Another Fletcher?" Fubuki asked. "I'm sure she'll get along fine with her sisters here."
"No, not another Fletcher." Himura said. "We don't know what kind of ship she is, what fleet she was a part of, or which nation she's from. She doesn't talk, and according Sendai she didn't know how to walk or eat when she got summoned. We don't know what means for how the crew was treated when she was an actual ship, but it doesn't say anything promising."
"Ah." "Huh."
"Anyway, we don't have a complete stray sheet, and we haven't sent it out to any other nations. Captain Nagato and I agreed that we shouldn't send out the sheet, so that way whoever did own her can't request we send her back. A bit of political misdirection for her protection."
"Fish-idiot, I know you mean well, but if she's American and they find out we're screwed without their research treaty and the line of credit they're extending to us." Murakumo sighed. "You know that, right?"
"Can you give us the incomplete stray sheet?" Fubuki asked.
"Certainly." Himura said, tapping at his keyboard. A few moments later, the admirals of the 2nd and 3rd fleets got an email.
Murakumo got about halfway down the first page before she stopped.
"Fish-idiot, you really are an idiot." She said.
"What?" Fubuki said.
"Regenerative hull? Do you honestly think that anyone has that?"
"Look, she's right." Fubuki said. "No one puts new technology on full-hulls anymore - just look at our deployment of the FCS-8. And this was a self-summon, so we know this is her original systems loadout.
"Now, the three groups that could have developed that are the United States, Russia, or the Continental Alliance." Fubuki geld up three fingers. "We have regular enough contact with the Russians based in Vladivostok that we know they haven't put something like that on their shipgirls." She pushed back on her index finger.
"While we've been out of contact with the Americans since the Strait closed," Now she pushed back on both her middle and index fingers, "We know they were focusing most of their efforts towards developing shipgirl-mounted railguns. Even if they developed it, deployment to full-hull ships wouldn't have started. It took them three years to remodel all their Fletchers to IFEP, and that was a remodel that didn't involve any hull replacement. There's no way they've refit their entire fleet by now.
"Finally," Fubuki said, "there's the Continental Alliance. They've been mainly working on super-aircraft to carry the war effort, since their remodeling cycle is so slow."
"Are you saying she's from the future or something?" Himura asked.
"Possibly." Fubuki said. "There's just not enough information to judge."
"Yeah, I'm going to say she's from the future." Murakumo said. "If they're fitting this regeneration system to the hatches of all things, that's a sign it isn't experimental. And no one we know with missile technology would think that stuffing a 600-meter hull with missiles is a good use of resources. I don't know what kind of combat paradigm she runs on, but it's not one I've ever seen."
Fubuki said. "Given the listed issues with identifying this 'Silent Blue,' as well as the possibility that any claims to her may be fake, we agree with you decision to not send out the stray sheet. Is that all?"
"No." Goto said. "Sendai raised the possibility that we may need to put this shipgirl into combat to get her 'functional' again. Which, given her lack of free will or speech, means we cannot simply give her the rank of Shipgirl Third Class and be done with it."
"Can't we just treat her like the Fletchers?"
"Technically, they're borrowed personnel from the Americans. And since we probably can't get in touch with her superiors, setting that up isn't possible. Our best bet is to say she's a civilian contractor. Given she's not talking right now, she can't exactly spill the beans. And once she starts talking we can work out a permanent solution." Fubuki said. "It's kind of skeevy, but if she isn't making progress I can't see another way."
"Actually, are we sure she's a combat ship?" Murakumo said. "We don't know those pods are missiles like we've been assuming. She could be a transport or oiler."
"She's got that big trident and more SAMs than modern cruisers. Not to mention the armor in her rigging." Fubuki said. "Even if she's not intended to kill enemy ships- which I doubt - she is clearly at home in a battlefield. If Sendai says to sortie her, then sortie her."
What the hell Japan.
