Chapter 29
WarpObscura
Sleepy Big Stick
- Location
- A dot at the edge of continental Asia.
Two lapses in 18 parts is a greater than 10% failure to comply. Disappointing.
It's been one week since the last pair of segments. It's probably safe to say that anyone who wants to vote will have done so; we'll tally the votes now.
1) Keep together as one chapter:
Without further ado, the hopefully final version of Chapter 29:
...
Authors' Notes: If you thought a Shinkai story wouldn't have a montage, you came to the wrong house, fool!
Unless segment states or implies otherwise, exact dates are deliberately left loose. Similarly, if not stated otherwise, every scene break represents a timeskip.
Pay attention. Many, though not all, of the things covered here will be important. You are advised to reread earlier chapters as well.
Nobody caught the significance of Chaldea Belarus and Cyprus, the RRC and the SPNIF working on paper ships?
Gentle reminder that it is possible to write a character whose attitudes and beliefs are not the author's.
I (Warp) have a Ko-Fi at https://ko-fi.com/2375DDLLGBXNI . If you like this story, would you kindly help defray the cost of the art?
{Good morning to you too, Uiui,} Ayaka sleepily said aloud. {Is this really that fun?}
{Yes.} Uileag replied without pausing.
{Really? From the outside? Without being able to feel it?} Ayaka was puzzled.
{Yes. Besides, if it was a problem, you'd have stopped me before I got this far, wouldn't you?}
{It's not that, but the Ship would have, yes…} Ayaka raised a finger to her mouth contemplatively, {unless it determined you were a threat to be eliminated rather than inducted into the herd of recruitment sources, in which case it would feign weakness until you were too far into the trap.}
Uileag stopped in place, though he didn't let go.
After a few nervous seconds, he asked, {Sierra Mikes don't enjoy all this… groundwork?}
{Those more attuned to their humanity might?} Ayaka hazarded. {This is in of itself useless to the Ship, though, since it doesn't contribute to meeting manning. What does contribute to manpower, the Ship pursues to the full.}
Uileag restarted hesitantly. {If the Ship cares not for the source's comfort and fun or from whence the manpower flows, only that it does, does that mean taking from storage is just as good as fresh?}
{I don't know!} It was Ayaka's turn to be sheepish. {I've never run my capacitance low enough that I need to use the reserves you've been helping me amass. Maybe not, though, just like something's always lost when being kept in storage even after preservation?} She laughed nervously.
It was still strange not waking up to her sisters' rowdiness, as short as that period had been. There had been something room-filling about their presence that, though she hadn't thought anything of it earlier, seemed obvious in hindsight by the feeling of emptiness that was left behind.
That said, Ayaka wasn't exactly eager to find out what her sisters might be getting up to now that they had been assigned to other bases' Constructs. She knew that the USN had fingers in enough pies even counting the CONUS alone that it had to space the shipgirls out, and she also knew she couldn't personally hover over them forever, any more than she could have Kagami. That, however, didn't make the thought particularly reassuring from a big-sisterly perspective, not when past experience with these three had given her much to worry about, unlike with her flesh-and-blood sister.
Yes, even Wisconsin.
There was a more pressing issue now, though, in her lower back.
{Good, you're ready! The Ship might find it useless, but it does help me. Let me have my turn.} "Rumble" was too strong a word for the sound her stomach made - she wasn't that deprived yet - but there was a clear noise nevertheless.
{Today's not in the safe zone anymore,} Uileag said as he let go.
{I know.} Ayaka turned to face him, the heady anticipation that made her lick her lips warring with the distracting irritation provoked by the yawning void in her belly, even though both strong sensations were born of the same need for him to make her whole once more. {Thanks for the reminder, though.}
{If the Summoned don't care about their cycles and just feed indiscriminately, then what about this?} Frowning at the intrusive thought, Uileag used a finger to prod at her belly.
{That,} Ayaka's head tilted as she pinched her chin, {is a very good question.}
"Iowa, over here!"
Ayaka stared as West Virginia waddled into view holding a bear in a full nelson, the ursine struggling futilely against almost 30,000 shp in a container smaller than itself. Uatu had had to deploy almost immediately after her wedding, as well as after the shore leave that she had used to go for Imamura's memorial, meaning that this was the first time she could accept the other shipgirl's invitation to go hunting in the forests of Washington State. She was already regretting it.
Ayaka had pondered at times if the reason why the Ship-aragami showed lupine traits was because the protector wolf kamisama Ooguchi no Makama-sama had some involvement in their existence. No thanks to her Reawakening and the new duties it'd thrown her in the deep end of, she'd never had the chance to sit down and discuss it with Rev Kanawa, who knew more about the topic.
"As this is your first time eating a bear, I'll show you where the blood pressure is low so you don't get it on your clothes, hiking attire or not," West Virginia said with a teacherly manner that Ayaka found disconcerting. "When you're more experienced, you can harvest from the jugular for maximum speed."
Ayaka was still staring as a fairy emerged from West Virginia and ran on the other shipgirl's arm onto the bear, where he pointed out the location she was indicating.
"Go on," she said with atypical calm and patience in the face of Ayaka's hesitance.
"What about Trichinella spiralis?" Ayaka asked nervously.
"When was the last time you fell sick?" West Virginia's patience developed a crack.
"Ano… Not since I Reawakened?"
"E-xact-ly. Now eat up!"
Still unsure, but not wanting any trouble, Ayaka approached the bear, which continued to strain against its captor. "Shouldn't I skin it first, or at least wash it?"
"Were you or were you not a country girl?" West Virginia's patience was audibly starting to wear thin, though not out of any difficulty with restraint.
"My family has never been into hunting, and even if I was, they'd still clean the game properly first."
"Fine, go ahead." Apparently unmollified, West Virginia continued speaking in a harsh whisper that she had to have known would be audible. "SecNav save me from picky exhumans. What, you want sauce and slaw and Tudor's with that too?"
Ayaka helpfully did not point out aloud that the majority of other Summoned would also not want to eat a live animal right out of the wild, but silently retrieved a hose and sprayed down the area to be consumed, the other shipgirl's fairy having moved out of the splash zone. Once that was done, Ayaka gingerly took hold, fighting down her instinctive revulsion at the feeling of wet fur against her face, hair and mouth, and bit down.
Almost immediately, the iron taste of blood flooded her mouth. She was no stranger to sashimi, of course, but that was always properly cleaned and prepared. The raw, gamey meat was simultaneously squishy yet ropey with muscle developed from years of life in the Pacific Northwest wilderness.
"Good?" West Virginia still wasn't showing the slightest bit of exertion from restraining the bear, which had gone glassy-eyed and ceased to struggle the moment Ayaka had bit into it. There was a proud look on her face as she watched.
The experience of using blood as chiminage was hard to describe; though still warm, it was somehow both brighter and darker than Ayaka's usual harvest. The surge of power that came from the bear also wasn't as intense. How much of that was due to blood being less effective a source of manpower and how much was due to animal products lacking the human connection element, she didn't know. Not that West Virginia would know the difference, given the other shipgirl's refusal of the most intimate human relations. It was still a supplement for her vitae stores, though smaller, but if she was to do this again, she would really like to get rid of the fur first.
It shut the Ship up, at least. Ayaka conceded that much.
After Ayaka got her mouthful and moved away, West Virginia sank her teeth into the bear's jugular and drank until it stopped twitching. When her head came back up, mouth ringed with blood, there was a rarely-glimpsed genuine joy on her perennially-peeved face. "Some of the others in Looking Glass I've hunted with say the blood of enemies domestic is more effective at meeting manning requirements, but I haven't the subtlety for that. Maybe you might."
Ayaka thought West Virginia wasn't giving herself enough credit. Animals could be sensitive to predators in ways that most alert, experienced and trained humans couldn't.
The Ship, satiated by the fresh feeding, was a tempting whisper rather than a roar as it not-spoke its interest in this avenue of replenishing manpower levels.
Ayaka frowned internally, trying to pass off any external sign of discomfort as that from her inexperience with hematophagia. Other Her might be currently unresponsive to attempts to directly communicate, but as much as she shared Ayaka's distaste for the Ship's take-what-you-want shortsightedness, she had also roused in Ayaka a conviction deeper-seated than any externally-imposed education that defending against enemies domestic was a duty the oath of office demanded.
Nearly three decades' worth of being taught to avoid kegare, what more deliberately and wilfully defiling herself with tsumi, tried to push against it, and she wasn't sure which was winning. Times like this made her wonder if the blinding red fury triggered by West Virginia's Raging out that first time near the Philippines was the Ship's doing or was actually Other Her's.
Speaking of West Virginia's Raging, Ayaka wondered if using blood for chiminage, while immediately satiating the Ship, did nothing to quell the violent impulses or even worsened them.
"Let me finish up here and we'll bag something for Mary and the others," West Virginia said, still with that alien cheerfulness, not having noticed her inner conflict.
Without waiting for a response, she began eating the rest of the bear.
"Attacking us for the Burma Campaign, I can understand, as much as I hate how many of us those may loe killed," the Burmese military attaché said with unmitigated displeasure, "but why would abyssal long-range strategic strike groups be interested in our jungle?"
"Essex, no cheating!" Hammann shouted, annoyed, as she hunkered behind a snow fort constructed with the early-December snow. "Just because you do everything on board doesn't mean you can use your procedures for this!"
Essex looked over her shoulder as she sidestepped a snowball and leaned away from another without deigning to look at either projectile.
"Don't act innocent!" Hammann shouted. "I can see causality going to plaid around you!"
"I refuse," Bell said on his mistress' behalf, fixing the destroyer with a steely gaze even as they dodged two more. The counterattack, also delivered while still looking in Hammann's direction rather than the attempted attacker's, hit its target square in the face as she was rising to attack. The now-victim's subsequent flailing sent the snowball in hand flying and caused a friendly fire incident.
"It doesn't seem right, recommissioning her without the shipgirl around," CAPT Paul Tai said.
He and Adams were among the guests watching as Iowa the steel hull pulled out of port to begin her latest post-reactivation shakedown cruise. As Christmas gifts went, it was a cut above most.
"The lieutenant commander wouldn't have appreciated it," Adams said.
He'd been privately amused by the castles in the air Battleship had built about the viability of reactivating the Iowas, but even with the lifelong aviator's obligation to rib surface warfare at every opportunity, he couldn't deny there was a certain primal appeal to the big guns.
That said, love of the battlewagons and what they stood for was one thing in peacetime, but under the circumstances of a normal war, no one in the know would have seriously considered bringing the old dames back. For a period of time after the mess that had been the Novacek Incident, he'd wondered if he might end up in a command slated for deactivation and museum conversion as a veiled alternative to the disgrace of open cashiering, and had done the appropriate reading up on what that entailed. Too much had been done in the name of visitor accessibility and safety in the process of turning them into museum ships. Too little of the production capability needed to get them back in action had still been in existence two years ago, too many of the surviving crew and engineers old and infirm with the technical and operational knowledge lost and forgotten.
Of course, two years ago, anagathics to return the aged to prime condition, omni-recycler/fabricators powered by the so-to-speak endless energy of Heaven - even as finicky and limited as they currently were - and incarnate magic warships that could offer up a full technical schematic and fully-trained crew to pass on operational skills were things that hadn't existed.
As if on cue, Medusa emerged into view on the top deck from somewhere, trailed by Iteration personnel wielding all sorts of equipment. One of the prerequisites of the reactivation had been surviving Board of Inspection and Survey scrutiny the first time around, unlike what had happened previously. While the inspection had been passed with flying colours, AR-1 and her team were remaining on board to ensure the restorative effects - metal fatigue eliminated, parts restored to fresh off the production lines, a laundry list of age-related issues rectified - held up while underway. If all went well, Iowa would be but the first of many to return to the fight in these desperate days.
"That doesn't make any sense." Tai had always been candid with his old friend, and here too he made no secret of his confusion. "The shipgirls at NBSD would have drank up the attention from this spectacle of putting themselves back in commission."
"Commander Greer-Godai is a Natural Born, Paul," Adams said reprovingly. She doesn't have as strong an emotional connection to the steel hull as a Summoned ex-museum would have. Razor's reports have told me much, as has Diarmuid, and my read on her at the wedding agrees; she wouldn't have liked the eyes on her and awkward questions."
Adams turned to lock his eyes on Turret Two, fully functional again for the first time in 34 years, and his voice grew a tad harder. It was still unclear how much a Natural Born's pre-Reawakening life circumstances changed her favoured Spheres from what she'd have had she been a Summoned, but he was glad LCDR Godai was one. He'd seen enough empty bunks, written enough letters of regretting to inform even before this war started. Shipgirl psychology, with all the ways it differed from normal human, was still mostly uncharted waters, but there was ample evidence that they were less inhibited. What hasty foolishness a Summoned Iowa as envisioned by Jane's, psychic wounds from the loss of the 47 still raw, might have gotten up to was something he was in no hurry to discover.
"There is a time for powering through painful memories to persevere in your duty, and this is not one of them."
The mess TV tuned to NHK was reporting yet another man found dead in a train station toilet with his pants down.
"Wow, I don't think I've ever seen so many people visit before," Alice said, still awestruck after the day's happenings, as she sank into the chair set aside for her in the New Shirokaze Shrine's guest area.
While the raid on NYC had scared some people into uprooting and moving further inland, not that many had done so in the end. That no subsequent attempt had made it that far helped.
"This is nothing," Ayaka said with a self-conscious chuckle. She hadn't been up long enough to tax the enhanced shipgirl constitution, but there was still something draining about the size of the crowd she had seen off less than an hour ago. Said crowd was already despite the fact that with the war, quite a few outsiders had chosen to stay home rather than come to NYC for the event. "Meiji Jingū regularly sees 3 million visitors for hatsumōde; our professors at Kokugakuin strongly advised against joining that particular crowd. That means the total number of sanpaisha in Tokyo alone is several times that. You won't find that many in NYC, or even across the entire East Coast."
Paradoxically, there was also something energizing about the proceedings. She'd noted before that some of the Shinto practices were baked into the Japanese cultural psyche, but that also meant that there were people who were merely going through the motions due to upbringing or visiting as a domestic tourist rather than out of genuine devotion. Not so different from Christianity in America, ironically. The upside of non-native adherents being a minority of minorities was that proportionately more of them, having had to find their own way onto the Way of the Gods rather than riding on their parents' coattails, were true-believing shinja, and the sincere exultation they brought was tangible.
"Not all who were here today will return next year," Quincy suddenly said.
Ayaka's eyes snapped to the heavy cruiser, but Quincy had already gone back to her usual blissed-out state without bothering to offer an explanation for her latest cryptic comment. Suppressing an open frown, she said, "Need anything else, Sara? I can get Uiui to fetch it."
"I'm fine, thank you," Saratoga said as she nibbled on some of the wagashi laid out for Gonzalez.
"Say, Alice, you didn't go back home to be with your family over this year-end period?" Ayaka asked.
"No, I'm fine too," Alice said, waving it off airily.
Her smile wavered for a moment, so minutely that even Ayaka with her experience and attuned senses didn't notice.
"What's our status, Steve?"
"Green across the board! Just say the word and Gary will hit it! You can tell Pax River we're good to go whenever they are!"
The Iteration team lead returned her colleague's okay sign and initiated the video call to Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River. "Pax River, this is China Lake. All systems nominal, standing by for TransMat test."
"Great timing, Misty!" her counterpart at Naval Air Station Patuxent River replied. "We've still a few probs with the capacitors, but we'll be with you soonish."
"Good to hear that, Mitch. Let's get it right the first time. This is a heavy power overdraw we're needing, and we're still waiting on a second reactor since the operational bases have priority. No need to disappoint Rear Admiral Davis so soon into 2024."
Misty knew full well that the frontline units needed the resources more, but she couldn't suppress a twinge of envy.
"That, we definitely don't," Mitch said.
While Mitch continued the troubleshooting on his end, Misty turned back to studying the chamber Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake's prototype TransMat was installed in. Portals like those created by Princeton had not shown any unwanted release of energy or harmful radiation, but no one was taking any chances with this fledgling attempt at humanly replicating them. The "embarkation room", as someone had coined the test chamber, was set more than double the seven-metre diameter of the ringlike portal generator belowground and walled off thickly, all views within provided by cameras rather than vulnerable glass that might be a structural weakness. Seven metres was enough for an TEU intermodal container to fit lengthwise with room to spare. The chamber itself was a safe distance away from the operations room. If repeated tests revealed that there was no danger to be had, the floorplan could be altered for greater ease of access, but until then Iteration was erring on the side of caution. A UGV and two sets of remotely-operated signal flags were set within.
Freeform generation of portals remained something that mankind hadn't yet managed to replicate, hence the need for fixed rings with an array of specially-designed and positioned elements to form the co-locationary spatial connection.
"All green now, Sir," one of Mitch's subordinates said.
"Gotcha, Norman! Alright, chums, let's do this!" Mitch shouted enthusiastically.
"Execute," Misty said.
"You heard the boss, Gary!" Steve also shouted. "Hit it!"
"Engaging TransMat tunnelling system. First element online." Sparks began to appear within the ring.
"Second element online. Third element online." A dripping sound started to become audible as the sparks started to gain coherence.
"Fourth element online. Fifth element online." The dripping became a trickle and the sparks formed into a circle within the ring.
"Sixth element online. Seventh element online." The trickling became a rushing river as the circle appeared to fill with water. Then, with a sound like "kawoosh", the water-like effect disappeared, giving way to a clear view of a chamber beyond. Within were three sets of signal flags.
"Is it wrong that we're not doing this under Cheyenne Mountain?" Steve suddenly asked.
Misty directed a flat stare at him. She was old enough to know exactly what he was talking about, and the combination of two sources of overenthusiasm and the stress of preparing this pioneering test was starting to get on her nerves. "What are you, a spy for the Chair Farce?"
"We see the portal too on our end, Sir, and a UGV and two sets of signal flags," Norman said.
"Wonderful! Misty, let's move to step 2."
"Roger. Steve, test the signal flags."
Steve gave the command and the signal flags in China Lake's embarkation room went through a prearranged routine.
"Message reads as follows," Norman said, and he read out what he had seen the flags say.
"Affirm message receipt." This was from Steve.
"Our turn now, Norman!" Mitch said.
Norman put the signal flags in Pax River's embarkation room through a prearranged routine of their own. China Lake read it out and got confirmation.
"Good. We've confirmed we can see through the TransMat-created portals in real time," Misty said. "Have the UGV team execute."
"Sir, the readings---" Norman suddenly spoke up.
His words were interrupted by repeated thumping noises that Misty recognised with a sinking feeling as the sound of blowing fuses despite the UPS in place.
"Warning: Power surge detected," the synthesised voice of the monitoring system promptly said. "Enacting automatic emergency shutdown of TransMat. Please remove all body parts and items from event horizon. Shutdown in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."
There was another kawoosh sound and the portal disappeared.
Both team leads sat still and stared silently at the failure for a few moments, even as their subordinates ran over their readings to make sure nothing else was going to happen for the moment.
"Admiral Davis is going to be disappointed." Misty was the first to speak.
Mitch winced as he raised a hand to wave away a burning smell. "Hey, one minute is better than nothing," he tried to say reassuringly, but his earlier enthusiasm had disappeared like the smoke currently being emitted.
"You're seriously saying Shrapnel Face over here who got blown up in the latest abyssal air raid is actually one of those home invader punks from a few weeks back who was suing over the would-be victim fighting back? I know I shouldn't be finding it funny, but---wheeze---"
{Look, look, Nee-sama!} Yamashiro shouted excitedly. {It's so ticklish!}
Ayaka and the hedgehog café worker stared in mute horror at the hedgehog Yamashiro held upside down in her hand, seemingly not bothered by the quills. She wanted to be glad that the older shipgirl had developed an enthusiasm for the spiny mammals despite the many months of delay after the visit had been first mooted, but this was doing it wrong!
{Ah, there you are, Naganami-neesama!} Takanami shouted. {Yuubari-san said you've been in here for a while.}
The workshop set aside for Naganami's use was a crowded, messy affair with a lot of apparati and machinery Takanami didn't recognise offhand. The shipgirl in question was fiddling with what looked like a gauntlet, her hair done up in a bun like during kendō and dressed in dull coveralls.
It was a strange sight, as was seeing someone who wasn't Yuubari-san or one of the repair ships working on her own rigging. Then again, supposedly the unorthodoxy of Tanaka-shōshō could have rubbed off on her. Certainly, even taking into account the many fantastic foci shipgirls used, the futuristic fashion that Naganami's power expressed itself in was unusual.
{Oh, what is it? Takanami?} Naganami's voice came out confused as she paused. {Have I really been long?}
{Yes, maybe.}
Naganami frowned as she turned back to look at the gauntlet. {I'll stow this, change up and join you.}
She did.
{What was that you were working on, Naganami-neesama?} Takanami asked once they were on their way out.
{You mean the gauntlet?}
{Yes!} Takanami nodded.
{Oh, that.} Naganami wiggled her fingers, looking thoughtful. {The movements are different with arm-mounted blades than when I hold the shinai in my hands. None of the abyssals fight in melee, but it throws me off. If I can get the Or Energy to form the blades in my hands, I can fight the same way I train.}
{Wow, that's so clever, Naganami-neesama!} Takanami exclaimed excitedly. {There're so many things you could do with more Prime literally in hand!}
{Ugh, I wish it was as easily done as said.} Naganami made a fist in frustration. {I can't seem to recreate the emitters correctly! Never mind the remote deploy---}
Naganami's handphone rang.
It rang some more.
{Naganami-neesama, are you getting that, maybe?} Takanami asked, confused by the delay.
That got Naganami to pull out her handphone, and as she looked upon it, she paused midstep. Her face seemed to shift in a subtly odd way even as it moved between a number of expressions too quickly to individually identify.
Takanami couldn't explain why, but for a moment it seemed that Naganami's hair was short and she was wearing over her blouse a blue vest and pleated miniskirt instead of the maroon pinafore.
No, it went beyond just that. The distorted vision of a person she saw seemed not like Naganami herself, but someone who might be a genetic sister thereof. The pink hairs were missing, there were barrettes in the bangs, and the face and figure were subtly off.
Even without these strange sights, it seemed as if her beloved sister was uncertain about something, so unlike her usual self.
Lost and troubled and so very small.
Then a nearby light got in Takanami's optics, and by the time she shook it off, the moment had passed. {It's nothing really important!} Naganami shouted cheerily, as if nothing had happened. {You needn't worry!}
"Good job, boys! That DUI case your roadblock caught last night was on a wanted list."
{Interesting. Most interesting,} the CO of the RRC said in her native tongue. {Pure Or Energy release, with no harmful radiation emissions, you said?}
{Yes, Ma'am.} The engineer giving the briefing was trying his hardest not to look at the nasty burn scar on her face.
{Relax, Ivan Mikhailovich Belenko. I do not have people's knees shot out for staring. What did you say the project codename was?} Vice Admiral Zeleska asked lightly, sounding most intrigued.
By Belenko's expression, he was not entirely calmed by the reassurances. {Obrimos.}
Kaga sat in seiza, the very picture of stoic serenity, as cherry blossom petals fell slowly around her. {Like dust in the wind, so too the days of our lives,} she said in Japanese. {Our young died deluded into thinking they were fighting the good fight.} Those that knew better could see the self-recrimination bubbling under the skin. {All that did was delay the inevitable for a regime so bent on saving face that, rather than back down on a war it should have known it couldn't have won, it followed through on the work begun by fools. It played so easily on our belief that we were superior and therefore right in whatever we did to those we called inferior. We burned for our arrogance, and justly so.}
Akagi, who had caught some of the petals in a hand, was looking intently at them, the food before her conspicuously untouched.
It had not gone unnoticed by Kaga. {Akagi-san, this is unlike you.}
{I keep feeling as though there is something or someone to do with the sakura that I have forgotten, Kaga-san.}
{You have shown no such reaction in the previous spring, Akagi-san.}
{I know, Kaga-san.} Akagi was obviously troubled as she turned her left hand over, and as her eyes passed over her rings, she found herself inexplicably staring at them longer than necessary. {The reason why I now do feels like it should be right before me, and yet I cannot grasp it. All that these ephemeral blooms make me think of is how some of the other Natural Borns are just so young. I don't know what I would do if one of my own girls was to Reawaken, even though I know that none of us who are unwilling to defend mankind responds to a Summons in the first place.}
{Matters of the heart... I do not know about,} Kaga's brow briefly furrowed, {but if they were kanmusu too, they should have Reawakened from the same incident as you.}
{Were it so easy, Kaga-san. That we still have Natural Borns being discovered even now, more than a year into this war, shows that. Few of us get to respond to the ceremonies we ourselves conduct the way Nakahara-sensei did.} The thought brought a twinkle of amusement to her eyes, but only briefly, and was gone by the time she finished turning to face Kaga. {Do you think Nagumo-sama or Yamamoto-sama ever doubted as I now do?}
The slowness of Kaga's response could only partially be attributed to surprise at the non sequitur. {It was not in my power either then or now to question that. Biographies constructed after the fact are necessarily incomplete. Akagi-san, you know as I do that whether Manifested like myself or Natural Born like you, our internal records are flawed. To look back so far into the past requires a store of Takamagahara's power and grasp of the ars temporis beyond either of us.} Her face and tone, already inexpressive by most metrics on the average day, somehow turned even flatter. {I have accepted an old killer brought back for wetwork like myself will never have a happy ending; this is something only you can come to terms with yourself.}
Akagi pushed at the food in one box. {Would you have preferred a Summoned me, Kaga-san?}
{What an odd question.}
Akagi looked back up and at her with uncharacteristically unwavering intensity.
{I do not know.} The long delay in reply was telling.
{What had you expected, Kaga-san?}
Kaga's reply was atypically hesitant. {An Akagi-san with a boundless appetite, wise yet fun...ny.}
{Sou ka naa.} Akagi didn't really sound convinced as she lifted a can to her mouth and slowly, almost hesitantly drank from it. {I see.}
"Ma'am, you need to calm down and speak slowly and clearly so that I can---"
"There was a ca---ca---carjacker! Put a gun in---in my face and told me to ge---get out, and then BANG! A van or---or something comes outta nowhere, runs him over, and both of them just gone before I---I knew what was going on!"
"You're doing that thing again, Ayachi," Uileag said.
Ayaka's head tilted quizzically. "Eh?"
"You just looked at your menstrual blood all 'hmm, interesting'-like!"
"Now that you mention it, I haven't gotten a single cramp ever since I Reawakened, why?"
"Ning Hai, Ping Hai, you two are not submarines," Kaga said, annoyance starting to suffuse her tone.
The two Chinese cruisers ignored her.
"Augusta-san, tell the brats to stop acting up."
Akagi laughed. {Kaga-san, let the children play. There is little enough happiness to be had in these times.}
{I do not have any authority over them either, Kaga-san,} Augusta said, her Japanese not wavering in the slightest despite her sheepishness. {Neither being a liaison between NAVENSCIWARCOM and the SPNIF nor now holding leadership of Amalgam 165 lets me command them.}
"Hey Matt, that shipgirl that just came in's kinda sus."
Matt looked confusedly at his fellow librarian. "What, the pale white-haired one?"
"Yeah."
"Really now, Rodri~go?" Matt's whispers turned teasing. "Just 'cause she doesn't make you feel like you want her to step on you?"
"Matt!" Rodrigo was starting to redden.
"Ah yes, you'd have successfully become a wizard in another two, three years, and then a shipgirl took pity on you, then gave you her number so she could come back for more. Such wasted potential," Matt said melodramatically.
"Pot, kettle, cabrón," Rodrigo replied harshly.
"You know there're shipgirls with those looks, right? Wash, Shoukek, Mo, Dunkek?"
"I'm telling you, something about her's bothering me, and not in the sense of making me want to kiss her fe---" Rodrigo abruptly realised what he was about to say and hastily zipped his lips.
Matt's grin turned even more sly, though the fact that they were on the clock kept him from laughing loudly and openly. "C'mon, man. An abyssal that doesn't only think about racking up a bodycount? What, are they going to end up in the job market next?"
Authors' Notes: Our thanks to FC Error from Sufficient Velocity for continued assistance rendered regarding certain characters' progenitors. Our thanks too to Kyryst also from SV for pointing out areas needing clarification.
We hope you did indeed pay attention. You might be able to figure out what's going on.
If anyone is confused, Kaga is a Sierra Mike. Did we not make that contrast with the NB Akagi (anyone put together the clues and figured out what her deal is yet?) clear enough? It's a Metal Gear reference, but an appropriate one, because this remorse over her (crew's) actions in the past has always been a part of her character. Please go back to her first appearance in Chapter 18 and her comments during the wedding.
Yes, the troubled Akagi who lacks an appetite is a deliberate contrast to canon.
It's been one week since the last pair of segments. It's probably safe to say that anyone who wants to vote will have done so; we'll tally the votes now.
1) Keep together as one chapter:
- BF110C4
- bldude
- kilopi505
- Kyryst
- Salbazier
- Sathzur
- warlock7
- irohlegoman
- Lost Horizon
- SkyBorn.12
Without further ado, the hopefully final version of Chapter 29:
...
Authors' Notes: If you thought a Shinkai story wouldn't have a montage, you came to the wrong house, fool!
Unless segment states or implies otherwise, exact dates are deliberately left loose. Similarly, if not stated otherwise, every scene break represents a timeskip.
Pay attention. Many, though not all, of the things covered here will be important. You are advised to reread earlier chapters as well.
Nobody caught the significance of Chaldea Belarus and Cyprus, the RRC and the SPNIF working on paper ships?
Gentle reminder that it is possible to write a character whose attitudes and beliefs are not the author's.
I (Warp) have a Ko-Fi at https://ko-fi.com/2375DDLLGBXNI . If you like this story, would you kindly help defray the cost of the art?
===[===]===
CHAPTER 29
===[===]===
{Kimi no Na Wa./your name. Original Soundtrack - Zen Zen Zense}
CHAPTER 29
===[===]===
{Kimi no Na Wa./your name. Original Soundtrack - Zen Zen Zense}
{Good morning to you too, Uiui,} Ayaka sleepily said aloud. {Is this really that fun?}
{Yes.} Uileag replied without pausing.
{Really? From the outside? Without being able to feel it?} Ayaka was puzzled.
{Yes. Besides, if it was a problem, you'd have stopped me before I got this far, wouldn't you?}
{It's not that, but the Ship would have, yes…} Ayaka raised a finger to her mouth contemplatively, {unless it determined you were a threat to be eliminated rather than inducted into the herd of recruitment sources, in which case it would feign weakness until you were too far into the trap.}
Uileag stopped in place, though he didn't let go.
After a few nervous seconds, he asked, {Sierra Mikes don't enjoy all this… groundwork?}
{Those more attuned to their humanity might?} Ayaka hazarded. {This is in of itself useless to the Ship, though, since it doesn't contribute to meeting manning. What does contribute to manpower, the Ship pursues to the full.}
Uileag restarted hesitantly. {If the Ship cares not for the source's comfort and fun or from whence the manpower flows, only that it does, does that mean taking from storage is just as good as fresh?}
{I don't know!} It was Ayaka's turn to be sheepish. {I've never run my capacitance low enough that I need to use the reserves you've been helping me amass. Maybe not, though, just like something's always lost when being kept in storage even after preservation?} She laughed nervously.
It was still strange not waking up to her sisters' rowdiness, as short as that period had been. There had been something room-filling about their presence that, though she hadn't thought anything of it earlier, seemed obvious in hindsight by the feeling of emptiness that was left behind.
That said, Ayaka wasn't exactly eager to find out what her sisters might be getting up to now that they had been assigned to other bases' Constructs. She knew that the USN had fingers in enough pies even counting the CONUS alone that it had to space the shipgirls out, and she also knew she couldn't personally hover over them forever, any more than she could have Kagami. That, however, didn't make the thought particularly reassuring from a big-sisterly perspective, not when past experience with these three had given her much to worry about, unlike with her flesh-and-blood sister.
Yes, even Wisconsin.
There was a more pressing issue now, though, in her lower back.
{Good, you're ready! The Ship might find it useless, but it does help me. Let me have my turn.} "Rumble" was too strong a word for the sound her stomach made - she wasn't that deprived yet - but there was a clear noise nevertheless.
{Today's not in the safe zone anymore,} Uileag said as he let go.
{I know.} Ayaka turned to face him, the heady anticipation that made her lick her lips warring with the distracting irritation provoked by the yawning void in her belly, even though both strong sensations were born of the same need for him to make her whole once more. {Thanks for the reminder, though.}
{If the Summoned don't care about their cycles and just feed indiscriminately, then what about this?} Frowning at the intrusive thought, Uileag used a finger to prod at her belly.
{That,} Ayaka's head tilted as she pinched her chin, {is a very good question.}
===[===]===
"Iowa, over here!"
Ayaka stared as West Virginia waddled into view holding a bear in a full nelson, the ursine struggling futilely against almost 30,000 shp in a container smaller than itself. Uatu had had to deploy almost immediately after her wedding, as well as after the shore leave that she had used to go for Imamura's memorial, meaning that this was the first time she could accept the other shipgirl's invitation to go hunting in the forests of Washington State. She was already regretting it.
Ayaka had pondered at times if the reason why the Ship-aragami showed lupine traits was because the protector wolf kamisama Ooguchi no Makama-sama had some involvement in their existence. No thanks to her Reawakening and the new duties it'd thrown her in the deep end of, she'd never had the chance to sit down and discuss it with Rev Kanawa, who knew more about the topic.
"As this is your first time eating a bear, I'll show you where the blood pressure is low so you don't get it on your clothes, hiking attire or not," West Virginia said with a teacherly manner that Ayaka found disconcerting. "When you're more experienced, you can harvest from the jugular for maximum speed."
Ayaka was still staring as a fairy emerged from West Virginia and ran on the other shipgirl's arm onto the bear, where he pointed out the location she was indicating.
"Go on," she said with atypical calm and patience in the face of Ayaka's hesitance.
"What about Trichinella spiralis?" Ayaka asked nervously.
"When was the last time you fell sick?" West Virginia's patience developed a crack.
"Ano… Not since I Reawakened?"
"E-xact-ly. Now eat up!"
Still unsure, but not wanting any trouble, Ayaka approached the bear, which continued to strain against its captor. "Shouldn't I skin it first, or at least wash it?"
"Were you or were you not a country girl?" West Virginia's patience was audibly starting to wear thin, though not out of any difficulty with restraint.
"My family has never been into hunting, and even if I was, they'd still clean the game properly first."
"Fine, go ahead." Apparently unmollified, West Virginia continued speaking in a harsh whisper that she had to have known would be audible. "SecNav save me from picky exhumans. What, you want sauce and slaw and Tudor's with that too?"
Ayaka helpfully did not point out aloud that the majority of other Summoned would also not want to eat a live animal right out of the wild, but silently retrieved a hose and sprayed down the area to be consumed, the other shipgirl's fairy having moved out of the splash zone. Once that was done, Ayaka gingerly took hold, fighting down her instinctive revulsion at the feeling of wet fur against her face, hair and mouth, and bit down.
Almost immediately, the iron taste of blood flooded her mouth. She was no stranger to sashimi, of course, but that was always properly cleaned and prepared. The raw, gamey meat was simultaneously squishy yet ropey with muscle developed from years of life in the Pacific Northwest wilderness.
"Good?" West Virginia still wasn't showing the slightest bit of exertion from restraining the bear, which had gone glassy-eyed and ceased to struggle the moment Ayaka had bit into it. There was a proud look on her face as she watched.
The experience of using blood as chiminage was hard to describe; though still warm, it was somehow both brighter and darker than Ayaka's usual harvest. The surge of power that came from the bear also wasn't as intense. How much of that was due to blood being less effective a source of manpower and how much was due to animal products lacking the human connection element, she didn't know. Not that West Virginia would know the difference, given the other shipgirl's refusal of the most intimate human relations. It was still a supplement for her vitae stores, though smaller, but if she was to do this again, she would really like to get rid of the fur first.
It shut the Ship up, at least. Ayaka conceded that much.
After Ayaka got her mouthful and moved away, West Virginia sank her teeth into the bear's jugular and drank until it stopped twitching. When her head came back up, mouth ringed with blood, there was a rarely-glimpsed genuine joy on her perennially-peeved face. "Some of the others in Looking Glass I've hunted with say the blood of enemies domestic is more effective at meeting manning requirements, but I haven't the subtlety for that. Maybe you might."
Ayaka thought West Virginia wasn't giving herself enough credit. Animals could be sensitive to predators in ways that most alert, experienced and trained humans couldn't.
The Ship, satiated by the fresh feeding, was a tempting whisper rather than a roar as it not-spoke its interest in this avenue of replenishing manpower levels.
Ayaka frowned internally, trying to pass off any external sign of discomfort as that from her inexperience with hematophagia. Other Her might be currently unresponsive to attempts to directly communicate, but as much as she shared Ayaka's distaste for the Ship's take-what-you-want shortsightedness, she had also roused in Ayaka a conviction deeper-seated than any externally-imposed education that defending against enemies domestic was a duty the oath of office demanded.
Nearly three decades' worth of being taught to avoid kegare, what more deliberately and wilfully defiling herself with tsumi, tried to push against it, and she wasn't sure which was winning. Times like this made her wonder if the blinding red fury triggered by West Virginia's Raging out that first time near the Philippines was the Ship's doing or was actually Other Her's.
Speaking of West Virginia's Raging, Ayaka wondered if using blood for chiminage, while immediately satiating the Ship, did nothing to quell the violent impulses or even worsened them.
"Let me finish up here and we'll bag something for Mary and the others," West Virginia said, still with that alien cheerfulness, not having noticed her inner conflict.
Without waiting for a response, she began eating the rest of the bear.
===[===]===
"Attacking us for the Burma Campaign, I can understand, as much as I hate how many of us those may loe killed," the Burmese military attaché said with unmitigated displeasure, "but why would abyssal long-range strategic strike groups be interested in our jungle?"
===[===]===
"Essex, no cheating!" Hammann shouted, annoyed, as she hunkered behind a snow fort constructed with the early-December snow. "Just because you do everything on board doesn't mean you can use your procedures for this!"
Essex looked over her shoulder as she sidestepped a snowball and leaned away from another without deigning to look at either projectile.
"Don't act innocent!" Hammann shouted. "I can see causality going to plaid around you!"
"I refuse," Bell said on his mistress' behalf, fixing the destroyer with a steely gaze even as they dodged two more. The counterattack, also delivered while still looking in Hammann's direction rather than the attempted attacker's, hit its target square in the face as she was rising to attack. The now-victim's subsequent flailing sent the snowball in hand flying and caused a friendly fire incident.
===[===]===
"It doesn't seem right, recommissioning her without the shipgirl around," CAPT Paul Tai said.
He and Adams were among the guests watching as Iowa the steel hull pulled out of port to begin her latest post-reactivation shakedown cruise. As Christmas gifts went, it was a cut above most.
"The lieutenant commander wouldn't have appreciated it," Adams said.
He'd been privately amused by the castles in the air Battleship had built about the viability of reactivating the Iowas, but even with the lifelong aviator's obligation to rib surface warfare at every opportunity, he couldn't deny there was a certain primal appeal to the big guns.
That said, love of the battlewagons and what they stood for was one thing in peacetime, but under the circumstances of a normal war, no one in the know would have seriously considered bringing the old dames back. For a period of time after the mess that had been the Novacek Incident, he'd wondered if he might end up in a command slated for deactivation and museum conversion as a veiled alternative to the disgrace of open cashiering, and had done the appropriate reading up on what that entailed. Too much had been done in the name of visitor accessibility and safety in the process of turning them into museum ships. Too little of the production capability needed to get them back in action had still been in existence two years ago, too many of the surviving crew and engineers old and infirm with the technical and operational knowledge lost and forgotten.
Of course, two years ago, anagathics to return the aged to prime condition, omni-recycler/fabricators powered by the so-to-speak endless energy of Heaven - even as finicky and limited as they currently were - and incarnate magic warships that could offer up a full technical schematic and fully-trained crew to pass on operational skills were things that hadn't existed.
As if on cue, Medusa emerged into view on the top deck from somewhere, trailed by Iteration personnel wielding all sorts of equipment. One of the prerequisites of the reactivation had been surviving Board of Inspection and Survey scrutiny the first time around, unlike what had happened previously. While the inspection had been passed with flying colours, AR-1 and her team were remaining on board to ensure the restorative effects - metal fatigue eliminated, parts restored to fresh off the production lines, a laundry list of age-related issues rectified - held up while underway. If all went well, Iowa would be but the first of many to return to the fight in these desperate days.
"That doesn't make any sense." Tai had always been candid with his old friend, and here too he made no secret of his confusion. "The shipgirls at NBSD would have drank up the attention from this spectacle of putting themselves back in commission."
"Commander Greer-Godai is a Natural Born, Paul," Adams said reprovingly. She doesn't have as strong an emotional connection to the steel hull as a Summoned ex-museum would have. Razor's reports have told me much, as has Diarmuid, and my read on her at the wedding agrees; she wouldn't have liked the eyes on her and awkward questions."
Adams turned to lock his eyes on Turret Two, fully functional again for the first time in 34 years, and his voice grew a tad harder. It was still unclear how much a Natural Born's pre-Reawakening life circumstances changed her favoured Spheres from what she'd have had she been a Summoned, but he was glad LCDR Godai was one. He'd seen enough empty bunks, written enough letters of regretting to inform even before this war started. Shipgirl psychology, with all the ways it differed from normal human, was still mostly uncharted waters, but there was ample evidence that they were less inhibited. What hasty foolishness a Summoned Iowa as envisioned by Jane's, psychic wounds from the loss of the 47 still raw, might have gotten up to was something he was in no hurry to discover.
"There is a time for powering through painful memories to persevere in your duty, and this is not one of them."
===[===]===
The mess TV tuned to NHK was reporting yet another man found dead in a train station toilet with his pants down.
===[===]===
"Wow, I don't think I've ever seen so many people visit before," Alice said, still awestruck after the day's happenings, as she sank into the chair set aside for her in the New Shirokaze Shrine's guest area.
While the raid on NYC had scared some people into uprooting and moving further inland, not that many had done so in the end. That no subsequent attempt had made it that far helped.
"This is nothing," Ayaka said with a self-conscious chuckle. She hadn't been up long enough to tax the enhanced shipgirl constitution, but there was still something draining about the size of the crowd she had seen off less than an hour ago. Said crowd was already despite the fact that with the war, quite a few outsiders had chosen to stay home rather than come to NYC for the event. "Meiji Jingū regularly sees 3 million visitors for hatsumōde; our professors at Kokugakuin strongly advised against joining that particular crowd. That means the total number of sanpaisha in Tokyo alone is several times that. You won't find that many in NYC, or even across the entire East Coast."
Paradoxically, there was also something energizing about the proceedings. She'd noted before that some of the Shinto practices were baked into the Japanese cultural psyche, but that also meant that there were people who were merely going through the motions due to upbringing or visiting as a domestic tourist rather than out of genuine devotion. Not so different from Christianity in America, ironically. The upside of non-native adherents being a minority of minorities was that proportionately more of them, having had to find their own way onto the Way of the Gods rather than riding on their parents' coattails, were true-believing shinja, and the sincere exultation they brought was tangible.
"Not all who were here today will return next year," Quincy suddenly said.
Ayaka's eyes snapped to the heavy cruiser, but Quincy had already gone back to her usual blissed-out state without bothering to offer an explanation for her latest cryptic comment. Suppressing an open frown, she said, "Need anything else, Sara? I can get Uiui to fetch it."
"I'm fine, thank you," Saratoga said as she nibbled on some of the wagashi laid out for Gonzalez.
"Say, Alice, you didn't go back home to be with your family over this year-end period?" Ayaka asked.
"No, I'm fine too," Alice said, waving it off airily.
Her smile wavered for a moment, so minutely that even Ayaka with her experience and attuned senses didn't notice.
===[===]===
"What's our status, Steve?"
"Green across the board! Just say the word and Gary will hit it! You can tell Pax River we're good to go whenever they are!"
The Iteration team lead returned her colleague's okay sign and initiated the video call to Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River. "Pax River, this is China Lake. All systems nominal, standing by for TransMat test."
"Great timing, Misty!" her counterpart at Naval Air Station Patuxent River replied. "We've still a few probs with the capacitors, but we'll be with you soonish."
"Good to hear that, Mitch. Let's get it right the first time. This is a heavy power overdraw we're needing, and we're still waiting on a second reactor since the operational bases have priority. No need to disappoint Rear Admiral Davis so soon into 2024."
Misty knew full well that the frontline units needed the resources more, but she couldn't suppress a twinge of envy.
"That, we definitely don't," Mitch said.
While Mitch continued the troubleshooting on his end, Misty turned back to studying the chamber Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) China Lake's prototype TransMat was installed in. Portals like those created by Princeton had not shown any unwanted release of energy or harmful radiation, but no one was taking any chances with this fledgling attempt at humanly replicating them. The "embarkation room", as someone had coined the test chamber, was set more than double the seven-metre diameter of the ringlike portal generator belowground and walled off thickly, all views within provided by cameras rather than vulnerable glass that might be a structural weakness. Seven metres was enough for an TEU intermodal container to fit lengthwise with room to spare. The chamber itself was a safe distance away from the operations room. If repeated tests revealed that there was no danger to be had, the floorplan could be altered for greater ease of access, but until then Iteration was erring on the side of caution. A UGV and two sets of remotely-operated signal flags were set within.
Freeform generation of portals remained something that mankind hadn't yet managed to replicate, hence the need for fixed rings with an array of specially-designed and positioned elements to form the co-locationary spatial connection.
"All green now, Sir," one of Mitch's subordinates said.
"Gotcha, Norman! Alright, chums, let's do this!" Mitch shouted enthusiastically.
"Execute," Misty said.
"You heard the boss, Gary!" Steve also shouted. "Hit it!"
"Engaging TransMat tunnelling system. First element online." Sparks began to appear within the ring.
"Second element online. Third element online." A dripping sound started to become audible as the sparks started to gain coherence.
"Fourth element online. Fifth element online." The dripping became a trickle and the sparks formed into a circle within the ring.
"Sixth element online. Seventh element online." The trickling became a rushing river as the circle appeared to fill with water. Then, with a sound like "kawoosh", the water-like effect disappeared, giving way to a clear view of a chamber beyond. Within were three sets of signal flags.
"Is it wrong that we're not doing this under Cheyenne Mountain?" Steve suddenly asked.
Misty directed a flat stare at him. She was old enough to know exactly what he was talking about, and the combination of two sources of overenthusiasm and the stress of preparing this pioneering test was starting to get on her nerves. "What are you, a spy for the Chair Farce?"
"We see the portal too on our end, Sir, and a UGV and two sets of signal flags," Norman said.
"Wonderful! Misty, let's move to step 2."
"Roger. Steve, test the signal flags."
Steve gave the command and the signal flags in China Lake's embarkation room went through a prearranged routine.
"Message reads as follows," Norman said, and he read out what he had seen the flags say.
"Affirm message receipt." This was from Steve.
"Our turn now, Norman!" Mitch said.
Norman put the signal flags in Pax River's embarkation room through a prearranged routine of their own. China Lake read it out and got confirmation.
"Good. We've confirmed we can see through the TransMat-created portals in real time," Misty said. "Have the UGV team execute."
"Sir, the readings---" Norman suddenly spoke up.
His words were interrupted by repeated thumping noises that Misty recognised with a sinking feeling as the sound of blowing fuses despite the UPS in place.
"Warning: Power surge detected," the synthesised voice of the monitoring system promptly said. "Enacting automatic emergency shutdown of TransMat. Please remove all body parts and items from event horizon. Shutdown in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."
There was another kawoosh sound and the portal disappeared.
Both team leads sat still and stared silently at the failure for a few moments, even as their subordinates ran over their readings to make sure nothing else was going to happen for the moment.
"Admiral Davis is going to be disappointed." Misty was the first to speak.
Mitch winced as he raised a hand to wave away a burning smell. "Hey, one minute is better than nothing," he tried to say reassuringly, but his earlier enthusiasm had disappeared like the smoke currently being emitted.
===[===]===
"You're seriously saying Shrapnel Face over here who got blown up in the latest abyssal air raid is actually one of those home invader punks from a few weeks back who was suing over the would-be victim fighting back? I know I shouldn't be finding it funny, but---wheeze---"
===[===]===
{Look, look, Nee-sama!} Yamashiro shouted excitedly. {It's so ticklish!}
Ayaka and the hedgehog café worker stared in mute horror at the hedgehog Yamashiro held upside down in her hand, seemingly not bothered by the quills. She wanted to be glad that the older shipgirl had developed an enthusiasm for the spiny mammals despite the many months of delay after the visit had been first mooted, but this was doing it wrong!
===[===]===
{Ah, there you are, Naganami-neesama!} Takanami shouted. {Yuubari-san said you've been in here for a while.}
The workshop set aside for Naganami's use was a crowded, messy affair with a lot of apparati and machinery Takanami didn't recognise offhand. The shipgirl in question was fiddling with what looked like a gauntlet, her hair done up in a bun like during kendō and dressed in dull coveralls.
It was a strange sight, as was seeing someone who wasn't Yuubari-san or one of the repair ships working on her own rigging. Then again, supposedly the unorthodoxy of Tanaka-shōshō could have rubbed off on her. Certainly, even taking into account the many fantastic foci shipgirls used, the futuristic fashion that Naganami's power expressed itself in was unusual.
{Oh, what is it? Takanami?} Naganami's voice came out confused as she paused. {Have I really been long?}
{Yes, maybe.}
Naganami frowned as she turned back to look at the gauntlet. {I'll stow this, change up and join you.}
She did.
{What was that you were working on, Naganami-neesama?} Takanami asked once they were on their way out.
{You mean the gauntlet?}
{Yes!} Takanami nodded.
{Oh, that.} Naganami wiggled her fingers, looking thoughtful. {The movements are different with arm-mounted blades than when I hold the shinai in my hands. None of the abyssals fight in melee, but it throws me off. If I can get the Or Energy to form the blades in my hands, I can fight the same way I train.}
{Wow, that's so clever, Naganami-neesama!} Takanami exclaimed excitedly. {There're so many things you could do with more Prime literally in hand!}
{Ugh, I wish it was as easily done as said.} Naganami made a fist in frustration. {I can't seem to recreate the emitters correctly! Never mind the remote deploy---}
Naganami's handphone rang.
It rang some more.
{Naganami-neesama, are you getting that, maybe?} Takanami asked, confused by the delay.
That got Naganami to pull out her handphone, and as she looked upon it, she paused midstep. Her face seemed to shift in a subtly odd way even as it moved between a number of expressions too quickly to individually identify.
Takanami couldn't explain why, but for a moment it seemed that Naganami's hair was short and she was wearing over her blouse a blue vest and pleated miniskirt instead of the maroon pinafore.
No, it went beyond just that. The distorted vision of a person she saw seemed not like Naganami herself, but someone who might be a genetic sister thereof. The pink hairs were missing, there were barrettes in the bangs, and the face and figure were subtly off.
Even without these strange sights, it seemed as if her beloved sister was uncertain about something, so unlike her usual self.
Lost and troubled and so very small.
Then a nearby light got in Takanami's optics, and by the time she shook it off, the moment had passed. {It's nothing really important!} Naganami shouted cheerily, as if nothing had happened. {You needn't worry!}
===[===]===
"Good job, boys! That DUI case your roadblock caught last night was on a wanted list."
===[===]===
{Interesting. Most interesting,} the CO of the RRC said in her native tongue. {Pure Or Energy release, with no harmful radiation emissions, you said?}
{Yes, Ma'am.} The engineer giving the briefing was trying his hardest not to look at the nasty burn scar on her face.
{Relax, Ivan Mikhailovich Belenko. I do not have people's knees shot out for staring. What did you say the project codename was?} Vice Admiral Zeleska asked lightly, sounding most intrigued.
By Belenko's expression, he was not entirely calmed by the reassurances. {Obrimos.}
===[===]===
Kaga sat in seiza, the very picture of stoic serenity, as cherry blossom petals fell slowly around her. {Like dust in the wind, so too the days of our lives,} she said in Japanese. {Our young died deluded into thinking they were fighting the good fight.} Those that knew better could see the self-recrimination bubbling under the skin. {All that did was delay the inevitable for a regime so bent on saving face that, rather than back down on a war it should have known it couldn't have won, it followed through on the work begun by fools. It played so easily on our belief that we were superior and therefore right in whatever we did to those we called inferior. We burned for our arrogance, and justly so.}
Akagi, who had caught some of the petals in a hand, was looking intently at them, the food before her conspicuously untouched.
It had not gone unnoticed by Kaga. {Akagi-san, this is unlike you.}
{I keep feeling as though there is something or someone to do with the sakura that I have forgotten, Kaga-san.}
{You have shown no such reaction in the previous spring, Akagi-san.}
{I know, Kaga-san.} Akagi was obviously troubled as she turned her left hand over, and as her eyes passed over her rings, she found herself inexplicably staring at them longer than necessary. {The reason why I now do feels like it should be right before me, and yet I cannot grasp it. All that these ephemeral blooms make me think of is how some of the other Natural Borns are just so young. I don't know what I would do if one of my own girls was to Reawaken, even though I know that none of us who are unwilling to defend mankind responds to a Summons in the first place.}
{Matters of the heart... I do not know about,} Kaga's brow briefly furrowed, {but if they were kanmusu too, they should have Reawakened from the same incident as you.}
{Were it so easy, Kaga-san. That we still have Natural Borns being discovered even now, more than a year into this war, shows that. Few of us get to respond to the ceremonies we ourselves conduct the way Nakahara-sensei did.} The thought brought a twinkle of amusement to her eyes, but only briefly, and was gone by the time she finished turning to face Kaga. {Do you think Nagumo-sama or Yamamoto-sama ever doubted as I now do?}
The slowness of Kaga's response could only partially be attributed to surprise at the non sequitur. {It was not in my power either then or now to question that. Biographies constructed after the fact are necessarily incomplete. Akagi-san, you know as I do that whether Manifested like myself or Natural Born like you, our internal records are flawed. To look back so far into the past requires a store of Takamagahara's power and grasp of the ars temporis beyond either of us.} Her face and tone, already inexpressive by most metrics on the average day, somehow turned even flatter. {I have accepted an old killer brought back for wetwork like myself will never have a happy ending; this is something only you can come to terms with yourself.}
Akagi pushed at the food in one box. {Would you have preferred a Summoned me, Kaga-san?}
{What an odd question.}
Akagi looked back up and at her with uncharacteristically unwavering intensity.
{I do not know.} The long delay in reply was telling.
{What had you expected, Kaga-san?}
Kaga's reply was atypically hesitant. {An Akagi-san with a boundless appetite, wise yet fun...ny.}
{Sou ka naa.} Akagi didn't really sound convinced as she lifted a can to her mouth and slowly, almost hesitantly drank from it. {I see.}
===[===]===
"Ma'am, you need to calm down and speak slowly and clearly so that I can---"
"There was a ca---ca---carjacker! Put a gun in---in my face and told me to ge---get out, and then BANG! A van or---or something comes outta nowhere, runs him over, and both of them just gone before I---I knew what was going on!"
===[===]===
"You're doing that thing again, Ayachi," Uileag said.
Ayaka's head tilted quizzically. "Eh?"
"You just looked at your menstrual blood all 'hmm, interesting'-like!"
"Now that you mention it, I haven't gotten a single cramp ever since I Reawakened, why?"
===[===]===
"Ning Hai, Ping Hai, you two are not submarines," Kaga said, annoyance starting to suffuse her tone.
The two Chinese cruisers ignored her.
"Augusta-san, tell the brats to stop acting up."
Akagi laughed. {Kaga-san, let the children play. There is little enough happiness to be had in these times.}
{I do not have any authority over them either, Kaga-san,} Augusta said, her Japanese not wavering in the slightest despite her sheepishness. {Neither being a liaison between NAVENSCIWARCOM and the SPNIF nor now holding leadership of Amalgam 165 lets me command them.}
===[===]===
"Hey Matt, that shipgirl that just came in's kinda sus."
Matt looked confusedly at his fellow librarian. "What, the pale white-haired one?"
"Yeah."
"Really now, Rodri~go?" Matt's whispers turned teasing. "Just 'cause she doesn't make you feel like you want her to step on you?"
"Matt!" Rodrigo was starting to redden.
"Ah yes, you'd have successfully become a wizard in another two, three years, and then a shipgirl took pity on you, then gave you her number so she could come back for more. Such wasted potential," Matt said melodramatically.
"Pot, kettle, cabrón," Rodrigo replied harshly.
"You know there're shipgirls with those looks, right? Wash, Shoukek, Mo, Dunkek?"
"I'm telling you, something about her's bothering me, and not in the sense of making me want to kiss her fe---" Rodrigo abruptly realised what he was about to say and hastily zipped his lips.
Matt's grin turned even more sly, though the fact that they were on the clock kept him from laughing loudly and openly. "C'mon, man. An abyssal that doesn't only think about racking up a bodycount? What, are they going to end up in the job market next?"
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Our thanks to FC Error from Sufficient Velocity for continued assistance rendered regarding certain characters' progenitors. Our thanks too to Kyryst also from SV for pointing out areas needing clarification.
We hope you did indeed pay attention. You might be able to figure out what's going on.
If anyone is confused, Kaga is a Sierra Mike. Did we not make that contrast with the NB Akagi (anyone put together the clues and figured out what her deal is yet?) clear enough? It's a Metal Gear reference, but an appropriate one, because this remorse over her (crew's) actions in the past has always been a part of her character. Please go back to her first appearance in Chapter 18 and her comments during the wedding.
Yes, the troubled Akagi who lacks an appetite is a deliberate contrast to canon.
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