This chapter turned very well and was well understood, unlike the confusing parts-though those drew great interest to see the completed version. Great job. the pictures were fun.
Kimi no Na Iowa, the zeroth draft (Kantai Collection/Kimi no Na Wa AU/Continuation) [Rehost]
- Thread starter WarpObscura
- Start date
- Crossover
Reality deviant - Starstruck
Finally got an OMAKE done, it was surprisingly hard to come up with a good idea, and what i did end up with, was short, very short. Still, I hope you will find some enjoyment in it. this is an attempt to show one way the Aura of Awe that ShipGirls have, could lead an unprepared man astray-as Grandma Ichiyo warned at the end of the chapter.
Starstruck
"Hey Shinji, you seem particularly happy today, nothing like your usual melancholy. What gives?"
I'm going to ask Asuka to be my girlfriend today! "
"Well, at first I thought that the devil will only bring doom and misfortune on ya, but now I see that she got ya under a dark spell, the witch!"
"Touji!" Shinji admonished his friend, "I wish you would stop talking like that about Asuka! That the two of you would get along…"
"Sorry, sorry. I'll stop needling you on yer sweetheart. I am happy for ya, ya know? You really seem happy with her around-you actually smile sometimes nowadays, and not just the polite smile either! Nothing like the gloomy kid that enlisted back then!"
"Yes, she does make my days more interesting." Shinji sighed, and then smiled shyly, wistfully recalling. "But these days are also happier."
Just as his friend was about to reply, a shrill voice interrupted. "Private Suzuhara, Private Ikari, Go to your posts, we are about to start the summoning!"
A double call of 'yes, ma'am!' and scramble to their posts followed.
The ritual was success, and a ShipGirl appeared, answering the call of Japan.
"Hey, Shinji, keep staring like that and Asuka might get jealous-you can't seem to tear your eyes from the girl just summoned."
"It's not important. " Private Ikari Shinji replied dreamily, gaze locked on the majestic figure of beauty that just appeared from the waters, just like that western kami, Venus.
"Snap out of it, Shinji. Shinji!"
Starstruck
"Hey Shinji, you seem particularly happy today, nothing like your usual melancholy. What gives?"
I'm going to ask Asuka to be my girlfriend today! "
"Well, at first I thought that the devil will only bring doom and misfortune on ya, but now I see that she got ya under a dark spell, the witch!"
"Touji!" Shinji admonished his friend, "I wish you would stop talking like that about Asuka! That the two of you would get along…"
"Sorry, sorry. I'll stop needling you on yer sweetheart. I am happy for ya, ya know? You really seem happy with her around-you actually smile sometimes nowadays, and not just the polite smile either! Nothing like the gloomy kid that enlisted back then!"
"Yes, she does make my days more interesting." Shinji sighed, and then smiled shyly, wistfully recalling. "But these days are also happier."
Just as his friend was about to reply, a shrill voice interrupted. "Private Suzuhara, Private Ikari, Go to your posts, we are about to start the summoning!"
A double call of 'yes, ma'am!' and scramble to their posts followed.
The ritual was success, and a ShipGirl appeared, answering the call of Japan.
"Hey, Shinji, keep staring like that and Asuka might get jealous-you can't seem to tear your eyes from the girl just summoned."
"It's not important. " Private Ikari Shinji replied dreamily, gaze locked on the majestic figure of beauty that just appeared from the waters, just like that western kami, Venus.
"Snap out of it, Shinji. Shinji!"
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Why, thank you!
I wonder where Gendou is...
I wonder where Gendou is...
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
It's still the 4th of October in the US, right? We're not late for the 6th anniversary of the Tiamat impact, are we?
Cannot into Okudera; send help
Authors' Notes: We have made various communications with Rev Barrish of Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America for the purpose of accuracy to its rendition of the shinzen kekkon shiki, but there were areas we failed to get a clear answer regarding, and for obvious reasons we cannot directly ask him to look the chapter over himself. We have had to fill in the gaps with our own research and the assistance of Rev Bernkastel of Konkyoko Yokosuka Shrine. We apologise in advance to any ujiko of Tsubaki for any inaccuracies you may find.
===[===]===
CHAPTER 24
===[===]===
September 3 2023
===[==]===
"Ayaka!"
Cannot into Okudera; send help
Authors' Notes: We have made various communications with Rev Barrish of Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America for the purpose of accuracy to its rendition of the shinzen kekkon shiki, but there were areas we failed to get a clear answer regarding, and for obvious reasons we cannot directly ask him to look the chapter over himself. We have had to fill in the gaps with our own research and the assistance of Rev Bernkastel of Konkyoko Yokosuka Shrine. We apologise in advance to any ujiko of Tsubaki for any inaccuracies you may find.
===[===]===
CHAPTER 24
===[===]===
September 3 2023
===[==]===
"Ayaka!"
Ayaka perked up at the familiar voice. "Okudera-sempai!"
{your name. Original Soundtrack - Theme of Ms Okudera}
"Yes, Okudera, coming through!"
Brilliant brown locks and flawless fashion sense - that was very much her.
"Sorry I can't look at you properly right now," Ayaka said, surrounded as she was by step ladders on which women from the specialty boutique laboured with the utmost care to get her into her shiromuku.
"Makiko, you always bring me the most interesting clients!" The petite woman overseeing the effort of dressing Ayaka exclaimed, arms wide in emphasis. "I'm still in awe at the size of this lass!"
"Don't worry, Jill, this one's quite harmless," Makiko said, "not like her husband-to-be."
"Hey!"
There was no genuine heat in Ayaka's exclamation, though, and the two of them chuckled afterward.
Ayaka was surprised there was no internal sign of displeasure from the Ship at being called harmless. Had that to do with the misogi shuho in the Pilchuck River Gran had the Reverend put her and Uileag through earlier, despite the fact that there was already going to be a purification rite in the wedding ceremony?
"I've fitted out so many people for Tsubaki," Jill said, "but this is the first time I've fitted out a priestess, and one getting married at a shrine not her own, right on the other end of the country at that! Crazy, huh?"
"These are crazier times than normal, you know!" Trying to suppress a sudden nervousness, Ayaka immediately afterward caught Makiko's eye in the mirror and mouthed, "Does she know?"
Makiko shook her head.
Ayaka tried not to relax heavily enough as to disrupt the proceedings, CAPT Cecil's words from months ago ringing clearly in her head. There was no need to advertise what she was, and she had no intention to.
Not that the cat was likely to remain in the bag. much longer. Her unique circumstances meant she had plenty of normal guests coming to witness the proceedings at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, and while NAVENSCIWARCOM didn't deliberately advertise, neither did it suppress identities the way NAVSPECWARCOM did. Enough shipgirls had made a name for themselves that anyone with a working brain could probably put two and two together.
"Look how far you've come," Makiko said aloud. "It was just, what, 7 years ago that you were getting sticker shock from cafe prices, wasn't it?"
"Do you have to keep bringing that up too?" Ayaka said with weariness only partly attributable to the early hour she had been roused. "It's bad enough Kas and Shin do!"
"Of course! You then proceeded to mooch off Uileag!"
Ayaka sighed.
"I'm glad he's finally found happiness, though. You seem to be taking this well."
"He? Am I not supposed to?"
"A lot of people either succumb to nervousness or go full Bridezilla. Isn't that right, Jill?"
"Oh, yes! Quiet dignity of the shinzen kekkon shiki, hah! Some of these fellows wouldn't know quiet dignity if it groveled unreservedly before them!"
Ayaka winced sharply enough she feared the obi holding the nagajuban and kakeshita in place might be shaken loose. "A few months at the sharp end provides enough perspective to stuff Anton Ego. Getting jitters from this just seems so... petty."
"Hardly! This is a once in a lifetime event!" Jill's face darkened. "In an ideal world, it would be. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with being concerned for everything to go well."
"Ayaka's right, you know," Makiko said in interjection. "I might not have been near the targeted areas, and we might have gotten off lightly, but I still remember what happened back in April quite clearly. It reminds me of what Uileag had said."
"Of what Uiui said?" Ayaka had no idea what she was going on about all of a sudden, unless… "Is this about creating memorable landscapes?"
"As one never knows when New York-"
"-might disappear."
"Yes, exactly that. One of the key reasons why he wanted to go into architecture, he kept saying." A frown marred Makiko's face.
"Kas and Shin joked he wasn't going to get a job if he used that in an interview," Ayaka said through a thin smile.
"It doesn't sound so silly now."
"Oh, phooey. You Noo Yorkas have to wait for people to come down from… where was it? New Jersey?" Jill's spirits had evidently recovered. "I'm not worried; the abyssals will have to go through Everett to get at us!"
Ayaka's hackles rose at the carefree way the other woman said it, a rage entirely her own, and though she didn't say anything aloud, she bristled hard enough the member of Jill's staff putting on the wataboshi muttered at having to adjust it again.
She could see in her mind's eye Hammann or West Virginia storming up at flank and slapping a hoe.
"There we go, all done," Jill eventually said after what felt like far too long, even if Ayaka's internal chronometer knew better, and passed her off to a miko to be brought from the dressing room to the reception room to wait for everything else to be ready. The younger woman - and wasn't that a thought - walked far enough ahead that Ayaka and Makiko could converse.
"They were the first ones to see. They are the last ones to bleed."
"Oh, is that…?" Makiko murmured contemplatively. "I would have thought your comrades would be more into Sabaton."
"They're both subgenres of Nordic metal. It's just a stone's throw away."
"Be it as it may, what Jill said struck a nerve?"
Perceptive as always.
"Yes," Ayaka replied tightly. "I know I shouldn't get angry on my wedding day, but have you ever been shot?" A pang of guilt hit at the bewilderment making itself known on Makiko's face, but she pressed on nevertheless. "There may be no scars thanks to Enlightened healing, no phantom pains, but it's something I still think of on occasion." She rubbed backhandedly through the fabric at her back where the shells had slashed through on that first convoy escort operation, and when she spoke again, it was with the full solemnity due the dead. "Hundreds to thousands of fallen grace the memorial walls of Everett and Yokosuka, and though I know none of them, the pain of those who do is obvious. That we do our duty to the last if need be is not something to be taken for granted."
The image of a large black book that should no longer exist flashed in Ayaka's mind, then faded until the contents superimposed themselves on a vision of the Everett Memorial Wall ominously.
There was, for a few moments, silence but for their footfalls, time enough for Ayaka to appreciate that the shiromuku didn't trail on the ground the way the train of a Western-style wedding gown did.
"We shouldn't be talking about this sort of kegare-inviting thing just before my wedding," she eventually said.
"No, no! It's fine. There's no need to apologise. Jill has never been a very empathetic person as long as I've known her, and it's as good an excuse to speak to her about this as any." Makiko's lips quirked upwards suddenly. "It could be worse."
"Eh?"
"You haven't heard?" Makiko made a confused sound. "There's that one conspiracy theorist from somewhere in Ohio who thinks all this is a show by actresses or cosplayers. Akron, maybe?"
"What, is the next thing you're going to say that the Russians or Chinese sunk the fleets, but are still refraining from going nuclear?"
"Yes...?"
"Wack!"
"Yes, exactly." Makiko tsked. "We really need to sit down and talk sometime. It's been too long."
"I agree. Cometfall Week."
"October… 4th, was it?"
Ayaka nodded firmly. "A proper overseas honeymoon, not under these circumstances, no way, but CAPT Zelben was fine with giving us shore leave for the week leading up to Columbus Day so I could take the time to meet up. We'll be spending a few days at home before coming back. Or maybe you could join us on the 4th itself?"
"I don't want to intrude."
"Hardly! Dad and Gran aren't going to turn anyone away." Ayaka's tone turned wistful. "A generation too young to remember Imamura is coming of age; those old enough, we are steadily haemorrhaging."
"I'll see what I can do. Anything for the both of you."
"Thank you."
{your name. Original Soundtrack - Theme of Ms Okudera}
"Yes, Okudera, coming through!"
Brilliant brown locks and flawless fashion sense - that was very much her.
"Sorry I can't look at you properly right now," Ayaka said, surrounded as she was by step ladders on which women from the specialty boutique laboured with the utmost care to get her into her shiromuku.
"Makiko, you always bring me the most interesting clients!" The petite woman overseeing the effort of dressing Ayaka exclaimed, arms wide in emphasis. "I'm still in awe at the size of this lass!"
"Don't worry, Jill, this one's quite harmless," Makiko said, "not like her husband-to-be."
"Hey!"
There was no genuine heat in Ayaka's exclamation, though, and the two of them chuckled afterward.
Ayaka was surprised there was no internal sign of displeasure from the Ship at being called harmless. Had that to do with the misogi shuho in the Pilchuck River Gran had the Reverend put her and Uileag through earlier, despite the fact that there was already going to be a purification rite in the wedding ceremony?
"I've fitted out so many people for Tsubaki," Jill said, "but this is the first time I've fitted out a priestess, and one getting married at a shrine not her own, right on the other end of the country at that! Crazy, huh?"
"These are crazier times than normal, you know!" Trying to suppress a sudden nervousness, Ayaka immediately afterward caught Makiko's eye in the mirror and mouthed, "Does she know?"
Makiko shook her head.
Ayaka tried not to relax heavily enough as to disrupt the proceedings, CAPT Cecil's words from months ago ringing clearly in her head. There was no need to advertise what she was, and she had no intention to.
Not that the cat was likely to remain in the bag. much longer. Her unique circumstances meant she had plenty of normal guests coming to witness the proceedings at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, and while NAVENSCIWARCOM didn't deliberately advertise, neither did it suppress identities the way NAVSPECWARCOM did. Enough shipgirls had made a name for themselves that anyone with a working brain could probably put two and two together.
"Look how far you've come," Makiko said aloud. "It was just, what, 7 years ago that you were getting sticker shock from cafe prices, wasn't it?"
"Do you have to keep bringing that up too?" Ayaka said with weariness only partly attributable to the early hour she had been roused. "It's bad enough Kas and Shin do!"
"Of course! You then proceeded to mooch off Uileag!"
Ayaka sighed.
"I'm glad he's finally found happiness, though. You seem to be taking this well."
"He? Am I not supposed to?"
"A lot of people either succumb to nervousness or go full Bridezilla. Isn't that right, Jill?"
"Oh, yes! Quiet dignity of the shinzen kekkon shiki, hah! Some of these fellows wouldn't know quiet dignity if it groveled unreservedly before them!"
Ayaka winced sharply enough she feared the obi holding the nagajuban and kakeshita in place might be shaken loose. "A few months at the sharp end provides enough perspective to stuff Anton Ego. Getting jitters from this just seems so... petty."
"Hardly! This is a once in a lifetime event!" Jill's face darkened. "In an ideal world, it would be. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with being concerned for everything to go well."
"Ayaka's right, you know," Makiko said in interjection. "I might not have been near the targeted areas, and we might have gotten off lightly, but I still remember what happened back in April quite clearly. It reminds me of what Uileag had said."
"Of what Uiui said?" Ayaka had no idea what she was going on about all of a sudden, unless… "Is this about creating memorable landscapes?"
"As one never knows when New York-"
"-might disappear."
"Yes, exactly that. One of the key reasons why he wanted to go into architecture, he kept saying." A frown marred Makiko's face.
"Kas and Shin joked he wasn't going to get a job if he used that in an interview," Ayaka said through a thin smile.
"It doesn't sound so silly now."
"Oh, phooey. You Noo Yorkas have to wait for people to come down from… where was it? New Jersey?" Jill's spirits had evidently recovered. "I'm not worried; the abyssals will have to go through Everett to get at us!"
Ayaka's hackles rose at the carefree way the other woman said it, a rage entirely her own, and though she didn't say anything aloud, she bristled hard enough the member of Jill's staff putting on the wataboshi muttered at having to adjust it again.
She could see in her mind's eye Hammann or West Virginia storming up at flank and slapping a hoe.
"There we go, all done," Jill eventually said after what felt like far too long, even if Ayaka's internal chronometer knew better, and passed her off to a miko to be brought from the dressing room to the reception room to wait for everything else to be ready. The younger woman - and wasn't that a thought - walked far enough ahead that Ayaka and Makiko could converse.
"They were the first ones to see. They are the last ones to bleed."
"Oh, is that…?" Makiko murmured contemplatively. "I would have thought your comrades would be more into Sabaton."
"They're both subgenres of Nordic metal. It's just a stone's throw away."
"Be it as it may, what Jill said struck a nerve?"
Perceptive as always.
"Yes," Ayaka replied tightly. "I know I shouldn't get angry on my wedding day, but have you ever been shot?" A pang of guilt hit at the bewilderment making itself known on Makiko's face, but she pressed on nevertheless. "There may be no scars thanks to Enlightened healing, no phantom pains, but it's something I still think of on occasion." She rubbed backhandedly through the fabric at her back where the shells had slashed through on that first convoy escort operation, and when she spoke again, it was with the full solemnity due the dead. "Hundreds to thousands of fallen grace the memorial walls of Everett and Yokosuka, and though I know none of them, the pain of those who do is obvious. That we do our duty to the last if need be is not something to be taken for granted."
The image of a large black book that should no longer exist flashed in Ayaka's mind, then faded until the contents superimposed themselves on a vision of the Everett Memorial Wall ominously.
There was, for a few moments, silence but for their footfalls, time enough for Ayaka to appreciate that the shiromuku didn't trail on the ground the way the train of a Western-style wedding gown did.
"We shouldn't be talking about this sort of kegare-inviting thing just before my wedding," she eventually said.
"No, no! It's fine. There's no need to apologise. Jill has never been a very empathetic person as long as I've known her, and it's as good an excuse to speak to her about this as any." Makiko's lips quirked upwards suddenly. "It could be worse."
"Eh?"
"You haven't heard?" Makiko made a confused sound. "There's that one conspiracy theorist from somewhere in Ohio who thinks all this is a show by actresses or cosplayers. Akron, maybe?"
"What, is the next thing you're going to say that the Russians or Chinese sunk the fleets, but are still refraining from going nuclear?"
"Yes...?"
"Wack!"
"Yes, exactly." Makiko tsked. "We really need to sit down and talk sometime. It's been too long."
"I agree. Cometfall Week."
"October… 4th, was it?"
Ayaka nodded firmly. "A proper overseas honeymoon, not under these circumstances, no way, but CAPT Zelben was fine with giving us shore leave for the week leading up to Columbus Day so I could take the time to meet up. We'll be spending a few days at home before coming back. Or maybe you could join us on the 4th itself?"
"I don't want to intrude."
"Hardly! Dad and Gran aren't going to turn anyone away." Ayaka's tone turned wistful. "A generation too young to remember Imamura is coming of age; those old enough, we are steadily haemorrhaging."
"I'll see what I can do. Anything for the both of you."
"Thank you."
Last edited:
good snippet. a fun injection of Slice of life into the story.
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
"Looking cool, IoIo!"
The interloper was, of course, Missouri, standing outside the reception room where the nuptial couple were supposed to wait.
Ayaka heard Makiko take in a sharp, sudden breath from beside herself.
Wait, Missouri? "Mo, aren't you supposed to be in the haiden already with the rest of our family? All three of you?"
Wisconsin, clad in a modified version of the sailor's white and blue outfit right off her namesake's great seal, had the good grace to look sheepish.
Missouri, wearing a Hawaii-yellow furisode embroidered with various flora and fauna of that state, did not. "Space is just a suggestion! You know that very well! Red on white looks good on you, but I was hoping we would get a chance to walk the sanshin, all of us! You, me, JerJer, Wisky, your pops, your nana and little Mimi!"
Ayaka winced at the casual mutilation of Kagami's name.
"Why'd you have to choose one of the shrines that didn't?!"
At Tsubaki, unlike most other shrines, the first stage of the wedding - the sanshin or procession - was a very restrained affair, only the presiding kannushi and the nuptial couple being involved. Though the cloud of witnesses would still line the path to the haiden, the rest of the families were to be already seated and awaiting the couple's arrival.
"Tsubaki was the only real choice on the CONUS. You know very well going back home would've been too inconvenient for most of the others."
"Bah! I really, really wanted to walk the sanshin, check out the untapped prospective recruitment sources!" Missouri grinned. "Don't you agree, JerJer?"
"I am not Sonny," Jersey told Missouri with the slow, deliberate flatness of one caring for her namesake's nickname. The red and blue dress she was wearing, inlaid with designs that included a Jersey Devil, almost certainly breached the cardinal rule of not outshining the bride, not that Ayaka was bothered; she doubted any bothering would even give number 62 pause, as things stood. "I do not go a-recruiting from the guests on the day my sister is to be married."
"On the night then!" Missouri pointed double finger guns, still grinning.
"Wisky."
In response to Jersey's directive, Wisconsin mutely flicked Missouri on the forehead with a finger.
"Aw, why you gotta be a killjoy, JerJer?!" Belatedly, she noticed Makiko, turned to look at her. "You must be IoIo's friend! What was it, Miki Okura?"
"Makiko Okudera, and yes," Makiko replied, sounding atypically awestruck in a way that wasn't entirely attributable to the difference in stature.
"Ah, yes, yes! IoIo's mentioned you before!" Missouri patted her on the shoulder. "Is there anyone you know who could do with some spiffy new footwear? I'm sure JerJer's willing to provide!"
Jersey regarded her third sister with the deadeyed gravity of a don behind a fine mahogany desk or a dragon lazing on its hoard.
"No, no need." Makiko still sounded breathy.
"Aw, really?" Missouri was disappointed. "Pity!" She fished out a business card. "Look, here's our numbers. You meet anyone who needs some pumped up kicks, contact us! No charge for a friend of the family!"
Makiko accepted it graciously.
"We should go," Wisconsin said, softly but firmly.
"What, already? Let's skedaddle, then! Don't keep us waiting, IoIo!" She patted Makiko's shoulder again, slapped Ayaka on the back, grabbed the others and stepped sideways.
"That was something," Makiko said after a while, still sounding overawed.
"They certainly are something," Ayaka said, a touch more irritably than was probably proper.
"Your little sister is right, though. I should get going too."
Ayaka looked to her timekeeper. "Yes, you should probably get to queuing."
Makiko waved and went off, after which the miko - who had been standing transfixed by the proceedings - slid open the door to the room.
Ayaka heard Makiko take in a sharp, sudden breath from beside herself.
Wait, Missouri? "Mo, aren't you supposed to be in the haiden already with the rest of our family? All three of you?"
Wisconsin, clad in a modified version of the sailor's white and blue outfit right off her namesake's great seal, had the good grace to look sheepish.
Missouri, wearing a Hawaii-yellow furisode embroidered with various flora and fauna of that state, did not. "Space is just a suggestion! You know that very well! Red on white looks good on you, but I was hoping we would get a chance to walk the sanshin, all of us! You, me, JerJer, Wisky, your pops, your nana and little Mimi!"
Ayaka winced at the casual mutilation of Kagami's name.
"Why'd you have to choose one of the shrines that didn't?!"
At Tsubaki, unlike most other shrines, the first stage of the wedding - the sanshin or procession - was a very restrained affair, only the presiding kannushi and the nuptial couple being involved. Though the cloud of witnesses would still line the path to the haiden, the rest of the families were to be already seated and awaiting the couple's arrival.
"Tsubaki was the only real choice on the CONUS. You know very well going back home would've been too inconvenient for most of the others."
"Bah! I really, really wanted to walk the sanshin, check out the untapped prospective recruitment sources!" Missouri grinned. "Don't you agree, JerJer?"
"I am not Sonny," Jersey told Missouri with the slow, deliberate flatness of one caring for her namesake's nickname. The red and blue dress she was wearing, inlaid with designs that included a Jersey Devil, almost certainly breached the cardinal rule of not outshining the bride, not that Ayaka was bothered; she doubted any bothering would even give number 62 pause, as things stood. "I do not go a-recruiting from the guests on the day my sister is to be married."
"On the night then!" Missouri pointed double finger guns, still grinning.
"Wisky."
In response to Jersey's directive, Wisconsin mutely flicked Missouri on the forehead with a finger.
"Aw, why you gotta be a killjoy, JerJer?!" Belatedly, she noticed Makiko, turned to look at her. "You must be IoIo's friend! What was it, Miki Okura?"
"Makiko Okudera, and yes," Makiko replied, sounding atypically awestruck in a way that wasn't entirely attributable to the difference in stature.
"Ah, yes, yes! IoIo's mentioned you before!" Missouri patted her on the shoulder. "Is there anyone you know who could do with some spiffy new footwear? I'm sure JerJer's willing to provide!"
Jersey regarded her third sister with the deadeyed gravity of a don behind a fine mahogany desk or a dragon lazing on its hoard.
"No, no need." Makiko still sounded breathy.
"Aw, really?" Missouri was disappointed. "Pity!" She fished out a business card. "Look, here's our numbers. You meet anyone who needs some pumped up kicks, contact us! No charge for a friend of the family!"
Makiko accepted it graciously.
"We should go," Wisconsin said, softly but firmly.
"What, already? Let's skedaddle, then! Don't keep us waiting, IoIo!" She patted Makiko's shoulder again, slapped Ayaka on the back, grabbed the others and stepped sideways.
"That was something," Makiko said after a while, still sounding overawed.
"They certainly are something," Ayaka said, a touch more irritably than was probably proper.
"Your little sister is right, though. I should get going too."
Ayaka looked to her timekeeper. "Yes, you should probably get to queuing."
Makiko waved and went off, after which the miko - who had been standing transfixed by the proceedings - slid open the door to the room.
Last edited:
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Uileag was seated inside, and reflexively turned to face the door as he heard it open.
Unlike the Western-style wedding, in the shinzen kekkon shiki there was no requirement for the bride and groom to not see each other before the ceremony.
"Uiui."
Despite that, she inexplicably couldn't bring herself to take him in her arms as she seated herself next to him. Meanwhile, the miko who had led her here slid the door shut and found seating a considerate distance away.
"Ayachi." Uileag now had on a black kimono under a black haori and grey hakama. Like most non-Japanese, the Greers did not have a family crest to call their own, but he came in a rentable size, and the one he had on now bore the mitsudomoe. "Was that your sisters?"
"Un. Were they that lou-" Ayaka regarded the flimsy construction of the shouji in sudden realisation and brought a hand up to her face, sighing in exasperation.
"Are they going to be a problem?"
Ayaka took a long, hard look in the general direction Makiko had walked off in, mentally playing back the signs of how their mutual friend had been entranced. "It shouldn't. That the code explicitly prohibits Jodying says they shouldn't be into homewrecking."
"Codes get broken," Uileag said doubtfully.
"As a precaution, I also left the obvious potential troublemakers off the guest list."
"Oho, how very sly of you!" Any attempt at selling a sense of outrage was, however, foiled by his chuckles thereafter.
Ayaka tried to laugh, but it came out wooden.
"Ayachi?"
"I'm still surprised, even up to this late hour, that Gran and your father actually managed to agree on the style of our wedding. Some of the arguments they had were quite intense."
Quite intense. Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
What an understatement.
"Just think," Uileag said, "10 years ago, if you told me I'd be having my wedding in the Shinto style, I'd have called you crazy."
"Speaking of that, how much of this did your father know about all this beforehand? I only remember him being incredulous the first time it came up."
Uileag scoffed. "Dadi? Not much, I don't think. Roosevelt never got forward-deployed to Japan the way Reagan or Washington 70 did, and he didn't concern himself much with that segment. Still, it could have been worse."
"Eh? How so?"
"All this talk reminded me: I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but it's a good thing my maternal grandparents are already gone."
"Your… you hardly mention them," Ayaka said, surprised and a bit discomfited, as she dove into the sea of memories in search of answers.
"Not finding much?"
Ayaka looked askance at Uileag and his lightly amused tone.
"You wouldn't. They were dead even before you tried looking for me that first time, and I don't remember much of them, but I…" Uileag scratched the back of his neck nervously, "think they would have put their foot down even more firmly than Dadi did. That's from what little I do remember and what Mamai told me."
"Sou." Ayaka murmured quizzically. "I still wouldn't have guessed them to be like that, considering how your mom is."
"No? Being one of the middle children must have meant they didn't instill as much of their attitudes in her. As for Dadi's side, you know that much."
She did indeed. The even older Greer's true mistress had been the sea, with how that shaped his psyche having effects that were still reverberating two generations down the line, and age had caught up with him 3 years ago. As for the man's widow, Ayaka had had the opportunity to meet her before. The kindly old woman with a peculiar interest in New York's history had pressed a choco pie into her hands mere moments into their meeting and been most pleasantly surprised that the future in-law was a gaeilgeoir.
Ayaka hadn't been able to help noticing how the old townhouse the old woman stayed in, predating the 20th century, contrasted sharply with a skyscraping modern tower, barely 10 years old, that was visible in the distance from its backyard. The way the sun had backlit the latter only made it all the more eyecatching.
"That's not the only thing that has you concerned, is it?"
Count on Uileag to see what others might not. "Uun. Everything changes after this, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" Uileag asked. "Should I have you start calling me 'darling'?" His arm raised and lowered as he fought the urge to nudge Ayaka with an elbow.
{Isn't that too much like a limey… a~na~ta?}
{That's laying it on too thick!} Uileag replied with heartfelt surprise in Irish. The atypically honeyed tones of Japanese made it clear she was using the word with its affectionate connotations in mind, as opposed to in the general sense of "you". {Don't you think so, a rúnsearc?}
{That--that, he says, right before escalating straight to the nuclear option!} Any thought of outrage on Ayaka's part was flash-fried like dry kindling before thermite beneath her embarrassment. "Mo anam cara" might not, to someone intent on fullest fidelity to the ways of the Irish, be a per se means of conveying romantic endearment, but obliqueness was the Japanese stock in trade, as the old "beauty of the moon" saying and the cultural allergy to an unambiguous "aishiteru" demonstrated. "A rúnsearc" was already very forward as far as the Irish were concerned; to her, it was just too much!
Uileag let slip an impish smile.
{Who do I blame for this? Shin? Morrie? One of your coursemates?}
Uileag's smile faded. {Should it? Why should we magically - hah - change just because of having gone through the ceremony?}
Ayaka pressed her hands into her thighs, fighting the urge to gesticulate in a most unsightly manner in the presence of a stranger. {Too many bad sitcoms about couples going to seed in middle age aside… you know long-term cohabitation doesn't guarantee a successful marriage, suggesting there is something about going through the ceremony that has power.}
{I know.}
{Long hours on the sea, with everyone spaced out too far to be seen visually, give one too much time to think. Did you know that part of the mission of Kokugakuin's Faculty of Shinto Studies is deepening the understanding of awareness, roles and functions of traditional culture?}
{No? This, you hardly mention.}
Ayaka huffed in acknowledgment of the riposte. {It made for interesting discussion in light of how the Great Fire of Mayugoro forced us to stagger onward with limited knowledge of our practices' true purpose.}
Uileag nodded in grim agreement.
{Even so, one thing remains clear. Mo can say what she wants about rising divorce rates and falling time-to-divorce. Marriage as the union of man and woman before law, society and whichever kamisama you honour - or no higher power at all, indeed - is a grave undertaking, and while it has its benefits,} Ayaka wasn't sure if she suddenly licked her lips at this point out of nervousness, the anticipation of the currently-torpid Ship, or entirely on herself, {so too has it obligations and responsibilities to family and country, duties I fear I'm not worthy to carry out.}
An awkward look settled on Uileag's face. Mr Greer might not have taken fidelity to the old ways as far as his parents-in-law, but he had taken in enough. The possibility that Uileag might not be able to produce a male heir via Ayaka - the Shirokaze having birthed only daughters for at least the past seven generations and no one knowing if this would stop now that the threat of Fafnir was gone - had been a big hurdle to overcome. {That's what you're worried about now,} he eventually said. {Not the wedding itself.}
{Why should the wedding be the problem? You know I'm not the fastidious, micromanaging sort.}
Uileag tried to hide a chuckle.
{No, it's the decades after I'm worried about. The children. The shrine and the lineage. The way forward. Whatever extenuating circumstances they may have had, the fact is we haven't had good role models. You know that.}
{Yes, but us being us, it feels like just yesterday that you wanted to run away and never say goodbye. Are you getting cold feet because of this?}
{What? No!} Ayaka shouted.
{Could have fooled me.}
{It's not like I almost chi---chi---chickened out at the last minute after going to all the trouble of suddenly getting off the train and running around as if at random or anything!}
Uileag didn't bother hiding his laughter this time. {That's why you need me around to keep you from going off script.}
"Please excuse me." There was a sudden knocking at the door, and before the miko in the room managed to get it, the door slid open, the Reverend letting himself in. Bushy of hair and beard, dressed in the pristine accoutrements of his station, he moved with the grace of his decades of aikido practice over to the two of them. "Mr Greer, Rev Shirokaze." His eyes twinkled more intently with amusement at the prospect of seeing a junior be married off on his watch.
Ayaka and Uileag rose and returned his bow and warm smile. "Reverend."
"Shall we?"
(Authors' Notes: Yes, that is the grandmother from WWY, if the clues weren't enough.)
"Uiui."
Despite that, she inexplicably couldn't bring herself to take him in her arms as she seated herself next to him. Meanwhile, the miko who had led her here slid the door shut and found seating a considerate distance away.
"Ayachi." Uileag now had on a black kimono under a black haori and grey hakama. Like most non-Japanese, the Greers did not have a family crest to call their own, but he came in a rentable size, and the one he had on now bore the mitsudomoe. "Was that your sisters?"
"Un. Were they that lou-" Ayaka regarded the flimsy construction of the shouji in sudden realisation and brought a hand up to her face, sighing in exasperation.
"Are they going to be a problem?"
Ayaka took a long, hard look in the general direction Makiko had walked off in, mentally playing back the signs of how their mutual friend had been entranced. "It shouldn't. That the code explicitly prohibits Jodying says they shouldn't be into homewrecking."
"Codes get broken," Uileag said doubtfully.
"As a precaution, I also left the obvious potential troublemakers off the guest list."
"Oho, how very sly of you!" Any attempt at selling a sense of outrage was, however, foiled by his chuckles thereafter.
Ayaka tried to laugh, but it came out wooden.
"Ayachi?"
"I'm still surprised, even up to this late hour, that Gran and your father actually managed to agree on the style of our wedding. Some of the arguments they had were quite intense."
Quite intense. Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
What an understatement.
"Just think," Uileag said, "10 years ago, if you told me I'd be having my wedding in the Shinto style, I'd have called you crazy."
"Speaking of that, how much of this did your father know about all this beforehand? I only remember him being incredulous the first time it came up."
Uileag scoffed. "Dadi? Not much, I don't think. Roosevelt never got forward-deployed to Japan the way Reagan or Washington 70 did, and he didn't concern himself much with that segment. Still, it could have been worse."
"Eh? How so?"
"All this talk reminded me: I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but it's a good thing my maternal grandparents are already gone."
"Your… you hardly mention them," Ayaka said, surprised and a bit discomfited, as she dove into the sea of memories in search of answers.
"Not finding much?"
Ayaka looked askance at Uileag and his lightly amused tone.
"You wouldn't. They were dead even before you tried looking for me that first time, and I don't remember much of them, but I…" Uileag scratched the back of his neck nervously, "think they would have put their foot down even more firmly than Dadi did. That's from what little I do remember and what Mamai told me."
"Sou." Ayaka murmured quizzically. "I still wouldn't have guessed them to be like that, considering how your mom is."
"No? Being one of the middle children must have meant they didn't instill as much of their attitudes in her. As for Dadi's side, you know that much."
She did indeed. The even older Greer's true mistress had been the sea, with how that shaped his psyche having effects that were still reverberating two generations down the line, and age had caught up with him 3 years ago. As for the man's widow, Ayaka had had the opportunity to meet her before. The kindly old woman with a peculiar interest in New York's history had pressed a choco pie into her hands mere moments into their meeting and been most pleasantly surprised that the future in-law was a gaeilgeoir.
Ayaka hadn't been able to help noticing how the old townhouse the old woman stayed in, predating the 20th century, contrasted sharply with a skyscraping modern tower, barely 10 years old, that was visible in the distance from its backyard. The way the sun had backlit the latter only made it all the more eyecatching.
"That's not the only thing that has you concerned, is it?"
Count on Uileag to see what others might not. "Uun. Everything changes after this, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" Uileag asked. "Should I have you start calling me 'darling'?" His arm raised and lowered as he fought the urge to nudge Ayaka with an elbow.
{Isn't that too much like a limey… a~na~ta?}
{That's laying it on too thick!} Uileag replied with heartfelt surprise in Irish. The atypically honeyed tones of Japanese made it clear she was using the word with its affectionate connotations in mind, as opposed to in the general sense of "you". {Don't you think so, a rúnsearc?}
{That--that, he says, right before escalating straight to the nuclear option!} Any thought of outrage on Ayaka's part was flash-fried like dry kindling before thermite beneath her embarrassment. "Mo anam cara" might not, to someone intent on fullest fidelity to the ways of the Irish, be a per se means of conveying romantic endearment, but obliqueness was the Japanese stock in trade, as the old "beauty of the moon" saying and the cultural allergy to an unambiguous "aishiteru" demonstrated. "A rúnsearc" was already very forward as far as the Irish were concerned; to her, it was just too much!
Uileag let slip an impish smile.
{Who do I blame for this? Shin? Morrie? One of your coursemates?}
Uileag's smile faded. {Should it? Why should we magically - hah - change just because of having gone through the ceremony?}
Ayaka pressed her hands into her thighs, fighting the urge to gesticulate in a most unsightly manner in the presence of a stranger. {Too many bad sitcoms about couples going to seed in middle age aside… you know long-term cohabitation doesn't guarantee a successful marriage, suggesting there is something about going through the ceremony that has power.}
{I know.}
{Long hours on the sea, with everyone spaced out too far to be seen visually, give one too much time to think. Did you know that part of the mission of Kokugakuin's Faculty of Shinto Studies is deepening the understanding of awareness, roles and functions of traditional culture?}
{No? This, you hardly mention.}
Ayaka huffed in acknowledgment of the riposte. {It made for interesting discussion in light of how the Great Fire of Mayugoro forced us to stagger onward with limited knowledge of our practices' true purpose.}
Uileag nodded in grim agreement.
{Even so, one thing remains clear. Mo can say what she wants about rising divorce rates and falling time-to-divorce. Marriage as the union of man and woman before law, society and whichever kamisama you honour - or no higher power at all, indeed - is a grave undertaking, and while it has its benefits,} Ayaka wasn't sure if she suddenly licked her lips at this point out of nervousness, the anticipation of the currently-torpid Ship, or entirely on herself, {so too has it obligations and responsibilities to family and country, duties I fear I'm not worthy to carry out.}
An awkward look settled on Uileag's face. Mr Greer might not have taken fidelity to the old ways as far as his parents-in-law, but he had taken in enough. The possibility that Uileag might not be able to produce a male heir via Ayaka - the Shirokaze having birthed only daughters for at least the past seven generations and no one knowing if this would stop now that the threat of Fafnir was gone - had been a big hurdle to overcome. {That's what you're worried about now,} he eventually said. {Not the wedding itself.}
{Why should the wedding be the problem? You know I'm not the fastidious, micromanaging sort.}
Uileag tried to hide a chuckle.
{No, it's the decades after I'm worried about. The children. The shrine and the lineage. The way forward. Whatever extenuating circumstances they may have had, the fact is we haven't had good role models. You know that.}
{Yes, but us being us, it feels like just yesterday that you wanted to run away and never say goodbye. Are you getting cold feet because of this?}
{What? No!} Ayaka shouted.
{Could have fooled me.}
{It's not like I almost chi---chi---chickened out at the last minute after going to all the trouble of suddenly getting off the train and running around as if at random or anything!}
Uileag didn't bother hiding his laughter this time. {That's why you need me around to keep you from going off script.}
"Please excuse me." There was a sudden knocking at the door, and before the miko in the room managed to get it, the door slid open, the Reverend letting himself in. Bushy of hair and beard, dressed in the pristine accoutrements of his station, he moved with the grace of his decades of aikido practice over to the two of them. "Mr Greer, Rev Shirokaze." His eyes twinkled more intently with amusement at the prospect of seeing a junior be married off on his watch.
Ayaka and Uileag rose and returned his bow and warm smile. "Reverend."
"Shall we?"
(Authors' Notes: Yes, that is the grandmother from WWY, if the clues weren't enough.)
Last edited:
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
{Weathering with You Original Soundtrack - Celebration}
The participants in the sanshin proper might be limited, but the cloud of witnesses lining the path up to the shrine's main building, dressed in scintillating style, still seemed a seriously stupendous sight, and Ayaka couldn't help wishing for the umpteenth time she'd been more aggressive in trimming the guestlist.
Almost everyone Ayaka and Uileag had called classmate or teacher had made the trip and were in various states of exuberance. Elementary, middle, high school, university and Kokugakuin, none were spared. Hitomi, Morrie and Kas in particular were visibly over the moon; Shin had gone even further beyond and was openly weeping tears of joy even as he clapped unreservedly.
Ayaka's eyes passed over the three former main bullies, who were gawking openly and most unglamorously. Whether at the regal figure she and Uileag now cut in their wedding garments or something else, she didn't know, and it seemed almost unbelievable that she'd let them have such power over her before.
Much of the rest of Imamura followed. Despite Yoshimichi's efforts, Imamura had had over 200 years of tradition, itself built on over a thousand years of the greater Shirokaze history, and a mere four years of attempts at forced secularization was but a drop in the bucket. It might have succeeded in the time of the generation after Ayaka's, given her then-disinterest in matters clerical, but as things currently stood, the faith remained strong enough that many were eagerly celebrating the marriage of their guuji.
Uileag's former colleagues at Il Giardino delle Parole were next. Whatever enmity they had once was now a thing of the past; that the one to eventually win Makiko's hand had been none of them, despite the misunderstanding Ayaka had inadvertently caused before, probably helped.
Then came Uileag's OCS and CEC coursemates, many of whom had brought out their dress whites. Irascible Mike was unmistakable, no outwardly-visible sign to be seen of the gut wound that had come too close to claiming his life.
Despite the wellness of the three of his closest coursemates, Uileag couldn't help feeling a bit down at the sight of who was absent. Though he and the gaggle of constructionmen had saved many that terrible night, still more had either already been dead when found or succumbed to their wounds afterward, and far too many of the deceased had he known.
Ayaka's colleagues at her former workplace went down a line that terminated at Mr Jordan, who had busted out dress whites that were clearly cut for a younger, fitter self.
It connected perfectly with Gonzalez Team via CAPT Cecil standing next to her former comrade. Washington wearing her dress whites over something with more personality ironically said everything that needed to be said about her, while Alice was wearing a robin blue furisode with canary yellow obi as expected. What wasn't expected was Albacore deigning to show up in something that wasn't her usual itsy bitsy teenie weenie red white blue Old Glorykini.
The coursemates of the officer training course at JB MDL were now up, those that had the necessary space in their operational schedules at any rate.
Uatu, of course, perfect attendance, with CAPT Zelben in tow. Even Mina's mood could not be dampened by the burning omamori attached to her clothing.
RDML Abel, somehow looking less of a hardass than usual despite the medal-laden dress whites.
RADM Adams.
Ayaka had originally wanted to avoid making an event out of the whole thing, which was why there were no Congresscritters or avatars of SecNav present. It had been a struggle getting her to accept even her namesake's governor, not that she was chummy with him the way a Summoned might have been. She had wanted to cap out at RDML Abel.
A polite but firm insistence from the father of the groom on behalf of a flag officer whom he had enjoyed a long working relationship with? Now that was something she couldn't worm her way out of, deputy of the command or not.
This was really the first time she had ever seen him in the flesh, the second direct encounter after that videoconference the day after her Reawakening. Despite the many tales she'd heard of an angry old man with a laser-grade glare, he seemed possessed of a fatherly countenance here, and oddly enough maybe a little melancholy.
Across the Pacific went the guestlist. Hai Jun Shao Jiang Shao and the Special Purpose Naval Infantry Force shipgirls had profusely apologised for how their tiny numbers relative to their responsibilities made freeing up the time impossible, and had opted to be absent rather than dishonouring the proceedings by sending some nobody of a junior officer or minor functionary that neither party to the marriage would recognise.
Their Japanese counterparts had no such issues, and Kaishou-ho Minami had managed to spare a sizeable contingent from KanFlot One. Naganami's J-DesRon Two was here, as was the Fusous' J-BatDiv One. Nakahara and her sister looked stunning in elaborately-embroidered black and red furisode. The Two Dragons could not be spared from their duties, but a smattering of others who Ayaka had fought alongside had been sent instead. The two Ducks were present, as was Maya, who was chattering away with the other bokukan on En-secure channels.
Akagi and Kaga were, while not the only ones, easily the most prominent of Kaishou-ho Ishikawa's representatives, and not just because of their heights. They were resplendent in haori, kimono and hakama skirt combinations - mainly black and red for Akagi and white and blue for Kaga - that curiously resembled what had been worn by the spectres Ayaka had seen the first time she had laid eyes on them.
On and on the guests lined the path with its towering evergreens, still feeling greater a number than Ayaka had originally desired, until the procession finally entered the main shrine building. Not before passing a number of projector screens, though. The ceremony proper was only supposed to be attended in person by family, but to accommodate the interested parties to the pioneering event that this was - for better or worse - Ichiyo had persuaded her fellow senior shinshoku to allow a film crew to capture the proceedings live for the local audience. The furthest of them were already moving forward to be in sight of the screens even as the procession passed under the torii into the main building.
Both families were indeed already in the haiden. Uileag's was seated on the right and Ayaka's on the left in order of seniority.
Ichiyo was a picture of poise as she knelt in seiza serenely.
Yoshimichi was seated next to her, beaming with paternal pride, but looking at the sight, what first came to Ayaka's mind was who wasn't there.
When she was younger, she'd always been confused by her father's refusal to provide a straight answer on the topic of her paternal grandparents. It hadn't been until everything had been given a thorough airing in the post-Fafnir therapy that she'd learnt how he had been disowned for the temerity of daring to not go along with their marital plans for him, and had played no part in his life thereafter. Not in his wedding and married life.
Not in Mom's funeral.
Not now.
She wouldn't say she was angry; that implied she cared enough about they who were snubbing her to take offence at the absence. She was, however, disappointed and saddened that, despite taking the trouble to try and reach out to them, they weren't able to set aside the enmity for just one most important of days just because she was of the same blood as the one they were shunning.
For a moment, a thought flashed through Ayaka's mind that old grudges held against perceived traitors, and the hatred and loathing that powered such, could have a power and life of their own.
The other vital absence, Ayaka felt more keenly.
Her mother, she hadn't seen a second time in the five months since her Reawakening, and that it remained so even in the run-up to what should have been the happiest day of her life was a sour note. She didn't want to admit it, but there was a cruel bit of herself that would have preferred her mother never reappear at all, never give her hope, never rip open decade-old wounds she'd thought healed.
The four sisters were naturally the last on this side. Kagami hadn't gotten off Cloud Nine ever since she had grown into her substantial upgrades to height and cup size, desire to not be exactly as much of a giant beanstalk as her older sister notwithstanding, and that good cheer remained clearly on display. Missouri wasn't so enthused, not least about being at the back of the line, and Jersey and Wisconsin had had to pointedly remind her that even using time-since-launch wasn't going to get them past Ichiyo.
Uileag's grandmother was at the head of the other line, and as predicted she was cheerfully taking the alien ceremony in stride.
SCQM Greer was next, and there was a crack of a smile, but little more, which was well within expectations. His immaculate dress whites had nothing to match his older son's Navy Cross, but his far greater time in service gave him a visible breadth of achievement that soundly pipped Uileag's.
Mrs Greer was all kindly smiles. Ayaka wondered not for the first time how the two had managed to make the marriage work despite the clashing personalities and the stresses from his being out at sea at length.
Uileag's older sisters were next, and lastly Ciarán, who couldn't keep from his customary puckish grin despite the sobriety of the circumstances.
The Reverend led Ayaka and Uileag further into the haiden until they were before the goshinden, and bid them sit on the special seats slightly behind him before said altar. With everyone in place, the Reverend proceeded to the second part of the ceremony: The shubatsu. Stepping into the heiden, the elevated area for offerings and norito, he began praying the harae no kotoba, then stepped out to take up a haraigushi, which he waved it person-by-person over all who were present in the haiden.
Next was the saishu ippai. At a cue, couple and relatives rose and bowed deeply towards the goshinden.
The participants were bid to sit, and the Reverend took up the food offerings and carefully placed them before the goshinden in the process called kensen.
After this, the Reverend moved closer to the goshinden before pronouncing the norito soujou. In reverent tones, he beseeched the kamisama for good fortune, happiness, protection and guidance upon the couple.
Ayaka and Uileag rose now and were presented with well-appointed sakazuki ceremonial saucers, into which the miko poured omiki, the specially-purified sake. This was the san san kudo, where they were to take three sets of three sips each.
One, two, three.
Ichi, ni, san.
A haon, a dó, a trí.
The miko retrieved the sakazuki, and once that was done, the Reverend bid them advance until they were standing on the heiden.
All shrines had their own idiosyncrasies in their practices, but most of them still followed the same broad strokes. That said, the next step in the ceremony, the taking of the marital vows, was where one of the major splits was found. Some shrines practised the seishi hodoku, a stiff formal declaration using the same archaic Japanese as in norito said either by one half of the couple or both in turn before the kamisama dedicating the marriage to them and promising to take care of the partner. Others opted for the chikai no kotoba, which was more flexible, rendered in modern Japanese, and entailed a back-and-forth. Tsubaki fell into the latter camp, and let the couple write their own instead of prescribing.
Uileag pulled out the piece of paper on the oath had been written, held it up for Ayaka, and exchanged glances with her before he took a deep breath and begun in Japanese, speaking with careful gravity. The chikai no kotoba might not be as rigid as the seishi hodoku, but that was no excuse to not treat it with the gravitas it deserved. The vow as rendered in English had already been presented to the AV crew to subtitle for the benefit of those unequipped. {On this day, before Tsubaki Ookamitachi, we give thanks and ask for your blessing and protection.}
{Love will guide the way, our hearts bound by an eternal promise,} Ayaka continued.
{Blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.}
{We give our bodies, that two might be one.}
{We give our spirits, till our life be done.}
Behind them, Uileag's grandmother gasped in recognition. She might not have been as hardline as her late counterparts on Mr Greer's side of the family, but she was familiar enough with the old ways nonetheless.
{We give our smile, that our words be unspoken.}
{I give you that which is mine to give.}
{I shall serve you in the ways that you require.}
{May the honeycomb taste sweeter coming from my hand.}
{Our love shall be one of respect, trust, and confidence forever.}
{Wholly and completely without restraint.}
{In sickness and in health.}
{In plenty and in poverty.}
{In life and beyond.}
{I shall be a shield for your back as you are for mine.}
{I shall be your refuge and safe harbour.}
{I shall cry no name but yours into the night.}
{I shall see no eye but yours first in the day.}
{If you get lost, wherever you are in this world-}
{-I will search for you.}
{Our fates have been and will remain bound together.}
{We swear by peace and love to stand.}
{Heart to heart and hand to hand.}
{Mark, Tsubaki Ookamitachi, and hear us now.}
{Confirming this our Sacred Vow.}
Uileag carefully placed the paper with the vows down before the goshinden with the offerings and stepped backwards out of the heiden, and now a miko approached bearing the wedding rings. This was the yubiwa koukan, the exchange of rings. He picked up one of the rings with deliberate sloth as the cameraman zoomed in to show the gold band inset with a small ruby and sapphire, the precious stones accompanied by grooves like tails.
{Are you kidding me?} Morrie muttered in startled recognition of what the design represented, but not softly enough unfortunately that Hitomi didn't hear and elbow him for it.
Slowly and carefully, Uileag raised it to Ayaka's outstretched left hand and slid it down her ring finger.
If Uileag was intent, Ayaka was outright gingerly in putting his on.
Now the families were bid to rise once more. Before Ayaka and Uileag were handed the sakaki branches for presentation in the tamagushi hairei, the relatives were to bow twice and clap twice before being given time to say prayers pronouncing blessings on the being-wed. Once everyone was done, they bowed twice more before Ayaka and Uileag offered up the sacred branches.
Another saishu ippai was conducted before the relatives retook their seats, and then it was time for the taishutsu. In other shrines, this exit procession might have been a more ostentatious thing, but at Tsubaki, it merely called for the nuptial couple to follow the kannushi back to the outer end of the haiden where the family members were seated.
The miko issued the sakazuki again, for it was now time for the naorae. It was the guests' turn to imbibe the omiki, and thereby formally complete the ceremony.
At least, that would have been the case in a normal shinzen kekkon shiki, but normal this hardly was, and thus after all had ritually partaken of the aforementioned sake, Uileag rose and offered his hand to Ayaka, who accepted it. With the Reverend retaking the lead, the rest of the families formed up behind them and made for the exit.
Missouri quivered with silent mirth as she realised her wish was being granted after a fashion.
A mixed honour guard comprised of both shipgirls and baselines, all in dress whites, was waiting in between the building's exit and the torii outside, and as the recession approached, they fell in on either side of the doorway.
"Officers, draw swords!"
At Wash's command, the honour guard drew their sabers and formed an arch over the path, blades up and tips touching.
The Reverend halted at the doorway, then stepped aside and waved Ayaka and Uileag on.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Washington said loudly in announcement as they started out the exit, "it is my honour to present to you LCDR and ENS Uileag Shane Greer!"
All eyes and optics locked onto them as they passed in a stately manner under the arches and all the way past the torii, upon which they stopped and bowed to the audience. Behind them, Wash shouted, "Officers, return swords!" and the honour guard sheathed their swords.
Coming up from the bow, they were struck by a sudden awareness that silence had fallen.
Quincy was the first to break it. "Kiss! Kiss!"
Hers was the only source of cacophony for a few moments, and Ayaka started to hope that no one else would get any funny ideas. Her apprehension was due in no small part to the fact that the shinzen kekkon shiki did not normally include a kiss as part of the proceedings.
"We haven't seen a kiss!" Princeton suddenly added, dashing that particular hope on the rocks.
The floodgates had been opened, and now steadily more and more of the audience took up the call. The senior officers remained above the fray, thankfully, but the enthusiasm was indiscriminate in its spread otherwise, sweeping up shipgirl and baseline, young and old alike.
Ayaka and Uileag turned back, looking to the Reverend, trying to ignore how Wisconsin was gagging Missouri in the background.
After what seemed a terribly-prolonged pause, but which Ayaka's internal chronometers showed was really but a few seconds, the Reverend nodded.
They turned to face each other, and Uileag began moving towards her while rising into tiptoe, but a most devilish thought had found its way into Ayaka's mind, and she was faster to swoop, bending him backwards like it was V-J Day in Times Square all over again.
The audience erupted into cheers and applause.
Ayaka's eyes passed over the three former main bullies, who were gawking openly and most unglamorously. Whether at the regal figure she and Uileag now cut in their wedding garments or something else, she didn't know, and it seemed almost unbelievable that she'd let them have such power over her before.
Much of the rest of Imamura followed. Despite Yoshimichi's efforts, Imamura had had over 200 years of tradition, itself built on over a thousand years of the greater Shirokaze history, and a mere four years of attempts at forced secularization was but a drop in the bucket. It might have succeeded in the time of the generation after Ayaka's, given her then-disinterest in matters clerical, but as things currently stood, the faith remained strong enough that many were eagerly celebrating the marriage of their guuji.
Uileag's former colleagues at Il Giardino delle Parole were next. Whatever enmity they had once was now a thing of the past; that the one to eventually win Makiko's hand had been none of them, despite the misunderstanding Ayaka had inadvertently caused before, probably helped.
Then came Uileag's OCS and CEC coursemates, many of whom had brought out their dress whites. Irascible Mike was unmistakable, no outwardly-visible sign to be seen of the gut wound that had come too close to claiming his life.
Despite the wellness of the three of his closest coursemates, Uileag couldn't help feeling a bit down at the sight of who was absent. Though he and the gaggle of constructionmen had saved many that terrible night, still more had either already been dead when found or succumbed to their wounds afterward, and far too many of the deceased had he known.
Ayaka's colleagues at her former workplace went down a line that terminated at Mr Jordan, who had busted out dress whites that were clearly cut for a younger, fitter self.
It connected perfectly with Gonzalez Team via CAPT Cecil standing next to her former comrade. Washington wearing her dress whites over something with more personality ironically said everything that needed to be said about her, while Alice was wearing a robin blue furisode with canary yellow obi as expected. What wasn't expected was Albacore deigning to show up in something that wasn't her usual itsy bitsy teenie weenie red white blue Old Glorykini.
The coursemates of the officer training course at JB MDL were now up, those that had the necessary space in their operational schedules at any rate.
Uatu, of course, perfect attendance, with CAPT Zelben in tow. Even Mina's mood could not be dampened by the burning omamori attached to her clothing.
RDML Abel, somehow looking less of a hardass than usual despite the medal-laden dress whites.
RADM Adams.
Ayaka had originally wanted to avoid making an event out of the whole thing, which was why there were no Congresscritters or avatars of SecNav present. It had been a struggle getting her to accept even her namesake's governor, not that she was chummy with him the way a Summoned might have been. She had wanted to cap out at RDML Abel.
A polite but firm insistence from the father of the groom on behalf of a flag officer whom he had enjoyed a long working relationship with? Now that was something she couldn't worm her way out of, deputy of the command or not.
This was really the first time she had ever seen him in the flesh, the second direct encounter after that videoconference the day after her Reawakening. Despite the many tales she'd heard of an angry old man with a laser-grade glare, he seemed possessed of a fatherly countenance here, and oddly enough maybe a little melancholy.
Across the Pacific went the guestlist. Hai Jun Shao Jiang Shao and the Special Purpose Naval Infantry Force shipgirls had profusely apologised for how their tiny numbers relative to their responsibilities made freeing up the time impossible, and had opted to be absent rather than dishonouring the proceedings by sending some nobody of a junior officer or minor functionary that neither party to the marriage would recognise.
Their Japanese counterparts had no such issues, and Kaishou-ho Minami had managed to spare a sizeable contingent from KanFlot One. Naganami's J-DesRon Two was here, as was the Fusous' J-BatDiv One. Nakahara and her sister looked stunning in elaborately-embroidered black and red furisode. The Two Dragons could not be spared from their duties, but a smattering of others who Ayaka had fought alongside had been sent instead. The two Ducks were present, as was Maya, who was chattering away with the other bokukan on En-secure channels.
Akagi and Kaga were, while not the only ones, easily the most prominent of Kaishou-ho Ishikawa's representatives, and not just because of their heights. They were resplendent in haori, kimono and hakama skirt combinations - mainly black and red for Akagi and white and blue for Kaga - that curiously resembled what had been worn by the spectres Ayaka had seen the first time she had laid eyes on them.
On and on the guests lined the path with its towering evergreens, still feeling greater a number than Ayaka had originally desired, until the procession finally entered the main shrine building. Not before passing a number of projector screens, though. The ceremony proper was only supposed to be attended in person by family, but to accommodate the interested parties to the pioneering event that this was - for better or worse - Ichiyo had persuaded her fellow senior shinshoku to allow a film crew to capture the proceedings live for the local audience. The furthest of them were already moving forward to be in sight of the screens even as the procession passed under the torii into the main building.
Both families were indeed already in the haiden. Uileag's was seated on the right and Ayaka's on the left in order of seniority.
Ichiyo was a picture of poise as she knelt in seiza serenely.
Yoshimichi was seated next to her, beaming with paternal pride, but looking at the sight, what first came to Ayaka's mind was who wasn't there.
When she was younger, she'd always been confused by her father's refusal to provide a straight answer on the topic of her paternal grandparents. It hadn't been until everything had been given a thorough airing in the post-Fafnir therapy that she'd learnt how he had been disowned for the temerity of daring to not go along with their marital plans for him, and had played no part in his life thereafter. Not in his wedding and married life.
Not in Mom's funeral.
Not now.
She wouldn't say she was angry; that implied she cared enough about they who were snubbing her to take offence at the absence. She was, however, disappointed and saddened that, despite taking the trouble to try and reach out to them, they weren't able to set aside the enmity for just one most important of days just because she was of the same blood as the one they were shunning.
For a moment, a thought flashed through Ayaka's mind that old grudges held against perceived traitors, and the hatred and loathing that powered such, could have a power and life of their own.
The other vital absence, Ayaka felt more keenly.
Her mother, she hadn't seen a second time in the five months since her Reawakening, and that it remained so even in the run-up to what should have been the happiest day of her life was a sour note. She didn't want to admit it, but there was a cruel bit of herself that would have preferred her mother never reappear at all, never give her hope, never rip open decade-old wounds she'd thought healed.
The four sisters were naturally the last on this side. Kagami hadn't gotten off Cloud Nine ever since she had grown into her substantial upgrades to height and cup size, desire to not be exactly as much of a giant beanstalk as her older sister notwithstanding, and that good cheer remained clearly on display. Missouri wasn't so enthused, not least about being at the back of the line, and Jersey and Wisconsin had had to pointedly remind her that even using time-since-launch wasn't going to get them past Ichiyo.
Uileag's grandmother was at the head of the other line, and as predicted she was cheerfully taking the alien ceremony in stride.
SCQM Greer was next, and there was a crack of a smile, but little more, which was well within expectations. His immaculate dress whites had nothing to match his older son's Navy Cross, but his far greater time in service gave him a visible breadth of achievement that soundly pipped Uileag's.
Mrs Greer was all kindly smiles. Ayaka wondered not for the first time how the two had managed to make the marriage work despite the clashing personalities and the stresses from his being out at sea at length.
Uileag's older sisters were next, and lastly Ciarán, who couldn't keep from his customary puckish grin despite the sobriety of the circumstances.
The Reverend led Ayaka and Uileag further into the haiden until they were before the goshinden, and bid them sit on the special seats slightly behind him before said altar. With everyone in place, the Reverend proceeded to the second part of the ceremony: The shubatsu. Stepping into the heiden, the elevated area for offerings and norito, he began praying the harae no kotoba, then stepped out to take up a haraigushi, which he waved it person-by-person over all who were present in the haiden.
Next was the saishu ippai. At a cue, couple and relatives rose and bowed deeply towards the goshinden.
The participants were bid to sit, and the Reverend took up the food offerings and carefully placed them before the goshinden in the process called kensen.
After this, the Reverend moved closer to the goshinden before pronouncing the norito soujou. In reverent tones, he beseeched the kamisama for good fortune, happiness, protection and guidance upon the couple.
Ayaka and Uileag rose now and were presented with well-appointed sakazuki ceremonial saucers, into which the miko poured omiki, the specially-purified sake. This was the san san kudo, where they were to take three sets of three sips each.
One, two, three.
Ichi, ni, san.
A haon, a dó, a trí.
The miko retrieved the sakazuki, and once that was done, the Reverend bid them advance until they were standing on the heiden.
All shrines had their own idiosyncrasies in their practices, but most of them still followed the same broad strokes. That said, the next step in the ceremony, the taking of the marital vows, was where one of the major splits was found. Some shrines practised the seishi hodoku, a stiff formal declaration using the same archaic Japanese as in norito said either by one half of the couple or both in turn before the kamisama dedicating the marriage to them and promising to take care of the partner. Others opted for the chikai no kotoba, which was more flexible, rendered in modern Japanese, and entailed a back-and-forth. Tsubaki fell into the latter camp, and let the couple write their own instead of prescribing.
Uileag pulled out the piece of paper on the oath had been written, held it up for Ayaka, and exchanged glances with her before he took a deep breath and begun in Japanese, speaking with careful gravity. The chikai no kotoba might not be as rigid as the seishi hodoku, but that was no excuse to not treat it with the gravitas it deserved. The vow as rendered in English had already been presented to the AV crew to subtitle for the benefit of those unequipped. {On this day, before Tsubaki Ookamitachi, we give thanks and ask for your blessing and protection.}
{Love will guide the way, our hearts bound by an eternal promise,} Ayaka continued.
{Blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.}
{We give our bodies, that two might be one.}
{We give our spirits, till our life be done.}
Behind them, Uileag's grandmother gasped in recognition. She might not have been as hardline as her late counterparts on Mr Greer's side of the family, but she was familiar enough with the old ways nonetheless.
{We give our smile, that our words be unspoken.}
{I give you that which is mine to give.}
{I shall serve you in the ways that you require.}
{May the honeycomb taste sweeter coming from my hand.}
{Our love shall be one of respect, trust, and confidence forever.}
{Wholly and completely without restraint.}
{In sickness and in health.}
{In plenty and in poverty.}
{In life and beyond.}
{I shall be a shield for your back as you are for mine.}
{I shall be your refuge and safe harbour.}
{I shall cry no name but yours into the night.}
{I shall see no eye but yours first in the day.}
{If you get lost, wherever you are in this world-}
{-I will search for you.}
{Our fates have been and will remain bound together.}
{We swear by peace and love to stand.}
{Heart to heart and hand to hand.}
{Mark, Tsubaki Ookamitachi, and hear us now.}
{Confirming this our Sacred Vow.}
Uileag carefully placed the paper with the vows down before the goshinden with the offerings and stepped backwards out of the heiden, and now a miko approached bearing the wedding rings. This was the yubiwa koukan, the exchange of rings. He picked up one of the rings with deliberate sloth as the cameraman zoomed in to show the gold band inset with a small ruby and sapphire, the precious stones accompanied by grooves like tails.
{Are you kidding me?} Morrie muttered in startled recognition of what the design represented, but not softly enough unfortunately that Hitomi didn't hear and elbow him for it.
Slowly and carefully, Uileag raised it to Ayaka's outstretched left hand and slid it down her ring finger.
If Uileag was intent, Ayaka was outright gingerly in putting his on.
Now the families were bid to rise once more. Before Ayaka and Uileag were handed the sakaki branches for presentation in the tamagushi hairei, the relatives were to bow twice and clap twice before being given time to say prayers pronouncing blessings on the being-wed. Once everyone was done, they bowed twice more before Ayaka and Uileag offered up the sacred branches.
Another saishu ippai was conducted before the relatives retook their seats, and then it was time for the taishutsu. In other shrines, this exit procession might have been a more ostentatious thing, but at Tsubaki, it merely called for the nuptial couple to follow the kannushi back to the outer end of the haiden where the family members were seated.
The miko issued the sakazuki again, for it was now time for the naorae. It was the guests' turn to imbibe the omiki, and thereby formally complete the ceremony.
At least, that would have been the case in a normal shinzen kekkon shiki, but normal this hardly was, and thus after all had ritually partaken of the aforementioned sake, Uileag rose and offered his hand to Ayaka, who accepted it. With the Reverend retaking the lead, the rest of the families formed up behind them and made for the exit.
Missouri quivered with silent mirth as she realised her wish was being granted after a fashion.
A mixed honour guard comprised of both shipgirls and baselines, all in dress whites, was waiting in between the building's exit and the torii outside, and as the recession approached, they fell in on either side of the doorway.
"Officers, draw swords!"
At Wash's command, the honour guard drew their sabers and formed an arch over the path, blades up and tips touching.
The Reverend halted at the doorway, then stepped aside and waved Ayaka and Uileag on.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Washington said loudly in announcement as they started out the exit, "it is my honour to present to you LCDR and ENS Uileag Shane Greer!"
All eyes and optics locked onto them as they passed in a stately manner under the arches and all the way past the torii, upon which they stopped and bowed to the audience. Behind them, Wash shouted, "Officers, return swords!" and the honour guard sheathed their swords.
Coming up from the bow, they were struck by a sudden awareness that silence had fallen.
Quincy was the first to break it. "Kiss! Kiss!"
Hers was the only source of cacophony for a few moments, and Ayaka started to hope that no one else would get any funny ideas. Her apprehension was due in no small part to the fact that the shinzen kekkon shiki did not normally include a kiss as part of the proceedings.
"We haven't seen a kiss!" Princeton suddenly added, dashing that particular hope on the rocks.
The floodgates had been opened, and now steadily more and more of the audience took up the call. The senior officers remained above the fray, thankfully, but the enthusiasm was indiscriminate in its spread otherwise, sweeping up shipgirl and baseline, young and old alike.
Ayaka and Uileag turned back, looking to the Reverend, trying to ignore how Wisconsin was gagging Missouri in the background.
After what seemed a terribly-prolonged pause, but which Ayaka's internal chronometers showed was really but a few seconds, the Reverend nodded.
They turned to face each other, and Uileag began moving towards her while rising into tiptoe, but a most devilish thought had found its way into Ayaka's mind, and she was faster to swoop, bending him backwards like it was V-J Day in Times Square all over again.
The audience erupted into cheers and applause.
Last edited:
that was adorable scene at teh end! and the officers raising swods was good touch as well!
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Merry Christmas y'all!
...
{What a beautiful sight,} Kaga said in Japanese as she chewed, a hint of wistfulness in her normally-toneless voice, even as she ignored the warm tingling sensation that had suddenly spawned as the newlyweds locked lips. {I enjoy the attention of the Admiral and the other men, but old killers brought back for wetwork like us never have happy endings.}
...
{What a beautiful sight,} Kaga said in Japanese as she chewed, a hint of wistfulness in her normally-toneless voice, even as she ignored the warm tingling sensation that had suddenly spawned as the newlyweds locked lips. {I enjoy the attention of the Admiral and the other men, but old killers brought back for wetwork like us never have happy endings.}
Akagi didn't rebut her stoic cynicism.
Kaga turned slightly towards Akagi and froze at the sight of her divisionmate staring off into the distance right through the kissing newlyweds, and her previously-blank face morphed into a wide-eyed stare. For someone like her, inhibited even by the standards of her countrymen, showing surprise so openly had been hitherto unthinkable. {Akagi-san?}
Akagi didn't reply, for she was very far away.
Spatially and temporally very, very far away.
It was the hill again.
She was walking up the hill, with its otherworldly nighttime vista above and the whistling wind.
She hadn't seen the hill in almost 30 years, long before she'd ever known who she really was, that her previous name was so near yet so far from her birth name, and yet she recognised it as soon as she saw where she was.
How could she not?
The green tint to the nighttime sky had been and still was a perfect match for the shade she saw every time she or her planes stepped sideways, but which was the chicken and which the egg, she couldn't begin to theorize.
The sky was like nothing she'd ever seen on Earth, either in this life or the indistinct secondhand memories of the last, and certainly not something that should exist on said planet. In addition to the green, there were occasional swathes of purple and other colours across the heavens. A celestial body of some kind, too big to be the Moon, hung overhead so vast and near that its gravitational pull should have been wrecking all kinds of havoc. Eddies and swirls, indeterminate as to whether they were clouds or surface features, could be seen all over the side facing her. It was ringed by an assortment of lesser satellites of its own, Saturn-like. Somehow, despite its luminosity, it didn't blot out the stars to its sides that could be seen through the sparse cloud cover with light pollution; barring those right next to it, all remained as clearly visible as if it was a perfectly dark night in the middle of the Pacific, or in the midst of a Tochigi field for that matter.
The grass that covered the gently-undulating hill she was seated on stretched far, but not forever; there was the occasional wildflower, shrubbery or lonely short tree, and in the distance on a lower elevation was a barren land marred by a collection of closely-spaced colossal craters. From time to time birds flew past, or insects flitted.
She could not miss, however, the young man standing beside her. Dark-haired, he kept sneaking glances at her with an innocent earnestness that seemed as though he thought she wouldn't notice. It was faintly amusing.
Maddeningly, she somehow couldn't get a good look at his face, despite an inexplicable sense of familiarity, even as the wind set his clothing aflutter.
A light appeared in the distance, as if the Sun rising. The rays emitted from the spherical sight started to cast an orange hue over the sky as birds flew in front, sweeping away the green.
This wasn't the only type of inexplicable stellar dream she'd had. Sometimes she would be standing before a vast body of water, wide enough it stretched to the horizon both to her left and right, the surface reflecting the cosmic kaleidoscope above. Sometimes stranger things, like how she'd imagined an acid trip might be like, if never malignant. Sometimes the Milky Way entire was visible above, reaffirming the extraterrestrial nature of these oneiric sojourns. Yet all took place in the same mysterious green-and-change landscape, the companionably mute young man her only fellow.
As the pseudo-sunrise reached its apex, she joined him in standing, and when he turned to look at her again, too startled by the sudden motion to try hiding it, she tried to meet his eyes.
When she had been younger, in the wispy post-waking recollections she had had of these dreams, she had thought the young man had been aspiring to something far beyond her, looking at something in the distance she would never have been able to provide.
Now, though, even as her treacherous eyes stubbornly continued to refuse to register his features, something was different. Was it that she now had been roused to her true nature, directly drew power from Takamagahara rather than passively feeding on scraps dropped under the table by higher powers?
Whatever the truth was, she now could see. There had been a moment, now far past, at once terrible and terrific in its perfection, like glimpsing the universe entire. Not truly Reawakening, but that approached it nevertheless. A moment beyond words, too overwhelmingly wondrous as to be harnessed by the imperfections of language, and desperate to avoid diminishing the moment by trying to reproduce it, he had chosen instead to wholly refrain from discussing it at all.
In his foolishness, he had doomed himself to banality.
As, she realised abruptly, she had herself.
It was plain to see now why Kaga was so astonished: Twin trails of tears flowed freely down Akagi's cheeks, who was otherwise frozen like a statue in her shock.
{Why…} Akagi whispered, barely audible to an increasingly confused and surprised Kaga, {am I crying?}
...
Authors' Notes: Another clue to the mystery of who Akagi is; wonder if anyone can guess who she is before we drop the final hint?
We are taking suggestions and omake contributions for interludes and Another Sides to the wedding and reception. Good ones may be acknowledged in-story; particularly good ones might be outright canonised and incorporated. Come one, come all! The only off-limit characters are RADM Adams, Alice, SCQM Greer and Sara.
Kaga turned slightly towards Akagi and froze at the sight of her divisionmate staring off into the distance right through the kissing newlyweds, and her previously-blank face morphed into a wide-eyed stare. For someone like her, inhibited even by the standards of her countrymen, showing surprise so openly had been hitherto unthinkable. {Akagi-san?}
Akagi didn't reply, for she was very far away.
Spatially and temporally very, very far away.
{5 Centimeters per Second Original Soundtrack - Dream}
It was the hill again.
She was walking up the hill, with its otherworldly nighttime vista above and the whistling wind.
She hadn't seen the hill in almost 30 years, long before she'd ever known who she really was, that her previous name was so near yet so far from her birth name, and yet she recognised it as soon as she saw where she was.
How could she not?
The green tint to the nighttime sky had been and still was a perfect match for the shade she saw every time she or her planes stepped sideways, but which was the chicken and which the egg, she couldn't begin to theorize.
The sky was like nothing she'd ever seen on Earth, either in this life or the indistinct secondhand memories of the last, and certainly not something that should exist on said planet. In addition to the green, there were occasional swathes of purple and other colours across the heavens. A celestial body of some kind, too big to be the Moon, hung overhead so vast and near that its gravitational pull should have been wrecking all kinds of havoc. Eddies and swirls, indeterminate as to whether they were clouds or surface features, could be seen all over the side facing her. It was ringed by an assortment of lesser satellites of its own, Saturn-like. Somehow, despite its luminosity, it didn't blot out the stars to its sides that could be seen through the sparse cloud cover with light pollution; barring those right next to it, all remained as clearly visible as if it was a perfectly dark night in the middle of the Pacific, or in the midst of a Tochigi field for that matter.
The grass that covered the gently-undulating hill she was seated on stretched far, but not forever; there was the occasional wildflower, shrubbery or lonely short tree, and in the distance on a lower elevation was a barren land marred by a collection of closely-spaced colossal craters. From time to time birds flew past, or insects flitted.
She could not miss, however, the young man standing beside her. Dark-haired, he kept sneaking glances at her with an innocent earnestness that seemed as though he thought she wouldn't notice. It was faintly amusing.
Maddeningly, she somehow couldn't get a good look at his face, despite an inexplicable sense of familiarity, even as the wind set his clothing aflutter.
A light appeared in the distance, as if the Sun rising. The rays emitted from the spherical sight started to cast an orange hue over the sky as birds flew in front, sweeping away the green.
This wasn't the only type of inexplicable stellar dream she'd had. Sometimes she would be standing before a vast body of water, wide enough it stretched to the horizon both to her left and right, the surface reflecting the cosmic kaleidoscope above. Sometimes stranger things, like how she'd imagined an acid trip might be like, if never malignant. Sometimes the Milky Way entire was visible above, reaffirming the extraterrestrial nature of these oneiric sojourns. Yet all took place in the same mysterious green-and-change landscape, the companionably mute young man her only fellow.
As the pseudo-sunrise reached its apex, she joined him in standing, and when he turned to look at her again, too startled by the sudden motion to try hiding it, she tried to meet his eyes.
When she had been younger, in the wispy post-waking recollections she had had of these dreams, she had thought the young man had been aspiring to something far beyond her, looking at something in the distance she would never have been able to provide.
Now, though, even as her treacherous eyes stubbornly continued to refuse to register his features, something was different. Was it that she now had been roused to her true nature, directly drew power from Takamagahara rather than passively feeding on scraps dropped under the table by higher powers?
Whatever the truth was, she now could see. There had been a moment, now far past, at once terrible and terrific in its perfection, like glimpsing the universe entire. Not truly Reawakening, but that approached it nevertheless. A moment beyond words, too overwhelmingly wondrous as to be harnessed by the imperfections of language, and desperate to avoid diminishing the moment by trying to reproduce it, he had chosen instead to wholly refrain from discussing it at all.
In his foolishness, he had doomed himself to banality.
As, she realised abruptly, she had herself.
It was plain to see now why Kaga was so astonished: Twin trails of tears flowed freely down Akagi's cheeks, who was otherwise frozen like a statue in her shock.
{Why…} Akagi whispered, barely audible to an increasingly confused and surprised Kaga, {am I crying?}
...
Authors' Notes: Another clue to the mystery of who Akagi is; wonder if anyone can guess who she is before we drop the final hint?
We are taking suggestions and omake contributions for interludes and Another Sides to the wedding and reception. Good ones may be acknowledged in-story; particularly good ones might be outright canonised and incorporated. Come one, come all! The only off-limit characters are RADM Adams, Alice, SCQM Greer and Sara.
Last edited:
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Happy New Year y'all!
...
"They look so happy, don't they?" Saratoga asked elsewhere among the guests, unaware of the turmoil roiling the other converted battlecruiser.
...
"They look so happy, don't they?" Saratoga asked elsewhere among the guests, unaware of the turmoil roiling the other converted battlecruiser.
"Of course!" Alice said. "When's your turn, Sara?"
"I haven't given it any real thought."
"No way!"
"Atlanta, you forget again," Sara said with gentle chiding. "Unlike November Bravos, or full humans for that matter, we aren't born with a biological imperative to perpetuate our genes. We recruit for operational effectiveness, not to construct the next generation. The idea of an existence that doesn't end in scrapping, sinking or being put into the reserves doesn't come to mind easily."
Or worse fates, Sara knew from personal experience and didn't bother adding, and Alice knew better than to bring up. Beside them, Bannie was still muttering irritably about her culture being tossed into a potluck to bother adding to the discussion, having tensely whispered along with the vows in the original Irish.
"What about wanting the admiral, then?" Not that his current absence mattered much, Alice thought; Ayaka had barely interacted with Construct Nine's admiral during her time at MDL, certainly not enough to warrant his being invited.
"That is a different matter, please," Sara said. "I'm not one of the obsessed ones!" She looked around for said obsessed ones and did not find them. "Besides, that's an ever-distant utopia."
"What's Avalon got to do with love?"
"Sorry?" Sara asked, confused.
"Nevermind, after your time," Alice said hastily.
"Really, though, there's only so few admirals around, only so many people beneath them, and polygamy isn't going to be legalized anytime soon, I don't think. What happens to the rest of us?"
"There're plenty of recruitment sources that would be most eager to have you!" Shipgirl acuity picked out on the human members of the honour guard the way the demands of duty warred with the enthralling that came with being so close to their shipgirl fellows. Wash was always too much of a hardass, not that the hostile presence deterred all suitors, but the other three would certainly be feeding well soon enough.
"How am I supposed to choose, though?"
"That's what it means to become human," Alice said airily.
"It's not all bad though!" Quincy suddenly interrupted. "This isn't Detroit!"
"Seriously, Atlanta," Sara said, inadvertently taking on a stern mother's tone despite her protests to the contrary, even as she customarily ignored the dopey heavy cruiser, "do you really think there's more to post-war existence, more than just feeding to meet our needs? What does it mean to find the right man? Surely you don't mean for me to jump on the first boy who knows to sing about the ship of-"
"Soft-"
"-happy landings?"
Chuckling, Alice shrugged off Sara's steamrolling her interruption. "Sara, people have been asking themselves that question for millennia before us and will continue asking it long after we've been forgotten. I don't have the answer yet. I don't think anyone has something that works for everyone. What I can say, though, is that no matter how pretty the visuals, no one keeps going back to a director's body of work who doesn't agree with his philosophy and vision, and Shinkai's no exception. I believe there is still something love can do."
...
Now you know why Sara and Alice were off-limits.
Still shamelessly seeking contributions and suggestions.
"I haven't given it any real thought."
"No way!"
"Atlanta, you forget again," Sara said with gentle chiding. "Unlike November Bravos, or full humans for that matter, we aren't born with a biological imperative to perpetuate our genes. We recruit for operational effectiveness, not to construct the next generation. The idea of an existence that doesn't end in scrapping, sinking or being put into the reserves doesn't come to mind easily."
Or worse fates, Sara knew from personal experience and didn't bother adding, and Alice knew better than to bring up. Beside them, Bannie was still muttering irritably about her culture being tossed into a potluck to bother adding to the discussion, having tensely whispered along with the vows in the original Irish.
"What about wanting the admiral, then?" Not that his current absence mattered much, Alice thought; Ayaka had barely interacted with Construct Nine's admiral during her time at MDL, certainly not enough to warrant his being invited.
"That is a different matter, please," Sara said. "I'm not one of the obsessed ones!" She looked around for said obsessed ones and did not find them. "Besides, that's an ever-distant utopia."
"What's Avalon got to do with love?"
"Sorry?" Sara asked, confused.
"Nevermind, after your time," Alice said hastily.
"Really, though, there's only so few admirals around, only so many people beneath them, and polygamy isn't going to be legalized anytime soon, I don't think. What happens to the rest of us?"
"There're plenty of recruitment sources that would be most eager to have you!" Shipgirl acuity picked out on the human members of the honour guard the way the demands of duty warred with the enthralling that came with being so close to their shipgirl fellows. Wash was always too much of a hardass, not that the hostile presence deterred all suitors, but the other three would certainly be feeding well soon enough.
"How am I supposed to choose, though?"
"That's what it means to become human," Alice said airily.
"It's not all bad though!" Quincy suddenly interrupted. "This isn't Detroit!"
"Seriously, Atlanta," Sara said, inadvertently taking on a stern mother's tone despite her protests to the contrary, even as she customarily ignored the dopey heavy cruiser, "do you really think there's more to post-war existence, more than just feeding to meet our needs? What does it mean to find the right man? Surely you don't mean for me to jump on the first boy who knows to sing about the ship of-"
"Soft-"
"-happy landings?"
Chuckling, Alice shrugged off Sara's steamrolling her interruption. "Sara, people have been asking themselves that question for millennia before us and will continue asking it long after we've been forgotten. I don't have the answer yet. I don't think anyone has something that works for everyone. What I can say, though, is that no matter how pretty the visuals, no one keeps going back to a director's body of work who doesn't agree with his philosophy and vision, and Shinkai's no exception. I believe there is still something love can do."
...
Now you know why Sara and Alice were off-limits.
Still shamelessly seeking contributions and suggestions.
Last edited:
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Have you not noticed with the past few chapters? This is quite intentional. These segments are -2nd drafts and only when the complete chapter is put together in a single post will that one be given a threadmark, with the segments hidden away afterward.
- Location
- Nova Zeelandia
Ah, I didn't know I had only recently caught up with the story and had assumed they were finished.
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
No harm done. Always good to see a new reader.
Chapter 24
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Authors' Notes: Much-belated Happy New Year to everyone.
We have made various communications with Rev Barrish of Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America for the purpose of accuracy to its facilities and rendition of the shinzen kekkon shiki, but there were areas we failed to get a clear answer regarding, which we didn't want to be a pest on, and for obvious reasons we cannot ask him to look the chapter over himself. We have had to fill in the gaps with our own research and questions asked of Rev Bernkastel of Konkyoko Yokosuka Shrine, who due to the idiosyncrasies of every shrine's unique praxis probably is unable to answer in exacting detail regarding Tsubaki's ways. We apologise in advance to any ujiko of Tsubaki for any inaccuracies you may find.
We find KC!Atlanta's resemblance to Sara gutbusting given we had Alice calling Sara mom years in advance.
"Ayaka!"
Ayaka perked up at the familiar voice. "Okudera-sempai!"
"Yes, Okudera, coming through!"
Brilliant brown locks and flawless fashion sense - that was very much her.
"Sorry I can't look at you in the eye right now," Ayaka said as she looked through the mirror ahead at Makiko, surrounded as she was by step ladders on which women from the specialty boutique laboured with the utmost care to get her into her shiromuku. It was, unsurprisingly, a custom work. Men her size were scarce enough; female giant beanstalks of her calibre might as well not exist.
"Makiko, you always bring me the most interesting clients!" The petite woman overseeing the effort of dressing Ayaka exclaimed, arms wide in emphasis. "I'm still in awe at the size of this lass!"
"Don't worry, Jill, this one's quite harmless," Makiko said, "not like her husband-to-be."
"Hey!"
There was no genuine heat in Ayaka's exclamation, though, and the two of them chuckled afterward.
Ayaka was surprised there was no internal sign of displeasure from the Ship at being called harmless. Had that to do with the misogi shuho in the Pilchuck River Gran had the Reverend put her and Uileag through earlier, despite the fact that there was already going to be a purification rite in the wedding ceremony?
"I've fitted out so many people for Tsubaki," Jill said, "but this is the first time I've fitted out a priestess, and one getting married at a shrine not her own, right on the other end of the country at that! Crazy, huh?"
"These are crazier times than normal, you know!" Trying to suppress a sudden nervousness, Ayaka immediately afterward caught Makiko's eye in the mirror with a raised eyebrow and mouthed, "Does she know?"
Makiko shook her head.
Ayaka tried not to relax heavily enough as to disrupt the proceedings, CAPT Cecil's words from months ago ringing clearly in her head. There was no need to advertise what she was, and she had no intention to.
Not that the cat was likely to remain in the bag much longer. Her unique circumstances meant she had plenty of normal guests coming to witness the proceedings at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, and while NAVENSCIWARCOM didn't deliberately advertise, neither did it suppress identities the way NAVSPECWARCOM did. Enough shipgirls had made a name for themselves in this life that anyone with a working brain could probably put two and two together.
"Look how far you've come," Makiko said aloud. "It was just, what, 7 years ago that you were getting sticker shock from cafe prices, wasn't it?"
"Do you have to keep bringing that up too?" Ayaka said with weariness only partly attributable to the early hour she had been roused in order to get all this ready. "It's bad enough Kas and Shin do!"
"Of course! You then proceeded to mooch off Uileag!"
Ayaka sighed.
"I'm glad he's finally found happiness, though. You seem to be taking this well."
"He---? Am I not supposed to?"
"A lot of people either succumb to nervousness or go full Bridezilla. Isn't that right, Jill?"
"Oh, yes! Quiet dignity of the shinzen kekkon shiki, hah! Some of these fellows wouldn't know quiet dignity if it groveled unreservedly before them!"
Ayaka winced sharply enough she feared the obi holding the nagajuban and kakeshita in place might be shaken loose. "A few months out in combat, occasionally meeting those who live under the threat of daily abyssal assault, provides enough perspective to stuff Anton Ego. Getting jitters from this just seems so... petty."
"Hardly! This is a once in a lifetime event!" Jill's face darkened. "In an ideal world, it would be. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with being concerned for everything to go well."
"Ayaka's right, you know," Makiko said in interjection. "I might not have been near the targeted areas, and we might have gotten off lightly, but I still remember what happened back in April quite clearly. It reminds me of what Uileag had said."
"Of what Uiui said?" Ayaka had no idea what she was going on about all of a sudden, unless… "Is this about creating memorable landscapes?"
"As one never knows when New York-"
"-might disappear."
"Yes, exactly that. One of the key reasons why he wanted to go into architecture, he kept saying." A frown marred Makiko's face.
"Kas and Shin joked he wasn't going to get a job if he used that in an interview," Ayaka said through a smile.
"It doesn't sound so silly now."
"Oh, phooey. You Noo Yorkas have to wait for people to come down from… where was the nearest base? New Jersey?" Jill's spirits had evidently recovered. "I'm not worried; the abyssals will have to go through Everett to get at us!"
Ayaka's hackles rose at the carefree way the other woman said it, a rage that didn't need the primal instinct of the Ship helping it along, and though she didn't say anything aloud, she bristled hard enough the member of Jill's staff helping put on the wataboshi muttered at having to adjust it again.
She could see in her mind's eye Hammann or West Virginia storming up at flank and slapping a hoe.
"There we go, all done," Jill eventually said after what felt like far too long, even if Ayaka's internal chronometer knew better, and passed her off to a miko to be brought from the dressing room to the reception room to wait for everything else to be ready. The younger woman - and wasn't that a thought - walked far enough ahead that Ayaka and Makiko could converse freely.
"They were the first ones to see. They are the last ones to bleed."
"Oh, is that…?" Makiko murmured contemplatively. "I would have thought your comrades would be more into Sabaton."
"They're both subgenres of Nordic metal. It's just a stone's throw away."
"Be it as it may, what Jill said struck a nerve?"
Perceptive as always.
"Yes," Ayaka replied tightly. "I know I shouldn't get angry on my wedding day, but have you ever been shot?" A pang of guilt hit at the bewilderment making itself known on Makiko's face, but she pressed on nevertheless. "There may be no scars thanks to Enlightened healing, no phantom pains, but it's something I still think of on occasion." She rubbed backhandedly through the extensive fabric covering her back where the shells had slashed through on that first convoy escort operation, already months away, and when she spoke again, it was with the full solemnity due the dead. "Hundreds to thousands of the fallen grace the memorial walls of Everett and Yokosuka, and though I know none of them, the pain of those who do is obvious. That we do our duty to the last if need be is not something others should take for granted."
The image of a large black book that should no longer exist flashed in Ayaka's mind, then faded until the contents superimposed themselves on a vision of the Everett Memorial Wall ominously.
There was, for a few moments, silence but for their footfalls, time enough for Ayaka to appreciate that the shiromuku didn't trail on the ground the way the train of a Western-style wedding gown did.
"We shouldn't be talking about this sort of kegare-inviting thing just before my wedding," she eventually said.
"No, no! It's fine. There's no need to apologise. Jill has never been a very empathetic person as long as I've known her, and it's as good an excuse to speak to her about this as any." Makiko's lips quirked upwards suddenly. "It could be worse."
"Eh?"
"You haven't heard?" Makiko made a confused sound. "There's that one conspiracy theorist from somewhere in Ohio who thinks all this is a show by actresses or cosplayers. Akron, maybe?"
"What," Ayaka asked disbelievingly, "is the next thing you're going to say that the Russians or Chinese sunk the fleets, but are for some reason still refraining from going nuclear?"
"Yes…?"
"Wack!"
"Yes, exactly." Makiko tsked. "We really need to sit down and talk sometime. It's been too long."
"I agree. Cometfall Week."
"October… 4th, was it?"
Ayaka nodded firmly. "A proper overseas honeymoon, not under these circumstances, no way," she sighed, "but CAPT Zelben was fine with giving Uatu shore leave for the week leading up to Columbus Day, so I could take the time to meet up. We'll be spending a few days at home before coming back. Or maybe you and the boys could join us on the 4th itself?"
"I don't want to be a bother."
"Hardly! Dad and Gran aren't going to turn anyone away." Ayaka's tone turned wistful. "A generation too young to remember Imamura and understand, truly understand why we honour 'a bunch of ruins'," she made an airquotes gesture, "is coming of age; those old enough, we are steadily haemorrhaging as the memories fade. Gran was healthy for her age even before the anagathic effects, but not everyone was so fortunate. We need all the outside interest we can get."
"I'll see what I can do. Anything for the both of you."
"Thanks."
"Looking cool, IoIo!"
Ayaka suppressed a scowl at the mood-ruining interloper who was, of course, Missouri, standing outside the reception room where the nuptial couple were supposed to wait.
Ayaka heard Makiko take in a sharp, sudden breath from beside herself.
Wait, Missouri? "Mo, aren't you supposed to be in the haiden already with the rest of our family? All three of you?"
Wisconsin, clad in a modified version of the sailor's white and blue outfit right off her namesake's great seal, had the good grace to look sheepish.
Missouri, wearing a Hawaii-yellow furisode embroidered with various flora and fauna of that state, did not. "Space is just a suggestion! You know that very well! Red on white looks good on you, but I was hoping we would get a chance to walk the sanshin, all of us! You, me, JerJer, Wisky, your pops, your nana and little Mimi!"
Ayaka winced at the casual mutilation of Kagami's name, simultaneously suspicious of how Missouri was wearing so much cloth seemingly of her own volition.
"Why'd you have to choose one of the shrines that didn't?!"
At Tsubaki, unlike most other shrines, the first stage of the wedding - the sanshin or procession - was a very restrained affair, only the presiding kannushi and the nuptial couple being involved. Though the cloud of witnesses would still line the path to the haiden, the rest of the families were to be already seated in said hall of worship and awaiting the couple's arrival.
"Tsubaki was the only real choice on the CONUS. You know very well going back home would've been too inconvenient for most of the others."
"Bah! I really, really wanted to walk the sanshin, check out the untapped prospective recruitment sources!" Missouri grinned. "Don't you agree, JerJer?"
Ah, that was the Missouri she knew.
"I am not Sonny," Jersey told Missouri with the slow, deliberate flatness of one caring for her namesake's nickname. The red and blue dress she was wearing, inlaid with designs that included a Jersey Devil, almost certainly breached the cardinal rule of not outshining the bride, not that Ayaka was bothered; she doubted any amount of reprimand would even give number 62 pause, much less change her mind, as things stood. "I do not go a-recruiting from the guests on the day my sister is to be married."
"On the night then!" Missouri pointed double finger guns, still grinning.
"Wisky."
In response to Jersey's directive, Wisconsin mutely flicked Missouri on the forehead with a finger.
"Aw, why you gotta be a killjoy, JerJer?!" Belatedly, Missouri noticed Makiko, turned to look at her. "You must be IoIo's friend! What was it, Miku Okura?"
"Makiko Okudera, and yes," Makiko replied, sounding atypically awestruck in a way that wasn't entirely attributable to the difference in stature.
"Ah, yes, yes! IoIo's mentioned you before!" Missouri patted her on the shoulder, hopefully unwittingly looming. "Is there anyone you know who could do with some spiffy new footwear? I'm sure JerJer's willing to provide!"
Jersey regarded her third sister with the deadeyed gravity of a don behind a fine mahogany desk or a dragon lazing on its hoard.
"No, no need." Makiko still sounded breathy.
"Aw, really?" Missouri was disappointed. "Pity!" She fished out a business card. "Look, here's our numbers. You meet anyone who needs underwater lodging, contact us! No charge for a friend of the family!"
Makiko accepted it graciously.
"We should go," Wisconsin said, softly but firmly.
"Oh, really?!" Missouri shouted.
"Ja, really."
Missouri pouted. "Let's skedaddle, then! Don't keep us waiting, IoIo!" She patted Makiko's shoulder again, slapped Ayaka on the back, grabbed the others and stepped sideways.
"That was something," Makiko said after a while, still sounding overawed.
"They certainly are something," Ayaka said, a touch more irritably than was probably proper.
"Your little sister is right, though. I should get going too."
Ayaka looked to her timekeeping equipment. "Yes, you probably should."
Makiko waved and went off, after which the miko - who had been standing mutely transfixed by the proceedings - slid open the door to the room.
Uileag was seated inside, and reflexively turned to face the door as he heard it open.
Unlike the Western-style wedding, in the shinzen kekkon shiki there was no requirement for the bride and groom to not see each other before the ceremony.
"Uiui."
Despite that, she inexplicably couldn't bring herself to take him in her arms as she seated herself next to him. Meanwhile, the miko who had led her here slid the door shut and found seating a considerate distance away.
"Ayachi." Uileag now had on a black kimono under a black haori and grey hakama. Like most non-Japanese, the Greers did not have a family crest to call their own, but he came in a rentable size, and the one he had on now bore the mitsudomoe. "Was that your sisters?"
"Un. Were they that lou-" Ayaka regarded the flimsy construction of the shouji in sudden realisation and brought a hand up to her face, sighing in exasperation.
"Are they going to be a problem?"
Ayaka took a long, hard look in the general direction Makiko had walked off in, mentally playing back the signs of how their mutual friend had been entranced. "It shouldn't. That the code explicitly prohibits Jodying says they shouldn't be into homewrecking."
"Codes get broken," Uileag said doubtfully.
"As a precaution, I also left the obvious potential troublemakers off the guest list."
"Oho, how very sly of you!" Any attempt at selling a sense of outrage was, however, foiled by his chuckles thereafter.
Ayaka tried to laugh, but it came out wooden.
"Ayachi?"
"I'm still surprised, even up to this late hour, that Gran and your father actually managed to agree on the style of our wedding. Some of the arguments they had were quite intense."
Quite intense. Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
What an understatement.
"Just think," Uileag said, "10 years ago, if you told me I'd be having my wedding in the Shinto style, I'd have called you crazy."
"Speaking of that, how much of this did your father know about all this beforehand? I only remember him being incredulous the first time it came up."
Uileag scoffed. "Dadi? Not much, I don't think. Roosevelt never got forward-deployed to Japan the way Reagan or Washington 70 did, and he didn't concern himself much with that segment. Still, it could have been worse."
"Eh? How so?"
"All this talk reminded me: I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but it's a good thing my maternal grandparents are already gone."
"Your… you hardly ever mention them," Ayaka said, surprised and a bit discomfited, as she dove into the sea of memories in search of answers.
"Not finding much?"
Ayaka looked askance at Uileag and his lightly amused tone.
"You wouldn't. They were dead even before you tried looking for me that first time, and I don't remember much of them, but I…" Uileag scratched the back of his neck nervously, "think they would have put their foot down even more firmly than Dadi did. That's from what little I do remember and what Mamai told me."
"Sou." Ayaka murmured quizzically. "I still wouldn't have guessed them to be like that, considering how your mom is."
"No? Being one of the middle children must have meant they didn't instill as much of their attitudes in her. As for Dadi's side, you know that much."
She did indeed. The even older Greer's true mistress had been the sea, with how that shaped his psyche having effects that were still reverberating two generations down the line, even though age had caught up with him 3 years ago. As for the man's widow, Ayaka had had opportunities to meet her before this. The kindly old woman with a peculiar interest in New York's history had pressed a choco pie into her hands mere moments into their first meeting and been most pleasantly surprised that the future in-law was a gaeilgeoir.
Ayaka hadn't been able to help noticing how the vintage townhouse the old woman stayed in, predating the 20th century, contrasted sharply with a skyscraping modern tower, barely 10 years old, that was visible in the distance from its backyard. The way the sun had backlit the latter only made it all the more eyecatching.
"That's not the only thing that has you concerned, is it?"
Count on Uileag to see what others might not. "Uun. Everything changes after this, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" Uileag asked, confused. "Should I have you start calling me 'darling'?" His arm raised and lowered as he fought the urge to nudge Ayaka with an elbow.
{Isn't that too much like a limey… a~na~ta?}
{That's laying it on too thick!} Uileag replied with heartfelt surprise in Irish. The atypically honeyed tones of Japanese made it clear she was using the word with its affectionate connotations in mind, as opposed to in the general sense of "you". {Don't you think so, a rúnsearc?}
{That--that, he says, right before escalating straight to the nuclear option!} Any thought of outrage on Ayaka's part was flash-fried like dry kindling before thermite beneath her embarrassment. "Mo anam cara" might not, to someone intent on fullest fidelity to the ways of the Irish, be a per se means of conveying romantic endearment, but obliqueness was the Japanese stock in trade, as the old "beauty of the moon" saying and the cultural allergy to an unambiguous "aishiteru" demonstrated. "A rúnsearc" was already very forward as far as the Irish were concerned; to her, it was just too much!
Uileag let slip an impish smile.
{Who do I blame for this? Shin? Morrie? One of your coursemates?}
Uileag's smile faded. {Should it? Why should we magically - hah - change just because of having gone through the ceremony?}
Ayaka pressed her hands into her thighs, fighting the urge to gesticulate in a most unsightly manner, mindful that the Tsubaki miko was still in the room. {Too many bad sitcoms about couples going to seed in middle age aside… you know long-term cohabitation doesn't guarantee a successful marriage, even though doing so supposedly familiarises you with your partner's habits. That suggests there is something about going through the ceremony that has power.}
{I know.}
{Long hours on the sea, with everyone spaced out too far to be seen visually, give one too much time to think. Did you know that part of the mission of Kokugakuin's Faculty of Shinto Studies is deepening the understanding of awareness, roles and functions of traditional culture?}
{No? This, you hardly mention.}
Ayaka huffed in acknowledgment of the riposte. {It made for interesting discussion in light of how the Great Fire of Mayugoro forced us to stagger onward with limited knowledge of our practices' true purpose.}
Uileag nodded in grim agreement.
{Even so, one thing remains clear. Mo can say what she wants about rising divorce rates and falling time-to-divorce. Marriage as the union of man and woman before law, society and whichever kamisama you honour - or no higher power at all, indeed - is a grave undertaking, and while it has its benefits,} Ayaka wasn't sure if she suddenly licked her lips at this point out of nervousness, the anticipation of the Ship stirring from its torpor, or entirely on herself, {so too has it obligations and responsibilities to family and country, duties I fear I'm not worthy to carry out.}
An awkward look settled on Uileag's face. Mr Greer might not have taken fidelity to the old ways as far as his parents-in-law, but he had taken in enough. The possibility that Uileag might not be able to produce a male heir via Ayaka - the Shirokaze having birthed only daughters for at least the past seven generations and no one knowing if this would stop now that the threat of Fafnir was gone - had been a big hurdle to overcome. {That's what you're worried about now,} he eventually said. {Not the wedding itself.}
{Why should the wedding be the problem? You know I'm not the fastidious, micromanaging sort.}
Uileag tried to hide a chuckle.
{No, it's the decades after I'm worried about. The children. The shrine and the lineage. The way forward. Whatever extenuating circumstances they may have had, the fact is we haven't had good role models. You know that.}
{Yes, but us being us, it feels like just yesterday that you wanted to run away and never say goodbye. Are you getting cold feet because of this?}
{What? No!} Ayaka shouted.
{Could have fooled me.}
{It's not like I almost chi---chi---chickened out at the last minute after going to all the trouble of suddenly getting off the train and running around as if at random or anything!}
Uileag didn't bother hiding his laughter this time. {That's why you need me around to keep you from going off script.}
"Please excuse me." There was a sudden knocking at the door, and before the miko in the room managed to get it, the door slid open, the Reverend letting himself in. Bushy of hair and beard, dressed in the pristine accoutrements of his station, he moved with the easy grace of his decades of aikido practice over to the two of them. "Mr Greer, Rev Shirokaze." His eyes twinkled more intently with amusement at the prospect of seeing a junior be married off on his watch.
Ayaka and Uileag rose as one and returned his bow and warm smile. "Reverend."
"Shall we?"
The participants in the sanshin proper might be limited, but the cloud of witnesses lining the path up to the shrine's main building, dressed in scintillating style, still seemed a seriously stupendous sight, and Ayaka couldn't help wishing for the umpteenth time she'd been more aggressive in trimming the guestlist.
Almost everyone Ayaka and Uileag had called classmate or teacher had made the trip and were in various states of exuberance. Elementary, middle, high school, university and Kokugakuin, none were spared. Hitomi, Morrie and Kas in particular were visibly over the moon; Shin had gone even further beyond and was openly weeping tears of joy even as he clapped unreservedly.
Ayaka's eyes passed over the three former main bullies, who were gawking openly and most unglamorously. Whether at the regal figure she and Uileag now cut in their wedding garments or something else, she didn't know, and it seemed almost unbelievable that she'd let them have such power over her before.
Much of the rest of Imamura followed. Despite Yoshimichi's efforts, Imamura had had over 200 years of tradition, itself built on a thousand years of the greater Shirokaze history, and a mere four years of attempts at forced secularization was but a drop in the bucket. It might have succeeded in the time of the generation after Ayaka's, given her then-disinterest in matters clerical, but as things currently stood, the faith remained strong enough that many were eagerly celebrating the marriage of their guuji.
Uileag's former colleagues at Il Giardino delle Parole were next. Whatever enmity they had once was now a thing of the past; that the one to eventually win Makiko's hand had been none of them, despite the misunderstanding Ayaka had inadvertently caused before, probably helped.
Then came Uileag's OCS and CEC coursemates, many of whom had brought out their dress whites. Irascible Mike was unmistakable, no outwardly-visible sign to be seen of the gut wound that had come too close to claiming his life.
Despite the wellness of the three of his closest coursemates, Uileag couldn't help feeling a bit down at the sight of who was absent. Though he and the gaggle of constructionmen had saved many that terrible night, still more had either already been dead when found or succumbed to their wounds afterward, and far too many of the deceased had he known.
Ayaka's colleagues at her former workplace went down a line that terminated at Mr Jordan, who had busted out dress whites that were clearly cut for a younger, fitter self.
It connected perfectly with Gonzalez Team via CAPT Cecil standing next to her former comrade. Washington wearing her dress whites over something with more personality ironically said everything that needed to be said about her, while Alice was wearing a robin blue furisode with canary yellow obi as expected. What wasn't expected was Albacore deigning to show up in something that wasn't her usual itsy bitsy teenie weenie red white blue Old Glorykini.
The coursemates of the officer training course at JB MDL were now up, those that had the necessary space in their operational schedules at any rate.
Uatu, of course, perfect attendance, with CAPT Zelben in tow. Even Mina's mood could not be dampened by the burning omamori attached to her clothing.
RDML Abel, somehow looking less of a hardass than usual despite the medal-laden dress whites.
RADM Adams.
Ayaka had originally wanted to avoid making an event out of the whole thing, which was why there were no Congresscritters or avatars of SecNav present. It had been a struggle getting her to accept even her namesake's governor, not that she was chummy with him the way a Summoned might have been. She had wanted to cap out at RDML Abel.
A polite but firm insistence from the father of the groom on behalf of a flag officer whom he had enjoyed a long working relationship with? Now that was something she couldn't worm her way out of, deputy of the command or not.
This was really the first time she had ever seen him in the flesh, the second direct encounter after that videoconference the day after her Reawakening. Despite the many tales she'd heard of an easily-displeased old man with a laser-grade glare, he seemed possessed of a fatherly countenance here, and oddly enough maybe a little melancholy.
Across the Pacific went the guestlist. Hai Jun Shao Jiang Shao and the Special Purpose Naval Infantry Force shipgirls had profusely apologised for how their tiny numbers relative to their responsibilities made freeing up the time impossible, and had opted to be absent rather than dishonouring the proceedings by sending some nobody of a junior officer or minor functionary that neither party to the marriage would recognise.
Their Japanese counterparts had no such issues, and Kaishō-ho Minami had managed to spare a sizeable contingent from KanFlot One. Naganami's J-DesRon Two was here, as was the Fusous' J-BatDiv Two. The Nakaharas looked stunning in elaborately-embroidered black and red furisode. The Two Dragons could not be spared from their duties, but a smattering of others who Ayaka had fought alongside had been sent instead. The two Ducks were present, as was Maya, who was chattering away with the other boukuukan on En-secure channels.
Akagi and Kaga were, while not the only ones, easily the most prominent of Kaishō-ho Ishikawa's representatives, and not just because of their heights. They were resplendent in haori, kimono and hakama skirt combinations - mainly black and red for Akagi and white and blue for Kaga - that curiously resembled what had been worn by the spectres Ayaka had seen the first time she had laid eyes on them.
On and on the guests lined the path with its towering evergreens, still feeling greater a number than Ayaka had originally desired, until the procession finally entered the main shrine building. Not before passing a number of projector screens, though. The ceremony proper was only supposed to be attended in person by family, but to accommodate the interested parties to the pioneering event that this was - for better or worse - Ichiyo had persuaded her fellow senior shinshoku to allow a film crew to capture the proceedings live for the local audience. The furthest of them were already moving forward to be in sight of the screens even as the procession passed under the torii into the main building.
Both families were indeed already in the haiden. Uileag's was seated on the right and Ayaka's on the left in order of seniority.
Ichiyo was a picture of poise as she knelt in seiza serenely.
Yoshimichi was seated next to her, beaming with paternal pride, but looking at the sight, what first came to Ayaka's mind was who wasn't there.
When she was younger, she'd always been confused by her father's refusal to provide a straight answer on the topic of her paternal grandparents. It hadn't been until everything had been given a thorough airing in the post-Fafnir therapy that she'd learnt how he had been disowned for the temerity of daring to not go along with their marital plans for him, and had played no part in his life thereafter. Not in his wedding and married life.
Not in Mom's funeral.
Not now.
She wouldn't say she was angry; that implied she cared enough about they who were snubbing her to take offence at the absence. She was, however, disappointed and saddened that, despite taking the trouble to try and reach out to them, they weren't able to set aside the enmity for just one most important of days just because she was of the same blood as the one they were shunning.
For a moment, a thought flashed through Ayaka's mind that old grudges held against perceived traitors, and the hatred and loathing that powered such, could have a power and life of their own.
The other vital absence, Ayaka felt more keenly.
Her mother, she hadn't seen a second time in the five months since her Reawakening, and that it remained so even in the run-up to what should have been the happiest day of her life was a sour note. She didn't want to admit it, but there was a cruel bit of herself that would have preferred her mother never reappear at all, never give her hope, never rip open decade-old wounds she'd thought healed.
The four sisters were naturally the last on this side. Kagami hadn't gotten off Cloud Nine ever since she had grown into her substantial upgrades to height and cup size, desire to not be exactly as much of a giant beanstalk as her older sister notwithstanding, and that good cheer remained clearly on display. Missouri wasn't so enthused, not least about being at the back of the line, and Jersey and Wisconsin had had to pointedly remind her that even using time-since-launch wasn't going to get them past Ichiyo.
Uileag's grandmother was at the head of the other line, and as predicted she was cheerfully taking the alien ceremony in stride.
SCQM Greer was next, and there was a crack of a smile, but little more, which was well within expectations. His immaculate dress whites had nothing to directly match his older son's Navy Cross, but his far greater time in service gave him a visible breadth of achievement that soundly pipped Uileag's.
Mrs Greer was all kindly smiles. Ayaka wondered not for the first time how the two had managed to make the marriage work despite the clashing personalities and the stresses from his being out at sea at length.
Uileag's older sisters were next, and lastly Ciarán, who couldn't keep from his customary puckish grin despite the sobriety of the circumstances.
The Reverend led Ayaka and Uileag further into the haiden until they were before the goshinden, and bid them sit on the special seats slightly behind him before said altar. With everyone in place, the Reverend proceeded to the second part of the ceremony: The shubatsu. Stepping into the heiden, the elevated area for offerings and norito, he began praying the harae no kotoba, then stepped out to take up a haraigushi, which he waved it person-by-person over all who were present in the haiden.
Next was the saishu ippai. At a cue, couple and relatives rose and bowed deeply towards the goshinden.
The participants were bid to sit, and the Reverend took up the food offerings and carefully placed them before the goshinden in the process called kensen.
After this, the Reverend moved closer to the goshinden before pronouncing the norito soujou. In reverent tones, he beseeched the kamisama for good fortune, happiness, protection and guidance upon the couple.
Ayaka and Uileag rose now and were presented with well-appointed sakazuki ceremonial saucers, into which the miko poured omiki, the specially-purified sake. This was the san san kudo, where they were to take three sets of three sips each.
One, two, three.
Ichi, ni, san.
A haon, a dó, a trí.
The miko retrieved the sakazuki, and once that was done, the Reverend bid them advance until they were standing on the heiden.
All shrines had their own idiosyncrasies in their practices, but most of them still followed the same broad strokes. That said, the next step in the ceremony, the taking of the marital vows, was where one of the major splits was found. Some shrines practised the seishi hodoku, a stiff formal declaration using the same archaic Japanese as in norito said either by one half of the couple or both in turn before the kamisama dedicating the marriage to them and promising to take care of the partner. Others opted for the chikai no kotoba, which was more flexible, rendered in modern Japanese, and entailed a back-and-forth. Tsubaki fell into the latter camp, and let the couple write their own instead of prescribing.
Uileag pulled out the piece of paper on the oath had been written, held it up for Ayaka, and exchanged glances with her before he took a deep breath and begun in Japanese, speaking with careful gravity. The chikai no kotoba might not be as rigid as the seishi hodoku, but that was no excuse to not treat it with the gravitas it deserved. The vows' English rendition had already been presented to the AV crew to subtitle for the benefit of those who were linguistically unequipped. {On this day, before Tsubaki Ookamitachi, we give thanks and ask for your blessing and protection.}
{Love will guide the way, our hearts bound by an eternal promise,} Ayaka continued.
{Blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.}
{We give our bodies, that two might be one.}
{We give our spirits, till our life be done.}
Behind them, Uileag's grandmother gasped in recognition. She might not have been as hardline as her late counterparts on Mr Greer's side of the family, but she was familiar enough with the old ways of her people nonetheless.
{We give our smile, that our words be unspoken.}
{I give you that which is mine to give.}
{I shall serve you in the ways that you require.}
{May the honeycomb taste sweeter coming from my hand.}
{Our love shall be one of respect, trust, and confidence forever.}
{Wholly and completely without restraint.}
{In sickness and in health.}
{In plenty and in poverty.}
{In life and beyond.}
{I shall be a shield for your back as you are for mine.}
{I shall be your refuge and safe harbour.}
{I shall cry no name but yours into the night.}
{I shall see no eye but yours first in the day.}
{If you get lost, wherever you are in this world-}
{-I will search for you.}
{Our fates have been and will remain bound together.}
{We swear by peace and love to stand.}
{Heart to heart and hand to hand.}
{Mark, Tsubaki Ookamitachi, and hear us now.}
{Confirming this our Sacred Vow.}
Uileag carefully placed the paper with the vows down before the goshinden with the offerings and stepped backwards out of the heiden, and now a miko approached bearing the wedding rings. This was the yubiwa koukan, the exchange of rings. He picked up one of the rings with deliberate sloth; as previously agreed, the cameraman zoomed in to show the gold band inset with a small ruby and sapphire, the precious stones accompanied by grooves like tails.
{Are you kidding me?} Morrie muttered in startled recognition of what the design represented, but not softly enough unfortunately that Hitomi didn't hear and elbow him for it.
Slowly and carefully, Uileag raised it to Ayaka's outstretched left hand and slid it down her ring finger.
If Uileag was intent, outright gingerly was how Ayaka put his on.
Now the families were bid to rise once more. Before Ayaka and Uileag were handed the sakaki branches for presentation in the tamagushi hairei, the relatives were to bow twice and clap twice before being given time to say prayers pronouncing blessings on the being-wed. Once everyone was done, they bowed twice more before Ayaka and Uileag offered up the sacred branches.
Another saishu ippai was conducted before the relatives retook their seats, and then it was time for the taishutsu. In other shrines, this exit procession might have been a more ostentatious thing, but at Tsubaki, it merely called for the nuptial couple to follow the kannushi back to the outer end of the haiden where the family members were seated.
The miko issued the sakazuki again, for it was now time for the naorae. It was the guests' turn to imbibe the omiki, and thereby formally complete the ceremony.
At least, that would have been the case in a normal shinzen kekkon shiki, but normal this hardly was, and thus after all had ritually partaken of the aforementioned sake, Uileag rose and offered his hand to Ayaka, who accepted it. With the Reverend retaking the lead, the rest of the families formed up behind them and made for the exit.
Missouri quivered with silent mirth as she realised her wish was being granted after a fashion.
A mixed honour guard comprised of both shipgirls and baselines, all in dress whites, was waiting in between the building's exit and the torii outside, and as the recession approached, they fell in on either side of the doorway and went to attention.
"Officers, draw swords!"
At Washington's command, the honour guard drew their sabers and formed an arch over the path, blades up and tips touching.
The Reverend halted at the doorway, then stepped aside and waved Ayaka and Uileag on.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Wash said loudly in announcement as they started out the exit, "it is my honour to present to you LCDR and ENS Uileag Shane Greer!"
All eyes and optics locked onto them as they passed in a stately manner under the arches and all the way past the torii, upon which they stopped and bowed to the audience. Behind them, Wash shouted, "Officers, return swords!" and the honour guard sheathed their swords.
Coming up from the bow, they were struck by a sudden awareness that silence had fallen.
Quincy was the first to break it. "Kiss! Kiss!"
Hers was the only source of cacophony for a few moments, and Ayaka started to hope that no one else would get any funny ideas. Her apprehension was due in no small part to the fact that the shinzen kekkon shiki was not normally sealed with a kiss.
"We haven't seen a kiss!" Princeton suddenly added, dashing that particular hope like an egg on rocks.
The floodgates had been opened, and now steadily more and more of the audience took up the call. The senior officers remained above the fray, thankfully, but the enthusiasm was indiscriminate in its spread otherwise, sweeping up shipgirl and baseline, young and old alike.
Ayaka and Uileag turned back, looking to the Reverend, trying to ignore how Wisconsin was gagging and restraining Missouri in the background.
After what seemed a terribly-prolonged pause, but which Ayaka's internal chronometers showed was really but a few seconds, the Reverend nodded.
They turned to face each other, and Uileag began moving towards her while rising into tiptoe, but a most devilish thought had found its way into Ayaka's mind, and she was faster to swoop, bending him backwards like it was V-J Day in Times Square all over again.
The audience erupted into cheers and applause.
{What a beautiful sight,} Kaga said in Japanese as she chewed, a hint of wistfulness in her normally-toneless voice, even as she ignored the warm tingling sensation that had suddenly spawned at the moment the newlyweds locked lips. {I enjoy the attention of the Admiral and the other men, but old killers brought back for wetwork like us never have happy endings.}
Akagi didn't rebut her stoic cynicism.
Kaga turned slightly towards Akagi and froze at the sight of her divisionmate staring off into the distance right through the kissing newlyweds, and her previously-blank face morphed into a wide-eyed stare. For someone like her, inhibited even by the standards of her countrymen, showing surprise so openly had been hitherto unthinkable. {Akagi-san?}
Akagi didn't reply, for she was very far away.
Spatially and temporally very, very far away.
It was the hill again.
She was walking up the hill, with its otherworldly nighttime vista above and the whistling wind all around.
She hadn't seen the hill in almost 30 years, long before she'd ever known who she really was, that her previous name was so near yet so far from her birth name, and yet she recognised it as soon as she saw where she was.
How could she not?
The green tint to the nighttime sky had been and still was a perfect match for the shade she saw every time she or her planes stepped sideways, but which was the chicken and which the egg, she couldn't begin to theorize.
The sky was like nothing she'd ever seen on Earth, either in this life or the indistinct secondhand memories of the last, and certainly not something that should exist on said planet. In addition to the green, there were occasional swathes of purple and other colours across the heavens. A celestial body of some kind, too big to be the Moon, hung overhead so vast and near that its gravitational pull should have been wrecking all kinds of havoc. Eddies and swirls, indeterminate as to whether they were clouds or surface features, could be seen all over the side facing her. It was ringed by an assortment of lesser satellites of its own, Saturn-like. Somehow, despite its luminosity, it didn't blot out with light pollution the stars to its sides that could be seen through the sparse cloud cover; barring those right next to it, all remained as clearly visible as if it was a perfectly dark night in the middle of the Pacific, or in the midst of a Tochigi field for that matter.
The grass that covered the gently-undulating hill she was seated on stretched far, but not forever; there was the occasional wildflower, shrubbery or lonely short tree, and in the distance on a lower elevation was a barren land marred by a collection of closely-spaced colossal craters. From time to time birds flew past, or insects flitted around her.
She could not miss, however, the young man standing beside her. Dark-haired, he kept sneaking glances at her with an innocent earnestness that seemed as though he thought she wouldn't notice. It was faintly amusing.
Maddeningly, she somehow couldn't get a good look at his face, despite an inexplicable sense of familiarity, even as the wind set his clothing aflutter.
A light suddenly appeared over the horizon in the distance, as if the Sun rising. The rays emitted from the spherical sight started to cast an orange hue over the sky as birds flew in front, sweeping away the green, and the air started to distort from heat.
This wasn't the only type of inexplicable stellar dream she'd had. Sometimes she would be standing before a vast body of water, wide enough it stretched to the horizon both to her left and right, the surface reflecting the cosmic kaleidoscope above. Sometimes stranger things, soaring, tumbling, freewheeling like how she'd imagined an acid trip might be like, if never malignant. Sometimes the Milky Way entire was visible above, reaffirming the extraterrestrial nature of these oneiric sojourns. Yet all took place in the same mysterious green-and-change landscape, the companionably mute young man her only fellow.
As the pseudo-sunrise reached its apex, she joined him in standing, and when he turned to look at her again, too startled by the sudden motion to try hiding it, she tried to meet his eyes.
When she had been younger, in the wispy post-waking recollections she had had of these dreams, she had thought the young man had been aspiring to something far beyond her, looking at something in the distance she would never have been able to provide.
Now, though, even as her treacherous eyes stubbornly continued to refuse to register his features, something was different. Was it that she now had been roused to her true nature, directly drew power from Takamagahara rather than passively feeding on scraps dropped under the table by higher powers?
Whatever the truth was, she now could See with sight beyond sight. There had been a moment, now far past, at once terrible and terrific in its perfection, like glimpsing the universe entire. Not truly Reawakening, but that approached it nevertheless. A moment beyond words, too overwhelmingly wondrous as to be harnessed by the imperfections of language, and desperate to avoid diminishing the moment by trying to flawedly reproduce it, he had chosen instead to wholly refrain from discussing it at all.
In his foolishness, he had doomed himself to banality.
As, she realised abruptly, she had herself.
It was plain to see now why Kaga was so astonished: Twin trails of tears flowed freely down Akagi's cheeks, who was otherwise frozen like a statue in her shock.
{Why…} Akagi whispered, barely audible even to the enhanced senses of an increasingly confused and surprised Kaga, {am I crying?}
"They look so happy, don't they?" Saratoga asked elsewhere among the guests, unaware of the turmoil roiling the other converted battlecruiser.
"Of course!" Alice said. "When's your turn, Sara?"
"I haven't given it any real thought."
"No way!"
"Atlanta, you forget again," Sara said with gentle chiding. "Unlike November Bravos, or full humans for that matter, we aren't born with a biological imperative to perpetuate our genes. We recruit for operational effectiveness, not to construct the next generation. The idea of an existence that doesn't end in scrapping, sinking or being put into the reserves doesn't come to mind easily."
Or worse fates, Sara knew from personal experience and didn't bother adding, and Alice knew better than to bring up. Beside them, Bannie was still muttering irritably about her culture being tossed into a potluck to bother adding to the discussion, having tensely whispered along with the vows in the original Irish.
"What about wanting the admiral, then?" Not that his current absence mattered much, Alice thought; Ayaka had barely interacted with Construct Nine's admiral during her time at MDL, certainly not enough to warrant his being invited.
"That is a different matter, please," Sara said. "I'm not one of the obsessed ones!" She looked around for said obsessed ones and did not find them. "Besides, that's an ever-distant utopia."
"What's Avalon got to do with love?"
"Sorry?" Sara asked, confused.
"Nevermind, after your time," Alice said hastily.
"Really, though, there's only so few admirals around, only so many people beneath them, and polygamy isn't going to be legalized anytime soon, I don't think. What happens to the rest of us?"
"There're plenty of recruitment sources that would be most eager to have you!" Shipgirl acuity picked out on the human members of the honour guard the way the demands of duty warred with the enthralling that came with being so close to their shipgirl fellows. Wash was always too much of a hardass, not that her hostile presence deterred all suitors, but the other three would certainly be feeding well soon enough.
"How am I supposed to choose, though?"
"That's what it means to become human," Alice said airily.
"It's not all bad though!" Quincy suddenly interrupted. "This isn't Detroit!"
"Seriously, Atlanta," Sara said, inadvertently taking on a stern mother's tone despite her protests to the contrary, even as she customarily ignored the dopey heavy cruiser, "do you really think there's more to post-war existence, more than just feeding to meet our needs? What does it mean to find the right man? Surely you don't mean for me to jump on the first boy who knows to sing about the ship of-"
"Soft-"
"-happy landings?"
Chuckling, Alice shrugged off Sara's steamrolling her interruption. "Sara, people have been asking themselves that question for millennia before us and will continue asking it long after we've been forgotten. I don't have the answer yet. I don't think anyone has something that works for everyone. What I can say, though, is that no matter how pretty the visuals, no one keeps going back to a director's body of work who doesn't agree with his philosophy and vision, and Shinkai's no exception. I believe there is still something love can do."
Authors' Notes: Cannot into Okudera; send help
Yes, that is the grandmother from WWY, if the clues weren't enough.
Another clue to the mystery of who Akagi is; wonder if anyone can guess who she is before we drop the final hint?
We are taking suggestions and omake contributions for interludes and Another Sides to the wedding ceremony and reception. Good ones may be acknowledged in-story; particularly good ones might be outright canonised and incorporated. Come one, come all! The only off-limit characters are RADM Adams and SCQM Greer.
We have made various communications with Rev Barrish of Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America for the purpose of accuracy to its facilities and rendition of the shinzen kekkon shiki, but there were areas we failed to get a clear answer regarding, which we didn't want to be a pest on, and for obvious reasons we cannot ask him to look the chapter over himself. We have had to fill in the gaps with our own research and questions asked of Rev Bernkastel of Konkyoko Yokosuka Shrine, who due to the idiosyncrasies of every shrine's unique praxis probably is unable to answer in exacting detail regarding Tsubaki's ways. We apologise in advance to any ujiko of Tsubaki for any inaccuracies you may find.
We find KC!Atlanta's resemblance to Sara gutbusting given we had Alice calling Sara mom years in advance.
===[===]===
CHAPTER 24
===[===]===
September 3 2023
===[==]===
CHAPTER 24
===[===]===
September 3 2023
===[==]===
"Ayaka!"
Ayaka perked up at the familiar voice. "Okudera-sempai!"
{your name. Original Soundtrack - Theme of Ms Okudera}
"Yes, Okudera, coming through!"
Brilliant brown locks and flawless fashion sense - that was very much her.
"Sorry I can't look at you in the eye right now," Ayaka said as she looked through the mirror ahead at Makiko, surrounded as she was by step ladders on which women from the specialty boutique laboured with the utmost care to get her into her shiromuku. It was, unsurprisingly, a custom work. Men her size were scarce enough; female giant beanstalks of her calibre might as well not exist.
"Makiko, you always bring me the most interesting clients!" The petite woman overseeing the effort of dressing Ayaka exclaimed, arms wide in emphasis. "I'm still in awe at the size of this lass!"
"Don't worry, Jill, this one's quite harmless," Makiko said, "not like her husband-to-be."
"Hey!"
There was no genuine heat in Ayaka's exclamation, though, and the two of them chuckled afterward.
Ayaka was surprised there was no internal sign of displeasure from the Ship at being called harmless. Had that to do with the misogi shuho in the Pilchuck River Gran had the Reverend put her and Uileag through earlier, despite the fact that there was already going to be a purification rite in the wedding ceremony?
"I've fitted out so many people for Tsubaki," Jill said, "but this is the first time I've fitted out a priestess, and one getting married at a shrine not her own, right on the other end of the country at that! Crazy, huh?"
"These are crazier times than normal, you know!" Trying to suppress a sudden nervousness, Ayaka immediately afterward caught Makiko's eye in the mirror with a raised eyebrow and mouthed, "Does she know?"
Makiko shook her head.
Ayaka tried not to relax heavily enough as to disrupt the proceedings, CAPT Cecil's words from months ago ringing clearly in her head. There was no need to advertise what she was, and she had no intention to.
Not that the cat was likely to remain in the bag much longer. Her unique circumstances meant she had plenty of normal guests coming to witness the proceedings at Tsubaki Grand Shrine, and while NAVENSCIWARCOM didn't deliberately advertise, neither did it suppress identities the way NAVSPECWARCOM did. Enough shipgirls had made a name for themselves in this life that anyone with a working brain could probably put two and two together.
"Look how far you've come," Makiko said aloud. "It was just, what, 7 years ago that you were getting sticker shock from cafe prices, wasn't it?"
"Do you have to keep bringing that up too?" Ayaka said with weariness only partly attributable to the early hour she had been roused in order to get all this ready. "It's bad enough Kas and Shin do!"
"Of course! You then proceeded to mooch off Uileag!"
Ayaka sighed.
"I'm glad he's finally found happiness, though. You seem to be taking this well."
"He---? Am I not supposed to?"
"A lot of people either succumb to nervousness or go full Bridezilla. Isn't that right, Jill?"
"Oh, yes! Quiet dignity of the shinzen kekkon shiki, hah! Some of these fellows wouldn't know quiet dignity if it groveled unreservedly before them!"
Ayaka winced sharply enough she feared the obi holding the nagajuban and kakeshita in place might be shaken loose. "A few months out in combat, occasionally meeting those who live under the threat of daily abyssal assault, provides enough perspective to stuff Anton Ego. Getting jitters from this just seems so... petty."
"Hardly! This is a once in a lifetime event!" Jill's face darkened. "In an ideal world, it would be. Nevertheless, there's nothing wrong with being concerned for everything to go well."
"Ayaka's right, you know," Makiko said in interjection. "I might not have been near the targeted areas, and we might have gotten off lightly, but I still remember what happened back in April quite clearly. It reminds me of what Uileag had said."
"Of what Uiui said?" Ayaka had no idea what she was going on about all of a sudden, unless… "Is this about creating memorable landscapes?"
"As one never knows when New York-"
"-might disappear."
"Yes, exactly that. One of the key reasons why he wanted to go into architecture, he kept saying." A frown marred Makiko's face.
"Kas and Shin joked he wasn't going to get a job if he used that in an interview," Ayaka said through a smile.
"It doesn't sound so silly now."
"Oh, phooey. You Noo Yorkas have to wait for people to come down from… where was the nearest base? New Jersey?" Jill's spirits had evidently recovered. "I'm not worried; the abyssals will have to go through Everett to get at us!"
Ayaka's hackles rose at the carefree way the other woman said it, a rage that didn't need the primal instinct of the Ship helping it along, and though she didn't say anything aloud, she bristled hard enough the member of Jill's staff helping put on the wataboshi muttered at having to adjust it again.
She could see in her mind's eye Hammann or West Virginia storming up at flank and slapping a hoe.
"There we go, all done," Jill eventually said after what felt like far too long, even if Ayaka's internal chronometer knew better, and passed her off to a miko to be brought from the dressing room to the reception room to wait for everything else to be ready. The younger woman - and wasn't that a thought - walked far enough ahead that Ayaka and Makiko could converse freely.
"They were the first ones to see. They are the last ones to bleed."
"Oh, is that…?" Makiko murmured contemplatively. "I would have thought your comrades would be more into Sabaton."
"They're both subgenres of Nordic metal. It's just a stone's throw away."
"Be it as it may, what Jill said struck a nerve?"
Perceptive as always.
"Yes," Ayaka replied tightly. "I know I shouldn't get angry on my wedding day, but have you ever been shot?" A pang of guilt hit at the bewilderment making itself known on Makiko's face, but she pressed on nevertheless. "There may be no scars thanks to Enlightened healing, no phantom pains, but it's something I still think of on occasion." She rubbed backhandedly through the extensive fabric covering her back where the shells had slashed through on that first convoy escort operation, already months away, and when she spoke again, it was with the full solemnity due the dead. "Hundreds to thousands of the fallen grace the memorial walls of Everett and Yokosuka, and though I know none of them, the pain of those who do is obvious. That we do our duty to the last if need be is not something others should take for granted."
The image of a large black book that should no longer exist flashed in Ayaka's mind, then faded until the contents superimposed themselves on a vision of the Everett Memorial Wall ominously.
There was, for a few moments, silence but for their footfalls, time enough for Ayaka to appreciate that the shiromuku didn't trail on the ground the way the train of a Western-style wedding gown did.
"We shouldn't be talking about this sort of kegare-inviting thing just before my wedding," she eventually said.
"No, no! It's fine. There's no need to apologise. Jill has never been a very empathetic person as long as I've known her, and it's as good an excuse to speak to her about this as any." Makiko's lips quirked upwards suddenly. "It could be worse."
"Eh?"
"You haven't heard?" Makiko made a confused sound. "There's that one conspiracy theorist from somewhere in Ohio who thinks all this is a show by actresses or cosplayers. Akron, maybe?"
"What," Ayaka asked disbelievingly, "is the next thing you're going to say that the Russians or Chinese sunk the fleets, but are for some reason still refraining from going nuclear?"
"Yes…?"
"Wack!"
"Yes, exactly." Makiko tsked. "We really need to sit down and talk sometime. It's been too long."
"I agree. Cometfall Week."
"October… 4th, was it?"
Ayaka nodded firmly. "A proper overseas honeymoon, not under these circumstances, no way," she sighed, "but CAPT Zelben was fine with giving Uatu shore leave for the week leading up to Columbus Day, so I could take the time to meet up. We'll be spending a few days at home before coming back. Or maybe you and the boys could join us on the 4th itself?"
"I don't want to be a bother."
"Hardly! Dad and Gran aren't going to turn anyone away." Ayaka's tone turned wistful. "A generation too young to remember Imamura and understand, truly understand why we honour 'a bunch of ruins'," she made an airquotes gesture, "is coming of age; those old enough, we are steadily haemorrhaging as the memories fade. Gran was healthy for her age even before the anagathic effects, but not everyone was so fortunate. We need all the outside interest we can get."
"I'll see what I can do. Anything for the both of you."
"Thanks."
"Looking cool, IoIo!"
Ayaka suppressed a scowl at the mood-ruining interloper who was, of course, Missouri, standing outside the reception room where the nuptial couple were supposed to wait.
Ayaka heard Makiko take in a sharp, sudden breath from beside herself.
Wait, Missouri? "Mo, aren't you supposed to be in the haiden already with the rest of our family? All three of you?"
Wisconsin, clad in a modified version of the sailor's white and blue outfit right off her namesake's great seal, had the good grace to look sheepish.
Missouri, wearing a Hawaii-yellow furisode embroidered with various flora and fauna of that state, did not. "Space is just a suggestion! You know that very well! Red on white looks good on you, but I was hoping we would get a chance to walk the sanshin, all of us! You, me, JerJer, Wisky, your pops, your nana and little Mimi!"
Ayaka winced at the casual mutilation of Kagami's name, simultaneously suspicious of how Missouri was wearing so much cloth seemingly of her own volition.
"Why'd you have to choose one of the shrines that didn't?!"
At Tsubaki, unlike most other shrines, the first stage of the wedding - the sanshin or procession - was a very restrained affair, only the presiding kannushi and the nuptial couple being involved. Though the cloud of witnesses would still line the path to the haiden, the rest of the families were to be already seated in said hall of worship and awaiting the couple's arrival.
"Tsubaki was the only real choice on the CONUS. You know very well going back home would've been too inconvenient for most of the others."
"Bah! I really, really wanted to walk the sanshin, check out the untapped prospective recruitment sources!" Missouri grinned. "Don't you agree, JerJer?"
Ah, that was the Missouri she knew.
"I am not Sonny," Jersey told Missouri with the slow, deliberate flatness of one caring for her namesake's nickname. The red and blue dress she was wearing, inlaid with designs that included a Jersey Devil, almost certainly breached the cardinal rule of not outshining the bride, not that Ayaka was bothered; she doubted any amount of reprimand would even give number 62 pause, much less change her mind, as things stood. "I do not go a-recruiting from the guests on the day my sister is to be married."
"On the night then!" Missouri pointed double finger guns, still grinning.
"Wisky."
In response to Jersey's directive, Wisconsin mutely flicked Missouri on the forehead with a finger.
"Aw, why you gotta be a killjoy, JerJer?!" Belatedly, Missouri noticed Makiko, turned to look at her. "You must be IoIo's friend! What was it, Miku Okura?"
"Makiko Okudera, and yes," Makiko replied, sounding atypically awestruck in a way that wasn't entirely attributable to the difference in stature.
"Ah, yes, yes! IoIo's mentioned you before!" Missouri patted her on the shoulder, hopefully unwittingly looming. "Is there anyone you know who could do with some spiffy new footwear? I'm sure JerJer's willing to provide!"
Jersey regarded her third sister with the deadeyed gravity of a don behind a fine mahogany desk or a dragon lazing on its hoard.
"No, no need." Makiko still sounded breathy.
"Aw, really?" Missouri was disappointed. "Pity!" She fished out a business card. "Look, here's our numbers. You meet anyone who needs underwater lodging, contact us! No charge for a friend of the family!"
Makiko accepted it graciously.
"We should go," Wisconsin said, softly but firmly.
"Oh, really?!" Missouri shouted.
"Ja, really."
Missouri pouted. "Let's skedaddle, then! Don't keep us waiting, IoIo!" She patted Makiko's shoulder again, slapped Ayaka on the back, grabbed the others and stepped sideways.
"That was something," Makiko said after a while, still sounding overawed.
"They certainly are something," Ayaka said, a touch more irritably than was probably proper.
"Your little sister is right, though. I should get going too."
Ayaka looked to her timekeeping equipment. "Yes, you probably should."
Makiko waved and went off, after which the miko - who had been standing mutely transfixed by the proceedings - slid open the door to the room.
Uileag was seated inside, and reflexively turned to face the door as he heard it open.
Unlike the Western-style wedding, in the shinzen kekkon shiki there was no requirement for the bride and groom to not see each other before the ceremony.
"Uiui."
Despite that, she inexplicably couldn't bring herself to take him in her arms as she seated herself next to him. Meanwhile, the miko who had led her here slid the door shut and found seating a considerate distance away.
"Ayachi." Uileag now had on a black kimono under a black haori and grey hakama. Like most non-Japanese, the Greers did not have a family crest to call their own, but he came in a rentable size, and the one he had on now bore the mitsudomoe. "Was that your sisters?"
"Un. Were they that lou-" Ayaka regarded the flimsy construction of the shouji in sudden realisation and brought a hand up to her face, sighing in exasperation.
"Are they going to be a problem?"
Ayaka took a long, hard look in the general direction Makiko had walked off in, mentally playing back the signs of how their mutual friend had been entranced. "It shouldn't. That the code explicitly prohibits Jodying says they shouldn't be into homewrecking."
"Codes get broken," Uileag said doubtfully.
"As a precaution, I also left the obvious potential troublemakers off the guest list."
"Oho, how very sly of you!" Any attempt at selling a sense of outrage was, however, foiled by his chuckles thereafter.
Ayaka tried to laugh, but it came out wooden.
"Ayachi?"
"I'm still surprised, even up to this late hour, that Gran and your father actually managed to agree on the style of our wedding. Some of the arguments they had were quite intense."
Quite intense. Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
What an understatement.
"Just think," Uileag said, "10 years ago, if you told me I'd be having my wedding in the Shinto style, I'd have called you crazy."
"Speaking of that, how much of this did your father know about all this beforehand? I only remember him being incredulous the first time it came up."
Uileag scoffed. "Dadi? Not much, I don't think. Roosevelt never got forward-deployed to Japan the way Reagan or Washington 70 did, and he didn't concern himself much with that segment. Still, it could have been worse."
"Eh? How so?"
"All this talk reminded me: I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but it's a good thing my maternal grandparents are already gone."
"Your… you hardly ever mention them," Ayaka said, surprised and a bit discomfited, as she dove into the sea of memories in search of answers.
"Not finding much?"
Ayaka looked askance at Uileag and his lightly amused tone.
"You wouldn't. They were dead even before you tried looking for me that first time, and I don't remember much of them, but I…" Uileag scratched the back of his neck nervously, "think they would have put their foot down even more firmly than Dadi did. That's from what little I do remember and what Mamai told me."
"Sou." Ayaka murmured quizzically. "I still wouldn't have guessed them to be like that, considering how your mom is."
"No? Being one of the middle children must have meant they didn't instill as much of their attitudes in her. As for Dadi's side, you know that much."
She did indeed. The even older Greer's true mistress had been the sea, with how that shaped his psyche having effects that were still reverberating two generations down the line, even though age had caught up with him 3 years ago. As for the man's widow, Ayaka had had opportunities to meet her before this. The kindly old woman with a peculiar interest in New York's history had pressed a choco pie into her hands mere moments into their first meeting and been most pleasantly surprised that the future in-law was a gaeilgeoir.
Ayaka hadn't been able to help noticing how the vintage townhouse the old woman stayed in, predating the 20th century, contrasted sharply with a skyscraping modern tower, barely 10 years old, that was visible in the distance from its backyard. The way the sun had backlit the latter only made it all the more eyecatching.
"That's not the only thing that has you concerned, is it?"
Count on Uileag to see what others might not. "Uun. Everything changes after this, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" Uileag asked, confused. "Should I have you start calling me 'darling'?" His arm raised and lowered as he fought the urge to nudge Ayaka with an elbow.
{Isn't that too much like a limey… a~na~ta?}
{That's laying it on too thick!} Uileag replied with heartfelt surprise in Irish. The atypically honeyed tones of Japanese made it clear she was using the word with its affectionate connotations in mind, as opposed to in the general sense of "you". {Don't you think so, a rúnsearc?}
{That--that, he says, right before escalating straight to the nuclear option!} Any thought of outrage on Ayaka's part was flash-fried like dry kindling before thermite beneath her embarrassment. "Mo anam cara" might not, to someone intent on fullest fidelity to the ways of the Irish, be a per se means of conveying romantic endearment, but obliqueness was the Japanese stock in trade, as the old "beauty of the moon" saying and the cultural allergy to an unambiguous "aishiteru" demonstrated. "A rúnsearc" was already very forward as far as the Irish were concerned; to her, it was just too much!
Uileag let slip an impish smile.
{Who do I blame for this? Shin? Morrie? One of your coursemates?}
Uileag's smile faded. {Should it? Why should we magically - hah - change just because of having gone through the ceremony?}
Ayaka pressed her hands into her thighs, fighting the urge to gesticulate in a most unsightly manner, mindful that the Tsubaki miko was still in the room. {Too many bad sitcoms about couples going to seed in middle age aside… you know long-term cohabitation doesn't guarantee a successful marriage, even though doing so supposedly familiarises you with your partner's habits. That suggests there is something about going through the ceremony that has power.}
{I know.}
{Long hours on the sea, with everyone spaced out too far to be seen visually, give one too much time to think. Did you know that part of the mission of Kokugakuin's Faculty of Shinto Studies is deepening the understanding of awareness, roles and functions of traditional culture?}
{No? This, you hardly mention.}
Ayaka huffed in acknowledgment of the riposte. {It made for interesting discussion in light of how the Great Fire of Mayugoro forced us to stagger onward with limited knowledge of our practices' true purpose.}
Uileag nodded in grim agreement.
{Even so, one thing remains clear. Mo can say what she wants about rising divorce rates and falling time-to-divorce. Marriage as the union of man and woman before law, society and whichever kamisama you honour - or no higher power at all, indeed - is a grave undertaking, and while it has its benefits,} Ayaka wasn't sure if she suddenly licked her lips at this point out of nervousness, the anticipation of the Ship stirring from its torpor, or entirely on herself, {so too has it obligations and responsibilities to family and country, duties I fear I'm not worthy to carry out.}
An awkward look settled on Uileag's face. Mr Greer might not have taken fidelity to the old ways as far as his parents-in-law, but he had taken in enough. The possibility that Uileag might not be able to produce a male heir via Ayaka - the Shirokaze having birthed only daughters for at least the past seven generations and no one knowing if this would stop now that the threat of Fafnir was gone - had been a big hurdle to overcome. {That's what you're worried about now,} he eventually said. {Not the wedding itself.}
{Why should the wedding be the problem? You know I'm not the fastidious, micromanaging sort.}
Uileag tried to hide a chuckle.
{No, it's the decades after I'm worried about. The children. The shrine and the lineage. The way forward. Whatever extenuating circumstances they may have had, the fact is we haven't had good role models. You know that.}
{Yes, but us being us, it feels like just yesterday that you wanted to run away and never say goodbye. Are you getting cold feet because of this?}
{What? No!} Ayaka shouted.
{Could have fooled me.}
{It's not like I almost chi---chi---chickened out at the last minute after going to all the trouble of suddenly getting off the train and running around as if at random or anything!}
Uileag didn't bother hiding his laughter this time. {That's why you need me around to keep you from going off script.}
"Please excuse me." There was a sudden knocking at the door, and before the miko in the room managed to get it, the door slid open, the Reverend letting himself in. Bushy of hair and beard, dressed in the pristine accoutrements of his station, he moved with the easy grace of his decades of aikido practice over to the two of them. "Mr Greer, Rev Shirokaze." His eyes twinkled more intently with amusement at the prospect of seeing a junior be married off on his watch.
Ayaka and Uileag rose as one and returned his bow and warm smile. "Reverend."
"Shall we?"
{Weathering with You Original Soundtrack - Celebration}
The participants in the sanshin proper might be limited, but the cloud of witnesses lining the path up to the shrine's main building, dressed in scintillating style, still seemed a seriously stupendous sight, and Ayaka couldn't help wishing for the umpteenth time she'd been more aggressive in trimming the guestlist.
Almost everyone Ayaka and Uileag had called classmate or teacher had made the trip and were in various states of exuberance. Elementary, middle, high school, university and Kokugakuin, none were spared. Hitomi, Morrie and Kas in particular were visibly over the moon; Shin had gone even further beyond and was openly weeping tears of joy even as he clapped unreservedly.
Ayaka's eyes passed over the three former main bullies, who were gawking openly and most unglamorously. Whether at the regal figure she and Uileag now cut in their wedding garments or something else, she didn't know, and it seemed almost unbelievable that she'd let them have such power over her before.
Much of the rest of Imamura followed. Despite Yoshimichi's efforts, Imamura had had over 200 years of tradition, itself built on a thousand years of the greater Shirokaze history, and a mere four years of attempts at forced secularization was but a drop in the bucket. It might have succeeded in the time of the generation after Ayaka's, given her then-disinterest in matters clerical, but as things currently stood, the faith remained strong enough that many were eagerly celebrating the marriage of their guuji.
Uileag's former colleagues at Il Giardino delle Parole were next. Whatever enmity they had once was now a thing of the past; that the one to eventually win Makiko's hand had been none of them, despite the misunderstanding Ayaka had inadvertently caused before, probably helped.
Then came Uileag's OCS and CEC coursemates, many of whom had brought out their dress whites. Irascible Mike was unmistakable, no outwardly-visible sign to be seen of the gut wound that had come too close to claiming his life.
Despite the wellness of the three of his closest coursemates, Uileag couldn't help feeling a bit down at the sight of who was absent. Though he and the gaggle of constructionmen had saved many that terrible night, still more had either already been dead when found or succumbed to their wounds afterward, and far too many of the deceased had he known.
Ayaka's colleagues at her former workplace went down a line that terminated at Mr Jordan, who had busted out dress whites that were clearly cut for a younger, fitter self.
It connected perfectly with Gonzalez Team via CAPT Cecil standing next to her former comrade. Washington wearing her dress whites over something with more personality ironically said everything that needed to be said about her, while Alice was wearing a robin blue furisode with canary yellow obi as expected. What wasn't expected was Albacore deigning to show up in something that wasn't her usual itsy bitsy teenie weenie red white blue Old Glorykini.
The coursemates of the officer training course at JB MDL were now up, those that had the necessary space in their operational schedules at any rate.
Uatu, of course, perfect attendance, with CAPT Zelben in tow. Even Mina's mood could not be dampened by the burning omamori attached to her clothing.
RDML Abel, somehow looking less of a hardass than usual despite the medal-laden dress whites.
RADM Adams.
Ayaka had originally wanted to avoid making an event out of the whole thing, which was why there were no Congresscritters or avatars of SecNav present. It had been a struggle getting her to accept even her namesake's governor, not that she was chummy with him the way a Summoned might have been. She had wanted to cap out at RDML Abel.
A polite but firm insistence from the father of the groom on behalf of a flag officer whom he had enjoyed a long working relationship with? Now that was something she couldn't worm her way out of, deputy of the command or not.
This was really the first time she had ever seen him in the flesh, the second direct encounter after that videoconference the day after her Reawakening. Despite the many tales she'd heard of an easily-displeased old man with a laser-grade glare, he seemed possessed of a fatherly countenance here, and oddly enough maybe a little melancholy.
Across the Pacific went the guestlist. Hai Jun Shao Jiang Shao and the Special Purpose Naval Infantry Force shipgirls had profusely apologised for how their tiny numbers relative to their responsibilities made freeing up the time impossible, and had opted to be absent rather than dishonouring the proceedings by sending some nobody of a junior officer or minor functionary that neither party to the marriage would recognise.
Their Japanese counterparts had no such issues, and Kaishō-ho Minami had managed to spare a sizeable contingent from KanFlot One. Naganami's J-DesRon Two was here, as was the Fusous' J-BatDiv Two. The Nakaharas looked stunning in elaborately-embroidered black and red furisode. The Two Dragons could not be spared from their duties, but a smattering of others who Ayaka had fought alongside had been sent instead. The two Ducks were present, as was Maya, who was chattering away with the other boukuukan on En-secure channels.
Akagi and Kaga were, while not the only ones, easily the most prominent of Kaishō-ho Ishikawa's representatives, and not just because of their heights. They were resplendent in haori, kimono and hakama skirt combinations - mainly black and red for Akagi and white and blue for Kaga - that curiously resembled what had been worn by the spectres Ayaka had seen the first time she had laid eyes on them.
On and on the guests lined the path with its towering evergreens, still feeling greater a number than Ayaka had originally desired, until the procession finally entered the main shrine building. Not before passing a number of projector screens, though. The ceremony proper was only supposed to be attended in person by family, but to accommodate the interested parties to the pioneering event that this was - for better or worse - Ichiyo had persuaded her fellow senior shinshoku to allow a film crew to capture the proceedings live for the local audience. The furthest of them were already moving forward to be in sight of the screens even as the procession passed under the torii into the main building.
Both families were indeed already in the haiden. Uileag's was seated on the right and Ayaka's on the left in order of seniority.
Ichiyo was a picture of poise as she knelt in seiza serenely.
Yoshimichi was seated next to her, beaming with paternal pride, but looking at the sight, what first came to Ayaka's mind was who wasn't there.
When she was younger, she'd always been confused by her father's refusal to provide a straight answer on the topic of her paternal grandparents. It hadn't been until everything had been given a thorough airing in the post-Fafnir therapy that she'd learnt how he had been disowned for the temerity of daring to not go along with their marital plans for him, and had played no part in his life thereafter. Not in his wedding and married life.
Not in Mom's funeral.
Not now.
She wouldn't say she was angry; that implied she cared enough about they who were snubbing her to take offence at the absence. She was, however, disappointed and saddened that, despite taking the trouble to try and reach out to them, they weren't able to set aside the enmity for just one most important of days just because she was of the same blood as the one they were shunning.
For a moment, a thought flashed through Ayaka's mind that old grudges held against perceived traitors, and the hatred and loathing that powered such, could have a power and life of their own.
The other vital absence, Ayaka felt more keenly.
Her mother, she hadn't seen a second time in the five months since her Reawakening, and that it remained so even in the run-up to what should have been the happiest day of her life was a sour note. She didn't want to admit it, but there was a cruel bit of herself that would have preferred her mother never reappear at all, never give her hope, never rip open decade-old wounds she'd thought healed.
The four sisters were naturally the last on this side. Kagami hadn't gotten off Cloud Nine ever since she had grown into her substantial upgrades to height and cup size, desire to not be exactly as much of a giant beanstalk as her older sister notwithstanding, and that good cheer remained clearly on display. Missouri wasn't so enthused, not least about being at the back of the line, and Jersey and Wisconsin had had to pointedly remind her that even using time-since-launch wasn't going to get them past Ichiyo.
Uileag's grandmother was at the head of the other line, and as predicted she was cheerfully taking the alien ceremony in stride.
SCQM Greer was next, and there was a crack of a smile, but little more, which was well within expectations. His immaculate dress whites had nothing to directly match his older son's Navy Cross, but his far greater time in service gave him a visible breadth of achievement that soundly pipped Uileag's.
Mrs Greer was all kindly smiles. Ayaka wondered not for the first time how the two had managed to make the marriage work despite the clashing personalities and the stresses from his being out at sea at length.
Uileag's older sisters were next, and lastly Ciarán, who couldn't keep from his customary puckish grin despite the sobriety of the circumstances.
The Reverend led Ayaka and Uileag further into the haiden until they were before the goshinden, and bid them sit on the special seats slightly behind him before said altar. With everyone in place, the Reverend proceeded to the second part of the ceremony: The shubatsu. Stepping into the heiden, the elevated area for offerings and norito, he began praying the harae no kotoba, then stepped out to take up a haraigushi, which he waved it person-by-person over all who were present in the haiden.
Next was the saishu ippai. At a cue, couple and relatives rose and bowed deeply towards the goshinden.
The participants were bid to sit, and the Reverend took up the food offerings and carefully placed them before the goshinden in the process called kensen.
After this, the Reverend moved closer to the goshinden before pronouncing the norito soujou. In reverent tones, he beseeched the kamisama for good fortune, happiness, protection and guidance upon the couple.
Ayaka and Uileag rose now and were presented with well-appointed sakazuki ceremonial saucers, into which the miko poured omiki, the specially-purified sake. This was the san san kudo, where they were to take three sets of three sips each.
One, two, three.
Ichi, ni, san.
A haon, a dó, a trí.
The miko retrieved the sakazuki, and once that was done, the Reverend bid them advance until they were standing on the heiden.
All shrines had their own idiosyncrasies in their practices, but most of them still followed the same broad strokes. That said, the next step in the ceremony, the taking of the marital vows, was where one of the major splits was found. Some shrines practised the seishi hodoku, a stiff formal declaration using the same archaic Japanese as in norito said either by one half of the couple or both in turn before the kamisama dedicating the marriage to them and promising to take care of the partner. Others opted for the chikai no kotoba, which was more flexible, rendered in modern Japanese, and entailed a back-and-forth. Tsubaki fell into the latter camp, and let the couple write their own instead of prescribing.
Uileag pulled out the piece of paper on the oath had been written, held it up for Ayaka, and exchanged glances with her before he took a deep breath and begun in Japanese, speaking with careful gravity. The chikai no kotoba might not be as rigid as the seishi hodoku, but that was no excuse to not treat it with the gravitas it deserved. The vows' English rendition had already been presented to the AV crew to subtitle for the benefit of those who were linguistically unequipped. {On this day, before Tsubaki Ookamitachi, we give thanks and ask for your blessing and protection.}
{Love will guide the way, our hearts bound by an eternal promise,} Ayaka continued.
{Blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.}
{We give our bodies, that two might be one.}
{We give our spirits, till our life be done.}
Behind them, Uileag's grandmother gasped in recognition. She might not have been as hardline as her late counterparts on Mr Greer's side of the family, but she was familiar enough with the old ways of her people nonetheless.
{We give our smile, that our words be unspoken.}
{I give you that which is mine to give.}
{I shall serve you in the ways that you require.}
{May the honeycomb taste sweeter coming from my hand.}
{Our love shall be one of respect, trust, and confidence forever.}
{Wholly and completely without restraint.}
{In sickness and in health.}
{In plenty and in poverty.}
{In life and beyond.}
{I shall be a shield for your back as you are for mine.}
{I shall be your refuge and safe harbour.}
{I shall cry no name but yours into the night.}
{I shall see no eye but yours first in the day.}
{If you get lost, wherever you are in this world-}
{-I will search for you.}
{Our fates have been and will remain bound together.}
{We swear by peace and love to stand.}
{Heart to heart and hand to hand.}
{Mark, Tsubaki Ookamitachi, and hear us now.}
{Confirming this our Sacred Vow.}
Uileag carefully placed the paper with the vows down before the goshinden with the offerings and stepped backwards out of the heiden, and now a miko approached bearing the wedding rings. This was the yubiwa koukan, the exchange of rings. He picked up one of the rings with deliberate sloth; as previously agreed, the cameraman zoomed in to show the gold band inset with a small ruby and sapphire, the precious stones accompanied by grooves like tails.
{Are you kidding me?} Morrie muttered in startled recognition of what the design represented, but not softly enough unfortunately that Hitomi didn't hear and elbow him for it.
Slowly and carefully, Uileag raised it to Ayaka's outstretched left hand and slid it down her ring finger.
If Uileag was intent, outright gingerly was how Ayaka put his on.
Now the families were bid to rise once more. Before Ayaka and Uileag were handed the sakaki branches for presentation in the tamagushi hairei, the relatives were to bow twice and clap twice before being given time to say prayers pronouncing blessings on the being-wed. Once everyone was done, they bowed twice more before Ayaka and Uileag offered up the sacred branches.
Another saishu ippai was conducted before the relatives retook their seats, and then it was time for the taishutsu. In other shrines, this exit procession might have been a more ostentatious thing, but at Tsubaki, it merely called for the nuptial couple to follow the kannushi back to the outer end of the haiden where the family members were seated.
The miko issued the sakazuki again, for it was now time for the naorae. It was the guests' turn to imbibe the omiki, and thereby formally complete the ceremony.
At least, that would have been the case in a normal shinzen kekkon shiki, but normal this hardly was, and thus after all had ritually partaken of the aforementioned sake, Uileag rose and offered his hand to Ayaka, who accepted it. With the Reverend retaking the lead, the rest of the families formed up behind them and made for the exit.
Missouri quivered with silent mirth as she realised her wish was being granted after a fashion.
A mixed honour guard comprised of both shipgirls and baselines, all in dress whites, was waiting in between the building's exit and the torii outside, and as the recession approached, they fell in on either side of the doorway and went to attention.
"Officers, draw swords!"
At Washington's command, the honour guard drew their sabers and formed an arch over the path, blades up and tips touching.
The Reverend halted at the doorway, then stepped aside and waved Ayaka and Uileag on.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Wash said loudly in announcement as they started out the exit, "it is my honour to present to you LCDR and ENS Uileag Shane Greer!"
All eyes and optics locked onto them as they passed in a stately manner under the arches and all the way past the torii, upon which they stopped and bowed to the audience. Behind them, Wash shouted, "Officers, return swords!" and the honour guard sheathed their swords.
Coming up from the bow, they were struck by a sudden awareness that silence had fallen.
Quincy was the first to break it. "Kiss! Kiss!"
Hers was the only source of cacophony for a few moments, and Ayaka started to hope that no one else would get any funny ideas. Her apprehension was due in no small part to the fact that the shinzen kekkon shiki was not normally sealed with a kiss.
"We haven't seen a kiss!" Princeton suddenly added, dashing that particular hope like an egg on rocks.
The floodgates had been opened, and now steadily more and more of the audience took up the call. The senior officers remained above the fray, thankfully, but the enthusiasm was indiscriminate in its spread otherwise, sweeping up shipgirl and baseline, young and old alike.
Ayaka and Uileag turned back, looking to the Reverend, trying to ignore how Wisconsin was gagging and restraining Missouri in the background.
After what seemed a terribly-prolonged pause, but which Ayaka's internal chronometers showed was really but a few seconds, the Reverend nodded.
They turned to face each other, and Uileag began moving towards her while rising into tiptoe, but a most devilish thought had found its way into Ayaka's mind, and she was faster to swoop, bending him backwards like it was V-J Day in Times Square all over again.
The audience erupted into cheers and applause.
{What a beautiful sight,} Kaga said in Japanese as she chewed, a hint of wistfulness in her normally-toneless voice, even as she ignored the warm tingling sensation that had suddenly spawned at the moment the newlyweds locked lips. {I enjoy the attention of the Admiral and the other men, but old killers brought back for wetwork like us never have happy endings.}
Akagi didn't rebut her stoic cynicism.
Kaga turned slightly towards Akagi and froze at the sight of her divisionmate staring off into the distance right through the kissing newlyweds, and her previously-blank face morphed into a wide-eyed stare. For someone like her, inhibited even by the standards of her countrymen, showing surprise so openly had been hitherto unthinkable. {Akagi-san?}
Akagi didn't reply, for she was very far away.
Spatially and temporally very, very far away.
{5 Centimeters per Second Original Soundtrack - Dream}
It was the hill again.
She was walking up the hill, with its otherworldly nighttime vista above and the whistling wind all around.
She hadn't seen the hill in almost 30 years, long before she'd ever known who she really was, that her previous name was so near yet so far from her birth name, and yet she recognised it as soon as she saw where she was.
How could she not?
The green tint to the nighttime sky had been and still was a perfect match for the shade she saw every time she or her planes stepped sideways, but which was the chicken and which the egg, she couldn't begin to theorize.
The sky was like nothing she'd ever seen on Earth, either in this life or the indistinct secondhand memories of the last, and certainly not something that should exist on said planet. In addition to the green, there were occasional swathes of purple and other colours across the heavens. A celestial body of some kind, too big to be the Moon, hung overhead so vast and near that its gravitational pull should have been wrecking all kinds of havoc. Eddies and swirls, indeterminate as to whether they were clouds or surface features, could be seen all over the side facing her. It was ringed by an assortment of lesser satellites of its own, Saturn-like. Somehow, despite its luminosity, it didn't blot out with light pollution the stars to its sides that could be seen through the sparse cloud cover; barring those right next to it, all remained as clearly visible as if it was a perfectly dark night in the middle of the Pacific, or in the midst of a Tochigi field for that matter.
The grass that covered the gently-undulating hill she was seated on stretched far, but not forever; there was the occasional wildflower, shrubbery or lonely short tree, and in the distance on a lower elevation was a barren land marred by a collection of closely-spaced colossal craters. From time to time birds flew past, or insects flitted around her.
She could not miss, however, the young man standing beside her. Dark-haired, he kept sneaking glances at her with an innocent earnestness that seemed as though he thought she wouldn't notice. It was faintly amusing.
Maddeningly, she somehow couldn't get a good look at his face, despite an inexplicable sense of familiarity, even as the wind set his clothing aflutter.
A light suddenly appeared over the horizon in the distance, as if the Sun rising. The rays emitted from the spherical sight started to cast an orange hue over the sky as birds flew in front, sweeping away the green, and the air started to distort from heat.
This wasn't the only type of inexplicable stellar dream she'd had. Sometimes she would be standing before a vast body of water, wide enough it stretched to the horizon both to her left and right, the surface reflecting the cosmic kaleidoscope above. Sometimes stranger things, soaring, tumbling, freewheeling like how she'd imagined an acid trip might be like, if never malignant. Sometimes the Milky Way entire was visible above, reaffirming the extraterrestrial nature of these oneiric sojourns. Yet all took place in the same mysterious green-and-change landscape, the companionably mute young man her only fellow.
As the pseudo-sunrise reached its apex, she joined him in standing, and when he turned to look at her again, too startled by the sudden motion to try hiding it, she tried to meet his eyes.
When she had been younger, in the wispy post-waking recollections she had had of these dreams, she had thought the young man had been aspiring to something far beyond her, looking at something in the distance she would never have been able to provide.
Now, though, even as her treacherous eyes stubbornly continued to refuse to register his features, something was different. Was it that she now had been roused to her true nature, directly drew power from Takamagahara rather than passively feeding on scraps dropped under the table by higher powers?
Whatever the truth was, she now could See with sight beyond sight. There had been a moment, now far past, at once terrible and terrific in its perfection, like glimpsing the universe entire. Not truly Reawakening, but that approached it nevertheless. A moment beyond words, too overwhelmingly wondrous as to be harnessed by the imperfections of language, and desperate to avoid diminishing the moment by trying to flawedly reproduce it, he had chosen instead to wholly refrain from discussing it at all.
In his foolishness, he had doomed himself to banality.
As, she realised abruptly, she had herself.
It was plain to see now why Kaga was so astonished: Twin trails of tears flowed freely down Akagi's cheeks, who was otherwise frozen like a statue in her shock.
{Why…} Akagi whispered, barely audible even to the enhanced senses of an increasingly confused and surprised Kaga, {am I crying?}
"They look so happy, don't they?" Saratoga asked elsewhere among the guests, unaware of the turmoil roiling the other converted battlecruiser.
"Of course!" Alice said. "When's your turn, Sara?"
"I haven't given it any real thought."
"No way!"
"Atlanta, you forget again," Sara said with gentle chiding. "Unlike November Bravos, or full humans for that matter, we aren't born with a biological imperative to perpetuate our genes. We recruit for operational effectiveness, not to construct the next generation. The idea of an existence that doesn't end in scrapping, sinking or being put into the reserves doesn't come to mind easily."
Or worse fates, Sara knew from personal experience and didn't bother adding, and Alice knew better than to bring up. Beside them, Bannie was still muttering irritably about her culture being tossed into a potluck to bother adding to the discussion, having tensely whispered along with the vows in the original Irish.
"What about wanting the admiral, then?" Not that his current absence mattered much, Alice thought; Ayaka had barely interacted with Construct Nine's admiral during her time at MDL, certainly not enough to warrant his being invited.
"That is a different matter, please," Sara said. "I'm not one of the obsessed ones!" She looked around for said obsessed ones and did not find them. "Besides, that's an ever-distant utopia."
"What's Avalon got to do with love?"
"Sorry?" Sara asked, confused.
"Nevermind, after your time," Alice said hastily.
"Really, though, there's only so few admirals around, only so many people beneath them, and polygamy isn't going to be legalized anytime soon, I don't think. What happens to the rest of us?"
"There're plenty of recruitment sources that would be most eager to have you!" Shipgirl acuity picked out on the human members of the honour guard the way the demands of duty warred with the enthralling that came with being so close to their shipgirl fellows. Wash was always too much of a hardass, not that her hostile presence deterred all suitors, but the other three would certainly be feeding well soon enough.
"How am I supposed to choose, though?"
"That's what it means to become human," Alice said airily.
"It's not all bad though!" Quincy suddenly interrupted. "This isn't Detroit!"
"Seriously, Atlanta," Sara said, inadvertently taking on a stern mother's tone despite her protests to the contrary, even as she customarily ignored the dopey heavy cruiser, "do you really think there's more to post-war existence, more than just feeding to meet our needs? What does it mean to find the right man? Surely you don't mean for me to jump on the first boy who knows to sing about the ship of-"
"Soft-"
"-happy landings?"
Chuckling, Alice shrugged off Sara's steamrolling her interruption. "Sara, people have been asking themselves that question for millennia before us and will continue asking it long after we've been forgotten. I don't have the answer yet. I don't think anyone has something that works for everyone. What I can say, though, is that no matter how pretty the visuals, no one keeps going back to a director's body of work who doesn't agree with his philosophy and vision, and Shinkai's no exception. I believe there is still something love can do."
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Cannot into Okudera; send help
Yes, that is the grandmother from WWY, if the clues weren't enough.
Another clue to the mystery of who Akagi is; wonder if anyone can guess who she is before we drop the final hint?
We are taking suggestions and omake contributions for interludes and Another Sides to the wedding ceremony and reception. Good ones may be acknowledged in-story; particularly good ones might be outright canonised and incorporated. Come one, come all! The only off-limit characters are RADM Adams and SCQM Greer.
Last edited:
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Still shamelessly requesting omake contributions. Offer remains good till chapter is finalized.
===[===]===
CHAPTER 25
===[===]===
===[===]===
CHAPTER 25
===[===]===
After the rigmarole of paperwork was over and done with, newlyweds and guests alike proceeded to the hotel with the rented ballroom for the lunch reception. Uileag changed to his dress whites, while Ayaka went with a elaborately-designed light blue kimono.
{Ayachi, how does that still look good on you?} Hitomi asked, surprised and a little envious, at the sight of Ayaka having returned to the old folded twin braids.
{Nn? What's wrong with that?} Ayaka asked, confused. She hadn't been paying full attention to their talk, preoccupied ever since the ceremony's conclusion by an inexplicable feeling that she was on the precipice of something important she couldn't grasp.
{I'm sure if you let your hair grow, you could go back to the braids too,} Morrie said helpfully.
{Hmph.}
{You might even look good in them!}
{... flattery will get you nowhere,} Hitomi said, the pink tint her cheeks had gained putting the lie to any distaste in her voice.
Ichiyo and Mr Greer had spared no expense; the feast was, even after accounting for shipgirl appetites, sumptuous. A steady stream of speeches, toasts and performances soon blurred together, not helped by ample alcoholic lubrication.
One encounter did stick out, though.
Ms Yukino was seated at one of the tables beside Mr Teruzuki. She was clad in a sleeveless dress the colour of red wine and not looking her 37 years, he in a shirt and grey waistcoat skirting the formality requirements.
{Yukino-sensei!} Ayaka shouted cheerfully. As a teacher of Japanese literature, Japanese had naturally been the medium of instruction.
{Congratulations, Godai-san, Greer-san,} Ms Yukino said. Pointing, she added, {You remember Atago-kun, I hope?}
{Of course, of course!}
Maya's older two sisters hadn't been invited, but Ayaka had seen how she had gotten her hands on a portable hologram projector, linked it to her phone, and brought both it and Teruzuki over, that she might take a photo of the man with both his namesakes. Even after the explanation, his visage had been still one of unvarnished confusion.
{Congrats, Godai-san, Greer-san.}
{Don't say it like that,} Uileag said, embarrassed by the formality. {I'm only one year your junior, aren't I?}
{Remember when you taught us about kataware doki?} Ayaka had pressed on to ask over the two husbands. {Did you know this was going to happen back then?}
The stunned look on Ms Yukino's face as she belatedly connected the dots was something that someone with a more twisted sense of humour might have delighted in.
{Nn? What's wrong with that?} Ayaka asked, confused. She hadn't been paying full attention to their talk, preoccupied ever since the ceremony's conclusion by an inexplicable feeling that she was on the precipice of something important she couldn't grasp.
{I'm sure if you let your hair grow, you could go back to the braids too,} Morrie said helpfully.
{Hmph.}
{You might even look good in them!}
{... flattery will get you nowhere,} Hitomi said, the pink tint her cheeks had gained putting the lie to any distaste in her voice.
Ichiyo and Mr Greer had spared no expense; the feast was, even after accounting for shipgirl appetites, sumptuous. A steady stream of speeches, toasts and performances soon blurred together, not helped by ample alcoholic lubrication.
One encounter did stick out, though.
Ms Yukino was seated at one of the tables beside Mr Teruzuki. She was clad in a sleeveless dress the colour of red wine and not looking her 37 years, he in a shirt and grey waistcoat skirting the formality requirements.
{Yukino-sensei!} Ayaka shouted cheerfully. As a teacher of Japanese literature, Japanese had naturally been the medium of instruction.
{Congratulations, Godai-san, Greer-san,} Ms Yukino said. Pointing, she added, {You remember Atago-kun, I hope?}
{Of course, of course!}
Maya's older two sisters hadn't been invited, but Ayaka had seen how she had gotten her hands on a portable hologram projector, linked it to her phone, and brought both it and Teruzuki over, that she might take a photo of the man with both his namesakes. Even after the explanation, his visage had been still one of unvarnished confusion.
{Congrats, Godai-san, Greer-san.}
{Don't say it like that,} Uileag said, embarrassed by the formality. {I'm only one year your junior, aren't I?}
{Remember when you taught us about kataware doki?} Ayaka had pressed on to ask over the two husbands. {Did you know this was going to happen back then?}
The stunned look on Ms Yukino's face as she belatedly connected the dots was something that someone with a more twisted sense of humour might have delighted in.
===[===]===
Last edited:
What about kataware doki
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
One of the driving inspirations for our starting this at all, as set up in the prologue. Yukari's lesson from early in canon. Twilight, neither day nor night, where the boundary of the works becomes blurred and one might encounter something not quite human.
Or... learn that one never truly was quite human.
Or, in other words, "You thought you would encounter something not quite human, but it was yourself
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Omake contribution box still open.
...
Mr Greer discreetly stepped out of the ballroom partway through the proceedings. Even with all the networking he'd had to contend with on the way to and past making chief, the festivities had been getting stifling. There had been an odd energy to the proceedings that had discomfited him, even if he'd never show it.
He stopped short at the sight of RADM Adams in the lobby outside, looking deep in thought. There were guards forming a loose outer picket line and a shipgirl - the "secretary ship", he vaguely remembered the term was - on close escort.
He had been barely a few seconds out the door before the secretary ship whirled on him, snapping sharply like a turret unerringly guided by fire control radar - which she might literally be - and he was struck by a scouring pressure like he was being scanned from head to toe.
It wasn't much of a glare by NCO standards, and it didn't help that it was coming from a beautiful, shapely young woman, dressed in a fine gown that wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-class establishment with exclusive clientele, yet it felt like his innermost being was being scrutinised. As normal as she looked from the outside, instincts cultivated by decades on the seas and more than a few pitched battles insisted there was something off, something primal that raised the hackles of the atavism that still feared the predators of the wild, as if there was a Terminator or some other inhuman thing beneath a skinsuit that didn't fit quite right.
He had spent enough time on the sharp end not to flinch, and it hadn't been the first shipgirl he'd been on the receiving end of an inquisition from either. Nevertheless, he couldn't help wondering nevertheless if this was how junior personnel felt being on the wrong end of him.
The thinking mind that kept its head when all about him were losing theirs wondered too why he had never gotten this vibe from his new daughter-in-law. Was it that he had known her before she had come into her power? Was it that she had been born human in the first place, and that nature conferred something the Summoned lacked? Or was there something else to it? He didn't have enough information to come to a conclusion.
Then the moment passed, as did the terrible feeling, and he felt bad for taking it so poorly. The secretary ship's expression… "softened" wasn't quite the right term, because it implied a level of warmth and familiarity that wasn't present, but it downshifted from actively evaluating whether he was a potential threat to the neutrality of a MP recognising an expected VIP as she moved to speak to Adams.
"Senior Chief!" Adams said warmly after turning to face him, extending a hand that Greer shook firmly and introducing the secretary ship. "Congratulations on your son's wedding, going from serving on one Big Stick to becoming father-in-law of another. This… shinzen kekkon shiki was something new."
"Thank you, Sir. Should you be leaving CAPT Tai unsupervised like this at San Diego, though, after what happened the last time you were indisposed?"
"I've taken extra precautions after that. You needn't worry."
They shared a laugh now, but while they may not have known each other as long as CAPT Tai had Adams - few people had that honor - there were enough years of mutual familiarity to let Greer catch the fleeting flash of pain on Adams's face, the subconscious rubbing of the wedding ring. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Lucinda's funeral," he said, now sombre.
"No," Adams said with a shake of his head, minute twitches on his face the only sign of the myriad emotions mulling beneath the surface. "You had your son to look after, yourself."
Lucinda, Adams's ex-wife, had been one of the civilian casualties of the Week of Blood. It had not been much of a secret that she had not been suited to the stresses of being a navy wife and that that had been the main source of their terminal marital problems.
"True."
Greer had never been much for introspection, but the month of vigil at Uileag's hospital bed had given him too much time to think, and he had wondered why Siobhan had stayed where Mrs Adams had not.
"He's made a remarkable recovery."
Uileag was no musician, to play an instrument, but his passion for the King of Pop had not waned in the 10 years since, and he and the more active of his friends had performed a routine the man himself would have applauded.
"After nine months, three of which were spent on home convalescence, he'd better."
"One of which was spent in a coma, you told me. Not all of us were so fortunate."
"Yes, Sir," Greer said, chastened. He scanned the surroundings, which he still thought more plush than he was comfortable with. "How has the lieutenant been?"
"Jamie? He still hardly speaks with me." There was a slight ragged note to Adams's tone, prompted by the talk of his older son. "Even at Lucinda's funeral, he said little more than that his mother had been going to remarry."
"Two years. Almost three." Greer fought back a wince even as he glanced back in the ballroom's direction. That was a horrible timing to learn something so earthshaking. "Even at our frostiest, Uileag's never given me the cold shoulder for that long."
"Losing Tobias hurt us both in ways that are hard for those lacking similar experience to understand." Adams paused, and when he spoke again, the edge to his voice that had been forming was gone, dutifully suppressed. "I hope you never become able to."
Greer frowned at the reminder. The death of Adams's younger son Tobias Z during what should have been routine peacetime flight ops two years ago had come as a shock.
When he refocused on his former superior, it was to the sight of Adams looking like he had bitten into a surprise lemon, struggling with his thoughts and words.
"He said little when I tried to catch him alone after the funeral, but he said enough."
"You know, all the things that you talked to me about the last time we were together at the previous funeral, they still ring in my ears after two years."
"Good!" Jamie L Adams shouted in response to his father's words. Looking away briefly, he schooled his features with visible effort, and in a more controlled tone, he now said, "Good, because---because you know what? They were meant to."
"I told now-LCDR Godai five months ago she had a choice how she wanted to serve, but what you've told me before about your boy's reluctance now reminds me of something Jamie said back then."
Jamie scoffed. "'A man isn't a man until he wears the wings of a naval aviator.' Doesn't that sound at all familiar to you?" There was unvarnished pain in his voice.
"Sir?" Greer wasn't sure he liked where this was going.
"Lay off with the 'sirs', Senior Chief."
Greer stared, uncomprehending.
"You're not in the navy anymore, and even if Navy Personnel Command got around to finding somewhere to bring you back into, it isn't going to be under me. You're not NAVENSCIWARCOM's type. After all we've been through, including the Novacek incident, Jeff is acceptable; Husk if you must."
Greer grunted, having difficulty articulating his discomfort at the combination of this informality and the reminder of that event even after all the years of having left the service. "Only if you call me Diarmuid… Husk." The moniker was alien on his tongue, and he couldn't help the reflexive licking of teeth. "Not Dia, though. Not even the missus calls me that."
"Deal." Adams's expression regained a cloudy complexion. "No, I told Jamie that wasn't fair, but he wouldn't be deterred. Harsh words were said, many of them, but one thing remains particularly clear."
"He was only doing it for you."
"Even with everything that setting NAVENSCIWARCOM's strategic direction and overseeing the constructs demands that Paul and his staff can't handle, there still has been enough downtime for me to mull over what he said. Was I…" the words took obvious effort to say, "wrong? Old folks like us, are we too determined to shape our legacy using our children that we're trying to squeeze square pegs in round holes, force them where they don't belong?" Adams's eyes, still alight with pain, flicked over to the secretary ship. "The same goes for Natural Borns."
Greer looked again towards the ballroom doors, unsure what to think. They really were well-fitted; not a sound from within could be heard. He turned back in time to see that Adams had also been doing the same, and couldn't help feeling concerned. "Has Ayaka been giving problems?"
"No, quite the opposite. Razor says Glider has had only good things to say, and in fact thinks the lieutenant commander isn't giving herself enough credit. Much as I appreciate what Katie can do, I'd rather have a dozen who are more capable than they believe themselves to be over a dozen mavericks, though even that's preferable to the abomination in Jane's."
Greer did not snort. Whatever age had done to Adams's current preferences, the things he had pulled off during his earlier years in the service were as belief-beggaring now as they had been then, and his taking brash LTJG Samo under his wing had come as no surprise to any who knew him. Greer had no insight into how NAVENSCIWARCOM's leadership had been selected, but he suspected it was this fair mix of firm and flexible that had gotten Adams chosen to be the command's deputy.
Adams's face turned conflicted now. "Except for her reckless sympathies regarding LTJG Delano."
"William D Porter?"
"Yes."
Greer made no attempt to hide his contemptuous snort. DD-579 had been infamous enough as a figure of FUBAR the last time around. Even without actively tapping into the petty officer grapevine, he hadn't been able to avoid hearing about how she was as much of a screwup this time too. "That boy of mine really imparted to her all the wrong lessons."
Preoccupied by his disdain and disappointment, Greer didn't notice the complicated look Adams shot him.
"I've never been comfortable deploying the younger-looking shipgirls," Adams said when Greer remained silent for a while. "Even one is too many. Sierra Mikes that look like teens or even kids are bad enough, but most of them are off enough in their mannerisms that anything more than a casual glance or a static photo makes it obvious they're not children. November Bravos don't have that luxury. When they insist on going into combat despite our letting them do otherwise, I cannot help asking myself: Are they serving because they genuinely believe in it, or are the instincts of what they once were and truly are driving them onward, like a 1MC that won't stop sounding in their heads, drowning out any dissenting voices?" His already-troubled expression darkened further. "Mankind couldn't even have 40 years of peace since we Ended at great cost the Terror that wanted the world, following but shortly Yamata… no, not even half that, and this time we can't even do the fighting but must leave it to the children."
Greer grimaced. Few and fortunate were those, regardless of rank or service or nation, that had gotten away from the Terror with unbowed head and spotless hands. That said, he thought Adams was being overly pessimistic.
His thoughts must have inadvertently shown on his face, for Adams next said, "Early breakthroughs like the Skyrangers, rider modifications and fabricators have their uses, I won't deny, but the things that would allow us to prosecute this war properly instead of leaving the shipgirls to do the majority of the work, we still lack. Even now, months in, Tomas still has far too much on his hands heading up Iteration."
The name was vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough; it took a while for Greer to recall who Adams might have been talking about. "RDML Markson?"
"The same."
"A good man." The chief engineer turned engineering duty officer was forward-thinking enough to know how best to explore the new frontier that was hypertech, yet had his feet planted firmly enough on the ground to keep the kookier specialists in line.
"Even so, his hands are tied by how little we still understand about enlightened science," Adams said, a little frustration entering his voice now. "Abyssal low observable functionality remains stubbornly beyond our ability to defeat, beyond what size alone should be able to confer, even though every last shipgirl we've studied tells us the practices of knowing and unveiling are among the meanest of enlightened procedures, such that only those completely incapable of wielding the relevant Spheres are unable to enact them.
"The matter of foci only makes things worse. Would a standardised method of enacting procedures have been too much to ask for? Shipgirls have an innate understanding of the application of Or Energy that lets them learn from each other despite their different methods. We do not, even if some hypothesise that moments of sudden insight are unconscious tapping into the same. I feel like in a different time, I would have been the old man yelling at clouds."
"Now you're just yelling at the cloud," Greer said lightly, partly in an attempt to hide his unfamiliarity with this brave new world of warfare.
Adams shot his former subordinate a cutting "don't you dad joke me" stare, though this one didn't get a very chastened look in response.
Calling the way Adams's lips curved upwards next a smile was probably being charitable. "I know the younger officers joke that the term 'enlightened science' is a gloss to mollify the Pentagon, but in a twisted way, it makes more sense to call magic as it is. The term demonstrates obviously that the power of the supernal is outside context and can therefore do what mundane technology cannot. 1940s technology, on the other hand, we know very well what it should be capable of. You've heard of Essex?"
Not well, Greer had to admit - and Ayaka didn't exactly share much about her service with him - though it had been hard to miss the towering carrier despite her laconic nature. All the more so after she had come forward to perform on, of all things, a recorder while her eagle served as vocalist.
"She does all her battlespace modeling and projection entirely with onboard systems, yet both in lab testing and reconstruction from field data, she consistently outperforms the latest predictive algorithms running on equipment 80 years her junior. Consider too that the 16"/45 shouldn't be able to match an Oerlikon for ROF, much less do so without melting into slag. Whether the term is 'Artillery Spotting' or 'EX Barrage' or 'Siege Mode' or something else, and whether it is 'true' enlightened science or merely an 'extraordinary talent', the fact remains that the shipgirls never got the memo.
"If only we could figure out how all this is being accomplished, we could make great strides. As matters stand, I suspect what we have won't be enough. I'd be very surprised if the abyssals don't have spare capacity they're working up themselves."
"How do you come to that conclusion, si---Husk?" Greer couldn't suppress his confusion.
"Tell me, Diarmuid: Where were we nine months after the last time a war started with an attack on Pearl?"
Where were we? Greer's initial thought was that no, neither of them had been born yet. Then he thought again, secretly glad he had spent some time in his retirement going through the history books. "In September 1942, the majority of the Clevelands had not been commissioned, and the majority of the Baltimores, Essexes and Independences had not even been launched. You think the abyssals have something similar going on?"
Adams nodded. "For a foe that apparently originates from the supernal, we have not seen any deployment of assets demonstrating similar flexibility to the shipgirls. This is highly suspicious. The analysts suspect they are being held in reserve for some reason."
"How certain are you of that?" Greer was still dubious. "All I've seen, admittedly from the limited access I now have, shows the abyssals do little more than uncreatively advance until a target is in range and then attack, secure the area and move on."
Adams shook his head. "The Soviets in World War II and the Chinese in Korea fought with a similarly relentless disregard for losses, but to dismiss them as brutes only capable of human wave attacks was and still is a common amateur error. For all the abyssals' usual indiscriminate brutality, every now and then we get hints that there is intelligence beneath." He turned to the secretary ship. "Activate the Babel field."
The shipgirl pulled out some gizmo and flicked a switch on it. Greer smelt a whiff of ozone, felt his teeth on edge momentarily from the anti-snooping device.
"Did you hear about the attack on Whiteman AFB?" Adams asked once that was done.
"Whiteman?!" Greer's voice lowered to an incredulous hiss despite the extant precautions. "That's in Missouri, a thousand miles from the nearest coast!"
"Exactly, but explosions forensically determined to match those created by World War II bombs happened at the same time as the attacks on our other naval bases. It was fortuitous that more than usual of the B-2 fleet was off base at the time, because those present were all either destroyed or unaccountable for afterwards."
Greer looked flabbergasted, both at the explanation and the implications. "If this really was due to abyssal attack, why did they not use this method more? The ability to strike with impunity in a way that apparently cuts out the naval delivery platform is a massive gamechanger."
"We do not know with certainty why this hypothetical Exarch capable of attacking from the supernal has held back on this capability subsequently." Adams did not bother to keep how the matter vexed him off his face or out of his voice. "What we do know, though, is that with what's at stake, assuming that the abyssals have shown their entire hand is a hard six I'd rather not roll."
Authors' Notes: Our continued thanks to now-FC Error for his continued help with characterisation of Adams' progenitor.
...
Mr Greer discreetly stepped out of the ballroom partway through the proceedings. Even with all the networking he'd had to contend with on the way to and past making chief, the festivities had been getting stifling. There had been an odd energy to the proceedings that had discomfited him, even if he'd never show it.
He stopped short at the sight of RADM Adams in the lobby outside, looking deep in thought. There were guards forming a loose outer picket line and a shipgirl - the "secretary ship", he vaguely remembered the term was - on close escort.
{Battlestar Galactica Original Soundtrack - The Shape of Things to Come}
He had been barely a few seconds out the door before the secretary ship whirled on him, snapping sharply like a turret unerringly guided by fire control radar - which she might literally be - and he was struck by a scouring pressure like he was being scanned from head to toe.
It wasn't much of a glare by NCO standards, and it didn't help that it was coming from a beautiful, shapely young woman, dressed in a fine gown that wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-class establishment with exclusive clientele, yet it felt like his innermost being was being scrutinised. As normal as she looked from the outside, instincts cultivated by decades on the seas and more than a few pitched battles insisted there was something off, something primal that raised the hackles of the atavism that still feared the predators of the wild, as if there was a Terminator or some other inhuman thing beneath a skinsuit that didn't fit quite right.
He had spent enough time on the sharp end not to flinch, and it hadn't been the first shipgirl he'd been on the receiving end of an inquisition from either. Nevertheless, he couldn't help wondering nevertheless if this was how junior personnel felt being on the wrong end of him.
The thinking mind that kept its head when all about him were losing theirs wondered too why he had never gotten this vibe from his new daughter-in-law. Was it that he had known her before she had come into her power? Was it that she had been born human in the first place, and that nature conferred something the Summoned lacked? Or was there something else to it? He didn't have enough information to come to a conclusion.
Then the moment passed, as did the terrible feeling, and he felt bad for taking it so poorly. The secretary ship's expression… "softened" wasn't quite the right term, because it implied a level of warmth and familiarity that wasn't present, but it downshifted from actively evaluating whether he was a potential threat to the neutrality of a MP recognising an expected VIP as she moved to speak to Adams.
"Senior Chief!" Adams said warmly after turning to face him, extending a hand that Greer shook firmly and introducing the secretary ship. "Congratulations on your son's wedding, going from serving on one Big Stick to becoming father-in-law of another. This… shinzen kekkon shiki was something new."
"Thank you, Sir. Should you be leaving CAPT Tai unsupervised like this at San Diego, though, after what happened the last time you were indisposed?"
"I've taken extra precautions after that. You needn't worry."
They shared a laugh now, but while they may not have known each other as long as CAPT Tai had Adams - few people had that honor - there were enough years of mutual familiarity to let Greer catch the fleeting flash of pain on Adams's face, the subconscious rubbing of the wedding ring. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Lucinda's funeral," he said, now sombre.
"No," Adams said with a shake of his head, minute twitches on his face the only sign of the myriad emotions mulling beneath the surface. "You had your son to look after, yourself."
Lucinda, Adams's ex-wife, had been one of the civilian casualties of the Week of Blood. It had not been much of a secret that she had not been suited to the stresses of being a navy wife and that that had been the main source of their terminal marital problems.
"True."
Greer had never been much for introspection, but the month of vigil at Uileag's hospital bed had given him too much time to think, and he had wondered why Siobhan had stayed where Mrs Adams had not.
"He's made a remarkable recovery."
Uileag was no musician, to play an instrument, but his passion for the King of Pop had not waned in the 10 years since, and he and the more active of his friends had performed a routine the man himself would have applauded.
"After nine months, three of which were spent on home convalescence, he'd better."
"One of which was spent in a coma, you told me. Not all of us were so fortunate."
"Yes, Sir," Greer said, chastened. He scanned the surroundings, which he still thought more plush than he was comfortable with. "How has the lieutenant been?"
"Jamie? He still hardly speaks with me." There was a slight ragged note to Adams's tone, prompted by the talk of his older son. "Even at Lucinda's funeral, he said little more than that his mother had been going to remarry."
"Two years. Almost three." Greer fought back a wince even as he glanced back in the ballroom's direction. That was a horrible timing to learn something so earthshaking. "Even at our frostiest, Uileag's never given me the cold shoulder for that long."
"Losing Tobias hurt us both in ways that are hard for those lacking similar experience to understand." Adams paused, and when he spoke again, the edge to his voice that had been forming was gone, dutifully suppressed. "I hope you never become able to."
Greer frowned at the reminder. The death of Adams's younger son Tobias Z during what should have been routine peacetime flight ops two years ago had come as a shock.
When he refocused on his former superior, it was to the sight of Adams looking like he had bitten into a surprise lemon, struggling with his thoughts and words.
"He said little when I tried to catch him alone after the funeral, but he said enough."
"You know, all the things that you talked to me about the last time we were together at the previous funeral, they still ring in my ears after two years."
"Good!" Jamie L Adams shouted in response to his father's words. Looking away briefly, he schooled his features with visible effort, and in a more controlled tone, he now said, "Good, because---because you know what? They were meant to."
"I told now-LCDR Godai five months ago she had a choice how she wanted to serve, but what you've told me before about your boy's reluctance now reminds me of something Jamie said back then."
Jamie scoffed. "'A man isn't a man until he wears the wings of a naval aviator.' Doesn't that sound at all familiar to you?" There was unvarnished pain in his voice.
"Sir?" Greer wasn't sure he liked where this was going.
"Lay off with the 'sirs', Senior Chief."
Greer stared, uncomprehending.
"You're not in the navy anymore, and even if Navy Personnel Command got around to finding somewhere to bring you back into, it isn't going to be under me. You're not NAVENSCIWARCOM's type. After all we've been through, including the Novacek incident, Jeff is acceptable; Husk if you must."
Greer grunted, having difficulty articulating his discomfort at the combination of this informality and the reminder of that event even after all the years of having left the service. "Only if you call me Diarmuid… Husk." The moniker was alien on his tongue, and he couldn't help the reflexive licking of teeth. "Not Dia, though. Not even the missus calls me that."
"Deal." Adams's expression regained a cloudy complexion. "No, I told Jamie that wasn't fair, but he wouldn't be deterred. Harsh words were said, many of them, but one thing remains particularly clear."
"He was only doing it for you."
"Even with everything that setting NAVENSCIWARCOM's strategic direction and overseeing the constructs demands that Paul and his staff can't handle, there still has been enough downtime for me to mull over what he said. Was I…" the words took obvious effort to say, "wrong? Old folks like us, are we too determined to shape our legacy using our children that we're trying to squeeze square pegs in round holes, force them where they don't belong?" Adams's eyes, still alight with pain, flicked over to the secretary ship. "The same goes for Natural Borns."
Greer looked again towards the ballroom doors, unsure what to think. They really were well-fitted; not a sound from within could be heard. He turned back in time to see that Adams had also been doing the same, and couldn't help feeling concerned. "Has Ayaka been giving problems?"
"No, quite the opposite. Razor says Glider has had only good things to say, and in fact thinks the lieutenant commander isn't giving herself enough credit. Much as I appreciate what Katie can do, I'd rather have a dozen who are more capable than they believe themselves to be over a dozen mavericks, though even that's preferable to the abomination in Jane's."
Greer did not snort. Whatever age had done to Adams's current preferences, the things he had pulled off during his earlier years in the service were as belief-beggaring now as they had been then, and his taking brash LTJG Samo under his wing had come as no surprise to any who knew him. Greer had no insight into how NAVENSCIWARCOM's leadership had been selected, but he suspected it was this fair mix of firm and flexible that had gotten Adams chosen to be the command's deputy.
Adams's face turned conflicted now. "Except for her reckless sympathies regarding LTJG Delano."
"William D Porter?"
"Yes."
Greer made no attempt to hide his contemptuous snort. DD-579 had been infamous enough as a figure of FUBAR the last time around. Even without actively tapping into the petty officer grapevine, he hadn't been able to avoid hearing about how she was as much of a screwup this time too. "That boy of mine really imparted to her all the wrong lessons."
Preoccupied by his disdain and disappointment, Greer didn't notice the complicated look Adams shot him.
"I've never been comfortable deploying the younger-looking shipgirls," Adams said when Greer remained silent for a while. "Even one is too many. Sierra Mikes that look like teens or even kids are bad enough, but most of them are off enough in their mannerisms that anything more than a casual glance or a static photo makes it obvious they're not children. November Bravos don't have that luxury. When they insist on going into combat despite our letting them do otherwise, I cannot help asking myself: Are they serving because they genuinely believe in it, or are the instincts of what they once were and truly are driving them onward, like a 1MC that won't stop sounding in their heads, drowning out any dissenting voices?" His already-troubled expression darkened further. "Mankind couldn't even have 40 years of peace since we Ended at great cost the Terror that wanted the world, following but shortly Yamata… no, not even half that, and this time we can't even do the fighting but must leave it to the children."
Greer grimaced. Few and fortunate were those, regardless of rank or service or nation, that had gotten away from the Terror with unbowed head and spotless hands. That said, he thought Adams was being overly pessimistic.
His thoughts must have inadvertently shown on his face, for Adams next said, "Early breakthroughs like the Skyrangers, rider modifications and fabricators have their uses, I won't deny, but the things that would allow us to prosecute this war properly instead of leaving the shipgirls to do the majority of the work, we still lack. Even now, months in, Tomas still has far too much on his hands heading up Iteration."
The name was vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough; it took a while for Greer to recall who Adams might have been talking about. "RDML Markson?"
"The same."
"A good man." The chief engineer turned engineering duty officer was forward-thinking enough to know how best to explore the new frontier that was hypertech, yet had his feet planted firmly enough on the ground to keep the kookier specialists in line.
"Even so, his hands are tied by how little we still understand about enlightened science," Adams said, a little frustration entering his voice now. "Abyssal low observable functionality remains stubbornly beyond our ability to defeat, beyond what size alone should be able to confer, even though every last shipgirl we've studied tells us the practices of knowing and unveiling are among the meanest of enlightened procedures, such that only those completely incapable of wielding the relevant Spheres are unable to enact them.
"The matter of foci only makes things worse. Would a standardised method of enacting procedures have been too much to ask for? Shipgirls have an innate understanding of the application of Or Energy that lets them learn from each other despite their different methods. We do not, even if some hypothesise that moments of sudden insight are unconscious tapping into the same. I feel like in a different time, I would have been the old man yelling at clouds."
"Now you're just yelling at the cloud," Greer said lightly, partly in an attempt to hide his unfamiliarity with this brave new world of warfare.
Adams shot his former subordinate a cutting "don't you dad joke me" stare, though this one didn't get a very chastened look in response.
Calling the way Adams's lips curved upwards next a smile was probably being charitable. "I know the younger officers joke that the term 'enlightened science' is a gloss to mollify the Pentagon, but in a twisted way, it makes more sense to call magic as it is. The term demonstrates obviously that the power of the supernal is outside context and can therefore do what mundane technology cannot. 1940s technology, on the other hand, we know very well what it should be capable of. You've heard of Essex?"
Not well, Greer had to admit - and Ayaka didn't exactly share much about her service with him - though it had been hard to miss the towering carrier despite her laconic nature. All the more so after she had come forward to perform on, of all things, a recorder while her eagle served as vocalist.
"She does all her battlespace modeling and projection entirely with onboard systems, yet both in lab testing and reconstruction from field data, she consistently outperforms the latest predictive algorithms running on equipment 80 years her junior. Consider too that the 16"/45 shouldn't be able to match an Oerlikon for ROF, much less do so without melting into slag. Whether the term is 'Artillery Spotting' or 'EX Barrage' or 'Siege Mode' or something else, and whether it is 'true' enlightened science or merely an 'extraordinary talent', the fact remains that the shipgirls never got the memo.
"If only we could figure out how all this is being accomplished, we could make great strides. As matters stand, I suspect what we have won't be enough. I'd be very surprised if the abyssals don't have spare capacity they're working up themselves."
"How do you come to that conclusion, si---Husk?" Greer couldn't suppress his confusion.
"Tell me, Diarmuid: Where were we nine months after the last time a war started with an attack on Pearl?"
Where were we? Greer's initial thought was that no, neither of them had been born yet. Then he thought again, secretly glad he had spent some time in his retirement going through the history books. "In September 1942, the majority of the Clevelands had not been commissioned, and the majority of the Baltimores, Essexes and Independences had not even been launched. You think the abyssals have something similar going on?"
Adams nodded. "For a foe that apparently originates from the supernal, we have not seen any deployment of assets demonstrating similar flexibility to the shipgirls. This is highly suspicious. The analysts suspect they are being held in reserve for some reason."
"How certain are you of that?" Greer was still dubious. "All I've seen, admittedly from the limited access I now have, shows the abyssals do little more than uncreatively advance until a target is in range and then attack, secure the area and move on."
Adams shook his head. "The Soviets in World War II and the Chinese in Korea fought with a similarly relentless disregard for losses, but to dismiss them as brutes only capable of human wave attacks was and still is a common amateur error. For all the abyssals' usual indiscriminate brutality, every now and then we get hints that there is intelligence beneath." He turned to the secretary ship. "Activate the Babel field."
The shipgirl pulled out some gizmo and flicked a switch on it. Greer smelt a whiff of ozone, felt his teeth on edge momentarily from the anti-snooping device.
"Did you hear about the attack on Whiteman AFB?" Adams asked once that was done.
"Whiteman?!" Greer's voice lowered to an incredulous hiss despite the extant precautions. "That's in Missouri, a thousand miles from the nearest coast!"
"Exactly, but explosions forensically determined to match those created by World War II bombs happened at the same time as the attacks on our other naval bases. It was fortuitous that more than usual of the B-2 fleet was off base at the time, because those present were all either destroyed or unaccountable for afterwards."
Greer looked flabbergasted, both at the explanation and the implications. "If this really was due to abyssal attack, why did they not use this method more? The ability to strike with impunity in a way that apparently cuts out the naval delivery platform is a massive gamechanger."
"We do not know with certainty why this hypothetical Exarch capable of attacking from the supernal has held back on this capability subsequently." Adams did not bother to keep how the matter vexed him off his face or out of his voice. "What we do know, though, is that with what's at stake, assuming that the abyssals have shown their entire hand is a hard six I'd rather not roll."
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Our continued thanks to now-FC Error for his continued help with characterisation of Adams' progenitor.
Last edited:
Chapter 25
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Last call for omake contributions! Box closes once this chapter hits AO3 and FF.Net!
After the rigmarole of paperwork was over and done with, newlyweds and guests alike proceeded to the hotel with the rented ballroom for the lunch reception. Uileag changed to his dress whites, while Ayaka went with a elaborately-designed light blue kimono.
{Ayachi, how does that still look good on you?} Hitomi asked, surprised and a little envious, at the sight of Ayaka having returned to the old folded twin braids.
{Nn? What's wrong with that?} Ayaka asked, confused. She hadn't been paying full attention to their talk, preoccupied ever since the ceremony's conclusion by an inexplicable feeling that she was on the precipice of something important she couldn't grasp.
{I'm sure if you let your hair grow, you could go back to the braids too,} Morrie said helpfully.
{Hmph.}
{You might even look good in them!}
{... flattery will get you nowhere,} Hitomi said, but the pink tint her cheeks had gained was putting the lie to any distaste in her voice.
Ichiyo and Mr Greer had spared no expense; the feast was, even after accounting for shipgirl appetites, sumptuous. A steady stream of speeches, toasts and performances soon blurred together, not helped by ample alcoholic lubrication.
One encounter did stick out, though.
Ms Yukino was seated at one of the tables beside Mr Teruzuki. She was clad in a sleeveless dress the colour of red wine and not looking her 37 years, he in a shirt and grey waistcoat skirting the formality requirements.
{Yukino-sensei!} Ayaka shouted cheerfully. As a teacher of Japanese literature, Japanese had naturally been the medium of instruction.
{Congratulations, Godai-san, Greer-san,} Ms Yukino said. Pointing, she added, {You remember Atago-kun, I hope?}
{Of course, of course!}
Maya's older two sisters hadn't been invited, but Ayaka had seen how she had gotten her hands on a portable hologram projector, linked it to her phone, and brought both it and Teruzuki over, that she might take a photo of the man with both his namesakes. Even after the explanation, his visage had been still one of unvarnished confusion.
{Congrats, Godai-san, Greer-san.}
{Don't say it like that,} Uileag said, embarrassed by the formality. {I'm only one year your junior, aren't I?}
{Remember when you taught us about katawaredoki?} Ayaka had pressed on to ask over the two husbands. {Did you know this was going to happen back then?}
The stunned look on Ms Yukino's face as she belatedly connected the dots was something that someone with a more twisted sense of humour might have delighted in.
Mr Greer discreetly stepped out of the ballroom partway through the proceedings. Even with all the networking he'd had to contend with on the way to and past making chief, the festivities had been getting stifling. There had been an odd energy to the proceedings that had discomfited him, even if he'd never show it.
He stopped short at the sight of RADM Adams in the lobby outside, looking deep in thought. There were guards forming a loose outer picket line and a shipgirl - the "secretary ship", he vaguely remembered the term was - on close escort.
He had been barely a few seconds out the door before the secretary ship whirled on him, snapping sharply like a turret unerringly guided by fire control radar - which she might literally be - and he was struck by a scouring pressure like he was being scanned from head to toe.
It wasn't much of a glare by NCO standards, and it didn't help that it was coming from a beautiful, shapely young woman, dressed in a fine gown that wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-class establishment with exclusive clientele, yet it felt like his innermost being was being scrutinised. As normal as she looked from the outside, instincts cultivated by decades on the seas and more than a few pitched battles insisted there was something off, something primal that raised the hackles of the atavism that still feared the predators of the wild, as if there was a Terminator or some other inhuman thing beneath a skinsuit that didn't fit quite right.
He had spent enough time on the sharp end not to flinch, and it hadn't been the first shipgirl he'd been on the receiving end of an inquisition from either. Nevertheless, he couldn't help wondering nevertheless if this was how junior personnel felt being on the wrong end of him.
The thinking mind that kept its head when all about him were losing theirs wondered too why he had never gotten this vibe from his new daughter-in-law. Was it that he had known her before she had come into her power? Was it that she had been born human in the first place, and that nature conferred something the Summoned lacked? Or was there something else to it? He didn't have enough information to come to a conclusion.
Then the moment passed, as did the terrible feeling, and he felt bad for taking it so poorly. The secretary ship's expression… "softened" wasn't quite the right term, because it implied a level of warmth and familiarity that wasn't present, but it downshifted from actively evaluating whether he was a potential threat to the neutrality of a MP recognising an expected VIP as she moved to speak to Adams.
"Senior Chief!" Adams said warmly after turning to face him, extending a hand that Greer shook firmly and introducing the secretary ship. "Congratulations on your son's wedding, going from serving on one Big Stick to becoming father-in-law of another. This… shinzen kekkon shiki was something new."
"Thank you, Sir. Should you be leaving Captain Tai unsupervised like this at San Diego, though, after what happened the last time you were indisposed?"
"I've taken extra precautions after that. You needn't worry."
They shared a laugh now, but while they may not have known each other as long as CAPT Tai had Adams - few people had that honor - there were enough years of mutual familiarity to let Greer catch the fleeting flash of pain on Adams's face, the subconscious rubbing of the wedding ring. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Lucinda's funeral," he said, now sombre.
"No," Adams said with a shake of his head, minute twitches on his face the only sign of the myriad emotions mulling beneath the surface. "You had your son to look after, yourself."
Lucinda, Adams's ex-wife, had been one of the civilian casualties of the Week of Blood. It had not been much of a secret that she had not been suited to the stresses of being a navy wife and that that had been the main source of their terminal marital problems.
"True."
Greer had never been much for introspection, but the month of vigil at Uileag's hospital bed had given him too much time to think, and he had wondered inconclusively why Siobhan had stayed where Mrs Adams had not.
"He's made a remarkable recovery."
Uileag was no musician, to play an instrument, but his passion for the King of Pop had not waned in the 10 years since, and he and the more active of his friends had performed a routine the man himself would have applauded.
"After nine months, three of which were spent on home convalescence, he'd better."
"One of which was spent in a coma, you told me. Not all of us were so fortunate."
"Yes, Sir," Greer said, chastened. He scanned the surroundings, which he still thought more plush than he was comfortable with. "How has the lieutenant been?"
"Jamie? He still hardly speaks with me." There was a slight ragged note to Adams's tone, prompted by the talk of his older son. "Even at Lucinda's funeral, he said little more than that his mother had been going to remarry."
"Two years. Almost three." Greer fought back a wince even as he glanced back in the ballroom's direction. That was a horrible timing to learn something so earthshaking. "Even at our frostiest, Uileag's never given me the cold shoulder for that long."
"Losing Tobias hurt us both in ways that are hard for those lacking similar experience to understand." Adams paused, and when he spoke again, the edge to his voice that had been inadvertently forming was gone, dutifully suppressed. "I hope you never become able to."
Greer frowned at the reminder. The death of Adams's younger son Tobias Z during what should have been routine peacetime flight ops two years ago had come as a shock.
When he refocused on his former superior, it was to the sight of Adams looking like he had bitten into a surprise lemon, struggling with his thoughts and words.
"He said little when I tried to catch him alone after the funeral, but he said enough."
"You know, all the things that you talked to me about the last time we were together at the previous funeral, they still ring in my ears after two years."
"Good!" Jamie L Adams shouted in response to his father's words. Looking away briefly, he schooled his features with visible effort, and in a more controlled tone, he now said, "Good, because---because you know what? They were meant to."
"I told now-Lieutenant Commander Godai five months ago she had a choice how she wanted to serve, but what you've told me before about your boy's reluctance now reminds me of something Jamie said back then."
Jamie scoffed. "'A man isn't a man until he wears the wings of a naval aviator.' Doesn't that sound at all familiar to you?" There was unvarnished pain in his voice.
"Sir?" Greer wasn't sure he liked where this was going.
"Lay off with the 'sirs', Senior Chief."
Greer stared, uncomprehending.
"You're not in the navy anymore, and even if Navy Personnel Command got around to finding somewhere to bring you back into, it isn't going to be under me. You're not NAVENSCIWARCOM's type. After all we've been through, including the Novacek incident, Jeff is acceptable; Husk if you must."
Greer grunted, having difficulty articulating his discomfort at the combination of this informality and the reminder of that event even after all the years of having left the service. "Only if you call me Diarmuid… Husk." The moniker was alien on his tongue, and he couldn't help the reflexive licking of teeth. "Not Dia, though. Not even the missus calls me that."
"Deal." Adams's expression quickly regained a cloudy complexion. "No, I told Jamie that wasn't fair, but he wouldn't be deterred. Harsh words were said, many of them, but one thing remains particularly clear."
"He was only doing it for you."
"Even with everything that setting NAVENSCIWARCOM's strategic direction and overseeing the constructs demands that Paul and his staff can't handle, there still has been enough downtime for me to mull over what he said. Was I…" the words took obvious effort to say, "wrong? Old folks like us, are we so determined to shape our legacy using our children that we're trying to squeeze square pegs in round holes, force them where they don't belong?" Adams's eyes, still alight with pain, flicked over to the secretary ship. "The same goes for Natural Borns."
Greer looked again towards the ballroom doors, unsure what to think. They really were well-fitted; not a sound from within could be heard. He turned back in time to see that Adams had also been doing the same, and couldn't help feeling concerned. "Has Ayaka been giving problems?"
"No, quite the opposite." Adams shook his head. "Razor says Glider has had only good things to say, and in fact thinks the lieutenant commander isn't giving herself enough credit. Much as I appreciate what Katie can do, I'd rather have a dozen who are more capable than they believe themselves to be over a dozen mavericks, though even that's preferable to the abomination in Jane's."
Greer did not snort. Whatever age had done to Adams's current preferences, the things he had pulled off during his earlier years in the service were as belief-beggaring now as they had been then, and his taking brash LTJG Samo under his wing had come as no surprise to any who knew him. Greer had no insight into how NAVENSCIWARCOM's leadership had been selected, but he suspected it was this fair mix of firm and flexible that had gotten Adams chosen to be the command's deputy.
Adams's face turned conflicted now. "Except for her reckless sympathies regarding Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Delano."
"William D Porter?"
"Yes."
Greer made no attempt to hide his contemptuous snort this time. DD-579 had been infamous enough as a figure of FUBAR the last time around. Even without actively tapping into the petty officer grapevine - something he considered himself above doing - he hadn't been able to avoid hearing about how Willie D was as much of a screwup this time too. "That boy of mine really imparted to her all the wrong lessons."
Preoccupied by his disdain and disappointment, Greer didn't notice the complicated look Adams shot him.
"I've never been comfortable deploying the younger-looking shipgirls," Adams said when Greer remained silent for a while. "Even one is too many. Sierra Mikes that look like teens or even kids are bad enough, but most of them are off enough in their mannerisms that anything more than a casual glance or a static photo makes it obvious they're not children. November Bravos don't have that luxury. When they insist on going into combat despite our letting them do otherwise, I cannot help asking myself: Are they serving because they genuinely believe in it, or are the instincts of what they once were and truly are driving them onward, like a 1MC that won't stop sounding in their heads, drowning out any dissenting voices?" His already-troubled expression darkened further. "Mankind couldn't even have 40 years of peace since we Ended at great cost the Terror that wanted the world, following but shortly Yamata… no, not even half that, and this time we can't even do the fighting but must leave it to the children."
Greer grimaced. Few and fortunate were those, regardless of rank or service or nation, that had gotten away from the Terror with unbowed head and spotless hands. That said, he thought Adams was being overly pessimistic.
His thoughts must have inadvertently shown on his face, for Adams next said, "Early breakthroughs like the Skyrangers, rider modifications and fabricators have their uses, I won't deny, but the things that would allow us to use our industrial and logistical capabilities to prosecute this war properly instead of leaving the shipgirls to do the majority of the work, we still lack. Even now, months in, Tomas still has far too much on his hands heading up Iteration."
The name was vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough; it took a while for Greer to recall who Adams might have been talking about. "Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Markson?"
"The same."
"A good man." The chief engineer turned engineering duty officer was forward-thinking enough to know how best to explore the new frontier that was hypertech, yet had his feet planted firmly enough on the ground to keep the kookier specialists in line.
"Even so, his hands are tied by how little we still understand about enlightened science," Adams said, a little frustration entering his voice now. "Abyssal low observable functionality remains stubbornly beyond our ability to defeat, beyond what size alone should be able to confer, even though every last shipgirl we've studied tells us the practices of knowing and unveiling are among the meanest of enlightened procedures, such that only those completely incapable of wielding the relevant Spheres are unable to enact them.
"The matter of foci only makes things worse. Would a standardised method of enacting procedures have been too much to ask for? Shipgirls, even those with no other talent for using Prime, have an innate understanding of the application of Or Energy that lets them learn from each other despite their different methods. We do not, even if some hypothesise that Eureka moments are unconscious tapping into the same. It all makes me feel like in a different time, I would have been the old man yelling at clouds."
"Now you're just yelling at the cloud," Greer said lightly, partly in an attempt to hide discomfort at his unfamiliarity with this brave new world of warfare.
Adams shot his former subordinate a cutting "don't you dad joke me" stare, though this one didn't get a very chastened look in response.
Calling the way Adams's lips curved upwards next a smile was probably being charitable. "I know the younger officers joke that the term 'enlightened science' is a gloss to mollify the Pentagon, but in a twisted way, it makes more sense to call magic as it is. The term demonstrates obviously that the power of the supernal is outside context and can therefore do what mundane technology cannot. 1940s technology, on the other hand, we know very well what it should be capable of. You've heard of Essex?"
Not well, Greer had to admit - and Ayaka didn't exactly share much about what her operations entailed with him - though it had been hard to miss the towering carrier despite her laconic nature. All the more so after she had come forward to perform on, of all things, a recorder while her eagle served as vocalist.
"She does all her battlespace modeling and projection entirely with onboard systems, yet both in lab testing and reconstruction from field data, she consistently outperforms the latest predictive algorithms running on equipment 80 years her junior. Consider too that the 16"/45 shouldn't be able to match an Oerlikon for ROF, much less do so without melting into slag. Whether the term is 'Artillery Spotting' or 'EX Barrage' or 'Siege Mode' or something else, and whether it is 'true' enlightened science or merely an 'extraordinary talent', the fact remains that the shipgirls never got the memo.
"If only we could figure out how all this is being accomplished, we could make great strides. As matters stand, I suspect what we have won't be enough. I'd be very surprised if the abyssals don't have spare capacity they're working up themselves."
"How do you come to that conclusion, si---Husk?" Greer couldn't suppress his confusion.
"Tell me, Diarmuid: Where were we nine months after the last time a war started with an attack on Pearl?"
Where were we? Greer's initial thought was that no, neither of them had been born yet. Then he thought again, secretly glad he had spent some time in his retirement going through the history books. "In September 1942, the majority of the Clevelands had not been commissioned, and the majority of the Baltimores, Essexes and Independences had not even been launched." His eyebrows twitched as the implications sunk in. "You think the abyssals have something similar going on?"
Adams nodded. "For a foe that apparently originates from the supernal, we have not seen the extradimensional entities deploy any assets demonstrating similar flexibility to the shipgirls. This is highly suspicious. The analysts suspect anything with such capabilities is being held in reserve for still-unknown reason."
"How certain are you of that?" Greer was still dubious. "All I've seen, admittedly from the limited access I now have, shows the abyssals do little more than uncreatively advance until a target is in range and then attack, secure the area and move on."
Adams shook his head. "The Soviets in World War II and the Chinese in Korea fought with a similarly relentless disregard for losses, but to dismiss them as brutes only capable of human wave attacks was and still is a common amateur error. For all the abyssals' usual indiscriminate brutality, every now and then we get hints that there is intelligence beneath." He turned to the secretary ship, who turned to meet his gaze without needing to be called. "Activate the Babel field."
The shipgirl pulled out some gizmo and flicked a switch on it. Greer smelt a whiff of ozone, felt his teeth on edge momentarily from the anti-snooping device.
"Did you hear about the attack on Whiteman AFB?" Adams asked once that was done.
"Whiteman?!" Greer's voice lowered to an incredulous hiss despite the extant precautions. "That's in Missouri, a thousand miles from the nearest coast!"
"Exactly, but explosions forensically determined to match those created by World War II bombs happened at the same time as the attacks on our other naval bases. It was fortuitous that more than usual of the B-2 fleet was off base at the time, because those present were all either destroyed or unaccountable for afterwards."
Greer looked flabbergasted, both at the explanation and the implications. "If this really was due to abyssal attack, why did they not use this method more? The ability to strike with impunity in a way that apparently cuts out the naval delivery platform is a massive gamechanger."
"We do not know with certainty why this hypothetical Exarch capable of attacking from the supernal has held back on this capability subsequently." Adams did not bother to keep how the matter vexed him off his face or out of his voice. "What we do know, though, is that with what's at stake, assuming that the abyssals have shown their entire hand is a hard six I'd rather not roll."
Authors' Notes: Our continued thanks to now-FC Error for his continued help with characterisation of Adams' progenitor.
===[===]===
CHAPTER 25
===[===]===
CHAPTER 25
===[===]===
After the rigmarole of paperwork was over and done with, newlyweds and guests alike proceeded to the hotel with the rented ballroom for the lunch reception. Uileag changed to his dress whites, while Ayaka went with a elaborately-designed light blue kimono.
{Ayachi, how does that still look good on you?} Hitomi asked, surprised and a little envious, at the sight of Ayaka having returned to the old folded twin braids.
{Nn? What's wrong with that?} Ayaka asked, confused. She hadn't been paying full attention to their talk, preoccupied ever since the ceremony's conclusion by an inexplicable feeling that she was on the precipice of something important she couldn't grasp.
{I'm sure if you let your hair grow, you could go back to the braids too,} Morrie said helpfully.
{Hmph.}
{You might even look good in them!}
{... flattery will get you nowhere,} Hitomi said, but the pink tint her cheeks had gained was putting the lie to any distaste in her voice.
Ichiyo and Mr Greer had spared no expense; the feast was, even after accounting for shipgirl appetites, sumptuous. A steady stream of speeches, toasts and performances soon blurred together, not helped by ample alcoholic lubrication.
One encounter did stick out, though.
Ms Yukino was seated at one of the tables beside Mr Teruzuki. She was clad in a sleeveless dress the colour of red wine and not looking her 37 years, he in a shirt and grey waistcoat skirting the formality requirements.
{Yukino-sensei!} Ayaka shouted cheerfully. As a teacher of Japanese literature, Japanese had naturally been the medium of instruction.
{Congratulations, Godai-san, Greer-san,} Ms Yukino said. Pointing, she added, {You remember Atago-kun, I hope?}
{Of course, of course!}
Maya's older two sisters hadn't been invited, but Ayaka had seen how she had gotten her hands on a portable hologram projector, linked it to her phone, and brought both it and Teruzuki over, that she might take a photo of the man with both his namesakes. Even after the explanation, his visage had been still one of unvarnished confusion.
{Congrats, Godai-san, Greer-san.}
{Don't say it like that,} Uileag said, embarrassed by the formality. {I'm only one year your junior, aren't I?}
{Remember when you taught us about katawaredoki?} Ayaka had pressed on to ask over the two husbands. {Did you know this was going to happen back then?}
The stunned look on Ms Yukino's face as she belatedly connected the dots was something that someone with a more twisted sense of humour might have delighted in.
Mr Greer discreetly stepped out of the ballroom partway through the proceedings. Even with all the networking he'd had to contend with on the way to and past making chief, the festivities had been getting stifling. There had been an odd energy to the proceedings that had discomfited him, even if he'd never show it.
He stopped short at the sight of RADM Adams in the lobby outside, looking deep in thought. There were guards forming a loose outer picket line and a shipgirl - the "secretary ship", he vaguely remembered the term was - on close escort.
{Battlestar Galactica Original Soundtrack - The Shape of Things to Come}
He had been barely a few seconds out the door before the secretary ship whirled on him, snapping sharply like a turret unerringly guided by fire control radar - which she might literally be - and he was struck by a scouring pressure like he was being scanned from head to toe.
It wasn't much of a glare by NCO standards, and it didn't help that it was coming from a beautiful, shapely young woman, dressed in a fine gown that wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-class establishment with exclusive clientele, yet it felt like his innermost being was being scrutinised. As normal as she looked from the outside, instincts cultivated by decades on the seas and more than a few pitched battles insisted there was something off, something primal that raised the hackles of the atavism that still feared the predators of the wild, as if there was a Terminator or some other inhuman thing beneath a skinsuit that didn't fit quite right.
He had spent enough time on the sharp end not to flinch, and it hadn't been the first shipgirl he'd been on the receiving end of an inquisition from either. Nevertheless, he couldn't help wondering nevertheless if this was how junior personnel felt being on the wrong end of him.
The thinking mind that kept its head when all about him were losing theirs wondered too why he had never gotten this vibe from his new daughter-in-law. Was it that he had known her before she had come into her power? Was it that she had been born human in the first place, and that nature conferred something the Summoned lacked? Or was there something else to it? He didn't have enough information to come to a conclusion.
Then the moment passed, as did the terrible feeling, and he felt bad for taking it so poorly. The secretary ship's expression… "softened" wasn't quite the right term, because it implied a level of warmth and familiarity that wasn't present, but it downshifted from actively evaluating whether he was a potential threat to the neutrality of a MP recognising an expected VIP as she moved to speak to Adams.
"Senior Chief!" Adams said warmly after turning to face him, extending a hand that Greer shook firmly and introducing the secretary ship. "Congratulations on your son's wedding, going from serving on one Big Stick to becoming father-in-law of another. This… shinzen kekkon shiki was something new."
"Thank you, Sir. Should you be leaving Captain Tai unsupervised like this at San Diego, though, after what happened the last time you were indisposed?"
"I've taken extra precautions after that. You needn't worry."
They shared a laugh now, but while they may not have known each other as long as CAPT Tai had Adams - few people had that honor - there were enough years of mutual familiarity to let Greer catch the fleeting flash of pain on Adams's face, the subconscious rubbing of the wedding ring. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for Lucinda's funeral," he said, now sombre.
"No," Adams said with a shake of his head, minute twitches on his face the only sign of the myriad emotions mulling beneath the surface. "You had your son to look after, yourself."
Lucinda, Adams's ex-wife, had been one of the civilian casualties of the Week of Blood. It had not been much of a secret that she had not been suited to the stresses of being a navy wife and that that had been the main source of their terminal marital problems.
"True."
Greer had never been much for introspection, but the month of vigil at Uileag's hospital bed had given him too much time to think, and he had wondered inconclusively why Siobhan had stayed where Mrs Adams had not.
"He's made a remarkable recovery."
Uileag was no musician, to play an instrument, but his passion for the King of Pop had not waned in the 10 years since, and he and the more active of his friends had performed a routine the man himself would have applauded.
"After nine months, three of which were spent on home convalescence, he'd better."
"One of which was spent in a coma, you told me. Not all of us were so fortunate."
"Yes, Sir," Greer said, chastened. He scanned the surroundings, which he still thought more plush than he was comfortable with. "How has the lieutenant been?"
"Jamie? He still hardly speaks with me." There was a slight ragged note to Adams's tone, prompted by the talk of his older son. "Even at Lucinda's funeral, he said little more than that his mother had been going to remarry."
"Two years. Almost three." Greer fought back a wince even as he glanced back in the ballroom's direction. That was a horrible timing to learn something so earthshaking. "Even at our frostiest, Uileag's never given me the cold shoulder for that long."
"Losing Tobias hurt us both in ways that are hard for those lacking similar experience to understand." Adams paused, and when he spoke again, the edge to his voice that had been inadvertently forming was gone, dutifully suppressed. "I hope you never become able to."
Greer frowned at the reminder. The death of Adams's younger son Tobias Z during what should have been routine peacetime flight ops two years ago had come as a shock.
When he refocused on his former superior, it was to the sight of Adams looking like he had bitten into a surprise lemon, struggling with his thoughts and words.
"He said little when I tried to catch him alone after the funeral, but he said enough."
"You know, all the things that you talked to me about the last time we were together at the previous funeral, they still ring in my ears after two years."
"Good!" Jamie L Adams shouted in response to his father's words. Looking away briefly, he schooled his features with visible effort, and in a more controlled tone, he now said, "Good, because---because you know what? They were meant to."
"I told now-Lieutenant Commander Godai five months ago she had a choice how she wanted to serve, but what you've told me before about your boy's reluctance now reminds me of something Jamie said back then."
Jamie scoffed. "'A man isn't a man until he wears the wings of a naval aviator.' Doesn't that sound at all familiar to you?" There was unvarnished pain in his voice.
"Sir?" Greer wasn't sure he liked where this was going.
"Lay off with the 'sirs', Senior Chief."
Greer stared, uncomprehending.
"You're not in the navy anymore, and even if Navy Personnel Command got around to finding somewhere to bring you back into, it isn't going to be under me. You're not NAVENSCIWARCOM's type. After all we've been through, including the Novacek incident, Jeff is acceptable; Husk if you must."
Greer grunted, having difficulty articulating his discomfort at the combination of this informality and the reminder of that event even after all the years of having left the service. "Only if you call me Diarmuid… Husk." The moniker was alien on his tongue, and he couldn't help the reflexive licking of teeth. "Not Dia, though. Not even the missus calls me that."
"Deal." Adams's expression quickly regained a cloudy complexion. "No, I told Jamie that wasn't fair, but he wouldn't be deterred. Harsh words were said, many of them, but one thing remains particularly clear."
"He was only doing it for you."
"Even with everything that setting NAVENSCIWARCOM's strategic direction and overseeing the constructs demands that Paul and his staff can't handle, there still has been enough downtime for me to mull over what he said. Was I…" the words took obvious effort to say, "wrong? Old folks like us, are we so determined to shape our legacy using our children that we're trying to squeeze square pegs in round holes, force them where they don't belong?" Adams's eyes, still alight with pain, flicked over to the secretary ship. "The same goes for Natural Borns."
Greer looked again towards the ballroom doors, unsure what to think. They really were well-fitted; not a sound from within could be heard. He turned back in time to see that Adams had also been doing the same, and couldn't help feeling concerned. "Has Ayaka been giving problems?"
"No, quite the opposite." Adams shook his head. "Razor says Glider has had only good things to say, and in fact thinks the lieutenant commander isn't giving herself enough credit. Much as I appreciate what Katie can do, I'd rather have a dozen who are more capable than they believe themselves to be over a dozen mavericks, though even that's preferable to the abomination in Jane's."
Greer did not snort. Whatever age had done to Adams's current preferences, the things he had pulled off during his earlier years in the service were as belief-beggaring now as they had been then, and his taking brash LTJG Samo under his wing had come as no surprise to any who knew him. Greer had no insight into how NAVENSCIWARCOM's leadership had been selected, but he suspected it was this fair mix of firm and flexible that had gotten Adams chosen to be the command's deputy.
Adams's face turned conflicted now. "Except for her reckless sympathies regarding Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Delano."
"William D Porter?"
"Yes."
Greer made no attempt to hide his contemptuous snort this time. DD-579 had been infamous enough as a figure of FUBAR the last time around. Even without actively tapping into the petty officer grapevine - something he considered himself above doing - he hadn't been able to avoid hearing about how Willie D was as much of a screwup this time too. "That boy of mine really imparted to her all the wrong lessons."
Preoccupied by his disdain and disappointment, Greer didn't notice the complicated look Adams shot him.
"I've never been comfortable deploying the younger-looking shipgirls," Adams said when Greer remained silent for a while. "Even one is too many. Sierra Mikes that look like teens or even kids are bad enough, but most of them are off enough in their mannerisms that anything more than a casual glance or a static photo makes it obvious they're not children. November Bravos don't have that luxury. When they insist on going into combat despite our letting them do otherwise, I cannot help asking myself: Are they serving because they genuinely believe in it, or are the instincts of what they once were and truly are driving them onward, like a 1MC that won't stop sounding in their heads, drowning out any dissenting voices?" His already-troubled expression darkened further. "Mankind couldn't even have 40 years of peace since we Ended at great cost the Terror that wanted the world, following but shortly Yamata… no, not even half that, and this time we can't even do the fighting but must leave it to the children."
Greer grimaced. Few and fortunate were those, regardless of rank or service or nation, that had gotten away from the Terror with unbowed head and spotless hands. That said, he thought Adams was being overly pessimistic.
His thoughts must have inadvertently shown on his face, for Adams next said, "Early breakthroughs like the Skyrangers, rider modifications and fabricators have their uses, I won't deny, but the things that would allow us to use our industrial and logistical capabilities to prosecute this war properly instead of leaving the shipgirls to do the majority of the work, we still lack. Even now, months in, Tomas still has far too much on his hands heading up Iteration."
The name was vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough; it took a while for Greer to recall who Adams might have been talking about. "Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Markson?"
"The same."
"A good man." The chief engineer turned engineering duty officer was forward-thinking enough to know how best to explore the new frontier that was hypertech, yet had his feet planted firmly enough on the ground to keep the kookier specialists in line.
"Even so, his hands are tied by how little we still understand about enlightened science," Adams said, a little frustration entering his voice now. "Abyssal low observable functionality remains stubbornly beyond our ability to defeat, beyond what size alone should be able to confer, even though every last shipgirl we've studied tells us the practices of knowing and unveiling are among the meanest of enlightened procedures, such that only those completely incapable of wielding the relevant Spheres are unable to enact them.
"The matter of foci only makes things worse. Would a standardised method of enacting procedures have been too much to ask for? Shipgirls, even those with no other talent for using Prime, have an innate understanding of the application of Or Energy that lets them learn from each other despite their different methods. We do not, even if some hypothesise that Eureka moments are unconscious tapping into the same. It all makes me feel like in a different time, I would have been the old man yelling at clouds."
"Now you're just yelling at the cloud," Greer said lightly, partly in an attempt to hide discomfort at his unfamiliarity with this brave new world of warfare.
Adams shot his former subordinate a cutting "don't you dad joke me" stare, though this one didn't get a very chastened look in response.
Calling the way Adams's lips curved upwards next a smile was probably being charitable. "I know the younger officers joke that the term 'enlightened science' is a gloss to mollify the Pentagon, but in a twisted way, it makes more sense to call magic as it is. The term demonstrates obviously that the power of the supernal is outside context and can therefore do what mundane technology cannot. 1940s technology, on the other hand, we know very well what it should be capable of. You've heard of Essex?"
Not well, Greer had to admit - and Ayaka didn't exactly share much about what her operations entailed with him - though it had been hard to miss the towering carrier despite her laconic nature. All the more so after she had come forward to perform on, of all things, a recorder while her eagle served as vocalist.
"She does all her battlespace modeling and projection entirely with onboard systems, yet both in lab testing and reconstruction from field data, she consistently outperforms the latest predictive algorithms running on equipment 80 years her junior. Consider too that the 16"/45 shouldn't be able to match an Oerlikon for ROF, much less do so without melting into slag. Whether the term is 'Artillery Spotting' or 'EX Barrage' or 'Siege Mode' or something else, and whether it is 'true' enlightened science or merely an 'extraordinary talent', the fact remains that the shipgirls never got the memo.
"If only we could figure out how all this is being accomplished, we could make great strides. As matters stand, I suspect what we have won't be enough. I'd be very surprised if the abyssals don't have spare capacity they're working up themselves."
"How do you come to that conclusion, si---Husk?" Greer couldn't suppress his confusion.
"Tell me, Diarmuid: Where were we nine months after the last time a war started with an attack on Pearl?"
Where were we? Greer's initial thought was that no, neither of them had been born yet. Then he thought again, secretly glad he had spent some time in his retirement going through the history books. "In September 1942, the majority of the Clevelands had not been commissioned, and the majority of the Baltimores, Essexes and Independences had not even been launched." His eyebrows twitched as the implications sunk in. "You think the abyssals have something similar going on?"
Adams nodded. "For a foe that apparently originates from the supernal, we have not seen the extradimensional entities deploy any assets demonstrating similar flexibility to the shipgirls. This is highly suspicious. The analysts suspect anything with such capabilities is being held in reserve for still-unknown reason."
"How certain are you of that?" Greer was still dubious. "All I've seen, admittedly from the limited access I now have, shows the abyssals do little more than uncreatively advance until a target is in range and then attack, secure the area and move on."
Adams shook his head. "The Soviets in World War II and the Chinese in Korea fought with a similarly relentless disregard for losses, but to dismiss them as brutes only capable of human wave attacks was and still is a common amateur error. For all the abyssals' usual indiscriminate brutality, every now and then we get hints that there is intelligence beneath." He turned to the secretary ship, who turned to meet his gaze without needing to be called. "Activate the Babel field."
The shipgirl pulled out some gizmo and flicked a switch on it. Greer smelt a whiff of ozone, felt his teeth on edge momentarily from the anti-snooping device.
"Did you hear about the attack on Whiteman AFB?" Adams asked once that was done.
"Whiteman?!" Greer's voice lowered to an incredulous hiss despite the extant precautions. "That's in Missouri, a thousand miles from the nearest coast!"
"Exactly, but explosions forensically determined to match those created by World War II bombs happened at the same time as the attacks on our other naval bases. It was fortuitous that more than usual of the B-2 fleet was off base at the time, because those present were all either destroyed or unaccountable for afterwards."
Greer looked flabbergasted, both at the explanation and the implications. "If this really was due to abyssal attack, why did they not use this method more? The ability to strike with impunity in a way that apparently cuts out the naval delivery platform is a massive gamechanger."
"We do not know with certainty why this hypothetical Exarch capable of attacking from the supernal has held back on this capability subsequently." Adams did not bother to keep how the matter vexed him off his face or out of his voice. "What we do know, though, is that with what's at stake, assuming that the abyssals have shown their entire hand is a hard six I'd rather not roll."
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Our continued thanks to now-FC Error for his continued help with characterisation of Adams' progenitor.
Last edited:
Sorry, no OMAKE ideas for the wedding...
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Authors' Notes: The 9th anniversary of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, without which we probably wouldn't be here, is now in the rearview mirror. Even so, please take a minute of silence for the lost.
The lunch reception eventually drew to a close, some way into the afternoon, and the official guests, more distant acquaintances and older family left, after which the younger relatives and closest friends joined the newlyweds in adjourning to another, cozier venue for a second round of merriment.
On the guests' own dime, of course. The families' largesse didn't extend quite that far.
===[===]===
CHAPTER 26
===[===]===
CHAPTER 26
===[===]===
The lunch reception eventually drew to a close, some way into the afternoon, and the official guests, more distant acquaintances and older family left, after which the younger relatives and closest friends joined the newlyweds in adjourning to another, cozier venue for a second round of merriment.
On the guests' own dime, of course. The families' largesse didn't extend quite that far.
Ayaka was glad Jersey and Wisconsin had taken it upon themselves to get Missouri out of the picture. She loved her sisters, but she doubted their presence would have done the mood any favours. Besides, she had seen said third sister eyeing members of the guestlist in a way that made her hear Hall & Oates or Nelly Furtado in her head.
There had been plenty to say. Life still went on back on the Eastern Seaboard; though the abyssals still tested the defences from time to time, no subsequent raid had gotten near enough to actually firing on NYC like back in April, and a faint but far from oppressive underlying tension had become the new normal.
Not that Ayaka was lacking in this area. Wild stories of what military personnel got up to while off-duty, while often exaggerated, still had at least a grain of truth to them, and shipgirls yet more so, even after she gave anything that might compromise opsec a wide berth.
That time Hammann had been tearfully glomped by an amputee she had deluged until the lost limbs regrew in real time was always a hoot.
That said, the pseudo-nijikai could not go on forever either. Far too soon, from one angle, given how few the chances to meet in the flesh had been over the past half year and would continue to be going forward for the foreseeable future. Not soon enough, from another, given the unearthly time Ayaka and Uileag had had to wake up earlier. Gradually the party dispersed, each saying their heartfelt goodbyes, until it was just Uileag's siblings and Kagami that joined them in returning to the hotel that had hosted the lunch reception.
"Here you go," Kagami said, presenting them with a keycard.
Near the tail end of the lunch reception, the siblings had helped them check in to the room that had been booked for them.
Unfortunately, the housing situation was still in flux. Uileag had to finish up with the CEC course before his posting could be finalised, and the next convoy was due to depart soon. This issue would not have a permanent solution just yet.
Hence this.
"You have our full blessing to do naughty things while our backs are turned!" Ciarán exclaimed, grinning impishly, and beat a hasty retreat with his tittering sisters before Ayaka and Uileag could say a word.
"You…" Ayaka breathed in and out in rasping hisses of displeasure. "You…"
"Ciarán James Greer," Uileag shouted, "get back here!"
{What have I gotten myself into?} Kagami asked with a sigh. {Isn't there enough crazy in this family already?}
{You've met them before,} Ayaka said, uncomprehending. {How's that news?}
{They're your direct in-laws, Oneechan,} Kagami said petulantly. {Not mine. I don't speak with them as often as you, and don't need to.}
{I guess that's fair…?} Ayaka said, still uncertain.
"And you!" Kagami whirled on Uileag.
{I can understand you perfectly well, you know,} Uileag said grumpily.
The younger Shirokaze, taken aback by her lapse, tried to look fierce in an attempt to retake lost ground. {I… knew that! You'd better look after this airhead sister of mine!}
{Hey!}
Ayaka's outrage fell on deaf ears; Kagami was already walking briskly off, muttering something about getting away before the crazy infected her too.
With nothing else to do here, they headed up.
The hotel room was, well, a hotel room. Double bed, attached bathroom, long desk with mirror, minibar, the works. Better adorned than the purely functional, with the Space Needle visible in the distance from the window, but it wasn't going to be winning any prizes for creativity.
There was some trepidation. Inevitable given the many earlier cautions faithfully followed against getting into the same room as someone of the opposite sex out of wedlock. It lasted but briefly, for Ayaka broke the tension by telling Uileag to go bathe first.
After he was done, he was met at the door by Ayaka holding a wrapped package. "No peeking," she said sternly.
"What's the fuss?" Uileag was confused. "I've seen you… your body naked before!"
"Not from the outside you didn't!"
"That matters why?"
"It just does!" Ayaka shouted insistently. "So don't!"
Uileag grumbled incoherently at her obstinacy as the bathroom door shut behind her and various ablutionary sounds issued.
The bathroom door opened and Ayaka emerged.
Uileag stared.
"What?"
Uileag stared some more.
Ayaka was now dressed in a dark blue, slightly purple, cleavage-baring strapped babydoll with black lace trim, a single garter on her right thigh and a sheer white shawl around her arms.
Granted, it was big enough that on a normal woman it could pass for a daring dress, but on Ayaka's frame there was no mistaking what it was.
"Nani?" She repeated, more insistently this time.
"I'm not used to seeing you in something like this," Uileag said, visibly and audibly confused. "I remember clearly that frumpy salmon thing that you somehow always wore the night before we swapped, but hardly anything of this sort."
"That didn't stop you from the diagnostics last time."
"Nor did it you." Uileag didn't waste any time in firing back.
Ayaka reddened. "Yes, I---I did! So---so what?!"
"Besides, that was then! Now is now. You, on the other hand, haven't changed much."
That caught Ayaka short. She wouldn't be so sure about that.
"Sorry?"
Had she been thinking aloud? "I wouldn't be so sure about that," Ayaka repeated as she bent to kiss him. Surprised, Uileag took a moment to return her hug.
When they broke off, Ayaka positioned herself so her back was to Uileag. "Go on."
"Huh?"
Ayaka backed into him and took hold of his wrists to guide his hands. "Do what you liked to do so much," she said, more insistently.
Hesitantly at first, but with growing enthusiasm, he did.
It was a very soothing experience, Ayaka thought, although… "You're really very familiar with this, aren't you?" She asked, a slight accusatory tone to her voice.
Uileag froze in place. "Look, when we remembered everything, that meant really everything! Including this!"
Ayaka let out a tired concessionary sigh at his frantic response and pressed herself more tightly against him, and so he resumed.
It was really a very soothing experience. Feeling Uileag against herself through the thinness of the garment, savouring his smell with the dash of cologne he had deigned to use today, it was relaxing and lulling her into a dreamy state, even with that pressure against her back.
Wait.
Pressure against her back?
Realisation started to dawn dreadfully, but too late; the Ship was already tearing its way out of the metaphysical chains that had kept it bound for months.
There was no attempt at pleasantry or smoothness this time; it had been frustrated long enough, and with satiation at hand, it had run out of patience.
Feed, you fool! How long will you cripple yourself with this self-sabotage?! What are you waiting for?! What excuse do you have now?!
It roared, in a manner of speaking, in her innermost being, at once machine and man and yet not quite either, but to call it speech at all was assigning the primal bundle of instincts in question a level of eloquence it didn't actually have. Despite all that, the intent and disappointed anger was clear.
There was a sudden needy itching sensation in her belly, a terrible hunger beyond merely gnawing that demanded immediate satiation, and her vision started to turn purple.
I do this at my own pace, not yours! I am not a slavering beast led by the nose! Ayaka shouted back in her head.
Uileag paused, abruptly aware of Ayaka's quivering. "Ayachi?"
With great effort, Ayaka took hold of his wrists as gently as she could once more and pried them off, then turned to face him.
What Uileag saw prompted an unguarded startled gasp. "Ayachi, your---your eyes!"
"I'm in control of the situation," Ayaka said firmly through gritted teeth, fighting against the Ship's continued urging her to haste even as she reached for him. "I am in control of the situation."
There had been plenty to say. Life still went on back on the Eastern Seaboard; though the abyssals still tested the defences from time to time, no subsequent raid had gotten near enough to actually firing on NYC like back in April, and a faint but far from oppressive underlying tension had become the new normal.
Not that Ayaka was lacking in this area. Wild stories of what military personnel got up to while off-duty, while often exaggerated, still had at least a grain of truth to them, and shipgirls yet more so, even after she gave anything that might compromise opsec a wide berth.
That time Hammann had been tearfully glomped by an amputee she had deluged until the lost limbs regrew in real time was always a hoot.
That said, the pseudo-nijikai could not go on forever either. Far too soon, from one angle, given how few the chances to meet in the flesh had been over the past half year and would continue to be going forward for the foreseeable future. Not soon enough, from another, given the unearthly time Ayaka and Uileag had had to wake up earlier. Gradually the party dispersed, each saying their heartfelt goodbyes, until it was just Uileag's siblings and Kagami that joined them in returning to the hotel that had hosted the lunch reception.
"Here you go," Kagami said, presenting them with a keycard.
Near the tail end of the lunch reception, the siblings had helped them check in to the room that had been booked for them.
Unfortunately, the housing situation was still in flux. Uileag had to finish up with the CEC course before his posting could be finalised, and the next convoy was due to depart soon. This issue would not have a permanent solution just yet.
Hence this.
"You have our full blessing to do naughty things while our backs are turned!" Ciarán exclaimed, grinning impishly, and beat a hasty retreat with his tittering sisters before Ayaka and Uileag could say a word.
"You…" Ayaka breathed in and out in rasping hisses of displeasure. "You…"
"Ciarán James Greer," Uileag shouted, "get back here!"
{What have I gotten myself into?} Kagami asked with a sigh. {Isn't there enough crazy in this family already?}
{You've met them before,} Ayaka said, uncomprehending. {How's that news?}
{They're your direct in-laws, Oneechan,} Kagami said petulantly. {Not mine. I don't speak with them as often as you, and don't need to.}
{I guess that's fair…?} Ayaka said, still uncertain.
"And you!" Kagami whirled on Uileag.
{I can understand you perfectly well, you know,} Uileag said grumpily.
The younger Shirokaze, taken aback by her lapse, tried to look fierce in an attempt to retake lost ground. {I… knew that! You'd better look after this airhead sister of mine!}
{Hey!}
Ayaka's outrage fell on deaf ears; Kagami was already walking briskly off, muttering something about getting away before the crazy infected her too.
With nothing else to do here, they headed up.
The hotel room was, well, a hotel room. Double bed, attached bathroom, long desk with mirror, minibar, the works. Better adorned than the purely functional, with the Space Needle visible in the distance from the window, but it wasn't going to be winning any prizes for creativity.
There was some trepidation. Inevitable given the many earlier cautions faithfully followed against getting into the same room as someone of the opposite sex out of wedlock. It lasted but briefly, for Ayaka broke the tension by telling Uileag to go bathe first.
After he was done, he was met at the door by Ayaka holding a wrapped package. "No peeking," she said sternly.
"What's the fuss?" Uileag was confused. "I've seen you… your body naked before!"
"Not from the outside you didn't!"
"That matters why?"
"It just does!" Ayaka shouted insistently. "So don't!"
Uileag grumbled incoherently at her obstinacy as the bathroom door shut behind her and various ablutionary sounds issued.
The bathroom door opened and Ayaka emerged.
Uileag stared.
"What?"
Uileag stared some more.
Ayaka was now dressed in a dark blue, slightly purple, cleavage-baring strapped babydoll with black lace trim, a single garter on her right thigh and a sheer white shawl around her arms.
Granted, it was big enough that on a normal woman it could pass for a daring dress, but on Ayaka's frame there was no mistaking what it was.
"Nani?" She repeated, more insistently this time.
"I'm not used to seeing you in something like this," Uileag said, visibly and audibly confused. "I remember clearly that frumpy salmon thing that you somehow always wore the night before we swapped, but hardly anything of this sort."
"That didn't stop you from the diagnostics last time."
"Nor did it you." Uileag didn't waste any time in firing back.
Ayaka reddened. "Yes, I---I did! So---so what?!"
"Besides, that was then! Now is now. You, on the other hand, haven't changed much."
That caught Ayaka short. She wouldn't be so sure about that.
"Sorry?"
Had she been thinking aloud? "I wouldn't be so sure about that," Ayaka repeated as she bent to kiss him. Surprised, Uileag took a moment to return her hug.
When they broke off, Ayaka positioned herself so her back was to Uileag. "Go on."
"Huh?"
Ayaka backed into him and took hold of his wrists to guide his hands. "Do what you liked to do so much," she said, more insistently.
Hesitantly at first, but with growing enthusiasm, he did.
It was a very soothing experience, Ayaka thought, although… "You're really very familiar with this, aren't you?" She asked, a slight accusatory tone to her voice.
Uileag froze in place. "Look, when we remembered everything, that meant really everything! Including this!"
Ayaka let out a tired concessionary sigh at his frantic response and pressed herself more tightly against him, and so he resumed.
It was really a very soothing experience. Feeling Uileag against herself through the thinness of the garment, savouring his smell with the dash of cologne he had deigned to use today, it was relaxing and lulling her into a dreamy state, even with that pressure against her back.
Wait.
Pressure against her back?
Realisation started to dawn dreadfully, but too late; the Ship was already tearing its way out of the metaphysical chains that had kept it bound for months.
There was no attempt at pleasantry or smoothness this time; it had been frustrated long enough, and with satiation at hand, it had run out of patience.
Feed, you fool! How long will you cripple yourself with this self-sabotage?! What are you waiting for?! What excuse do you have now?!
It roared, in a manner of speaking, in her innermost being, at once machine and man and yet not quite either, but to call it speech at all was assigning the primal bundle of instincts in question a level of eloquence it didn't actually have. Despite all that, the intent and disappointed anger was clear.
There was a sudden needy itching sensation in her belly, a terrible hunger beyond merely gnawing that demanded immediate satiation, and her vision started to turn purple.
I do this at my own pace, not yours! I am not a slavering beast led by the nose! Ayaka shouted back in her head.
Uileag paused, abruptly aware of Ayaka's quivering. "Ayachi?"
With great effort, Ayaka took hold of his wrists as gently as she could once more and pried them off, then turned to face him.
What Uileag saw prompted an unguarded startled gasp. "Ayachi, your---your eyes!"
"I'm in control of the situation," Ayaka said firmly through gritted teeth, fighting against the Ship's continued urging her to haste even as she reached for him. "I am in control of the situation."
===[===]===
Last edited: