Welp, here we go again.
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"Jaaaaa!" The Captain screeched, plunging the point of her blade into the exposed neck of the Abyss-spawn, oily black blood coating her uniform as she kicked the screaming creature's body back towards its compatriots. "Jaja ja, ja jaaa!"
One either branch of the junction around her, Armsmen faced off against a seemingly endless horde of hunchbacked crustaceoids within the narrow confines of the corridors. The occasional pistol-shot cracked above the furious din as the melee raged on, axes and boots smashing against the bony carapaces of the ponderous Drones as the Crew swarmed their much larger foes, shrill screams and squeaked battlecries intermingling with the bestial roars of the enemy.
"Jaaa!" Spotting one of the Drones about to finish off one of her Armsmen, the Captain leaped over the prone Fairy and tackled the foul thing out of the way just as an obsidian pincer began to close around the downed Fairy's neck, latching onto the face of the Drone as the stunned creature reeled. The extra weight pulling it off balance, the Drone gargled in surprise as it lurched away from the Armsman before a glimmering blade sank into its unprotected eye, the Captain pulling her sabre free from the wound with a spray of dark viscera.
With a final groan the Drone toppled over with a rattling crash, the corpse already beginning to dissolve into a black mist as the Captain wiped off her stained blade on one of her sleeves.
Looking over the ongoing melee, the Captain nodded to herself in satisfaction. The specifics of it still eluded her, but the unexplained "cleansing" effect the Captain's presence had on their surroundings was going strong as usual; patches of rot coating the metal walls of the corridor continued to wither away into more of that black mist as the Drones fell one by one, the steadily weakening beasts surrounded and brought down one by scores of angry Fairies with great prejudice.
The spell was broken, however, by the scuttling of spindly legs against steel; as yet another of the foul beasts blundered into the battleground through the open bulkheads on the far ends of the corridors, a bellowing warcry erupting from the Drone's throat as it squeezed its bulk through the northern portal. As long as those hatches remained open their foes would be an inexorable tide, the Captain feared, endless waves of Drones boiling forth into the corridors until they all were dragged kicking and screaming under a sea of black chitin.
Those gates needed to be sealed, to hell with the casualties!
Picking out the familiar welding mask of Engine from the press of bodies lining the walls, the Captain bellowed a warning and waved her blade in the direction of the open hatchways. Engine's eyes widened at the sight of a fresh Drone squeezing in and she snapped off a quick salute, rapping the Armsmen around her on their heads with her wrench and bodily dragging the disorganised Fairies into crude ranks.
"Ja ja, ja!" Engine hollered, flashing the Captain a thumbs-up as the lines of fighting men formed up and began to press back against the tide, a battle-rhythm of stamping boots and grunts of effort forming at the heart of the little army with two-man teams of Armsmen shoving the teeming mass of Drones back down the passageways with lowered shoulders, Abyssal carapace crunching underfoot as Fairies armed with sharpened lengths of pipe skewered exposed mouths and eyes from the back.
"Jajaja, jaja ja!" Crewmen darted to the side at the command as the Captain squeezed through to the fore, blade whirling as the massed Fairies drove deep into the heart of the abominations. Picking out a scarred Drone looming over the cowering form of one of her straggling Crew, the Captain bellowed a challenge at the foul creature and charged, rolling under the giant pincer-arm swinging towards her face and dragging her sabre across the Drone's exposed armpit, the gleaming edge of her blade splitting open accursed metal-flesh as she opened up the sinews of the screaming monstrosity.
Right arm dangling limply in its socket as oily blood gushed down its sides, the Drone roared in frustration and animal fury at the offending Fairy that had wounded it so, its brutish frame clanging against the narrow walls as it struggled to turn around in the tight confines. Without missing a beat, the Armsmen at the fore drew their hefty fire axes and hacked away at the creature's exposed back, axe-heads and solid butt-strikes sending cracks running down the Drone's shell that seeking pipe-spears immediately dug into with relish.
As one, the Armsmen gave the soon-to-be coprse a strong kick and began clambering past the dissolving carcass, the Captain plopping the peaked cap in her hands back onto its rightful position as the three of them seized the rusty bulkhead and began the arduous task of muscling it back into position, the three Fairies huffing with exhaustion as they fought the rusted hinges for every bitter inch.
Spears clanged against carapace overhead as an almighty blow slammed against the other side of the bulkhead, a Drone's pincer-arm scrabbling against the rim of the hatch as it attempted to fight its way in. Before any of them could react, barbed claw-tips sank into the shoulder of the Armsman and pulled, the hapless Crew's legs kicking frantically as she was dragged kicking and screaming through the opening.
"JAAAA!" the Captain roared as the bulkhead slammed shut with a final metallic screech, the clanks of the hatchway's locks drowning out the doomed Armsman's cries. Staggering back from the bloodsoaked bulkhead that had cost them so many lives to reach, the sabre in hands fell to the floor with a clatter as the Captain sank to her knees, exhausted Crew mimicking their leader as the lot of them simply collapsed wherever they stood.
Hard-earned victory but a victory nonetheless, but as the sounds of battle raged on from the other corridors none of them had the heart to cheer.
And as her head rested against the cold steel of the sealed door, the Captain saw a glimpse of the future: miles and miles of tainted halls birthing monsters from their very walls, her precious Crew grinding themselves into dust as they chiselled further and further into the depths of the corrupted hulk in search of...
...of what, again? She couldn't even remember.
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Author's Note: This started off as a very old Self-Insert idea in the vein of Lord K and borrows inspiration from "Captain on Deck" over on Spacebattles, in the SI inserts as only a single "soul" (the Captain) instead of a full ship.
(Un)luckily for them, there's a whole bunch of "blank" hulls running around on the high seas with no ship-spirits of their own, being simulacra of ships formed wholesale out of concentrated grudges and no overarching will. The "mook" Abyssals, Abyss-spawned parodies of proper hulls that in a twisted parody of MSSB, actually sort of count as ships.
Boarding action, ho! (Does it even count as a boarding action if you're already onboard?)
Half throwing out an old idea before it withers on the vine and half battle-scene practice, I don't really have a concrete plan for where this snip's headed to. Leaning towards the nascent shipgirl having to "earn" the right to exist, and perhaps a look into the mind of one of many nameless Abyssals and its (lack of) reasons to fight.
One fights for Humanity, but has never even seen the Humanity they're fighting for. The other fights against it, but can't even think of why.
"What do you fight for?" The two sides of the same coin ask each other, and there can only be one answer.
ADDENDUM: Pardon the chuunibyou antics. I did mention this was an incredibly.old idea.
ADD2: Doesn't even need to be an SI anymore to be honest, could write up a whole story about one of the many "paper ship" kanmusu clawing her way in through the veil.
ADD3: Fairy dialogue is absolute cake to write, if you don't mind looking like an uneducated hack. Or more of one, in my case. Screw coming up with snappy lines, just Desu/Ja/Hey/Oi/Da your way to victory!