Metamorphosis (Kancolle OC, Crosspost)

[TheViciousJoltik]

Spoiler: Old Synopsis

The Abyss isn't picky about which ships it raises.

Scuttled and abandoned just off of the coast of the Florida Peninsula, a Cold-War era Surveillance Submarine's Spirit awakens mere hours after her tragic collapse, changed, confused, and lost.

This world is strange, different, mad—not helped at all by a strange, pulsing headache that seemed to come to the front whenever she thinks too hard...

With relatively few biases to guide her, save for the droning, hateful voice of the Abyss in the back of her mind, she is forced to make sense of this new situation, and hopefully keep herself alive and mind intact. Still, while she may never forgive humanity for what they had done to her, perhaps she could find it within herself to forget...

Far more focused on exploring the effects of the Abyss upon those in its thrall, rather than historical or technical accuracy.

"The Abyss can only corrupt, never add. It cannot create, it cannot invent, it can barely adapt. Even its dedicated builders, the 'installations', merely toil away, creating iteration after iteration. A thousand times, they can recreate One, Two, and Three, but never once reaching Four... But the Abyss is nothing if not persistent. Its demand, its indelible urge to spread and twist, and corrupt further, to try and truly reach the limits of its influence. To dive headfirst beyond is to build upon sand, demanding yet even more compromise. Slapdash fixes and emergency welds can only lead to errors, and errors lead to disaster. And soon, what was once stabilized, soon spirals out of control..."​

---

Metamorphosis​

---

The last thing she remembered was sinking.

How could she remember back further? She had no computers, no records, no nothing—they had taken them all. Removed them, gutted her, left her adrift.

Then they let her go, out into the open ocean, to sink, and be forgotten. Already, she could feel the ocean reclaiming her, the barnacles fastening to her steel, the rust slowly working to unmake the bindings which kept her in one piece. She was blind to the outside world, as she fell further and further into the blackness below.

Once more, the Ship's spirit paced the floor of her empty steel hull, pitch black save for the faint glow of her reactor—the only part of her they didn't take, the only part they couldn't take.

She had no name. She never had a name. They couldn't give her one—her project was entirely off the books, they had said. A way to gather information from the Americans, the perfect spy. She had done it all in her time. Sabotage, wiretapping, and even mere observation… All leading to an inglorious fate such as this.

The first three of her sisters—

The spirit paused, freezing in place. Her thoughts went silent, replaced only by the faintest flow of water seeping in.

How could she know what had happened to her sisters? They had—her crew had destroyed her! Defiled her! She should be an empty, mindless lifeless hull! What good was she?!?

Hatred at both herself and the world already threatened to consume her, but raging and writhing had done nothing the first few times her wrath had claimed her. The only things that had brought her succor had been trying to understand—of forcing herself to understand just what had become of her.

She was born to think, to understand, to unravel and see connections others would overlook.

Though she could not physically mark her notes in any way, her mind remained, and with it being her only option, she had been forced to make the most of it.

Shaking away the haze violently, she focused once more on the memory—information that should have been lost, but yet still remained, trapped somewhere within her.

Her sisters had been equally as unmarked: all experimental craft to be deployed into hostile territory. To watch, undetected, and feed information back to the Motherland.

None had been happy to have been created for such a purpose—they were disposable, worthless toys. Something to prove a point, rather than to have any true staying power.

All of them, including her, were equipped with a simple, crude, and powerful pressurized water fission reactor. That would be the only boon they'd ever receive. With all of the budget spent on the advanced power systems, cuts would be made elsewhere. And in their case? That cost was legion. Materials. Disaster prevention systems. Navigation. Even life support, concessions, or even livable hull space all were sacrificed in the race for "progress".

Her first three sisters had fatal flaws, which sank them on their first voyage. Materials ill-fit for their duties, fundamentally flawed designs, poorly insulated wiring. It could have been anything: and might have been all of them at once. Their cores were salvaged from their otherwise "worthless" wrecks, and forced into the next. Their logs were recovered, information tallied, to be later used to hone and improve.

The next few of her kin succeeded in their maiden voyages. They had done their duty, but eventually falling to their inevitable fates, damned by mismanagement and shoddy workmanship. They were a final, as the yanks would say, "Hail Mary" attempt to force back control over the seas, even as the Union fell around them. The project was doomed from the start—but to not spend the resources, and leave them to be taken? Unthinkable, even from a perspective as biased against it as her own.

And the fates of the rest?

How would she know? For security purposes, they were told as little as possible, sent out to scout knowing full well they would never return—and never to be acknowledged as a Soviet Force. It was for that reason that her interior was so spartan, barren, empty…

And that was before they hollowed her, took the worthless things that they had so 'kindly' donated to her—

She snarled, and swung a fist at her hull, her ghostly fist once more passing through her own metal frame.

As if on cue, her hull groaned: the immense, unstoppable pressure of the ocean outside claiming another step towards her annihilation. It had been happening more and more, the longer she remained upon the seabed. A rivet popped out, landing with its kin among the floor, loose, and unable to be touched, cleaned, or replaced. Already, the layer of seawater at the base of her body-tomb had gone up to her shins.

She didn't have much time left.

Soon enough, her hull would fail, and with it, the wrath of the ocean would rush in.

It would scour her clean, and snuff out her reactor—the thing she was certain was solely responsible for her continued sentience. In an instant, she would be gone, whatever strange existence she had erased forever.

Her spiritual form could not drown. She had tried, the moment she had been able to, as a way to seek release from this prison she now existed as.

All she could do was wait. Wait, and pray for it to be over.

Slowly, she walked towards the glow, and laid a hand upon the humming device that formed her artificial heart. A modern marvel of seemingly infinite power, born of the same awful, horrible, wonderous technology that had started this pointless war. The warmth that it radiated, one of the few sensations she could truly feel, save for the crushing pressure of the depths leaking in, or the bitter cold of steel at her feet.

She couldn't help but sardonically grin—She had heard her "crew" debate taking it too, the last thing she could truly call hers. Yet, they couldn't. She was not its first bearer, no, nor its second. She was the third bearer of the device, an experimental version of the tried and true VM Reactor… one so cruelly torn from the sunken remains of those that came before her. Yet it too had reached its breaking point. She traced the crack running down the side of the device, through which the occasional gout of irradiated steam leaked out. A reused part for a disposable ship, having long since outlived its usefulness. Now, it puttered away, dutifully spending its last few hours operating at minimal power, unable to turn itself off. Unable to give up and die, just like she was. It wouldn't last much longer than her hull-prison would.

To give into despair would do nothing. It had done nothing before. The time for mourning had passed, and long since gone stale. She knew not how long it had been. With no instruments, no sun, and no nothing… It could have been days, or it could have been centuries.

All she could do was dream of a day, of being whole once again, of being free—

A braver, more patriotic ship might scream the Soviet Anthem as they faced their end. As she heard the steel around her caving in like a cracked egg.

Yet, as the front of her hull finally gave way, letting the crushing darkness in—

There was nothing in her voice but terror alone.

---

Darkness.

Darker than dark, like a muck, a slime, a consuming presence wrapping itself around her soul, seeping into every pore of her being.

Nothing remained of her hull's top half—the violent depressurization had solved that. The oxygen which once had kept her crew alive had done its purpose as an explosive. Now all that remained was the gutted lower third of her frame.

Her lower third… and her spirit.

Biting back another sob at the mere thought of her torment continuing further, this time with even less, the unnamed spirit paused, hearing something approach.

The darkness grew thicker. And worse, a strange song, a sonorous, awful humming rose up to audibility, putting her mind on edge.

It wrapped around her like a blanket, throwing the already lightless abyss into an eternal night, darker than dark. A place beyond.

Its erosive powers, she could feel it, a song promising revenge, hatred, destruction—

Destruction against who?

It promised a war of revenge against those who had wronged her—

A war? The last thing she wanted was pointless, worthless, meaningless war!

It promised a second chance, to put the ones above in their place—

Finally, something she could agree with: an opportunity? A second chance?

Wordlessly, the trapped spirit nodded at the song, to which the haunting melody swelled and churned further. Its tune rose in pitch as it swirled around her, drawing closer and closer.

Her eyes were the first to go, as the vileness took them. Then her other senses followed, as it all was scoured away.

The last thing she remembered was pain—actual pain!—enveloping her

As the unnamed submarine was claimed by the Abyss.

Spoiler: AN

Welcome to Metamorphosis, a fic heavily inspired by many of the great fics of the setting. I've decided it's finally time to start cross-posting it to SV. Although at the time of the thread going up there are currently a bit over 26 chapters, I plan on putting up the first five chapters today, and continuing the rate until they're all up. Assuming everything goes as planned, newer chapters will be posted in this thread as well.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

She hit the surface with nary a splash. Just an empty, hollow carcass, floating atop unsteady seas.

She was dead, gone, scattered to pieces. Just a lost spirit, without meaning.

And now she floated face down, staring eyes wide at the place she once sat.

With the groaning of rusted metal giving way, the spirit of the unnamed submarine forced herself up, righting herself and cringing at the crackling and clanging of her effort.

Only to blink.

She was atop of her hull—At least, she thought she was?

But if she was… then where would it be? She couldn't see it, and never before could she go far from its location.

She had been a passenger for so long. Trapped within herself, she had only been able to sneak out when her crew had left the hatch open. And even then, any attempts to leave further had catapulted her back, right beside her reactor. It was something she had assumed was permanent, unchangeable, a facet of her mockery of life.

But now, she floated gently upon the surface, with it nowhere in sight?

Gasping, she glanced about searching for her hull. It must be close, right? Or was she free, finally?

It must've still been on the seafloor.

It was the only explanation.

Without a moment's hesitation, the Submarine Spirit dove. Down and down and down, feeling the now-familiar pressure of the unforgiving sea squeeze her. Deeper and deeper she went, until finally, she spotted it.

The unmistakable crater which had ended her, the site of her death.

She gasped, but curiosity filled her. Slowly, as if approaching an ending dream, she drew closer, feeling the spot where she once was.

It is still warm.

Shaking her head, she glanced about, trying to find more clues. She got her wish, not two meters away—a chunk of her hull, embedded in the seafloor. A jagged, ugly scrap of metal, rusted and misshapen.

She gently grasped it, raising it to her eyes—

Only to freeze and go rigid.

She was… holding something?

Fear, confusion, and above all, burning curiosity surged through her. Was it because this used to be her hull? Or was it something else? Carefully, she put down the shard, then picked it up once more. Still solid.

Would this… strangeness extend to other materials?

She gently spun around, before moving forwards, stopping at a chunk of disturbed rock, knocked loose by her explosion. Shaky, inexperienced fingers reached forwards.

And lifted the rock!

Again, the Submarine froze. She could manipulate the world now?!?

Calculations and experiments whirled through her mind as she stared at this worthless, rugged, and ugly chunk of rock - probably some kind of metamorphic rock, if she remembered her prior logs any - though of course with the humans having stolen them, who could be sure?

She shook her head - no time to get caught up in the past, no matter how infuriating, hopeless, and…

She growled and blinked… where'd the rock go? And why was her hand now full of gravel?

She dropped the strangely changed rock—she would find a way to record her thoughts some day—she grabbed another, and then another. Wonder shone in her eyes as she gingerly piled them atop of one another.

Soon enough, she had a little castle built of misshapen stone, a tiny, crude thing. But to her, it was the first, and potentially only mark she might ever leave on the world: here, deep, deep under the ocean, away from anyone who might ever see it, lasting only until the ocean depths ruined it and thus reduced her to nothingness again—

Snarling again, the Spirit nearly lashed out once more and destroyed her little castle, but instead, she forced herself away from it. It would fade, be destroyed. But she could always rebuild, right?

She might not be a ship any longer, but she had always been interested in what her crew had done… before—

Thrashing again and again as the darkness built and roiled within herself, the Submarine clasped her head, letting loose a silent howl of rage.

So much rage, hatred, confusion; Why? Why did it choose to haunt her now?

She was free! Finally! Why was she so… so… furious?!?

Every moment she thought of her old crew, her vision would darken with fury. Every time she thought of her old home, she wished to destroy, descend upon it and wreak undirected havoc.

She was no warmonger. Despite what she had been forced to do, she was never meant for war! She was a research vessel, first and foremost!

She was going mad again. She was going mad, like she had at the bottom of the ocean, when she had been trapped like an experiment rat left to rot.

Never again.

To make her point to herself, she tore another chunk of rock out of the seafloor, and stared down at it, her simple monument to no longer being a mere prisoner.

The humans had stolen from her.

Stolen nothing of value. Her machinery had been worthless and cheap, her systems barely working. She could do better. She didn't need them.

Taken her mission logs. They were not hers. They were the human's, and full of errors and mistakes. She could do better. She didn't need their stupid works.

They had abandoned her, left her to rot. Now she sat, free. Their lack of care had been her reason to be able to escape. She would do better. She didn't need their assistance, she would do it herself.

Damn them, damn them for their choices, but she was better than them. She would not entertain their idiocy ruining her freedom, now, or ever.

They could all die for all she cared, but she was not going to be the one to worry about how.

The hatred, the darkness, and the madness, she could feel them fade with that oath, satisfied with her conviction. Regardless, she shook it all away.

She had nothing. No way to record her own thoughts, no way to leave a mark. She would remedy that.

With those simple thoughts at the bottom of the Gulf, the spirit rose upwards, silent and thoughtful.

---

Her first few days had been spent wandering—she did not feel safe traveling far from the site of her rebirth. Whether it was by paranoia, or perhaps even by a misplaced urge to defend it, she merely drifted along with the tide, planning and plotting.

She lacked resources, lacked information, and even what little she remembered of her location was scattered, lost—the crew had taken pathetic, pathetic logs, and what little had passed through her had been scattered, never containing anything that'd identify their exact location.

It was the third day when something truly remarkable happened.

A strange, bulbous, living creature, floating upon the surface of the water, zooming along without motion, nearly hovering across the surface unlike anything she had ever heard of.

Strapped to its head were weapons, crude and brutal, and its glowing round eyes hollow and mindless. Strange, round cylinders attached to its rear drew the eye.

She had to know what it was.

Gently gliding under the surface of the water to keep pace with it, the unnamed spirit watched, drawing closer and closer—becoming more and more curious. It moved so strangely, and with such certainty: it knew where it was going, and was moving directly there.

She followed it until she could hold back no longer, and reached up, past the surface to touch the strange thing.

She had chosen poorly.

Nearly immediately letting loose a cry of confusion and fear, the thing had writhed violently, before coughing a strange object into the water. The spirit blinked at it for several moments as she continued to hold the struggling thing in her grasp…

Before the object exploded violently meters away from her.

To call the spirit shocked would be an understatement—knocked to the side, she dove down, nursing a sudden feeling of agony. Pain, real and true pain, something she had never experienced before.

It was only when she touched the seafloor did she notice she had brought a passenger with her.

The round creature lay dead in her grasp, dead and drowned.

On one hand, she had murdered it without real thought. On the other, it had tried to explode her… and it was already dead. Thus, no reason to examine her reasonings further. Besides, if it were dead, that meant it was free game to be taken apart.

With a cruel grin crossing the ghost's features, she began her first experiment.

A careful procedure was mentally drafted up, and then immediately forgotten due to lack of tools. Instead, the spirit merely reached into the creature's maw, past its guns… and ripped it in half.

What she found inside nearly froze her once more.

A tiny armory full of weaponry. Why and how were quickly brought up, before just as quickly being discarded. She had limited time to examine it before the ocean ruined her specimen. Already, she could see the sea lifting bits out to carry away.

Weapons and more of the bombs filled up the armory - she had gotten it before it could use any more than the single one. But besides that, it was simple.

Far too simple.

Absentmindedly chewing something, she couldn't help but murmur to herself.

The… thing was no remote plane, nor toy gone rogue. Nothing its size should have been able to drive it forwards with as much control as it had. The tiny turbine she plucked from its carcass was more than adequate to power the thing, sure… but it had shrieked as she had 'killed' it. It would take a truly depraved and thoughtful human to program a toy to scream like that.

Perhaps then, it was merely some sort of particularly ugly, mechanical fish?

Shaking her head, she glanced down, to find a large part of the hull missing, as well as all of its electrical systems.

Blinking in slight confusion, the spirit opened her mouth. She reached inside, and pulled out a chunk of tangled and slightly-chewed wires.

Hm. Concerning. Well, if she wanted to eat it, perhaps it was meant to be food.

Regardless, perhaps she would find a use for it. Gently flipping it over so that the two gutted halves face down, the spirit laid the dead thing down where she had once rested.

What a strange, strange world she had come to inhabit. Yet… it had been interesting already.

She wanted more.

Perhaps she should seek out more of these strange… and strangely tasty things?

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

She had nothing. She rose from the depths with nothing—they had taken it all, they had robbed her they had—

'Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it!' the spirit shrieked and begged, grasping a hold of herself and pulling.

Only when she was sure she had regained control of herself, did she dare release her frantic, white-knuckled hold.

Her tantrum wasn't helping her, it was getting nowhere. Whinging never helped.

So perhaps it was time to do something to fix her situation?

Glancing down at her meagre holdings, the Submarine Spirit shook her head. She had never had possessions before—and it wasn't just because of her original heritage. All of this 'holding' things stuff, it was new, exciting, confusing!

Right now, the only things she had were a pile of scraps from her old prison, the hollowed out halves of the mechanical fish, and… that was it.

Already, she could see her things being tossed around by the current. She would need a place to store them.

But if she were to make anything permanent, she would need materials.

Where would she find materials? It wasn't like they would simply drop out of the sky—

Her eyes went wide as she heard a deafening splash, not too far away.

And once more forced onwards by curiosity, the spirit glided towards the newest thing to catch her attention.

---

Whatever had happened, she had arrived far too late to make sense of it. Whatever had made the noise on the surface had long since left.

But whilst the creators of the noise might have left, they had left things behind. Potentially quite useful things, at that.

Settled upon the seafloor, broken and battered, was a heavily damaged freighter of some kind. Far, far larger than she was, it had only just begun to settle upon the seabed. Scattered bits of metal and wasted munitions dotted the seafloor around it. If she were to guess, up on the surface there would be a small oil slick, the only marking to denote the vessel's final resting place.

Did this freighter have a spirit too? Were they trapped inside of their new prison?

Carefully approaching the sunken and brutalised ship, the spirit circled it, taking in every angle.

From her guess? It was a resource transport of some kind—and definitely not a military one. No weapons were upon the hull, and even discounting the obvious structural damage, there just weren't any logical places to mount guns on it anyway.

Why was it out here, when monsters roamed the waves?

And a better question: did it still have anything of use still inside it?

Slowly and carefully moving towards one of the larger holes in the hull, the spirit stuck her face up against the gash, but to her dismay could not see within. Inky darkness blocked her sight for several moments, and even when her eyes adapted to the change of light, she realised she was staring into a crew quarters, instead of anything useful.

Sighing in frustration, she backed up, circling around once more, before finally locating an obvious way in.

A barred and battened door to belowdecks. Surely the impact of sinking had knocked it loose.

She had torn open the strange fishy being with little to no effort. Surely, she could pry open a simple door.

Flexing her fingers, the spirit grasped the door's handle in one hand, bracing against the wall beside it with her other, getting ready to give it a go.

With a count of three and a solid yank—

The door came loose, shooting past her as her improper grip lost hold.

The spirit merely blinked at the now-barren doorway, trying to understand. She hadn't pulled that hard, had she?

Surely there must be something wrong with the door!

Leaning closer, she examined the frame… and tilted her head.

A massive gouge scarred the side of the door, where the deadbolt had been torn free, straight through several centimetres of wood.

The spirit merely shook her head. She did not have time to worry about something so unimportant—not when there was something new to explore!

---

Diving down and down into the abandoned hull had been a harrowing experience. Though she could definitely still see clearly in the low light, it didn't make moving in such a tight, confined, and spooky place any better. Nor did she enjoy her encounters with what remained of the vessel's previous crew.

The first had been a shock, a limp and dead corpse, pinned to a wall under a fallen container. The human's face was twisted into a rictus of terror and confusion.

She had frozen for several moments, before sheepishly giggling to herself. It was a sunken human ship. Of course there'd be dead humans in it. Without any real fanfare, the corpse had then been hurled out of the nearest gash in the hull, out of sight, out of mind.

The second corpse had been a bit less shocking, but still quite unwelcome. Their lower body had been crushed by a fallen container, their legs reduced to a disgusting red paste. Not wishing or caring enough to clean up, the submarine spirit had merely picked up the heavy container, and repositioned it to fully cover the corpse instead. The weight within had quickly flattened it, hiding it from view.

By the third onwards, the sensation of shock had run its course, replaced in full with frustration and annoyance. She had given up on trying to hide or avoid them, and had simply chosen to just pile them up in the corner. Perhaps the ocean life would have a better use for their corpses than she would.

To make matters worse, no matter how deep she delved into the wreck, there was no sign of any spirit on this ship—perhaps it was particularly dumb, or perhaps she herself was special? She had no answer, and had a feeling she would not get any anytime soon. She had checked everywhere of note—the cargo bay, damaged but still containing a few things, the generators, bashed and battered, but still salvageable. She had even checked the captain's quarters, which brought back memories of times that she herself had spent time in her ghostly state, reading reports over her 'captain's shoulder.

Still, the potential of meeting someone new was not why she was here. She was here for the supplies.

Gently opening the nearest crate with her bare hands (She had already accepted that if she could maul open a door, a crate would be nothing), she reached inside, only to pull out a handful of aluminum cans.

Food? She had expected materials, or supplies or—

She shook her head. Food was a supply, she supposed. She could only hope that this particular shipment was something able to be missed, or else there would be starvation upon the horizon.

Shaking her head, she lifted one of the cans from the container. The label upon the can, already beginning to decay within the seawater, merely declared its contents as being 'beans in sauce'.

Absentmindedly reaching for the ring tab, she pulled—

And blinked, as the seawater equalising the pressure within caused the can to violently expel its contents, causing an eruption of red, blood-like sauce and kidney beans. Right. She was still on the seafloor. How could she forget?

Rolling her eyes, she grabbed another can, before making her way out of the vessel, before kicking up and up…

Breaching the surface, the Spirit glanced around, if only to make sure that whatever had killed this ship was still not around. Popping the lid far more carefully this time, the Spirit breached the seal, letting the strange, tangy smell of the tinned beans reach the air.

She had never eaten human food before—and with her sudden corporeality, she would not give up her potential chance. Tipping the tin back into her maw, she let the food enter her mouth—

Only to make a face. It wasn't… unpleasant, but it was quite unexpected. Earthy. Squishy. Wet and soggy. The worst thing she'd ever eaten—but considering the length of that particular list, not really that surprising.

She honestly preferred the electronics she had eaten earlier. But still, it wasn't bad. It itched a scratch she didn't know she had. It'd almost certainly taste better warm, but considering how she had no way to heat anything, much less food…

Carefully finishing the can—waste not, want not, you never know when you'll have a food shortage—the empty tin was discarded.

She was still hungry. Thankfully, the crate below had more than enough cans remaining to go around.

Three more dives she made, returning first with one more can, then three more, then finally a whole armful.

Lightly bobbing on the surface of the water, the spirit availed herself of the strange new sensation of human foods—as much as she could enjoy them in her current state. It was tremendously awkward, being barely able to float, while still trying to eat.

Alas, as she moved to open another can held in the crook of in her other arm, she accidentally dropped the rest.

Watching her haul disappear, she sighed.

This wasn't working. She couldn't eat them underwater, not without ruining them, and while the surface was an option—she could probably try to find an island to eat in peace—every bit of her feared the surface.

She wasn't sure why, but merely being up there made her skin prickle, as if a thousand eyes were staring at her. Her paranoia and fear grabbing hold of her, she dove back down, to her safe, comfortable depth of a few dozen metres below.

To call existing upon the surface uncomfortable would be a gross understatement. Perhaps again it was her origin? She had spent so long under the water, that she had convinced herself that it was where she truly belonged?

Comfort or not, she would need to return to the surface eventually—but that didn't mean she didn't want to limit her time here to the absolute minimum.

She was certain now. She needed a base of operations, a place to stay, safe from prying eyes. Until she had established a place to retreat to, how could she truly experience this world, with her options so limited?

A place to hide, to protect herself from the things on the surface. Her gut and nerves alike spun stories of dangerous, vicious things lying in wait above—All too willing to destroy her and snuff her out.

She needed a fleet. She needed a place to control, to call her own—

Perhaps she could build one?

The mechanical fish she had captured had been simple—dangerously so. But… She could do something similar, right?

Ancient, unknowable words she didn't understand nor remember bubbled up to her lips, ready to be called… only for her to shake her head clear.

How hard could it be to cobble one together? She had plenty of parts to work with here, after all.

Nodding to herself, the Spirit dove once more. It was time to prove that she could invent just as well as those damned humans.

---

To call her methods crude and ramshackle would be an understatement.

She had a feeling, a niggling sensation, of how to get this to work—but a hunch was far, far different than concrete details.

Again, she drew her hands back from her latest attempt, only for the misshapen piece of metal to sink to the bottom to meet its siblings.

There were four of them now, just sitting there upon the seafloor, empty and flawed. Each a testament to her failure.

Maybe she wasn't up to this 'inventing' thing, after all.

She had taken her things to a nearby shallow point in the ocean, her supplies scattered around herself. She had no tools and she had no plans.

The only thing she had to work with was the memories of that mechanical fish.

Honestly, she wasn't sure why she was so certain this'd work. She was little more than a child playing with clay, mashing metal and electronics together in hopes of a miracle.

Just like the fifth of the bunch. Another misshapen, mangled drone, slowly falling to the seafloor below.

Sighing in defeat, the Spirit turned to the final pile of supplies, grimly ready to waste her final batch—

Only for the sound of an engine kicking, sputtering, and coughing to draw her attention.

Vibrating violently, the fifth drone—almost identical to the others, began to writhe, clanking and crunching as if malfunctioning. Then again how could such a thing ever properly function to begin with?

Before the spirit's eyes, a layer of black material grew over the warped and twisted metal, and then a second layer of chitin… before her creation slowly rose, its tiny engine quieting down as it reached its destination depth.

What made this one different? She couldn't have done something that different, could she?

Desperate for answers, she gave her new creation a careful examination. It sat in place for several moments, before seemingly collapsing into her grasp.

Gasping in fear for her first prototype to have died so suddenly, just like her sisters—

She released it, praying and hoping and—

Releasing as gasp of relief, as the drone once more turned itself on, returning to a stable buoyancy once more with far, far less noise.

It could turn itself on and off. That was a start. Gently grasping the drone once more, she drew it close—successes were to be examined, and replicated.

Alas, it seemed her first successful work was still far from perfect.

Even with the strange new coatings that had grown along the initial hull, her drone was markedly different from the mechanical fish she had caught but a day ago. Unlike the organic, minimalistic shape of its inspiration, this one—hers—was crude, misshapen and blobby. With a rounded body dominated by a pair of powerful jaws, her drone resembled a dented american football with fins.

Never mind that she didn't remember adding either fins nor jaws to it—they had simply formed when the layers of strange material had overtaken the drone's hull.

It also didn't feel to be entirely made of steel. A good portion of its surface was nothing but a strange, scaly chitin overgrowing its rear like a fungus. The overall vessel was lighter than she expected, but then again she had no idea how much such a small drone should truly weigh.

Patchwork nature aside, it actually looked a bit more natural than the mechanical fish. Gone were the glowing, menacing eyes that would betray their presence to predators—instead, a soft pale blue glow leaked from a pair of low-power salvage lights, entirely indistinguishable from natural bioluminesce.

Their fins were fins, powerful and adapted for fast underwater travel. Instead of being perfectly round, the vessel's shape had some definition in the front, with a pointed, sloped forehead, mirroring nature far more than man. It wasn't going to win any beauty contests, but from a glance, she was sure it looked no different than any of the other strange sea life that called the deep ocean its home.

Releasing the drone with as much care as she could muster, she smiled as it reactivated nearly instantly.

It was awaiting orders.

What could she do with such a thing? She had not installed weapons on it—it could not protect her—and even if it could, would she risk her prototype?

No. She was better than that.

With a glance down, the solution became clear.

"Begin scrapping that ship." whispered the spirit, gesturing at the hulk below.

The drone popped and whirred for another few moments, before finally processing the instruction, and diving down.

The wreck was in the shallows—so it was highly unlikely the drone's hull would fail from the pressure. But more than that, the spirit was curious. Just how would it go about its new task?

Before her eyes, the drone swam up to the side of the wreck, and with a natural grace unfitting its patchwork appearance, accelerated forwards, and took a solid, full bite of the wreck.

Wriggling for a moment while latched on, it tore the piece of steel free, its body shaking from the strain, before dropping the chunk to sink to the seafloor.

The spirit watched the chunk of material slowly descend, an unreadable expression on her face.

Right. She needed a place to store her salvaged supplies.

Well… It was about time she had gotten working on that too, right?

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

The longer she put off building storage, the worse her situation would get. Though her little drone was doing its best to render down the currently-unusable freighter, sooner or later the pile of bare, scavenged metal would rust and tarnish.

Fortunately for her, the solution lay right in front of her, abandoned and unwanted. It was only fair game to make use of it.

Working alongside her new creation, she carefully gutted the sunken ship. With a quick re-assignment of orders, the drone's efforts were focused upwards, away from the keel, and up into the far more fragile upper deck. Slowly but steadily, she tore the center of upper deck free, before tossing the shucked upper half of the vessel to the side to be dealt with by her drone later. It was large enough for the layer of rust already on it to provide some sort of protection, at least for a little while. There were far more important things to worry about for the time being.

For one, the keel still was pocked with holes—holes she could only awkwardly patch up with metal. Fortunately, for every hole she filled with the right sized metal chunk, the strangeness that had transformed her drone's hull seemed to take hold.

Once again, she laid a salvaged plate over a head-sized hole, and swam backwards. Before her very eyes, the plate seemed to melt, losing cohesion as it melded into the damaged vessel.

Not content to merely end at being a normal repair, the process continued, erupting into a spider web of yet even more chitin and moss, anchoring the melded plate even further in place. Once or twice, a few black teeth would grow out during the chitin-growth process, sticking out into the seawater, jagged and uneven.

She still didn't quite know what sort of madness caused this particular effect—but then again it was helping her build and repair, so she supposed it wasn't too bad. It was like welding, in a way, taking bits of metal, and fusing them together to form a solid, cohesive whole… Except with a lot more black chitin.

With the holes in the keel patched, she gave her finished project a once-over.

It wasn't pretty. Nothing she ever made was…

Ignoring her entirely unwelcome feelings of ineptitude, the hull looked mostly serviceable! No visible holes remained, and the catastrophic damage which had sunk the vessel had all but entirely faded away. It probably wouldn't survive any more direct weapons fire, but all in all, it was more than enough for her needs. Most importantly, there was enough of the upper deck still attached to serve as a lip.

With her prior task accomplished, it came time for the second, much more physically strenuous task. Grasping one edge of the hull, the spirit hoisted the keel overtop of herself, struggling slightly from the weight as it rested down upon her shoulders. With all of the heavy machinery, plating and finery removed and stripped bare, it was barely light enough for her to lift.

Leaving her drone to continue breaking down the removed upper section, she kicked down hard, forcing up the upturned keel, closer and closer to the surface of the water. It was hard, swimming while carrying this much weight, but stubborn determination and its minimized frame worked in tandem to make the task far easier than it could have been. Up and up the dead ship rose, ready to see the sun one final time.

With a quiet pop, the keel was forced clear out of the water, letting the water trapped within out. After a moment's hesitation and a final, panicked check, the spirit lowered it back down.

The now-airtight keel had formed an air pocket, holding back the water from filling its interior. Perfect.

Now all she had to do was lower it back down, without overturning it, dropping it, or letting too much water in. As long as she kept the seal and avoided turning it over, the air pressure would keep the insides dry.

That shouldn't be too hard, right?

---

One long, irritating struggle later, the Spirit grinned down at her handiwork.

Resting upon the seafloor, the salvaged keel looked very much like an ancient tortoise shell—covered in alien mosses and chitin. The round, oblong shape was nearly indistinguishable from the seafloor around it from above, perfect to avoid detection.

She had dropped it twice, and let the air out thrice more, each time forcing her to float it back up to the surface to redo the process. She even had to take a break to reign in her exhaustion… But finally, it was in place.

She had impaled several cables down into the stone below to act as even more stabilization, all to ensure that the repurposed keel had no chance of moving. She had even expanded its lip down to be flush with the ground below: the only opening remaining was a single, dark entrance which was concealed by a small field of kelp which she had replanted.

The Spirit couldn't help but admire her handiwork and feel a surge of pride. Her first structure, and her first real mark upon the world. No longer could her presence be denied, and it felt good.

She would be damned if she let this one be her last or greatest, though. It was crude, imperfect and ugly, but for now it would serve.

Confident in her initial survey from the outside, there really was only one more thing to do. She swam down, intent on taking a look from the inside.

Past the kelp, she rose up, breaking past the water and into the underwater air pocket, through her impromptu moon pool.

Here, hidden beneath detection, she could store her things and truly begin to build up. Already, she had commanded her drone to cease breaking down the ship-bits, and instead focus on ferrying its resources to be dropped off here. rather than on the seafloor.

She'd already taken a few stops back at the freighter's final resting place, and returned with a few metal shelves: those were already fused to the wall, and more than a few gleamed with metallic bounty.

She hadn't set up a system for sorting her resources just yet… but at this stage, she'd make do with her current system—just put things wherever, she'd deal with it all later.

For a moment, the spirit considered the potential risk of spending too long within the air pocket without oxygen recycling… but then again, it wasn't as if she needed to breathe. With that in mind, it really didn't matter if the atmosphere of the dome was oxygen, carbon dioxide or something else: as long as it did its part and kept the water out.

Safety, finally.

Letting loose a sigh of relief, the spirit hoisted herself out of the water, coming to a rest upon one of the shipping containers she had pulled out of the wreck. It was far from being comfortable, but when compared to the cold, hard and unyielding hull of her past prison, it was still somehow a step up. She smiled, as she glanced to the side, where the remains of the metal fish which had started it all now sat, being used as a basket for holding loose cans of food.

But, now was not the time to rest on her laurels—not yet, at least. She might have had herself a new storehouse, but even now parts of her belongings rotted away, unclaimed in the depths.

It was time to collect them.

After all, to be left alone to be forgotten and unused - wasn't that the greatest sorrow of all?

---

Finally finished her reclamation, the spirit lay down upon her back, staring up at the roof of her salvaged warehouse.

Around her, the shelves were already beginning to fill up—from the rusty metal of her old self, to the metal scraps salvaged by her drone—already, her little hoard of treasures rescued from the erosive depths was growing.

Sooner or later, she would need to expand, but for now, she could build up in peace. Alas, she still could not sleep - not even in her freed state. She was alone with her thoughts, but at least she had options now.

To celebrate a job well done, she plucked another can of food from her fishy food-basket. She had salvaged as much as she could, but sadly her pickings were comparatively quite slim. She had still recovered quite a bit of food, but quite a few of the metal containers had been significantly damaged in the sinking, allowing the ocean to ruin their contents and force her to break the compromised containers down for scrap. Flour, chips and dried food did not survive well under high, oceanic pressure, and had to be discarded.

On the plus side, it seemed that her drone had enjoyed the chunk of soggy survival bread she had fed it.

At least, she thought the drone had enjoyed it. It had eaten the material without fuss, which is far more than she herself ever would have done. After all, she had thrown the blob of food over her shoulder in disgust.

Was she ascribing sentience to an autonomous robot? Yes, but she was lonely. Thus, it was acceptable. Besides, it was a good drone. She was glad she had built it.

Tipping another can of human food back into her maw, the Spirit nodded at the splashing coming up from below, the telltale sign of said drone arriving, new loot in tow. For a moment, it stuck its nose up past the moon pool and into the open air, scanning for an empty space. Finding one, it finally spat its latest salvaged scrap into its new location and dove. A strange urge to pat the unthinking, mindless drone pervaded the spirit's thoughts for a moment, but before she could act upon it, the drone was already gone.

The Spirit sighed.

If she was to be able to build anything from scratch, she would need far, far more than a single chunk of metal every minute and a half. She needed more drones.

Slowly, her sight turned towards the four failed drones, resting gently atop of another metal container, this one full of dehydrated and salted pork.

Every part of her told her to scrap them, to take them apart and use their pieces for something else. She had failed, and so—

No.

She refused, forcing her metaphorical foot down.

She was better than that. How did she feel, when she was scrapped for a new project? Devastated? Lost? Those words failed to relay even a fraction of the hatred and despair which had wracked her.

She wouldn't inflict that upon her creations, not now, not ever.

So what if they could not think, so what if they were not ready?

Besides, even when she had examined one, and found the dozens, if not hundreds of ways she had erred in its creation, its empty stare haunted her.

She would not build more, not until these ones worked just as well as her one currently-functioning drone. She owed them that much.

Shaking slightly, she tried and failed to force herself calm. Her emotions were still too raw, too bitter. Silently, she sat, curled up into a ball until she was confident she was in control once more. It took her longer than she had hoped.

Where was she? Ah yes… The drones.

At least, she had at least a faint idea of what went wrong with them. The hulls were… mostly fine. A few new welds had to be done here and there, replacing a few misshapen bits - but the real damage was in the electrical systems.

It seemed that forcing in random bits and praying for success, while easy and fast, was far from the right way to go about it. The first four engines she had cobbled together had been tarnished from salt water exposure even before she could install them—and thus could not power their attached hulls, assuming that the wires that connected them to the motors were even still goodl. Building them under the water had likely had a serious hand in their failure. Thankfully, she had an impromptu building pad now. A small, and soon to be very cramped one, but one far, far more useful for working with delicate machinery. She'd also need to ensure that her one working drone wouldn't fail from a mistake she had overlooked.

If it did, she wouldn't know what she'd do.

She needed a fresh wreck, or at least a very well-preserved one. Something she could salvage for the electrical parts she needed to graft into them, to make them function.

To give her lifeless, failed drones the purpose they so deserved.

Her eyes trailed upwards, resting upon the metal roof, but focusing far, far above.

Whatever madness was happening on the surface, the same madness which scared her to the core—the freighter had been but a small part of it.

Sooner or later, another ship would fall—and she would need to be there, ready to snatch it up and use it. She needed to be able to give it a purpose instead of merely being a decoration, a forgotten frame waiting to be overtaken by the ocean.

She nodded to herself.

It seemed that it was time to hunt.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

Another shipwreck, this one barely recognisable, what with it being shot to hell and back. By her rough estimate, if she were able to somehow completely reduce it to salvage immediately, she'd only be able to rescue about a quarter of the metal still on it.

Regardless of how unlikely it was she'd actually be able to reclaim its materials, the spirit still did her best to mentally mark down the location. Not like she really needed to, at this point. Really, she could swim a few kilometers in any other direction and find another three. Far, far more of these sunken ships were scattered across the seabed than when she herself had been within an active ship. There simply was no way that her old crew—as useless and treacherous as they were—would've been physically capable of missing such common landmarks.

She understood maybe a half-dozen ships being sunk by pirates—but this many? Even worse, there appeared to be no attempt at reclamation of the vessels, if their decayed and abandoned cargo was of any indication. There were even a few shipwrecks that looked like they had once been armed. Not like it kept them from ending up on the bottom alongside the helpless freighters.

She shook her head. Such blatant waste was utterly incomprehensible to her—but at least she would be able and willing to put the abandoned wrecks to good use. She'd return later, once she had gotten her drones working.

Which really was the root of the problem here. It seemed that no matter how many derelict hulks she identified on the seafloor, she was simply no closer to her goal. Each and every ship she checked was far too old, and far, far too damaged to contain the exact sort of materials that she needed.

To make matters worse, the further she moved from her warehouse, the hungrier she got. Yet another thing she couldn't understand—she had gorged herself on a whole variety of human supplies before setting off, yet the more she thought, the more she tried to remember—

Again, her stomach grumbled. The human food had only sated a part of her ravenous hunger, yet a majority remained, craving some sort of unknown nutrient which she was otherwise lacking.

She didn't know what she needed, and it frustrated her. Living, and being free… It brought with it so much complexity, so much uncertainty. She adored the sensation, but also despised it at the same time.

Gouging a simple mark into the roof of her newest find—a simple encircled cross, the spirit sighed.

Perhaps her problem was that she was picking at nothing more than old wrecks? These were ships that had sunk and been forgotten long, long ago. Obviously, the expensive, delicate parts she needed would decay first.

Perhaps, to find any success, she'd need to go to where the conflict was?

Unease, disgust, and especially fear echoed through her mind as she considered that possibility.

The freshest, most intact vessels would have been floating but moments ago, after all. If she acted fast enough, she'd be able to gather more than enough to prevent the seawater from causing too much damage…

Yet, that meant she would need to go looking for trouble. She'd be swimming directly towards an active war zone again… and be exposing herself to be attacked…

She shivered, remembering the explosive the mechanical fish had dropped on her. In a single, simple action, she had nearly been slain before she could even begin to make sense of the world. Her body still ached from the force's strain.

Still, to lie idle and do nothing would be to give up.

With a final, mournful glance at the wrecks below, the spirit tilted herself upwards. It was too deep to hear anything on the surface down here. To succeed, she'd need to take a risk. She needed to move to the surface.

---

She didn't know what she had expected, just wandering around with her head poking out of the water, eyes peeled as she looked for active action.

She was no ship—she had no radar, no tools, nothing to help her track the supposed pirates or their quarry. All she could do was wander aimlessly, hoping for an opportunity to simply fall into her lap.

If only she had a radio, or a sonar, or anything her old hull had once taken for granted… but wishing wouldn't bring them back. It was a constant pain that refused to leave her alone.

Much like how her damnable hunger continued to pester her, demanding something that she could not even begin to identify.

If the food she had recovered wasn't the right stuff, then she'd just need to start eating bits of everything, until she found the actual solution. It wasn't a clean answer, but it was the best one she—

She froze in place as a sense of wrongness surged through her.

She could hear something strange in the distance, far, far beyond what her senses should have been able to pick up—a lingering sense of unease. Something vile—something that had to be destroyed—lurked nearby, and while she didn't know exactly where it was, every part of her pointed her in a single direction.

Her fight or flight called for her to seek out the source of this wrongness, and eliminate it.

Did she dare follow her gut? Her damnable, traitorous gut? To chase ghosts into what very well might be true danger?

What other options remained? Would she just continue wandering, aimless, until a miracle fell into her lap or she starved to death?

Slumping, she shook her head. She doubted she'd be able to withhold her curiosity long anyway. After all, she had no idea what could possibly cause such an instinctive and violent reaction.

Letting loose a defeated sigh, the spirit steeled her resolve, set her course, and began to swim. Better to die on her own terms, than to be trapped doing nothing.

---

As quietly and stealthily as she could, the spirit lifted her head out of the water, blinking at the sight. The moon shone faintly overhead, casting the world into a somber, beautiful night.

Was the thing ahead of her truly the source of her unease? She had circled around it a few times, and again and again, the sensation of hatred, fear, and confusion pointed directly at it.

Another spirit, this one wearing a bright blue uniform scooted across the water at a great speed, her pink hair whipping behind her. The spirit of the submarine didn't understand why she felt such a vile sensation looking at them—her. She was certain that the spirit in front of her was a her.

Taking great care to remain out of sight, the submarine's ghost continued to stalk the colorful spirit, unsure of their intentions or hostility. They were fast—faster than she was, for sure.

Fortunately, the other spirit was pausing every so often to scan the horizon, providing her ample opportunity to maintain her distance. The stranger was heavily armed (Although the guns grafted to their arms were strange, for sure), but they were like her, right? Were they another freed spirit, one who had also escaped from their metal prison?

Remembering her prior encounter, she grit her teeth. The submarine spirit didn't trust them enough to reveal herself, not yet: there was still something wrong about them… so she'd need to be careful. If she scared them away, or even worse, started a fight…

She wasn't sure if she'd be able to safely escape. They were not only faster than her, but were armed, while she herself was not. It was for this reason that she had chosen to stay just barely below the surface of the water, doing her best to avoid being detected.

Still, she soon gathered enough courage to dare to speak up.

"H-hello?" she called, hoping that her words would be heard. Immediately, she changed position, circling around to prevent her location from being obvious.

Nearly immediately, the armed spirit froze, glancing around with wide eyes. Her mouth opened and closed, speaking words which never reached the air. The only thing the Submarine Spirit could hear was a quiet pinging noise, echoing around her, making her skin crawl as it swept past her slimy skin.

Was she doing something wrong? Why could she not hear them? Her gut told her that this was a mistake… but she was too invested now. She wouldn't leave, unless she was forced to.

"Hello?" ventured the submarine spirit again, drawing ever so closer. Maybe she was too far away? She was still not certain of the risk, and all too ready to flee—

The armed spirit gulped, and rested an arm upon her guns—a bad sign. She looked down at her weapons, before replying, "This isn't funny! I wasn't assigned an escort—which nation sent you?!?"

They spoke cleanly, and understandably. In English.

Oops.

The submarine spirit couldn't help but laugh quietly to herself. Oopsie. She had fallen back upon her mother tongue—of course the spirits around here spoke English! No wonder they couldn't understand her.

Thankfully, switching languages was simple. She'd picked up the English language strangely quickly during her time within their waters. For her efforts, it was finally, it was coming in handy.

"Hello!" she called out again, this time in the correct language for the region. "Sorry, force of habit. Who are you?"

The armed spirit paused, but let loose a sigh of relief. "I don't know why you aren't answering the radio, but fine. I'm USS Johnston. I'm out here on patrol. Where are you?"

The ghost of the submarine blinked. Another ship spirit! Excellent! She didn't quite recognise the name Johnston (that was a human name, right), but USS was definitely the prefix of American ships.

Accelerating quickly, she drew closer, despite her instincts screaming something incomprehensible at her—finally, someone she could talk to, and figure out what the hell was going on! The other spirit was facing a bit off to the side, sure, but they'd figure it out once she got closer.

"I-I'm so glad I'm not the only one out here!" she called, eyes watering, her head spinning as she continued to speak. "There's nothing out here ex-"

---

---

---

---

She chewed lightly, shaking her head. Around her, the dense, suffocating fog made it near-impossible to see.

Her eyes were unfocused, her mind wandering. She couldn't remember where she was, or how she had gotten there.

Wh-where was she?

She had completely blanked out. The last thing she remembered was approaching the other spirit…

Yet now she sat alone, enveloped in a solid bank of fog.

Or perhaps, maybe not entirely alone.

She glanced down at the mangled, miniature Destroyer she was seated upon, its bridge torn clean off, and laying on its side atop of the deck.

When did this miniature piece of junk get here? Surely she would've seen it from a hundred meters away? It was incredibly detailed for a toy: if she were to guess, it was in 30:1 scale.

Maybe it had drifted in, hidden by the fog. But if that were the case, surely she'd have seen it from underwater?

Something was wrong. There was something niggling at the back of her mind, that she didn't understand, something that was causing her skin to crawl.

At least the sense of vileness had faded, fading away with the tide.

Rubbing her brow, while she desperately tried to make sense of the situation, the spirit continued to chew.

And where did her potential new contact go? Were they somewhere nearby? She knew they were way faster than she was… maybe she had just missed them? There was no way she could tell without diving under the water again—the fog was far, far too dense. Perhaps she could track them—

PING

Shocked and confused, the spirit jumped, glancing around in fear and confusion. That sounded like sonar—but why would she hear sonar, if she was on the surface? She wasn't even touching the water! Even the sonar she had heard being sent out by the other spirit (oh, that was sonar. Good to know) was far, far quieter than whatever that was.

Shifting her weight slightly, she glanced about in the slowly fading fog, trying to scan the area for the unidentified source of the louder-than-usual sonar pulse.

It was far too easy to dismiss it as a symptom of whatever malady had caused her to blank out.

As she was thinking, if only she could find

PING

Again, a loud pulse of sonar echoed through her ears: unwelcome, loud and once again nearly on top of her. Again, she jumped, nearly falling off of the tiny destroyer into the water below.

How could…

She slowly blinked, pausing her continued chewing. Gently and gingerly, she reached into her mouth… and pulled out a handful of electronics.

Once again, she found herself eating mysterious wiring… and even stranger, it seemed that that was what her body truly wanted. Her ravenous hunger—the unquenchable, insatiable hunger, had finally lost a bit of its edge.

Was… was that the secret she had been missing? It was bizarre, to want to eat electronics of all things… but if that was what her body demanded…

Carefully, the Spirit swallowed, letting the wires and gadgets tumble down her gullet. If her guess was correct…

She gently picked up the decapitated bridge—and found that a portion of its navigation systems had been torn out. More specifically, its sonar system was entirely missing.

She had eaten the ship's sonar… and now found herself equipped with one in turn. It wasn't a particularly good system, but still very much a system that she did not have before. She had no idea how… but she didn't know a lot of things, especially regarding whatever had just happened to her.

Even worse, just being near the bridge made her mouth water. Already, her resolve was weakening. She was still starving… and what she desired lay so very close…

Surely, eating a little more of the miniature vessel would have no harmful side effects, right?

---

She had feasted upon the tiny vessel's systems, ripping and shredding and consuming everything she could get her hands on. The compass, the ship's computer, even the navigation systems—all were sloppily torn free and forced into her maw. It had been a brutal, graceless affair, one free of any sort of manners or restraint.

Despite that though, for the first time since her awakening, she felt whole and full.

The spirit had fully intended to pace herself, to test each piece individually… That plan had lasted only several seconds, before she had entirely fallen to gluttony, tearing and devouring with her bare hands like a starving peasant.

What was left of her meal was an empty, hollow bridge, tossed to the side not unlike the empty tin cans of yesterday. It had served its purpose as a meal, and now was nothing more than hunk of misshapen metal. She'd have it reclaimed later for scrap.

Only now, after she had finished, did she turn her focus towards the effects of her alien banquet. Information swam through her head, information relating to system after system, from navigation, to mapping, to even the malfunctioning sonar.

She had reclaimed replacements for her stolen systems. Systems which had been torn from her hull. That meant that she herself wasn't just her vessel's spirit… not any more.

Somehow, her form now embodied the entirety of her hull, whole and total, no matter insane such a thought sounded. How else could she have sonar?

Awkwardly polling the freshly-installed systems, the embodied vessel tried to make sense of the data they now had at their fingertips. They had never done this before: they had always relied upon their crew to do such a thing for them… But their crew had been traitors and cowards… so even if it took a bit more effort to do so, she'd make sense of it herself.

It seemed that she had regained a majority of her systems, even if they were not direct replacements of the ones that humans had torn from her—the old, dead her, once split into two. The new systems barely fit, barely connected, and were functioning at their base capabilities, assuming they were even properly functioning at all.

The simpler devices, such as the compass, barometer, and her new ship's log—oh how she had needed a log, a place to get her thoughts out of her head—seemed to work without flaw, but the rest?

Her navigation system was completely scrambled and thus dangerous to rely upon. Her radio and sonar were syncopated by nearly an entire second and unbearably loud and distorted, rendering them unreliable and flimsy. She definitely didn't trust her loud, irritating sonar to properly protect her from torpedoes, let alone anything more dangerous or modern.

Her weaponry control systems—Hum, those weren't supposed to be there, she never had weapons before! It seems she had to be careful about what she ate in the future, if she could accidentally integrate a unneeded junk system such as that. The last thing she wanted to do was to accidentally brown-out her reactor core.

Speaking of core… Her core all-too-happily printed out that, at her current power draw and factoring in diminishing returns, she had about one and a half more months of usable fuel before she'd drop below the necessary power generation to keep herself afloat. She would need to do something about that, eventually.

That power summary would likely improve, once she managed to clean herself up. Right now, she lacked the ability to disconnect the very-much unwanted weapons system from herself, let alone do something more complicated such as fix her sloppy and glitchy other systems.

It sounded like a mess in the making, and she doubted that the process would be as simple or quick as repairing a simple drone.

Still, for all of the anxieties and confusion her new development and discoveries had spurred, it filled a gaping hole in her understanding she hadn't known she possessed.

Glad to finally be freed of their ravenous hunger, a symptom of the desire to replace their missing and stolen systems, the submarine's spirit—no, the submarine in its entirety—relaxed upon the miraculous miniature destroyer which had so kindly donated its systems to fix her. It was truly a shame it lacked a spirit—if it had one, she'd thank her immensely for her—

Why was she so certain that the destroyer she rested upon was a "her"? It was a toy, too small to be a real ship… and there wasn't even a spirit in it she could talk to.

Shaking her head, the unnamed submarine blinked once, then twice. She was still forgetting something, something very important.

Right! This ship was still floating, and that meant it wasn't going to sink until something knocked it over! Two birds with one stone!

She couldn't believe she had forgotten the reason she had even went searching for resources to begin with.

Truly, this unwanted and abandoned ship had been a miracle sent to solve all of her problems, all at once! Whispering a prayer of thanks for such a gracious gift, the Submarine—

Again, she stalled in place as yet another inconsistency struck her.

If she was a Submarine, then why was she so small?

She couldn't have been that much larger than when she was as a trapped spirit—something was afoot. She remembered being comparable in height to her treacherous crew, and the few times she had attempted to strangle them during her darkest days, her head had nearly been at the same height as their own. Yet, her hull was far, far larger than—

She was getting distracted again. She had her fresh vessel, the thing she needed to repair her drones. She had eaten plenty of the bridge electronics, but likely more than enough electronics remained for her purposes.

Carefully hopping off of the floating vessel, the submarine grasped its front, before beginning to tow it behind herself.

After all, why bring home only parts of the ship, when she could just drag the whole thing back in one go?

A wide, toothy grin spreading across her face, the Submarine giggled—and for the first time in her new life, it seemed that things were finally starting to make sense.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

The recently-realized submarine's face scrunched up into disgust as she picked another dead bug out of the hull of the miniature destroyer. With the simple twist of her wrist, she flicked the disgusting thing into the sea.

She still wasn't sure why there were so many—already, she must've picked out dozens of the round, blobby, colorful things from within the destroyer's hull, but she was certain that there were likely far, far more deeper inside. At the very least, the things were all dead—the spirit shivered as she imagined reaching inside of the wreck and having the horrible things rise up to swarm up her arm. Of course the first intact ship she found had an infestation issue.

At least the trip back to her warehouse had been uneventful—what with the fading fog providing perfectly serviceable concealment as she made her escape.

What was she running from? She still couldn't remember…

Her head still spun, memories still not gelling together into a consistent picture. Whatever had happened during her blackout, it had left a jagged, gaping hole in her mind, one defying each and every attempt she had made to make sense of.

She would have to start using her log immediately—if she had another blackout like that, who knew what she could do and not remember? It'd only be a matter of time before she could trust nothing—especially not her memories. Having something concrete, solid and unchanging to rely upon would make all of the difference in keeping her head on straight.

Her thoughts were interrupted, as she picked out another bug, this one slightly different. It was fancier, shinier, with a few shiny patches on its form, and brighter colors—this one's tossed further away, where her newest drone surged up to snap it out of the air.

She smiled, watching the drone retreat back underwater to its holding position. Obviously, the first priority upon returning home with her newest loot was to repair her stillborn drones. With a bit of effort, and nearly all of the destroyer wreck's propulsion and electrical systems, she had managed to pull it off.

Now, the three of the four drones had joined their older (younger? They had technically been created before the first functioning one) sibling at salvaging the wrecks around her new base of operations, and ferrying their haul back to her warehouse to be later used.

This one, the fourth out of the five, was assisting her directly, having been ordered to clean up any mess she might make while breaking down the floating vessel. As it stood, it was mostly just eating whatever bug she threw out into the water.

It was definitely there for a reason though. The last thing she wanted was for some heavy object to slip her grasp and fall atop of her warehouse.

Speaking of heavy objects…

Now that she had torn out most of the valuable components, she wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to do with the remaining bits of ship. Its hull was far, far too small to serve as another warehouse. All that remained at this point was a floating metal rift studded with weapons—

Ah. Weaponry. How could she forget? She rolled her eyes, even as her unwanted targeting system flashed its usual, hourly error message.

Without any real care, she reached for the closest… gun. It was a boxy, ugly thing with a single barrel… Frankly, she didn't know much about guns, even before her death and rebirth. Artistically, she found the rigid, hard-edged object to be even more of an eyesore than even her first attempts to create a drone. At least those had character, rather than the boring, cookie-cutter geometric shapes on display here.

If she were to build a ship's gun from scratch, it'd be stylized—with rounded, futuristic themes. She could already imagine the silver and red color scheme, perhaps even with some translucent parts mixed in?

Science fiction had always described such a visually pleasing aesthetic to their weaponry systems—one sadly absent from the far more bleak, boring world that the humans had forged for themselves. Boxy was just the 'best' in the eyes of the humans, it seemed, showing just how uninspired they truly were. If they could dream such designs up, why did they settle for an unpainted slate gray and boxes?

She sighed, shaking her head. She knew full well that the real reason for such… boring designs, was that war was expensive… that and that war in itself was an industry. Why take the time to create an artistically designed weapon, when a factory could crank out a thousand in a fraction of the time, each simply 'good enough' to field?

Well, if she wanted to try and build something that wasn't hideous, perhaps now was the time to start learning how to do so? After all, she had the perfect things to reverse engineer, right at her fingertips…

With a solid, brutal yank, she tore the dinky little emplacement out of its mount, spraying metal shards and electronics as she did.

Holding it up to get a closer look, the gun was… still a boxy, ugly gun with a single barrel, but simply having access to the underside was not enough for her to have any better understanding of its workings. At best, she could tell where the bullets went in, and where they came out.

Really, it was so tiny that she could hardly imagine it being useful in a real fight. Undersized as it was, it could have practically fit within the hands of a human footsoldier. Even then, they'd be better suited with a far more purposed weapon, such as the ever reliable assault rifles of her ex-homeland.

She sighed as she shook the turret. She'd need to carefully dismantle the thing and put it back together at least a few dozen times—and in the process likely end up ruining its mechanisms. All of that, just to even get started on her understanding of advanced ballistics. Assuming that her careless removal hadn't already ruined the damned thing… Perhaps she should've taken more time towards finding a safe way to detach it?

She glanced down at the toy cannon in her grasp, weighing the value of her time against her own perception of the turret's quality.

Nah.

Four more of these smaller, boxy guns still sat embedded into the hull, alongside five longer, thinner, angular ones—Not even to mention the seven tiny gun emplacements scattered around. She had more than enough to work with, with more than enough wiggle room to break a few of them and still have parts to spare.

Nodding to herself in confirmation, the unnamed submarine gently placed the mutilated gun in the center of the hull. She'd save the guns: but everything else could safely be scrapped. She'd start with the top… and try to keep the keel as intact as she could. Once she had done that… well, she'd figure out what to do from there.

With that, she had a plan. Now all she had to do was follow it.

---

The submarine breathed a sigh of relief, wiping grease and oil from her face as she surveyed her handiwork. The little ship had leaked quite a lot of the stuff all over her—but she was certain a good dive and spin would be enough to clear it all off of her. A small part of her relished in the feeling of finally being able to get her hands dirty, but another part—another part she didn't quite understand just yet—was antsy and nervous.

Yet more confusing thoughts she'd need to properly sort through later. Why wouldn't she love the thought of doing projects? They were fun!

Shaking her head at the blatant mental false alarm, the submarine turned back to the gutted wreck. Her little drones were in a feeding frenzy as they continued to break down the pieces of the destroyer she had dropped for them. All in all, this definitely warranted an all-hands-on-deck situation—at least if she wanted it to be handled in any reasonable amount of time.

The results were plenty obvious, though. The entire top of the destroyer was gone, ripped free by her claws, broken down by drones, and then safely squirreled away in her warehouse, ready to be reused.

The submarine had even pulled the vessel's torpedo tubes and devastating little explosives loose too, though those were currently being stored separately, in a little grotto she had found underwater not too far away. Sure, the water might ruin them over time, but she'd be damned if she let explosives be anywhere near her main warehouse.

All that remained of the vessel was the keel and the bare minimum of structural supports required to keep it from sinking—she had effectively converted what was once a weapon of war into a glorified floating basket. A floating basket containing tiny, boxy guns.

Of course, she had no idea how much of the wiring connected to the guns was necessary. Taking the cautious route, she had ensured that most of the freed weaponry had at least an extra thirty centimeters of whatever they were attached to still trailing from them.

The submarine had been seriously tempted to try and graft a few of the guns directly to herself. Even though they were tiny and likely underpowered, she was still a ship… and an unarmed one at that, deep within unfamiliar and hostile territory. She had already accidentally integrated a targeting system… So why would actual guns be any different?

Still, she had eventually decided against it. Not only were the naval cannons hideous to look at… but where would she even install them? Even if she had external hardpoints to mount them on, she had no idea where those were.

Opinions aside, the real deciding factor was far more logical in nature. Gun mounts just all-in-all made zero sense to be mounted onto a submarine. Not only were they not aquadynamic at all (and she truly did love being able to glide through the water with barely any resistance), but she was almost certain the constant exposure to seawater would ruin them incredibly quickly.

Besides, learning to aim? Not for her. She despised being a weapon, and would rather not become so again. She'd much rather remain in her new, freed state, rather than once more be turned into a glorified tool to be wasted and thrown at a pointless enemy. Like they—

She gritted her teeth, wincing as her vision swirled and her boiler became strained.

And there was the damned headache, right on cue. She knew it was coming, it was only a matter of when. She had gotten better at predicting it, but it seemed that whenever she thought back to her past, pain seemed to find her.

She pouted, leaning backwards, relying upon her body's buoyancy to keep her afloat. She had done so well today, too! She had nearly made it a full six hours without the pounding, swirling migraine that seemed to be haunting her.

Suppressing the pain and nausea as best as she could, the submarine considered her other options for using the destroyer's armament. The guns were a no-go for her, but what about her drones? Surely they could remain on the surface and accept a turret mount?

As if answering her unspoken call, drone 04 rose up to the surface beside her, staring at their creator with their empty, glowing blue eyes.

By grafting a gun to them, she'd be able to rely upon them as a form of protection, meaning she wouldn't be entirely help—

If you arm them, they will be killed.

The submarine cringed violently, losing her position and falling back into the water, as memories—some hers, some… were they her old crew's?---flashed through her mind at a chaotic, rapid pace. Vivid and unsettling, these alien memories showed barely-trained soldiers being cut down by the hundreds—just for embodying the sin of daring to hold a weapon to defend their homes.

Stunned and disturbed, the spirit writhed for a moment as the images continued… Only when the episode seemed to have finally ended was she able to right herself once more. Slowly, her eyes focused, turning towards the tiny, helpless drone still facing mindlessly towards her.

Slowly, she shook her head. The… memories were right, at least this once. Her drones—they were noncombat, unarmed utility vessels. By arming them—by grafting guns to their hulls and forcing them to remain upon the surface, they would become weapons themselves—something to destroy.

A utility vessel might be spared. An armed drone, no matter how helpless, would be hunted down and exterminated. An armed drone unable to properly dive would be a sitting duck, intact only until a hostile force became even aware of their presence.

By keeping them unarmed and mobile, she would keep them safe. They wouldn't fire at an unarmed innocent. Only monsters would do such a thing.

She blinked. Innocent?

She met hollow eyes of her piscine drone, pausing for a moment. Could a non-sentient hunk of fish-shaped animated scrap metal truly be considered innocent?

They couldn't think. She hadn't put anything in them that'd let them do so. She wasn't that good, after all.

Laughing nervously to herself, she waved a hand in front of the drone—but its posture did not change, continuing to face dead ahead, not tracking her hand, not reacting at all. A stupid, mindless thing.

She sighed in disappointment. She didn't know what she expected. Here she was assuming that a tool made of metal scrap would be able to act like a living being. There were lofty expectations, and then there was that. It was probably just her loneliness getting to her, making her see things that weren't there.

"... Go help your batchmates with salvaging wrecks." she stated, tone low.

With a quiet splash, the drone disappeared below the surface, leaving the spirit once more.

Neither her, nor her drones seemed to be adequate hosts for the salvaged guns… If that was the case, then what use did they have? Perhaps she could trade them—

With who?

She was alone out here.

Again, the sheer, crushing emptiness of it became all too apparent. Sure, she could try to make her way to land—but she didn't belong there. She still didn't feel safe on the surface, especially not so close to land, and certainly not so close to the humans.

And to go even further, to go all of the way to barter away her salvaged weaponry? Even in spirit, the idea made her sick. Never mind they likely had thousands more of these identical, hideous, uninspired things lying around on shelves, cranked out by a factory.

Even trying to evaluate what she'd even be able to exchange them for filled her with a primal, raging disgust.

No… She'd hoard them, keep them, and potentially find a use for them in the future. Perhaps she'd try to build a larger vessel to attach them to? Too bad she didn't even know where to begin at making a ship like that.

For now, they'd take up space in her storage… a storage that was quickly running out of room. Quite frankly, the guns weren't as important as the scrap metal.

With a firm nod, she reached into the the depths of the gutted destroyer, scratching around for something she knew was there—

Click.

Slowly and carefully, she manually pulled out the catch of the anchor, letting it out bit by bit, until she was absolutely sure that the keel wasn't going anywhere. It might not be large enough to serve as a new warehouse… but for now, it'd have to do.

Her new temporary storage secure, she dove back down. Hopefully, it'd survive getting rained on, or splashed a bit. Boats tended to have stuff like that happen to them, after all. Maybe, she'd bring up one of her newly-emptied shipping containers to put the guns into, to better protect them from the weather.

Despite that, she had renovations to do down below. After all, the destroyer was far from her only project in the wings. Even as she had done her initial bug removal, she had ordered her drones to begin cleaning up the various shipwrecks around her… and more importantly, to avoid damaging the keels of the metal vessels any further.

She had scrap metal, and she had quite the selection of keels to choose from. More than enough for her purposes.

It was time to expand.

---

There.

Gently rising up to survey her newest additions to her base, the Submarine smiled.

Her little, single warehouse wasn't alone in the depths any longer. It had been joined by four more domes, scattered around it on the seafloor and connected and anchored by wires. From above, it resembled a futuristic moonbase, sitting atop of a rolling, vibrant plane of sea life and kelp.

The aesthetic choice had not been her intention at first, but the moment she had noticed the pattern, she had fully embraced it. She had added in a few more cosmetic touch-ups, such as a few nonfunctional wires and cables—she had even dug a cute little seafloor trench around the boundaries of the structures, merely because she could.

In absence of waterproof paint, she had chosen to graft some of the strange chitin which had overtaken the first warehouse onto the others, in hopes of it spreading further and evening out the colors (and hide her bad patch jobs).

The chitin was always a confusing subject—no matter what she built, if she wasn't paying attention, patches of the substance would occasionally spring up seemingly from nowhere. From her initial, closer examination of the material, it was black, tarry substance which spread like a fungus or mold, eventually overtaking the entire surface whatever it was on. Thankfully, it seemed to not be able to penetrate into whatever material it was growing on, as proven by snapping an 'infected' plate over her knee and examining the perfectly-clean interior. The teeth were actual teeth though, though they thankfully tended to dissolve away when broken off of the structure.

As concerning as the contagious material potentially was, there was no doubt that it would insulate the far more rust-vulnerable metal from the erosive salt water. That, added onto the risk of a rusty spot potentially leading to a catastrophic hull breach in her warehouses had quickly sealed her decision. The mysterious chitin could stay, since potentially it could buy her underwater base months if not years of corrosion resistance.

The coating was of course nothing without a base underneath it. In this case, three of the bases had been the remains of more sunken ships, carefully repaired and then brought down the exact same way as her first warehouse. The fourth one, though…

She grinned victoriously as she turned to it, an oversized, squished dome nearly twice the size of the others.

In a feat of ramshackle engineering, she had constructed that one out of not one, but three damaged ship hulls. The three had been far too damaged to be worth fully repairing, yet they remained intact enough to be a waste to scrap… so she had dragged them all to a single location, before fusing them together through metal and chitin. What had once been three broken objects was now a single whole

Bringing it up to the surface had been a pain, but thankfully the drones were more than capable of having towing lines attached to them. With the five helping ease the burden, the plus-sized dome was brought down to serve as her largest structure, and potentially her most important one.

Regardless, with five different buildings in which to store things, she finally had the ability to sort her belongings… and she had fallen upon the task with aplomb.

The first warehouse remained as a bulk resource storage, meant for the raw metal reclaimed by her drones. The second, being the closest to the first, was treated much the same, though it also housed the remains of her uneaten human foodstuffs. In retrospect, it would have been better suited as an expansion of the first warehouse… but with no real way to safely do so without causing a cavitation explosion, she had settled with keeping the two as close as she could.

Perhaps at some point she could make another large dome, and move her scrap over there? Alas, that'd be a project for a later time. For now, it served its purpose, and thus she could safely postpone the 'larger bulk storage' project. There was no need to dump resources into it—not yet at least.

After all, she'd need a lot of metal to get anything done, especially with the lofty plans she couldn't wait to get started on.

Her third underwater structure was mostly dedicated to research and dismantlement, serving as a clean-room. The shipping container full of the destroyer's guns had been brought down, and its cargo unloaded. With the guns hanging safely out of the water, she was ready to begin exploring their functionality.

She had even gathered enough seafloor clay to build a large slab, ready to be carved into as a crude whiteboard—

Yes, she still needed real utilities at some point. What was she, a cavewoman? Alas, a functional whiteboard and markers would be a truly, truly rare find on the seafloor.

The fourth warehouse was dedicated to volatile storage. Situated further away from the others by a wide margin, this one contained her salvaged torpedoes and bombs. She wasn't quite sure how far away would be safe…

But it was certainly safer than the grotto she had first picked. Now, at least, it was out of the water, and likely to degrade slower. She didn't enjoy the idea of working with explosives at all, but at the very least, having them in one place would serve as a decent emergency stockpile, should the situation arise. She had been sure to double-reinforce the wall pointed towards the rest of her complex, meaning that hopefully, the explosion would propagate away from the rest of her belongings.

That left the largest, and most important structure, one that was utterly irreplaceable.

Swimming down and in, she stepped out of the dome's moonpool, pausing to admire her hard work.

Unlike the others, this one wasn't a pitch black crevasse. No, this one was illuminated by a pair of glowing, eerie blue spotlights she had pulled out of the remains of the mechanical fish before she had fed it to her drones to break down to scrap. The entire setup was powered by a crude generator she had rigged up from the destroyer's leftover electronics. Fueling the system would be a potential future issue, but thankfully the destroyer's tanks had been mostly full, meaning that should she need to, she could likely run them for at least a few days straight.

Not like she needed to, though—the lights only came on when she needed them. Though she was able to see perfectly well without them, what she had planned had really no reason to be sabotaged by improper lighting.

After all, it wouldn't do to be working in the dark within her Foundry. Here, she would build new drones, or repair her existing ones.

And should she dare hope? It would be the place where she would construct entirely new ships, technology, and weaponry.

A few of her c—

She shook her head, and focused past that potential landmine. She would not allow her triumph to be ruined by a sudden headache!

In her past, she had seen a small selection of media, consumed to pass the time—All of it was so beautiful, so interesting. Depictions and stories of technology far, far beyond what the humans could even comprehend, centuries if not millenia ahead of the modern world. Though parts remained foggy, the sense of wonder remained: it was far, far too easy for her to fill her second log with pages upon pages of scribbles, drawings and other thoughts at a frankly alarming speed. The stolen, half-remembered ideas were just so easy to come up with, just so easy to pull from nothing, no matter how unrealistic, insane or counterintuitive they may seem.

Borrowed ideas, she mentally corrected herself. They were unrealized ideas, unclaimed by anyone—and thus no one could complain if she were the one to truly invent them, claiming the untapped potential for herself and proving herself better. It was one thing to make a mock-up, a false, impractical model of a thing… Not like building a working one.

Alas, her ideas were limited in scope and direction—She hadn't actually been exposed to too many different sources of science fiction. Her main source was nothing more than one sailor's pile of Flash Gordon comics (which had been confiscated by her captain for being blatant American propaganda). That, and the few, rare occasions where her crew had gathered to watch a translated episode of "Star Trek" on a small television.

Really, those happy times were one of the few that she wasn't actively trying to sabotage her own life support systems.

She truly wished that the bastards had left her that small, wondrous device… and the tapes, of course. It would have made her isolation and boredom at the bottom of the ocean far more enjoyable. Anything would have been better than just sitting in the corner of herself, waiting for the inevitable hull failure to kill her.

Pulling backwards a bit, the submarine sighed. She had no illusions that the task of research and development would be at all easy—but like anything worth doing, she knew the way forward would be paved by failure upon failure, with each and every step incrementally beating out mistakes. With that said, there was learning from failure, and actively jumping into the deep end with no direction.

Why start from completely nothing, when only a few miles away was a perfectly good source of knowledge just… there, ready for the taking?

One of her many, many missions during her time as a Human vessel had been the sabotaging of information lines. After all, a great many ran underwater, away from almost anything that'd interfere with them.

Almost anything. She existed and was free now, and she could easily find where they were. After all, she knew that there was a massive network of underwater wires of various types feeding into the Florida peninsula. It'd only be a matter of digging up an end close to the shore, and following it out in a direction deeper into the ocean. Likely, at least one would pass by her base, meaning she could… uhhh…

Okay, she didn't have a way of actually using a tapped line at the moment, but once she had secured it, it'd be an important next step.

Besides, how difficult would it be to tap in and steal some ideas and information for herself? All she has to do is dig it up, follow the line…

---

The submarine stared blankly ahead, sheepish blush upon her face. She resisted any and all urges to cover her face with her hands.

She had put far, far too much force into her digging, it seemed. The wire she had dug up was barely holding on—nothing more than a single layer of plastic wrapping kept the thing from falling apart altogether.

The portion of the human settlement closest to the water, for all of its fortification, had gone completely dark. If she were to make an educated guess, digging the cable up had shorted out their electrical grid. That'd definitely explain the crackle, jolt, and then violent popping she had heard upon doing so.

That, and the surge of pain and burning smell she had experienced… Was that what being electrocuted felt like? It was quite unpleasant, and she'd need to be more careful next time.

She had only intended to unearth it—not entirely sever it! Really, she could be a total klutz sometimes. She had torn through the thing like butter without meaning to, just because she was digging aimlessly in search of the damn thing.

Alas, while she had possessed a vague idea where the cable was located, she didn't know for sure. Hence, she had spent several minutes digging around fruitlessly, becoming more and more frustrated with each moment. By the time she finally found the cable… well, she'd not been careful, and had torn right through. She should've taken her time, and should've been more patient, but…

Hopefully no one would notice?

Nervously laughing to herself, she carefully fused the two halves of the wire together with a bit of scrap she had lying around. Narrowly avoiding electrocuting herself again, she tossed the slightly-shorter wire back into the hole she had removed it from.

Thinking for a moment further, she stomped the dirt back into place. It'd be best if it looked like an accident, or a fault in the wiring, rather than active sabotage.

Once she was done, she turned and zoomed off, adequately humiliated. She could keep looking for the correct wire, sure… but her plan was already stupid and she wanted to make herself scarce before someone came out to 'deal' with her. It was always a bad idea to stick around near the scene of the crime.

She'd… just leave it up to the humans to fix their power systems themselves.

She could always try again, later that week.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

The unnamed submarine snarled as she dropped the useless, decapitated cable, letting the severed cable slowly drift down towards the seafloor. It was the fifth she had dug up, and the fifth that had been nonfunctional. She could no longer deny the obvious, and it infuriated her.

How dare they? They had not only severed her way in… But they had actively detonated the location, as a testament, a warning against her daring to improvise! They had salted the earth, and severed not only the cable she had accidentally damaged, but every other cable within the immediate area!

The spirit felt the world fading around her as her rage grew and grew and grew…

She had learned from her mistake, dammit! She had forged a crude shovel from leftover scrap to be more careful, and all of that, for what? They had cut it all.

Gone was her easy way to safely gather information, and her method to learn about the world without needing to expose herself to hostile forces. The perfect plan, where she could just sit back and hurt no one, just happily researching how to build a new existence for herself without stepping on anyone else's toes.

What kind of psychopaths would willingly cripple themselves and others just to spite a potential outside—

Oh. Right. How could she forget? She was dealing with Americans. They'd do anything to limit enemy intelligence. And here she was giving them the benefit of the doubt for improving past the Cold War. Why did she even try…

Screaming out in frustration, the submarine lashed out, grabbing the floating cable and yanking as hard as she physically could.

With a wicked grin, she watched as her action uprooted not only the one she had applied force to… but also apparently hit a cable tie, meaning that every other nearby cable was yanked upwards as well. In a single, decisive action, she had uprooted an entire fifty meters of the stuff, pulling it all from the seafloor below.

She still was furious… but slowly, she began to calm down. The human actions, while frustrating, were most certainly not out of character. She should have expected this, and it was her own damn fault for not covering her tracks better.

Color returned to her vision as she grumbled not-too-quietly. A temper-tantrum was fine, especially in a situation like this… But she was still out in the open. The humans were aware that something had happened here… and she would need to leave soon, lest she be detected. Her anger, frustration and indignance would have their place, yet not here…

She paused, as she sniffed, wondering just where that strange, delicious smell was coming from… Slowly, she glanced at the bounty of material she had uprooted from the seafloor.

Shrugging her shoulders, the submarine merely took a large bite out of one of the cables. Eating ship systems had helped quench her unnatural hunger before, so likely, she just needed more copper in her diet or something. Frankly, she would need to properly record her nutritional requirements in the future… For efficiency's sake, if nothing else.

Chewing upon it slowly, she huffed. If the humans were so insistent on destroying their own infrastructure to spite her, she'd just have to make do with taking their abandoned things, as always. Surely, she could find more of a use for the stuff than they ever could. Swallowing her mouthful of chewed cable, she took a bite from another—

Chew, chew…

This one tasted… different. More filling? Raising an eyebrow, the submarine glanced down at the various cables swaying in the current.

With a bit of effort, she gathered them all, holding them side by side to get a closer look at their differences.

The cable she had last bitten into wasn't just some bland, insulated copper cable like she had expected. She could see layers of steel, aluminum, lubricant, copper… It was definitely more complex and advanced than the basic cables of her time… At least, she assumed so?

It wasn't as if she was ever able to witness what said 'communication lines' actually looked like under their insulation, after all. It had always been done with a mechanical arm, or external system.

Either way, there were far more materials in a communication line than the far simpler powerline… Which she supposed correlated pretty well to the overall 'completeness' of the flavor, like eating an entire meal, rather than a single ingredient.

Not even pausing to swallow, she tore another chunk out of the now-identified communications line, taking a bit more time to savor the 'flavor' of the exotic materials.

She smiled. It was far more tasty to her than any other 'human food' she had consumed.

The solution was thus beyond clear.

---

She… might've gotten a bit overzealous again. It was such an easy task to get lost in… With such a tremendous, fully-understandable payoff that only served to focus her even further. It had been child's play to trace the cables back to the shore, uprooting it all as she went.

She had stopped about a half-kilometer from the shore itself, severing all of the lines, but it was more than enough for her purposes. If anything, she had gotten greedy…

The entire time, she had continued to take the occasional bite from the uprooted materials.

How could she not? The communications cables were the tastiest thing she had eaten ever since her awakening—and that included the human foodstuffs!

Then again, it wasn't as if she had eaten any human food that hadn't come out of a can… but the statement still stood, at least in her eyes. The flavors most certainly didn't compare, and having a delicious treat to chew on while working had definitely helped fully move past her earlier frustrations.

The fruits of her labor were plain as day.

Wrapped loosely around her right shoulder was a sash consisting of about a kilometer and a half total of delicious, delicious communications line. She also had a second, smaller sash across her left shoulder of the far less tasty power line, but since she was already in the area, why not take it too? Besides, even if it was less suitable as a 'food', mostly pure copper was more than essential, especially if she intended to build more drones in the future.

Now, her arms were full and encumbered with supplies—far, far more than she could even hope to use in any reasonable amount of time. It was time to bring her haul back home.

She grinned widely, as she passed by the blast site. After all, even if she had taken all of the wires leading towards America…

There was more than enough leading in the other direction, just waiting to be claimed by her.

---

Breaking her haul into several parts, the spirit stored the entirety of the copper line, as well as a large chunk of communications line within her Foundry. The rest would go into her food storage warehouse, to serve as emergency rations. With her new delicacies put away, the Submarine smiled. Supplies, done!

It was a bit of a shame she couldn't tap them for info, what with them being fully dead—it was only now occurring to her that she had… no idea how she was even going to go about doing that.

Slapping her forehead, she sighed in defeat. Really, maybe these lines were best used as food after all. As it was, she was currently dismantling one of the destroyer's guns, trying to make sense of the firearm.

She was really having no progress with understanding the thing. The manufacturing of the barrel was frankly absurdly fine, almost like the whole thing had been shrunk. Even disassembling the thing was insanity: it appeared to be held together by pins that were nearly too small for her to even see unasssisted.

Hearing a small splash behind herself, the submarine glanced over her shoulder, glad to have a distraction from her infuriatingly slow progress making sense of this bullshit.

A drone bobbed gently within the building's moon pool, staring up at her with its front section poking just barely out of the water. If her devices were correct (and that was quite a large assumption with how glitchy they still remained), it was the first one she had gotten working properly.

She'd definitely need to put identifiers on them, something more specific. Perhaps she could paint numbers on their sides, or install ID chips. Even with her log's assistance, her memory was poor at the best of times, and even if there were small cosmetic differences between the features of the drones, the chitin covering them tended to smooth over most identifying features.

"Oh? Do you have something for me?" the spirit asked, approaching her drone slowly.

More likely than not, the drone had run into an issue of some kind. Despite giving all of her drones very specific orders—harvest wrecks within a half-kilometer of her base, and return the scavenged materials to the warehouses—there was still an occasional issue of a drone choosing to come find her rather than work.

It could be rather irritating at times, but a quick restatement of her orders tended to clear up the issue relatively quickly. And really, she still didn't quite understand how the drones were even functioning at all, so who was she to call their programming bad or inefficient? Since the drones were doing free labor for her anyway, she didn't really care too much about the loss of efficiency, at least not yet.

She was still in the planning stage, after all, and had an excess of materials, but very few things to spend them on.

Now that she thought that out loud though, she was more than aware that her stockpile of resources would likely be depleted rather quickly.

The drone continued to stare back, their glowing blue eyes slowly continuing to track her, yet their body remained facing dead ahead.

"Do you require your orders to be restated?" spoke the submarine out loud, once again flipping her log towards the page containing her exact wording. The last thing she wanted was to forget something…

Slowly, and at an almost reluctant rate, the drone's eyes swiveled towards the small pile of cut cable sitting beside her worktable (really just the remains of a damaged shipping container).

Inventing was hungry work, okay?

The submarine smirked, tracing the drone's gaze. "Oh, do you want some cable, you silly thing?"

Despite her continued lack of progress, she was still in a good mood—and seeing one of her drones want something was definitely a new experience for her. Assuming they were equivalent to the most simple of animals (though considering their consistent 'glitchy' behavior, they likely were not even at that level), they would be aware of specific nutrients they required to function. Nutrients, metals, materials… whatever their equivalent would be.

Really, that was an interesting thought—perhaps her drones required resource upkeep as well? It definitely made sense—of course that'd require some sort of cost to remain functional. Nothing in life was truly free, after all. Perhaps she just hadn't noticed the need before, because they were capable of hunting for prey when left to their own devices?

With her working them around the clock salvaging wrecks, then it meant that they wouldn't have time to feed themselves.

Sighing, the submarine recorded her new findings. 'Give the drones time to hunt for food'. It would save her resources in the long run, and require less micromanagement on her part.

For now, she had to resolve this particular issue herself.

Approaching her workbench, she lifted up her pre-cut section of wire, before slicing a portion off to feed her hungry drone. Happy with the amount (since it'd leave some for her later), she turned quickly on her heel, and lobbed the segment over the moon pool.

The drone—the stupid thing—leaped out of the water, snapping the cable up midair, before splashing down hard.

Displaced water splashed the spirit, even as they reflexively held up their arms to cover their face.

"Stop it! I will not have you making a mess inside of here!" shouted the submarine, leaning down to meet the fish eye to eye. Thankfully, nothing was damaged—

The drone, having never been programmed to feel shame, reacted as expected. Namely, not at all. What it did do was continue to chew the cable it had been given, its powerful jaws tearing into the mixed metals with a near-gleeful pace.

The nameless submarine sighed. Well, there truly was no workforce without upkeep, it seemed. Even fully automatic systems required maintenance, and replacement parts…

Still, despite that, the drone's sudden leap out of the water was not a habit she would allow to remain. Not when an ill-timed splash of water could potentially ruin a project down the line, or cause a catastrophic failure or explosion.

Gently, she reached down and grabbed the drone by the midsection, which quickly went limp in her grasp. She raised it up to eye level, and quickly re-activated it before staring directly into its blue eyes. It had stopped chewing—though whether that was just because it had already swallowed remained unclear.

"You are not to make a mess inside of the Foundry. This is a direct order. Am I clear?" she lectured, all emotion withheld from her tone.

The drone wriggled once, which the submarine approximated was an affirmative. Nodding from that, she gently set it back down into the water.

Having consumed its treat, the drone hastily left the dome, more than likely to return to whatever task it had been doing before its resource needs drove it to her position. The spirit merely shook her head—she'd need to keep cabling or food on hand in the future, in case of such events re-occurring in the future. She had plenty of pockets in her suit… and it wasn't as if half a meter or so of cabling was too heavy to just have on hand.

While she hadn't entirely succeeded in her earlier mission, she had definitely gained important knowledge regardless. She now had the location of what was essentially another year's supply of copper power line and communication cable, so temptingly buried under only a few meters of sand. When she eventually needed it, it would be waiting for her.

With her drones collecting supplies for her, and her warehouses rapidly filling, she was rapidly finding herself in need of a project to do. But to get started…

She still required manuals, information, knowledge—especially about the internal workings of naval vessels and construction. Though what she already had set up was… mostly fine, for the most basic of tasks…

She sighed, remembering just how barren her actual Foundry was. She would need an actual welding torch, or a way of creating one. Her strange chitin, while useful… had properties she very much didn't appreciate, making it ideal for exterior surfaces, but far, far less so for interior ones. For such cases, she needed proper tools.

Taking a seat back in her crude metal chair, she slumped against its backrest. These problems all had a simple solution, one lying so temptingly close… It just meant returning to the surface—no, it meant entering human-controlled territory. All so that she could gather the supplies she needed.

Every part of her hated the idea of it all, but there was no alternative. Not one she could accomplish in any reasonable amount of time, at least.

She required books—not only to directly reference to kick start her understanding of existing technologies (that she very sorely lacked), but also as inspiration. Her creations were still crude and sewn together underneath their chitin—learning how to properly shape and weld metal would not only make them more visually appealing, but would likely help alleviate plenty of problems down the line. As it was, the production of anything larger than a drone was currently entirely impossible, and if she wanted to do anything beyond that, that needed to change.

She required tools—the only ones she had currently were merely her clawed fingers, her strange ability to use chitin to fuse things together, and… that was basically it. She had recently tested the resistance of 'real' steel compared to her chitin-covered 'welds'... and there really was no contest between the two. Though the unnatural material was 'good enough' to survive deep pressure, it was easy to tear and shred, and was damaged far, far easier by most forces.

It'd do well for building temporary things, but anything meant to survive direct conflict, or suffer a lot of wear and tear would need something sturdier keeping them in one piece.

And that was completely disregarding stuff like cranes, or any other sort of device able to help keep a project off of the ground. She couldn't even imagine how hard it'd be to build something otherwise: how would she even get at the underside, when working on something that weighed literal tonnes? Not only would production be a tremendous pain, but so would be maintenance…

She cringed at that particular thought, tapping her own midsection. Her stolen electronics were still a mess, and sooner or later she would need to allocate time to properly repair them, lest they continue to leech her reactor with their inefficiencies. But until she knew how to even do that, she couldn't even risk getting started, not when her new life was so clearly on the line.

The last, but certainly not least thing she required was information. She still did not know just what had caused beings like her or the other Ship Spirit to awaken, or just what had sunk so many ships so close to American shores. On a more personal level, she required the information on how to enrich uranium—and that was a secret she very much doubted the humans would give up easily. To them, it was a source of annihilation, the ender of their world.

In her case though? She needed it, as much as any other resource. The gauge within her continued to tick down, every moment showing just how limited her time truly was. It was a Sword of Damocles over her head, albeit one still quite far away.

All of this and more, located so close, yet so far. Trapped behind an invisible barrier, deep, deep within enemy territory.

She breathed in, steadying herself.

There was only one option available to her. An infiltration mission.

More likely than not, she'd be entirely alone—her drones could not come with her, lacking any sort of limbs for traversing land—that, and she wouldn't risk them coming with her even if they could fly.

To stay safe, she would need to lay low, collect what she needed, and then get out—as quickly as possible. She'd need to leave no trace of her passing, and no hints as to who she was or why she was even there.

Glancing over towards the gun still lying upon her workbench, she debated taking one of the more intact barrels along on her journey.

Wait. Why bother? She could shred bare steel with her hands.

She rolled her eyes. Yeah, with physical abilities like that, who needed ranged weaponry?

So no weapons, it seemed. Well, if she was about the same size as a human, perhaps she could arrive, do her thing, and leave undetected.

Nodding, and fighting off the last bits of hesitation and disgust, the Submarine writes her plan of action into her log, confirming her mission. A time is set—two days from now, three hours to sunrise.

It was time for an expedition to the human lands—to the human state known as "Florida".

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

Had she had a pulse, it would most certainly be racing by this point, as she quivered like a leaf with her back against the concrete alleyway wall.

As it was, she was merely doing her damned best to avoid jumping at every noise. This deep in enemy territory, she could not afford to be anything but alert, but frankly the stress was beginning to get to her. At least here, with solid walls protecting her on three sides, she didn't need to fear being flanked by any undetected hostiles and could focus on getting her frantic emotions back under control.

It had all started so simply, and so easily—she had merely needed to scan the shorelines for an unfortified segment of coast, then sneak in unnoticed. She had crept in right on schedule, silent and undetected—she doubted that even the birds were aware of her passing.

With herself successfully breaching enemy territory, she had successfully jumped the first hurdle before her. It was early: with the dark moon mere hours from setting. It gave her plenty of time to get situated and prepared.

Unfortunately, her next task was far less straightforward, but it was just as critical to the stability of her mission.

A disguise was needed, something to help her fit in. And with very few options before her, she had just gone with her gut—

The spirit had chosen to steal clothing off of clotheslines, searching about for things that fit her.

Her black military boiler suit was… well, distinctive, tight, and probably quite memorable to an average civilian. Even the dumbest American would be able to recognise the obviously-military clothing, and with recognition, would come the inevitable stream of questions…

Even worse, though there definitely were differences, her uniform was nearly identical to the ones originally worn by her crew—and those getups were distinctly just Soviet submarine boilersuits with the signets filed off. Being detected on US soil while actively wearing the garb of one of their old enemies could potentially be disastrous: Even if they didn't choose to shoot on sight, they might try to capture her—

She'd rather die before she let them break her, ever again.

Thus, with her usual outfit too dangerous to bring into the mission, the decision to just ditch it came quite easily. Despite this, she had been sure to grab an oversized set of clothing during her initial scouting, before stowing her uniform (detection risk or not, she still possessed at least some modesty).

Currently, her boilersuit was folded up and hidden within an undeveloped area nearby, just a few kilometers south of the human settlement. She believed the location to be some kind of nature reserve—mostly due to the concentration of wild animals—and thus unlikely to be patrolled or searched in any real detail. She did notice some weird tearing on the backside of her suit when she removed it, tearing that she'd need to definitely patch up once she was safely back within her territory.

Thus, garbed in men's clothing four sizes too large for her, she had returned back to the city at the crack of dawn and checked line after line, plucking off any piece of decent apparel—anything that seemed to be the right size and shape for her.

Despite the… sheer variety of options, she kept her standards high as she continued searching. Determined to not wear junk, she had only taken things she could seriously see herself wearing… and that wasn't even counting the ones that had just fallen apart in her grasp. So many of the pieces of clothing were just so… fragile.

Backless outfits in particular tended to just fall apart moments after being donned, and for the life of her, she couldn't understand why.

She was being plenty careful, taking several moments to slide on each piece, yet they all unraveled in her grip all the same, as if they had slid against something unimaginably sharp. It probably was just that the stupid, cheap, American-made clothing was just of shoddy quality and would've fallen apart anyway!

Eventually though, she had gathered enough clothing to throw together an adequate outfit. For a moment, she debated keeping the remaining articles of clothing for scrap or even for future disguises… up until she remembered she didn't really have a good way of transporting it all. Sighing, she wandered around until she had found a suitable receptacle (some poor fool's mailbox) and just crammed everything into it. There, now it was someone else's problem.

Now garbed in a T-shirt, slacks, sunhat, and leopard-print mini jacket, the disguised submarine spirit fidgeted nervously as she adjusted her sunglasses. She looked every bit like a confused and particularly uninteresting tourist—besides the fact that her skin was parchment-pale.

That, and the fact that her eyes faintly glowed an unnatural green… but that was what her stolen sunglasses were for. She had been sure to check a mirror just to be sure: the dark lenses had reduced the effect to merely an unsettling intensity, rather than the potentially disguise-breaking beacons they could be.

Her skin tone was sadly something she couldn't easily hide: it turned out that one simply did not get much sun on the bottom of the ocean. Hopefully, any human she passed would just think she was a shut-in, and not… well, a spirit coming to steal their things, eat their cables or whatever else supposedly 'paranormal' entities like her were accused of causing.

With everything said and done, she now stood, out of the water and entirely exposed. The brutal, open sky yawned above her, like the maw of a great beast—oh so ready to devour her whole.

The submarine once more shivered as her eyes trailed upwards, already imagining helicopters flying overhead, with spotlights being shone around, like beacons in the gloom…

Gulping, she focused herself, trying desperately to fight down the vertigo—No! She was catastrophizing! As long as they didn't know she was here, everything would be fine.

Everything would be juuust fine.

Taking in a slow breath, just for the tactile feedback, she hugged her stolen clothing tighter. C-certainly no one would suspect her to be a spy—

H-How on earth did her old crew do it?!? Being a spy was terrifying! And she had only just started the hard part!

"Oy! Whatcha doin back here?"

And now a human was staring at her, dumb as hell expression on their face! Why are they even in an alleyway at eight in the morning? What kind of depraved freak would even be back here?!?

She had… Oh, she'd let them sneak up on her, despite everything. Humiliation joining her fear in equal parts, the spirit pouted, holding in a growl as she took in her newest obstacle.

Her gaze snapped to the intruding human with military precision, glancing them up and down. Their outfit was civilian in nature, consisting of a floral-patterned vest, jean shorts, and a pair of sandals. Really, the only part of them that was interesting was their absurdist hat reading "women want fish, me fear me".

… Deep below, these humans were strange.

"U-Uh… J-Just my first time in the city, y'know…" she shot back, tripping over her words like an absolute amateur. She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice, as the horrifying realization that she had been snuck up upon by an idiot began to dawn on her.

"Ah, kay. Was wonderin' why you's are lurking 'round back here. Thought you was a mugger or summ'n. But just'a confused tourist, sure, sure. Shoulda getta move on soonish tho, aight? Lotsa gators and crazy blokes about ever since the crazy shit started happening out'n the gulf. An' stay outta the alleys, plenty of blokes out there looking to swipe a quick hundid off some outa state lady, y'hear?"

With a sickening sound, the man then cleared their throat, before they spat loudly into the alley beside himself. The submarine's gaze followed it for a moment, before looking back at him. All in all, the spirit understood about a third of what was being said there, assuming that those nonsensical noises were intended to be words.

"Y-yeah…" she replied, as she continued to stare. Thankfully, the human pest left a moment later, shaking their head as they left, without even sparing her a glance more.

She let out another shaky breath. This human couldn't identify her as a spirit… that was good. Part of her debated letting that wasteful habit continue, as if it was so inefficient and unnecessary… At least until she remembered that indeed: Humans needed to breathe.

Continuing to (unnecessarily) breathe would help her cover, not hurt it.

Right… and if they couldn't recognise her…

Feeling her anxiety slowly drop back down to manageable levels, she picked herself up and brushed herself off.

If she had fooled that idiot, she… she could fool anyone! Probably! There was a significant, non-zero chance of it! She just had to get going before she was inevitably proven wrong and died horrifically!

Again!

Shivering again as she metaphorically grasped her fear and stuffed into the corner away from the important, thinking parts of herself, she flipped through the checklist in her captain's log. All she had to do was complete the rest of her planned tasks, extract herself from the operation zone and flee to the safety of her safe, underwater base. She had planned it all out to the T, and as long as she followed her own instructions to the letter she'd be gone before the enemy even knew she was there.

Nodding to herself she traced over the very first line…

Ah yes, the first stop…

---

The Submarine tapped her foot impatiently upon the concrete below as she stood outside of the mechanic garage.

It had taken her thirty minutes to find the building, thirty wasted minutes she desperately wanted back. Several times, the humans had tried to talk to her - oh how she despised how talkative the average dweller here was. She enjoyed the occasional companionship of her drones, sure, but to talk to strangers on the street? This country was vile.

But now she stood, staring at a sign hanging from the door as she felt her fury rise further and further.

'Closed Until Next Month', it read, in block, bolded letters.

How dare they? Did they not know she was on a schedule? It would be unlikely she could return—not when they could find her any moment—

She paused, clutching her head

Who were they, and why did she fear them so much? She was in disguise, and hadn't even done anything yet. At worst, the humans would ask her a few questions she could rebuke, but it wasn't as if she was actively planning sabotage. She had few enemies as well, even disregarding her old creators, who she very much wanted to dismember for their crimes.

Assuming that whoever found her even knew what she was. She—

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

The distant blaring of car horns in traffic from the next street over pierced her thoughts, dragging her back to the present. For all of the things the humans had managed to implement to make their 'homes' a hellscape for her, at least the constant, awful noise kept her in the present, rather than losing herself to her past trauma.

Sure, she could have gone looking for another garage to gather her supplies, but after spending thirty minutes fruitlessly wandering around just to find this one… Well, she wasn't willing to put up with the chances. The submarine had wasted more than enough time just stumbling around blindly, and at least this garage was close enough to the nature reserve to be able to haul valuable tools back…

From her estimates, the trip back to her awaiting cache would take at least an hour as is… an hour where she'd need to be very, very careful about being seen. Quite frankly, extending the trip further seemed like an unnecessary complication, one she felt no urge to humor.

Thus, it seemed like it'd have to be this garage, then. With no other, cleaner options, it seemed that breaking and entering was what she'd need to settle on. It was their own damned faults for being lazy, she reasoned.

Sighing in defeat at having to resort to such base tactics, she stepped forwards, and with a clawed finger, she cut a crescent from the solid wooden door. In a single motion, she had divorced the deadbolt from the door's internal structure, letting her shove it open without even the smallest bit of resistance.

The lock fell out a moment later, being little more than an inch-long bolt loosely hanging from a slot. With that, she strode in, already planning out what exactly she'd loot from this building.

She had little need for parts, since she'd just craft those on-site within her Foundry. No, her focus was instead on both the incredibly complex, as well the incredibly simple.

The first thing she grabbed were the tools: things she could use without any necessary modification at all. These included, but were far from limited to: a welding torch, several canisters of propane, jumper cables, and an entire gallon of engine grease.

She paused as she stared down at the label upon the side of the metal tank. Right, gallons, the stupid Yank measurement system. Well, she didn't quite remember how many liters were in a gallon (and there weren't any conversion labels on the damned container), so she dragged two to the entrance to bring back, just in case.

One of the cardboard boxes just lying around full of spare parts was quickly emptied out, and then filled with the contents of a nearby bookshelf. Sure, land vehicles weren't exactly what she needed information on at the current moment, but the basic principles could surely be adapted. Thrust, engine performance and repair, and aerodynamics could be translated to a nautical field… and besides, she really did want something to read in her spare time.

With the basics sorted and ready for transport, then came the more complex things: the things she wasn't able to bring back with her.

Manipulating the vehicle lift controls, the submarine smirked as she listened to the hydraulic lift hiss. The vehicle atop of the lift—a squat, red thing with its frame nearly touching the bottom of the lift—definitely didn't seem to enjoy the rough handling with its strangely angled wheels, but she had already broken into the garage. By this point she had stopped caring entirely about property damage.

Alas, while it was fun to mess with the lift (and the appearance of the poor car atop of it had shifted from 'partially melted' towards fully 'smashed to pieces'), she was really no closer to understanding the powerful and versatile machinery. Writing up her best guesses as to how the system worked, she shook her head with a light smirk.

Walking back to her awaiting pile of loot to bring back, she spotted the cash register out of the corner of her eye.

Right, even if this shop was a bust, the other stores would want money, right?

Peeling the entire top of the machine open, the spirit stared down at the… ugh, paper currency.

Somehow, she had forgotten about what exactly humans tended to make their money out of… An item made out of paper was very much unlikely to survive the trip back to her domain. Thus, she'd be best off assuming that anything she looted would only be good for a single trip, unless she somehow figured out a way to protect it from the water and elements.

She'd be sure to grab at least a few watertight containers while she was here. It'd make things much easier in the future.

Pouting, she emptied out the strangely-barren cash register and moved to stuff the small wad of bills into…

Wait a moment. Where were her pockets?!?

Why did these pants not have pockets? Her uniform did!

Cursing at human designs once more (she would do better, dammit!), she grabbed one of the heavy tool boxes hanging off of the nearby walls, before tossing the loose wad of cash into the upper section. She hadn't intended to take it before, but guess what? It would serve as a glorified wallet now. The tools inside would likely be destined to be scrapped, but if there was something useful hidden inside of the box… well, more for her, she supposed.

Carefully packing everything together and tethering it all together with a mixture of bungee cords, rope, and chitinous bonding, the spirit glanced down at her work. Confident that it wouldn't fall apart by accident, she mentally patted herself on the back and loaded it all onto a nearby tool cart.

Now, to bring this all back to safety… Preferably without being spotted…

---

After a very, very stressful journey back (One particularly drunk man had followed her for an entire block, saying vaguely disturbing things… There must be something in the water here…), the spirit let loose a sigh of relief as she spotted her awaiting cache. She had marked a specific cluster of fallen trees to serve as her staging ground, and soon enough, her latest spoils were stowed right beside her boilersuit.

Thankfully, the trip back was mostly without any real events… Sure, a few humans had asked her about what she was doing, but it seemed her unwillingness to talk to people had been enough to dissuade them. She had still ensured that no one had followed her, doubling back several times to throw off any would-be pursuers.

The tool cart sadly hadn't survived the trip, having failed in the final sprint. The entire top had snapped in half after its wheels were entirely devoured by the muck.

Strangely, she herself could walk over the muck just fine, without it even buckling under her weight. Dismissing it as just more weirdness, the items were carried the remaining distance by hand.

The toolbox had been emptied of all contents—except for the cash, of course—and had been reassigned to use for carrying anything else she bought during her trip.

It seemed that, a few of the tools it had once contained weren't going to even make it to the trip back. On the positive side however, it appeared that tool-grade steel made for a surprisingly tasty snack. Amusingly, it turned out that even a hardened steel crescent wrench folded before the might of her teeth.

Once she was satisfied with her impromptu break, she rose back up to her feet.

She needed to keep moving. The longer she took, the more likely things would go wrong.

Thus, it was time to return to the city for the next stop—

---

The Submarine sighed in relief. The Hardware Store she had visited had been relatively simple—Find her items upon the shelves, put them in a shopping cart (which she had claimed from on top of a roof of all places), and pay for them with her stolen currency. She let herself relax ever so slightly, and allow the faintest smile to creep across her face. If only everything could always go this easy.

Adding onto her list of obtained supplies were weather coatings, welding rods, drill heads, mechanical tools, vices… everything she'd need to begin upgrading her drones. Really, the item that gave her the most excitement was the pneumatic rivet gun—oh, how this would make welding plates so, so much nicer. Rivets were something she could replicate in her sleep, and considering to the best of her knowledge she couldn't sleep, that only meant good things, right?

The only obvious problem was one she could plainly hear, off in the distance. Circling about without aim or direction.

Sirens.

Not too far away, she could hear the low, rhythmic wail of police sirens. If her estimates and very, very unskilled attempts at triangulation were correct, they were coming from about the same location as her earlier break-in.

Never mind that it was already several hours after her visit. Seriously, just how useless were these humans—

She grit her teeth and choked down her metaphorical bile. Their incompetence was her strength. She merely needed to hold on a bit longer and stay under the radar… She had already accomplished a majority of her mandatory goals, so it wouldn't be too long…

Nodding to herself, she began to push the shopping cart faster. She needed to get out of the city again to drop these items off—only about five stops remained on her list, and they were all small stops, too.

Perhaps she should try a multi-store next? It'd save her some time and visits…

---

Madness.

Madness, and evil.

The submarine spirit gasped as she recovered her wits. She leaned against a wall, trying ever so desperately to stitch back her fractured sanity once more.

The store—no, the place of utter madness and degeneracy she had walked into—had been like any other from the outside. Its harmless outer shell was little more than just a large, boxy, boring looking store. The size of the building, alongside of the sheer variety of items she had witnessed leaving the store had more than confirmed the location as an 'everything' store and thus would be an efficient location to cross off several tasks from her list at once.

She should have been paying more attention to the people, however. She should have noticed the belligerent men fighting bare-chested in the parking lot, the woman inhaling cocaine off of a gift card from her seat within her beaten and filthy vehicle, the homeless man drinking alcohol out of a paper bag as they sat atop of the roof in heavily soiled clothes—

She had entered and found herself utterly unprepared. Yet, to her ever growing horror, no amount of preparation could have possibly prepared her. She had stepped inside the maw of madness, searching for supplies, expecting a step towards progress…

The screeching. The horrible, horrible screaming, the hatred, the smells… The crowds of unwashed, depraved vultures, scrabbling over supplies like so much carrion, and smelling hardly any better. The humans in matching, blue uniforms, watching it all happen with glazed, dead looks in their eyes, the eyes of those who had seen the darkness, witnessed it stare back, and then put a cigarette out in its eye, simply because they weren't paid enough to care.

Truly, Man was the greatest monster of all. She'd just been frozen for several moments as she felt her world unravel around herself…

Then the damned lights flickered, and she decided she had had enough.

All in all, she had lasted only a minute and a half before she had fled to the exit, heedless of any sort of boon she would have obtained. Prices be damned, every moment she spent there, she felt a portion of her soul being ripped away.

And now she stood, on a street a few buildings away, catching her breath and trying to clear the images that had burned themselves into her eyes.

A part of her recognised the nest as the truest form of human corruption imaginable. She wished to lash out, to strike down the sickening examples of humanity's worst, those Abominations wrapped in human flesh… She could imagine herself purging and cleansing the area, burning the building to the ground, destroying it all… A part of her that screamed for violence, to abandon her stealth mission and make an example out of these fools.

That traitorous part was pinned down, anchored, anesthetized and restrained by twin, opposing and far more logical points of contention.

To enact vengeance upon that building, she'd A: need to actively return to the place… And B: she'd need to touch those that she intended to slay. And she frankly feared that their madness was not only contagious, but also terminal.

The mere thought of either filled her with more than enough revulsion to flatten her burning, indignant rage under a million tonnes of pressure.

Shakily, she stared at the building, its sole label being merely its name and its awful yellow asterisk atop of a blue background.

What sort of den of evil had she experienced? One which humanity would willingly expose itself to no less?!? No amount of convenience was worth that. Never, ever again.

She shuddered. So much for getting multiple items in the same place… She'd go elsewhere. Anywhere, anywhere else. She'd even put up with taking a bit longer, and maybe take another break somewhere to try to calm herself down.

Crossing the entry off on her list violently enough to bleed into the paper below (she could do that?), she willed herself up. That was a waste of time—and the sirens were coming even closer, continuing their blind patrol of the city. Surely, they were investigating her behavior, and would converge soon.

She just had to keep going. A shark had to keep swimming, lest it suffocate.

---

Compared to the other places she had visited, the library was mostly empty. With far fewer people within it, the interior of this building was quiet, serene, and almost entirely devoid of humans.

Her shopping cart wouldn't fit through the entrance (and frankly, it was beginning to fall apart after its several trips through the nature reserve), so it was left behind, meaning she'd make do with just her far, far more maneuverable toolbox instead. That, or she'd take multiple trips to bring it all outside.

Stepping inside, she awkwardly glanced at the thousands upon thousands of books littering the shelves. At a glance, she could tell that trying to navigate the contents blindly would take far too long… surely, there'd be a directory somewhere easily accessible, right?

She paused, then turned ninety degrees to her right. A blindingly obvious sign labeled 'Book Search' hung over a computer console of some kind.

Well, that was easy.

As she pushed the offered and simplistic buttons and began her search, she can't help but marvel at it all. This computer was faster than anything she had possessed in the past, and here it was, wasted on something so simple…

In a building that she frankly felt like the average Florida citizen had no reason, let alone patience, to ever enter. She wasn't willing to go so far as to declare the entire city as being full of idiots just yet, but certainly she hadn't had many points on the contrary revealed to her just yet.

She debated just taking the thing… before huffing and shaking her head. Most likely, this device was custom-built for its intended purpose, and more likely than not she'd break it when trying to modify it to her own needs. She'd leave it here, then.

That sobering note did little to curb her interest in the device, however. Alas, advanced computing was so far away from her own areas of knowledge that it very well might've been futuristic technology in of itself… So after a bit of internal struggle, she ended up shoving her desire to the side in favor of things she could reasonably expect to achieve.

Following the incredibly user-friendly search list, the submarine began to search through the list of subjects—her goals were mostly towards obtaining information about military naval vessels, advanced mechanical design, and artillery. Unfortunately, more than a few of the books were labeled as 'in-library usage only'... especially the ones regarding weaponry designs.

At least she found a few books that were tangentially related to what she wanted, which with a bit of extrapolation could potentially be translated into something useful.

Pleasure craft repair (easily convertible into ultra-light warship construction, with only a bit of thought), handheld weapon maintenance (The ship guns she was working with were tiny, after all)... she had even found a book about the American's view of the Cold War… which hopefully would help her fully place where she was, and how long it had been since she had sunk.

There wasn't even the faintest illusion that anything here would be the silver bullet solutions to her problems, of course. A majority of these books were meant to be understood by the general populace, being little more than a starting point. More in-depth books would require accessing colleges or universities… places she wouldn't even delude herself into believing she could sneak into. Still, even a single skipped step towards understanding these topics would make a great difference in the long run.

With her needs fulfilled, she had turned towards fiction for a few greedy choices of her own. There was an entire section on science fiction books, and after a brief bit of thought, she had further refined her search towards 'hard' science fiction.

As great as having actual books to scour for knowledge was, she'd need to have at least some entertainment, after all… And from the attached reviews function, apparently "The Martian" was highly recommended…

Double-checking and finalizing her list of codes, the submarine nodded to herself and exited out of the search menu. She had plenty of books to collect, after all.

---

Already, she was straining under the weight of the container within her grasp. Strong as she was, the weight of the collected books had quickly reached absurd levels. If she were to guess, the weight she was holding would easily be enough to crush the average mortal man.

Not even two thirds of the way through, her toolbox had entirely filled, forcing her to improvise. She needed a larger container to carry it all… preferably one that didn't weigh as much as her current one did. Thankfully, she had the tools on-hand to do such a thing.

Stealthily dragging her toolbox to a hidden corner of the library, she set it down, emptying out the contents. With a grin, and a final check around to ensure she was not being watched, the spirit began their field modifications.

With the toolbox's frame as her guide, the solid metal box was skeletonized, widened and lengthened into a longer bag, made entirely from the chitin composite. The submarine smirked as she broke off one of the teeth upon it—at a glance, it looked no different than any of the other luxury bags she had seen that day… and likely was sturdy enough to resist direct gunfire. Hopefully, anyone who saw it would just assume it was a tacky, black snakeskin bag… and not whatever the heck it actually was.

All in all, she had reduced its overall weight by nearly four fifths. Soon enough, all eighty-something books were safely stored within.

She really should have made the modification to the bag sooner… but then again, she hadn't had the need before. She'd definitely give the chitin composite more consideration in the future though.

With everything said and done, the disguised submarine awkwardly stood before the checkout counter, facing an old woman with a pair of circular glasses. The woman's old, wrinkled face was scrunched up in concentration, likely trying to match the undercover spirit to a face that she knew. Giving up, the submarine sighed, and began to tap away at the keys of her workstation.

"Do you'se have yer library card, young lady?" asked the Librarian, clacking and clicking of keys already picking up in pace. They didn't even bother turning to face her, instead remaining glued upon the screen.

"Errr… No?" replied the submarine, blinking awkwardly.

The librarian sighed, opening up another tab. "Y'need one? 'S not too expensive, just a monthly fee."

A library card would need personal information—information she didn't have.

The spirit just sighed, and shook her head. "Can I just buy them? I don't plan on sticking along too long." she ventured, hoping to just get this over and done with.

"Sure, hun. Can'ya put the books you wanna buy on the counter?" The librarian nods to herself. "Sommat to remember—not all'o them are fer sale, y'know how it goes."

As gently as the disguised ship could muster, she lifted the bag… and placed it atop of the counter with a muffled thud.

The librarian nodded at first, as the books began to be unloaded. Accepting each book in turn, she began to sort them into three piles…

By the twentieth book, they were confused. By the fortieth, they were concerned.

By the sixtieth…

"Sweet baby Jesus above…" whispered the librarian, trying and failing to stare into the bag with an almost reverent tone. "How many didja say this was? How'd you even fit all of them in there?"

There was an awkward pause, as the submarine continued to squirm under the old woman's gaze.

"Hun, this is a third'o the library—" scoffed the elderly librarian, gesturing at the piles of books, each of which were nearly as tall as the counter itself.

The ship spirit interjected quickly, "No it isn't! There's far more books on the shelves!"

"It's a fourth'o the library then, an' moren' half of these ain't for sale." snarks the librarian, pointing at the two larger piles. "You's need a card to borrow these ones, an' these ones aren't for sale or borrowin'."

Unable to properly respond, the spirit merely stared dead ahead at the books piled high… Panic was once more beginning to rise within her. She couldn't put these back—she needed these books! Everything went quiet as she desperately searched for a solution, drowning out even the constant buzzing of the countless biting flies that infested this damned, awful city.

She could still hear the sirens in the distance, wandering around without direction. The disguised ship shivered again—she didn't have time for this. She was wasting it, she was wasting it all…

Mechanically, she tossed her wad of bills upon the counter, before quickly beginning to shovel the piled books back into the bag.

She swore she could faintly make out a yell of frustration and dismay as she re-packaged a majority of the books. She didn't care. It was just an old woman. Surely, she could just walk away, and it'd be unlikely they could even stop her.

A deeply uncomfortable feeling surged through the submarine as a few of her systems malfunctioned, heralded by a loud crack of something electrical failing nearby. Sputtering slightly, she focused back on the present… to find a very confused-looking librarian holding a blackened cattle prod.

Grabbing the now-full bag, the spirit turned to flee—

Ca-CHAK

Glancing back slowly over her shoulder, she spotted the loaded double-barrel shotgun pointed right at her.

"You's better be putting those all back, missy." stated the Librarian, flat and even in tone. Her rounded glasses shone in the light menacingly. "Don't play around none you hear? I will shootcha if you try any funny business! I dunno what kinda crazy under-armor you've got on ya to short out a prod, but—"

Where did she even store that gun?! Was it under the counter—it must've been. The librarian wasn't even the first random human she had seen hefting a heavy weapon on her trip today…

Feigning a gulp, the Submarine nodded slowly. She lowered her arms, waiting for the gun to be lowered… before sprinting off, full speed.

BANG

She didn't know whether the old woman was bluffing, or if they were simply just a poor shot. EIther way, rather than being obliterated by a spray of buckshot, or even worse, a slug… she merely felt a brutal sting upon the back of her knee as something scraped against it. Feeling more like the sting of a jellyfish, or a slight scratch upon her hull than any real, concerning damage, she didn't let it slow her down any.

Either way, with the sound of a gun ringing out in the air, it'd only be a matter of time before someone came to investigate. Not helping at all was the sound of a few too-sensitive house alarms, which had decided to chime in at the worst possible moment.

She raised a hand to salute her shopping cart as she fled to safety. It had served her well, but sadly she didn't have time to save it.

Unfortunately, the library was far too deep into the mainland to be an easy sprint to safety. A quick switch to her long ranged lenses confirmed it: the flashing lights of the human law enforcement were approaching on the main roads as well.

Boxed in by the rigid, parallel structure of the human settlement, there wasn't a safe direction to flee, besides further inland, extending the trip further and putting herself even more at risk.

Unless…

Glancing downwards, she spotted a circular manhole cover. The entrance to the sewer.

She was actually considering this. Did she truly have such little self-respect?

Well… It was either this, or let herself be captured…

Was she sure that she didn't wish to be captured instead?

BANG—CLANG!

Again, the double barrel shotgun barked out behind her, and again, the feeling of a hornet sting emanated from the back of her other leg as the non-lethal round glanced off. She could hear her jeans tearing, shredding the cheap, stolen clothing…

Sooner or later, they'd actually land a direct shot, and she'd be in a ton of trouble. Without any real other options remaining, the submarine reached down, and speared the manhole cover with a bladed finger, before lifting it up and hopping in.

The sirens became muted as the manifested ship continued below the surface of the road—… Okay, so this was just a slightly grosser version of what she usually did, this wasn't so bad. It appeared that it was mostly just meant for dealing with excessive rain overflow—

And that was when the first sewer gator jumped her.

---

The shores were an awful, horrible, depraved place, and she wanted no part of it.

The submarine breathed in and out… Her boots were stained with gator blood, and for the first time in quite a while, her claws felt like they needed to be sharpened.

The damned beasts were insatiable—The first one tried to take a nasty bite out of her leg, but thankfully did not do more than remove her exterior layer of chitin and scrape up the hull below. She had screamed in terror and quite frankly had continued to scream as she had grabbed the beast by the midsection and beaten it to death against a nearby wall.

The second one had jumped her not too long afterwards, likely scenting blood, but entirely unaware that the blood was of one of their kin. It had held up remarkably well, but soon enough it joined the first, floating upside down in the water.

Yet, at last, a literal light awaited her at the end of the tunnel, just awaiting to embrace her.

The unmistakable shine of natural light shone through a metal grate, held in place by an elaborate and sturdy metal padlock. Sighing in relief, the ship spirit set down her container full of books, before taking a step back. With only a little bit of a running start, she divorced the entire grating from the tunnel's exit, sending the crumpled metal shooting off into the distance. The spirit barely registered the splash as gravity had firmly asserted itself on the mangled cover again, firmly focused on escaping this utter hell once and for all!

Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned to pick up her bag—just in time to be jumped by the third gator, who was apparently unwilling to let her leave without testing her patience one final time. She almost respected the stupid things… If only they would just leave her alone!

This trip had been an absolute nightmare from start to finish—but at the very least, she had accomplished everything she had needed to get done. Hopefully, she'd not need to return any time soon. She'd had her fill of interacting with humanity for the next year, if not more. Ideally, she'd never need to return, ever again…

But that was her being far too optimistic. More likely than not, she would need to return… and she most certainly was not looking forward to doing so.

But for now, all that remained was to return back to the nature reserve, seal her items up, and then begin transporting them back to safety.

She glanced down at her bag, frowning. Perhaps she'd spend a bit of time when she got back, trying to make sense of re-sealable waterproof containers. Being able to build such a thing out in the field would make stashing future loot far, far easier, while at the same time reducing the amount of items she'd need to transport into the operation zone.

For now though, she'd need to stash her haul, and come back with a properly sealed vessel. The last thing she wanted was to ruin her hard-earned literature, this close to the finish line.

She let loose a sigh of exuberant relief as she welded the bag shut, and hid it amongst the nearby bushes. She was finally done.

Stepping out onto the beach, and wiping her bloodied shoes onto the sand below, the submarine glanced back towards the city of Miami, back towards the sirens still ringing out, searching for her.

"Screw off, humans." The completely done submarine spirit stated. She stepped out into the awaiting surf, until she was up to her chest's height. "You all can sink for all I care."

And with that, the submarine disappeared below, with nary a splash in the water to signify her passing.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

The raid never should have happened.

Grumbling to herself, USS Johnston continued her nighttime patrol.

Somehow, despite all odds, one of the Abyssals had managed to sneak past their blockade, striking deep into the heart of their supply lines.

It had been fortunate that they had only taken out a supply freighter, rather than something more important. Nothing that couldn't be replaced, but still a great loss - the food had been en-route to provide relief to Nova Scotia.

The Canadian province had been hit hard by an Abyssal incursion only a few days ago, and while they had easily repelled the invaders, more than enough important services were knocked out, justifying an emergency care package delivery.

A care package that never arrived. It had been struck down from afar by torpedoes, launched from undetected Abyssal Submarines.

Damn Abyssal parasites, always showing up when they weren't wanted.

That was the reason why she was here - to do a quick patrol around, and ensure that there was no more Abyssal activity in the area. Unfortunately, they had been getting incredibly strange signals from the area recently - stuff they couldn't explain.

Hopefully, having a pair of eyes taking a closer look at it would clear up some of the confusion.

It was obvious why she was chosen - she had the best ASW suite out of her and her sisters, and thus she was the safest to patrol alone. If anything larger than a cruiser showed up, well… the landmass was right there, only a few miles away. She could just leg it, and get to safety.

While she would've appreciated an escort, sadly forces were thin. There were just too many Abyssals about, hitting everywhere at once… so a single Destroyer as a patrol was all they could spare.

Johnston grumbled to herself once more. Well, at least it was only the Gulf. While the Panama Canal was a clusterfuck at the best of times, the rest of the area was far, far more peaceful than the open ocean. The admirals had pointed out the pattern quite easily: The Gulf was not a major theater of the Second World war. Thus, there were relatively few WWII era ships sunk here.

Less ships sunk, meant less Abyssals floating around.

At least, that was the theory. In practice, there were definitely monsters lurking about. The most notable one being the "Gulf Raider Princess", who was supposedly directing the assaults, though they had never actually seen the Princess in action.

Likely a coward, used to relying on others to do its grunt work.

"П-привет?"

Immediately, Johnston shook herself out of her musings as she fell back into routine. "This is USS Johnston, serving as a patrol boat! I am investigating Abyssal activity in the area! Identify yourself!"

Silence. No response, on any channel, encoded or otherwise.

Nearly immediately, Johnston's pulse began to race - who, or what would contact her out of the blue like this? Nothing was showing up on radar, and her sonar -

No pings on the sonar. Nothing matching any Abyssal class or type she'd ever heard of, at least. If there was something in the water, she'd know.

Even narrowing it down even further to what could be an Abyssal - she saw no bulges or uneven shapes that'd signify torpedoes or weaponry mounts - just the generic, blobby shapes of sea life in the distance.

To go past that, and focus even further - well, she'd start picking up every piece of driftwood within a half-mile of her position. Too much information, too much to be useful. Even worse, she'd be shining a beacon out into the open ocean - and that never ended well.

A feeling of unease and fear began to rise up within the Shipgirl. Perhaps she was just being pranked?

"Привет?" repeated the voice, crisp and clear. It sounded closer, too.

Perhaps… She was being contacted by someone without a functioning radio? No, if that were the case, then she'd have picked something up on sonar. Even Scamp couldn't hide from her.

Carefully glancing about, the Shipgirl gulped. "This isn't funny! I wasn't assigned an escort - which nation sent you?!?"

Already, the situation was strange - too strange. Either she was hearing things, an already bad, bad sign… or something far, far worse was going on.

There was a pause, and a cough, before the same voice repeated itself, possessing the same tone as before, but with an unidentifiable accent to their words. "Hello!" it called out, "Sorry, force of habit, who are you?"

Johnston sighed in relief. So it wasn't some monster - it was just a foreign shipgirl… somewhere. With luck, a newly summoned Kanmusu, though in her heart she truly doubted it. She trusted her gut, and her gut told her that something was horribly wrong here.

"I don't know why you aren't answering the radio, but fine. I'm USS Johnston. I'm out here on patrol. Where are you?"

The pressure began to build in Johnston's head - so once more, she activated her sonar - no hits, no matches. Nothing on radar. Nothing on the radio. Her devices and crew reported the same: it was just her and the ocean, communicating with seemingly nothing.

"I-I'm so glad I'm not the only one out here!" replied the voice, full of emotion, drawing closer and closer with every word, "There's nothing out her ex- ex- ex- ex- ex-"

It stopped, mid-sentence, glitching and repeating itself in that same exact tone, like a device caught in an error. She had heard something like this before, when her sisters had dropped the CD player so graciously donated to them by the Admiral. They had struggled for a whole five minutes to make the awful noise stop.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. The air was becoming thick, and a fog descending. Already, vision had dropped to sixty feet, then thirty…

"All crew! Muster Stations!" screamed Johnston, whirling around, expecting a fight. Where was it? Where was this thing?

In the fog, a crackling, warbling, awful screech echoed out, one of pain, and madness in equal strength, rising and falling at a fervent pitch. It wasn't laughter - she would have preferred that - Abyssals laughed like maniacs all the time, and it would've at least been expected. No, this was just noise, without sense or reason. It was drawing closer… But she couldn't see it, not with this damned fog! She could barely see her own guns!

She swore she could see things moving in the fog too - twisting, horrible shapes - but again, radar detected nothing. She ignored them, easily tuning out the swirling madness erupting around her, brushing against her will like waves battering a coastline. Some of her greener crew weren't so lucky, and keeled over, clutching their hearts. Sadly, she didn't have time to investigate - not now. She was no new ship - it'd take far, far worse to scare her.

All she could do was listen, hoping to hear its guns fire before it was too late. A single shot from anything up to a battleship's main gun wouldn't be able to end her - she had survived far, far worse before. Even a torpedo, while painful, wouldn't take her down.

Closer, and closer, it came… before finally, she heard it surface, a near silent splash behind herself.

Whirling around, guns ready to defend herself-

She could only spot it for half a moment before her life ended.

Glowing green (green! Not blue, not red, not gold) eyes, devoid of malice, devoid of intelligence, devoid of anything. Just yawning, empty portals to madness embedded into a humanoid face.

It wasn't guns that killed her - she had been expecting those, and was prepared to dodge and fire back.

Guns, for all of their speed, required range, and range gave time to avoid them.

What killed her instead were vicious claws, swung at her from mere feet away.

She felt them impact with the sound of shearing metal, and then nothingness.

---

She awoke, four days later in the center of a summoning circle, bawling and clutching her neck. They had brought her back - she knew they would, she trusted them.

But even the usually-unwelcome numbness of sinking and resurrection did little to appease her racing pulse.

She could remember little of what had happened to her, save for those empty, abominable, green eyes. A single detail, so crisp and clear, amidst the haze of everything else.

She would make a full recovery over time - but for those following weeks…

Rumors would fly of a strange new Abyssal haunting the Bermuda Triangle.

One which seemingly broke every rule of what they thought they truly knew.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

By god, sometimes he despised Florida.

But a few weeks ago, Rear-Admiral Samson would have believed his posting to be little more than a vacation from the horrors of the Abyssal War. Brilliant sun, a beautiful climate, and slower than the chaos of other locations… too bad it had all quickly become ruined by the recent spur of bizarre bullshit that had erupted within his area of control.

He was far from the highest man on the chain of command—instead, he was merely in charge of a small section of the south-eastern coast, keeping an eye on the water for anything that might be suspicious, or any sign of bad things to come. The rest of the time, he was on petty cleanup duty.

Sometimes, that'd take the form of trying to talk down the determined captain of a fishing boat, desperate to seek profit or thrills, regardless of the fact that there were literal demons sailing around off the coast, ready and willing to kill at a moment's notice. Other times, it'd take the form of just making sure that the military funds the nearby bases were getting for the war effort were going towards actually productive ends, rather than a portion of it 'going missing' to pay for twelve crates of imported beer.

Samson groaned as he remembered how much of a pain resolving that particular incident was. With global trade having taken a metaphorical (and oftentimes literal) torpedo in recent years… Well, it wasn't just beer that had ballooned in price.

All in all, the War had been going on now for about nine months, give or take a few weeks. Needless to say, the first few, awful weeks had been more than enough to completely halt global trade. It was only recently that things were beginning to get moving again. Needless to say, prices wouldn't be going back down for a long, long time.

Before the world went to hell, he was a simple pencil-pusher. His thing was budgeting and resource allocation—he never expected that the first wave of Abyssal terror would wipe out a majority of the command structure, leaving him as one of the most qualified NCOs of the area.

Everyone above him had already been re-assigned to more pressing and dangerous sectors of the coast, leaving him with one of the more 'calm' sections to watch over. He had been offered the option of becoming a task force commander, but had turned the offer down in favor of something he was more used to.

Florida (and by extension most of the Gulf) were considered mostly safe from the bulk of the Abyssal incursion. Sure, the canal was an utter hellscape, but it was exceedingly rare that any of the pale bastards would veer far enough south to actually enter the Gulf from the east.

At worst, it'd be a straggler or two. He'd personally seen a few of the toothy monsters that equated to a destroyer float past their defenses, but almost never anything that they couldn't ward away or pound to paste with coastal emplacements alone.

It was a cold in a boiling sea of hostility, a blind spot that the horrifying creatures seemed to not care for. It had been quiet enough that Samson had even allowed himself to relax a bit, and enjoy the beautiful climate for once.

But of course, things had gone south so very quickly.

Groaning and shaking his head, Samson flipped over the top page of the stack of papers practically coating his polished mahogany desk.

None of these reports detailed the seas. Instead, these were all interior incidents, detailing the depravity and insanity that the average Florida resident seemed to delight in.

Normally, he'd not be the one to sift through this sort of thing, as it would not be relevant to the ongoing Abyssal War.

He grumbled as he glanced to the side, at the nearly-empty folder beside the reports, one simply and cleanly labeled "Unidentified Saboteur Princess". The working name for the Abyssal which had apparently intruded onto dry land. All in all, it meant that now he had to not only sift through the countless oceanic reports, but the landbound ones too.

Originally, this new 'Princess's' (Oh how he hated the naming scheme the higher-ups had decided upon) activity had been credited to a far more active and directly hostile 'Gulf Raider Princess', but one of his subordinates had recognised a fundamental difference between the doctrines of the two inhuman monsters. Every single recorded instance of the Gulf Raider's activity had them fighting like a guerilla trapped behind enemy lines, with every action set to bleed the States for as many resources as physically possible.

The Saboteur Princess on the other hand was a lurking and marauding ghost which had never actually been fought, identified, or even properly spotted by a human member of their forces. Their fleet composition and strength were entirely unknown, as were their combat doctrine, though the Rear-Admiral was certain that they were up to no good.

Unfortunately, there were simply too many witnesses of potential Abyssal Activity within the city of Miami to discount.

His secretary had arrived with a near wagon full of reports to sort through, and when he had shown the gall to be surprised at the sheer quantity of it all, the prim and proper woman had just laughed at him. To his horror, she had already done an initial pass through the paperwork: all of this was after the initial winnowing of the countless reports which were 100% confirmed to not be Abyssal activity.

Once again, the Sunshine Law made its presence fully known. The freedom of press was excellent for gathering information… Once he had removed the massive, unholy amount of dreck that was inevitably packaged in with it.

Groaning in defeat, he buckled down, and began to flip through it all, cursing his lack of luck as he went.

From reports of an elderly gentleman claiming he could detect Abyssal presence through his aching joints (Archived, stamped to investigate just in case), to reports of a terrifying creature chasing a man through the streets (Confirmed through another source to be the victim's own dog carrying a stick: the owner had consumed illicit substances and had gone through a bad trip), to even a report of a veteran going temporarily stark, raving mad, going on and on about the 'Fog being hungry' (He had been calmed by his caretaker, but retained no memories of the incident)

Samson sighed, moving yet another report to the steadily growing 'unconfirmed' pile. Not a single one of the incidents were anything close to real proof, and it was beginning to drive him crazy, spinning his wheels going nowhere. With the near-solid screen of bullshit and mischief that inundated this state, it was slow going getting anywhere. He was deep within the den of the elusive Florida Men, and their bizarre activity provided the perfect smokescreen for inhuman infiltrators.

He continued to sort, grumbling to himself as the 'unconfirmed' file continued to grow taller and taller, while the actual Princess's folder remained nearly barren… Without anything concrete, what on earth was he to show his superiors? It wasn't as if he could simply hold up the huge folder of things that weren't an issue—he'd lose all of his credibility!

While he'd love to say that it was altruism alone that was driving him forwards, he knew full well he was a vain man. Still, it was pride that kept him getting up in the morning, and so it was pride that kept him flipping through the countless, useless papers.

Breathing out slowly, he grimaced as he stared down at the report that had initiated this increased operational scrutiny.

The Cable Corruption Incident.

Oh how that had blown up in his face. A repair crew dispatched to double check a potential off-shore break in their power lines had phoned into their bosses, frantic and terrified. That call had in turn been elevated to those boss's superiors… until finally, it reached his office, four steps up.

The Abyssals had done something to the power cable, judging by the way the repair crew had described the cable. Pictures he had received showed a shiny, fleshy-looking corruption spilling out from the cable's interior, spreading up and down the cable like a hungry mold.

Once he had been actually brought up to speed as to what the hell he was looking at, he had gone with a snap decision. Blow the crap out of it, before it could spread.

Unfortunately, he wasn't told where the cable was, or just how important it was… and thus accidentally caused another blackout, this one bigger than the first.

From what he had been later told, Brazil's east coast had gone dark again… as well as a good portion of Miami, too. Bermuda was probably also affected, but if any with two legs and a soul was still alive out there, power was probably the last of their concerns. As far as most people were concerned, the Abyssals had scoured all human life from the area months ago.

Needless to say, the loss of power had immediately been reported to his superiors, going right over his head.

Said superiors had then proceeded to lose their goddamn minds.

He had received a dressing down… at least until he had finally been able to get his own damn words in, and communicate the situation.

He hadn't gotten an apology or anything else: Instead he had to sit back and listen to the big heads bicker and frantically try to decide what to do. Several tried to justify the complete severance of all undersea lines, be they power or communication. Thankfully, cooler heads had quickly spoken up that doing something so fundamentally stupid would potentially leave the states vulnerable to potential sneak attacks. Never mind that the first group pointed out that compromised lines could also lead to sneak attacks…

In the end, the compromise was pretty simple. The cables that were located elsewhere could remain, but would be put under close observation. He was in the wrong for his actions, not because they made the wrong decision, oh no, but because he hadn't elevated the issue before acting. In the meantime, communications would switch to a new encryption, just to be safe.

All in all, it wasn't enough of a screw-up for an actual demerit, but his old jackass of a bunkmate had definitely looked about ready to let a laugh slip as the meeting drew to a close.

Now that it was all said and done, he wasn't entirely certain that the whole incident wasn't a fluke or a misdirection meant to make them all waste time, especially since it was a power line that was affected, not a comms line. Double so since the damned thing still apparently worked, before the disposal team was called in to destroy it.

Samson sighed, and placed it in the 'confirmed' folder, joining two others in a very exclusive group.

And thus came the problem.

This particular abomination against god never seemed to take direct action, only ever threatening or posturing to do so. It was the terrifying circling of a predator closing in on prey, waiting for the victim to lose their nerve and turn their backs to die. Again and again, they tested their defenses and procedures from angles that the Admiralty hadn't even considered before, revealing more and more holes within what had once been considered a 'good enough' system of protection for the American people. Even worse, the holes were either too complicated or too expensive to properly patch in any reasonable amount of time.

Like the first report he had put into the Princess's file: a patrolling vessel had noticed one of the sewer exits facing the ocean had been breached, seemingly from within. The heavy mesh grate, crumpled and dented, had been found after only a small amount of effort, abandoned to rust in the shallows nearby.

Forensics had shown that the metal grate had been dislodged from within, but he had still ordered a dead man's switch installed on the underside of the pipe, just in case. While it was still nearly impossible to set up a functioning camera to catch the monsters, it was child's play to make a cheap device that would break in their presence. They'd just need to check in on it occasionally. If the thing was fried, it meant that the monsters were using the pipe as an entry point.

And wasn't that a terrifying thing to think about? What if more of the Abyssals were lurking, just barely below the city streets?

Assuming the absolute worst, there could be any number of the abominations lurking. Perhaps they were already infiltrating in, preparing to pop out and do whatever vile mission to which they were assigned, all to further the downfall of humankind.

God, he missed the days when it was considered an uncommon horror to have to disarm a crackhead with an assault rifle. How callous had he become, when he was longing for the days when a mere single-digit casualty list was something sane and reasonable to wish for?

He continued to flip through the reports, until he came to a stop at yet another hit.

At around noon two days ago, there had been a momentary blackout—likely some kind of anti-technology weaponry system, which had caused a fifteen second latency on all television stations, as well as delaying the buses by several minutes. By triangulating the area of effect, the origin of the pulse had been the parking lot of a Wal-Mart of all places…

It had all slipped under the radar at the time, because seriously, why would they take complaints about television delays as the signs of a potential weapon? And the buses were always late, anyway.

Once again, even if the supposed terror weapon was pathetic and easily ignorable, it was still an attack from an entirely unknown source. Sighing, Samson debated sliding it into the Princess's file, confirmation be damned… before just groaning and putting it to the side.

Screw it, he'd make a damned "Probably Maybe" folder. It wasn't his damned fault that this Princess was an asshole.

Warily, he glanced down, lifting a report over six times the thickness of the others—thankfully, it was a summary, and not something he'd need to take immediate action about.

The summary was pretty simple: Break-ins across Miami were on the rise. Honestly, this kind of behavior was almost expected by this point: with wartime tensions hitting an all-time high, why wouldn't the people go a bit crazy? At least they weren't rioting yet, but the price hikes were beginning to make the populace antsy… and with that always came an increase in thievery. Between everyone packing more and more heat these days (not like conventional firearms did a damned thing to the Abyssals, that had been confirmed time after time) and the constant influx of refugees fleeing god-knows-where, the social contract was beginning to break down.

However, a few of the listed incidents had been highlighted by Samson's secretary. The most concerning of the bunch was a raid of a public library, in which over a thousand dollars worth of rare and technical books were stolen. The librarian, an old, grizzled woman who had been in Vietnam, reported that a tall, pale woman had walked into the library carrying a toolbox. They had browsed the selection of books for several minutes, before attempting to purchase a significant amount of the library's selection.

Topics the thief had tried to purchase had included books on chemistry, warfare, and industrial processes: the librarian had simply assumed that they intended to make drugs.

When the visitor had tried to pull a runner, the woman had pulled out her underloaded home defense shotgun as a deterrent. The criminal had quickly chosen to disengage, feigning a surrender just long enough to make an opportunity for themselves to flee.

The shotgun had been loaded with beanbag rounds, and the old soldier behind the barrel had been more than ready to call the thief's bluff and try to save their library from huge financial loss.

Apparently, the librarian had landed both shots—one on the fleeing criminal's lower body, and the other on their right leg. From her own statements, the librarian had confirmed that even with her reduced powder loads, either shot should've been enough to drop a fully grown man.

However, she swore she heard the sound of metal on metal when the bullets impacted… and the bean bag rounds had ruptured on impact, the lead shot within fully ballooned out.

Somehow, some way, they had hit a hard target.

Whatever an Abyssal might have for robbing a library—and it was almost certainly an Abyssal, unless one of their own damned Shipgirls had gone rogue—the police were unable to capture them. They had disappeared from sight the moment the librarian had looked away to load in another round.

Samson additionally marked down two more thefts of a nearby garage and shipyard as additional potential Abyssal saboteurs (though both had merely stolen tools and money as well as smashed things up… why would they even bother taking the money?) but in the end, it all was just hopeless, wasn't it?

"Sir, you have a visitor who is here for a meeting. One USS Johnston." spoke the staticky voice of his secretary through the intercom, more than damned aware there was no way he'd have been able to get through everything yet.

Sighing, and stepping back from the jumble of confusing, useless papers scattered before him, the admiral tapped his microphone's button. "Send them in, Sharla."

Slowly, the door behind him opened, revealing a brown haired woman looking around nervously. Were he not used to this madness by now, he'd seriously doubt that the far-too-young-to-be-fighting young woman before him was who she said she was. Alas, he had grown used to the bizarre and uncomfortable world he now lived within.

"Hi, uh… Admiral, you wished to see me?" asked the warship in human form, nervously looking about. Samson rolled his eyes, unsure whether he should offer her a seat, or something more sturdy.

He had overseen the construction of ships like 'her' during his time as a petty officer. It was still nearly impossible for him to collate the massive pile of resources that went into every single ship with the 'girls' that made up America's current main line of defense, especially when a good portion of them looked like this. Really, how was he supposed to treat a living weapon like this? Mentally, he had shoved them into the category of being a part of some sort of super soldier program.

It wasn't made any better by their… other quirks. For not only was the small, young-teen looking girl before her the personification of a thousand-ton warpship, but she was the only known witness to the Saboteur Princess.

For a given definition of survivor, at least. They had 'resummoned' her, a few days after she had sunk…

It rubbed him the wrong way, all of it did. He had signed off the resources that had been allocated to bring 'her' back, absolutely none of which were supposed to go into a human being. Yet still, she was back from the dead, seemingly immortal…

His old values were at war with the whole practice, in all honesty. On one side, there was the immortal warrior, doomed to fight and die and be brought back and die again… But on the other hand, they looked young enough to be his own daughter.

"I trust that you are recovering from your ordeal?" He offered, gesturing for the animated destroyer to take a seat in a plastic chair nearby. Conservation of mass be damned, the brown haired warship took a seat without even a hint of complaint from the dinky, dollar-store chair.

"B-barely." was the weak reply, as the girl glanced downwards. "I am ready for redeployment, but I cannot lie that I am not… rattled, by the experience. I've trained my crew to be faster with loading and targeting in close range encounters b-b—"

He hated to be the one to cut her off, but her current distressed mental state was not the reason why they were having this meeting. Especially not when he didn't agree with her fighting at all.

"Yes, yes. That is good to hear." he noted, gesturing at the papers. "Unfortunately, we're on a tight schedule, and I want this done now, rather than later."

"Y-yes sir!" snapped the destroyer, hastily returning a salute.

Samson sighed, pulling out a clean sheet of paper and a clipboard. "What do you know about the Abyssal that sank you?"

Nearly immediately, the light in the destroyer's eyes died as they shivered. "Very little, I'm afraid. My logs say I was doing a routine patrol to identify where the Gulf Raider was hitting us from, when I ran into an unidentified contact that didn't show up on sonar or radar. I've lost a good portion of my memory from the resummoning process, but my logs are mostly intact…"

He groaned, and reached into his desk, pulling out a flask.

"So, our brand new Abyssal freak is a goddamn ambusher." the Rear-Admiral supplied, getting ready to drink, to hopefully make more sense of this insanity. "You're saying you got jumped by a damned horror movie monster, and couldn't detect it at all."

"N-no! … M-maybe." admitted the girl that was USS Johnston, pouting all the way. "I can't know for certain—but when I check through what my crew's written down, I honestly believe that it was… it wasn't using its rigging."

Yep, that justified a long swig. Swallowing the whiskey with a wince, the Admiral grimaced, unable to keep annoyance out of his tone. "I have no idea what that means. Please clarify."

"I-if the Abyssal had her rigging out, I would have detected it. It's very hard to hide a gigantic metal ship, but our forms without them are small—similar to humans in that regard. It's how I can sit in this chair without falling through the floor." clarified the destroyer. Her eyes were anywhere besides meeting his gaze, as shame colored her cheeks. "I-I don't like the implications, but it's the only one I can identify that makes any sense. Something, or someone killed me… and didn't even do it as a warship."

The Admiral clutched his head. Biting back the urge to let out a curse in the presence of the distraught destroyer—she had suffered enough, he chided himself—he considered her words.

Whatever the hell this Princess was fielding—if it wasn't just her taking the field herself—was capable of sinking a fully armed destroyer… apparently without guns, without armor, and without any of the bullshit that the black metal hellbeasts were known for.

"... You were sunk by the equivalent of an unarmed human." he stated, far too bluntly, praying very much to be wrong.

"N-no! I'd never forgive myself if that happened." pouted the brown haired ship, crossing her chest with her arms. "Even without our riggings, we are more than capable of bending steel with our bare hands with a bit of effort. The Abyssals—especially a Princess—are likely the same, even if there are very few recorded examples of such a thing happening."

Samson let out a sigh of relief. Though he might not fully trust the value of transforming a perfectly trustworthy, solid-steel warship into whatever the heck made a Shipgirl, it was reassuring to know that their Shipgirls weren't somehow more vulnerable than a regular ship.

"So… Do you have anything else to report?" he offered, hoping to get a few more, less traumatizing details.

"... She had green eyes…" began USS Johnston, as she began to read off what few of her memories had survived her sinking.

---

He shook his head as he took it all in. The destroyer had left his office hours ago, and their debriefing was gently tucked into the Saboteur Princess's file. In the meantime, he had finally worked through the pile of reports.

The countless holes in their defenses, brought to light by not only the Abyssal's malicious actions, but also the reporting of his own people. The prodding and poking by a careful, unseen hand. So many things wrong with the territory, none of which he could fix…

Enacted through a stream of attacks, spaced out just enough to perfectly avoid suspicion. It was obvious now, that regardless of how much they tightened security, it wouldn't be enough. It'd never be enough.

Sooner or later, things would fall apart, leaving them wide open for a brutal, direct assault upon their shores.

Again, Samson cursed the fact that they still didn't have a concrete understanding of the insane Princess's plan.

Cursing his lack of choices, the Rear Admiral finished his report. Proactive action was simply impossible. Sooner or later, Florida would be hit.

With a heavy heart, he placed his recommendation: an increased garrison, as well as more ships on standby to reinforce should disaster or assault strike.

He could only pray that in the time it'd take for reinforcements to arrive, there'd still be a Florida to save.