Metamorphosis (Kancolle OC, Crosspost)

[TheViciousJoltik]

She hummed a half-remembered song to herself with a big smile on her face, as she slowly painted scales on the side of one of her Minnows. It was busywork, but that was far from a bad thing.

Her current art project, Minnow 01, or perhaps even Minnow 001, if she was being far, far too generous with herself, wriggled under her tender care, but a quick shushing was enough to convince the rowdy drone to stay put.

What a week it had been. After returning home from the human hellscape, she had thrown herself into her new projects with absolute aplomb. Sure, the books had been dry at the best of times, but they just had so much she could work with. Never mind the warship designs, or the weapon manuals: her absolute favorite book so far had been one on the sea life of the region.

A fisherman's handbook, which she had picked up in the same area as the pleasure yacht repair manual. She had flipped through the pages in her off-time (When she had lost her focus long enough to become inefficient, she didn't truly have off time to herself, just yet), and nearly immediately had her attention be captivated by the beautiful scale patterns of the native fish.

Thus, the Submarine spirit giggled to herself, as she continued to detail the drone's side, each careful stroke drawing yet another triangular scale onto its side. She was nearly done one side - and her internal chronometer had told her it had been nearly a half hour since she had started, meaning she could expect about an hour per drone.

More than worth it, in her eyes. Anything to make her creations stand out - or in this case, fit in.

As for their new designation as a Minnow-class Miniature Submarine, the fishing manual had helped in that regard as well. Small, elusive, and ever-present freshwater fish which swam up and down rivers, the perfect match for her flighty little drones. She had even given them each little upgrades to crown their new class - better fins, straighter plates, and far, far sturdier constructions truly befitting of a design she knew she would be replicating in the future. And replicate she had - her new little fleet had now grown to six. Although she likely could build more, there was no point in overproducing just yet - not when she lacked suitable tasks to permanently devote any to.

Again, her drone began to squirm under her attention. "Oh, come on, it hasn't been that long, has it?" she whispered, patting it again to try and calm it down. Eventually, she relented, feeding the project a handful of dried kelp and salvaged metal. What a little glutton.

It was far more cooperative after that, going rigid and allowing the brush to glide over it with hardly any fuss at all.

She wasn't even painting it on the floor now - it was currently hanging from the ceiling, held aloft by a crude set of chains leading to a harness. Said harness was really little more than a metal band around the drone's neck and tail segments, but still! Progress! With a bit more scrap and resources, she might even be able to build a hydraulic lift!

Probably not. At the very least she could rig up an adjustable system that could handle something more than a Minnow.

Nodding to herself, she placed her paintbrush down into a clay pot full of water, and looked over her progress. The scales were crude and uneven, but so was life, wasn't it? Nothing was perfect, pristine, as nature was a writhing, adapting thing. At least, if she said that as if she believed that, then 'good enough' truly was 'good enough'. Taking a few steps back and disabling the light for but a single moment, in the low light they even resembled a fish's scales, meaning they'd serve their purpose as camouflage as well.

Smiling again, she popped open another container of vehicle paint with one of her claws, this one labeled "Inferno Red". She had always loved red, it was such a visually pleasing color.

Confirming her biases, the pleasing, deep crimson shone out of the bucket under the lights above, which she quickly dipped another clean brush into, and moved to color in the scales -

Only for the paint to be left on the hull as a flat, monochrome color. In this case, a dirty and brackish color which looked far more like mud than any intentional decoration.

"Dammit! Not again!" she pouted, holding back all urges to punt the uncooperative bucket into the moon pool.

This wasn't the first time this had happened. No matter what colors she dared use, they'd all be applied as some form of monochrome. She had first noticed the effect when she had opened a can of sky-blue paint to try and detail herself - that one had turned to an upsetting, cloudy gray on contact. At least that one was potentially useful as a base for something, this one just looked hideous.

Sighing in defeat, she reset the lid with a few slaps from her palm, and put the colored can with the rest of the 'uncooperative' cans. It seemed she was confined to a single spectrum of coloration, but she could work with that!

Shaking her head, she quickly grabbed a rag from nearby (her stolen clothing had most certainly not survived the trip back) and wiped the still-wet paint from her drone's hull.

The scales were thankfully still fine. She would have a damned conniption if all of her hard work was ruined by a single, mistaken stroke. She already had a plan for keeping the paint on (it involved varnish and another layer of translucent chitin to seal it all in, away from the water), but despite how much fun she was having, she knew repeating the task over and over with no progress would quickly turn it into a frustrating, fruitless endeavor.

Either way, it seemed nearly all of her colored paint was useless - she'd find a way to break them down into useful chemicals later - or try to, at least. For now, they'd be stacked up in the corner, until she found a better use. Perhaps she'd try again later on the domes, and see if they too were cursed with the monochromic effect?

With individual colors to differentiate her drones out of the picture, she was stuck with the least interesting, but only real remaining method to tell them apart.

Decision made, she drew a large "01" on the side of the drone in gray paint, contrasted against the white scales and black chassis. With smooth, careful strokes, she finally christened her first Drone.

The drone began to chirp, but she merely shook her head. Was it ticklish? Well, her designs must have greater tactile feedback than some dumb human drone, if they were to move as swiftly and smoothly as they did. Either way, with the number painted, she rotated the harness apparatus, flipping the drone over. It was time to do the other side.

---

Minnows 02 through 06 followed shortly thereafter, likely having learned from the first to stay put - if they even could learn. They remained deactivated as she worked, much to her relief.

She still patted each of them in turn as she finished, though.

---

Stretching after a job well done, the Submarine turned to the side of the foundry, appreciating the results of her own work.

Stored in little cubbies, Minnows 01 through 06 rested, elevated from the water and temporarily deactivated while their paint dried. They truly looked the part of a school of fish now, aquadynamic and agile things, more than capable of darting from place to place with the greatest of ease. She'd need to wait for the paint to set, and only then apply another layer to seal it in.

However, with her drones requiring unavoidable time to cure, she was left with a sobering realization.

There really was no escaping it, then? It was her turn to be on the operating table. She had time to spare, and putting it off any longer would be detrimental to her continued well-being.

Yet, the idea of merely… ripping herself apart and doing repairs from the outside was utterly abhorrent, even if they were truly necessary. That was something that'd need to be done in only the most dire of situations, and most certainly not here, at the bottom of the ocean, where a single mistake could lead to her never being able to surface ever again.

Biting her lip, she pondered her options of how to go about it.

Her memories trailed back, unbidden, dreaming of the days when she could merely wander her own hull - with her current state, she could just… enter herself… …

She paused, looking down at her own hands.

She was her hull… but she was her spirit as well, was she not?

Why was her spirit so much larger, or vessel so much smaller? Were they not the same?

Perhaps… she was nothing more than the captain of herself? Would that even work?

She focused inwards, first at the wall in front of her, and then mentally stepping back, and back and back…

Until she found herself stumbling, falling flat on her back.

Clonk

Above her, a far too familiar metal roof.

Quickly, she scrambled to her feet - no longer was she inside of her foundry, instead…

She was within an infested space station of sorts - or at least, that's what it looked like.

Meaty growths clung to the walls, interlacing the metal like veins spread from the floor to the ceiling. Dark fluid pulsed and pumped through each, and a faint, unidentifiable glow suffused the area.

Holding back confusion (but strangely not horror?) She took a step forward, and then another.

She… recognised this place. But if it were true…

Turning to her left, she spotted it, beating not unlike a heart.

Her reactor, broken and fragmented, yet stitched back together by fleshy strands. Attached to the ceiling and floor, her heart - now more literal than ever, softly beat, each motion causing a cascade of soft, green light.

This was her hull… changed.

These were her insides.

Was it because she was a Ship Spirit now? She knew the internals of a human were similar - medical training was a mandatory requirement to be a submarine crew - but this… this was truly alien.

Slowly, she walked about her old prison, so warped and changed, just as she was.

Gone was the emptiness, the cold, the silence, all replaced by the feeling of being within some kind of great beast - at least she did not feel lonely here, though the sheer amount of teeth and eyes growing out of some crevasses continued to be unnerving.

Still, she had a job to do. With only slightly squishy steps, she traced her way towards the bridge.

Only to lose her metaphorical lunch onto the floor as she opened the metal door to the command room. She had expected horror, something truly vile - but not this.

The panels, the machinery - it was all wrong. Wires stripped and bare, cables poorly labeled, hell, her navigation system wasn't even properly bolted to the floor, meaning it must have been flopping around whenever she made a sharp turn! Why did she do this? How did she do this?

It was a damned miracle that none of them were installed upside down, for how horrible it all was. Gritting her teeth, she raised a claw.

She had read the manuals for several kinds of ships - she knew the basics now. And the machines were working… it was just cabling, and poor connections.

She knew that what she was seeing was wrong. And it was time for her to remedy it. Nothing she could do would be worse than the current setup.

With the determination of a soldier marching to battle, she fell upon the task with furious resolve.

---

Sighing in relief, the Spirit took a step back, gazing at her handiwork. Her stomach growled as she did - working hard was hungry work, after all!

Her reactor reported a near twenty percent efficiency increase, and her systems - they actually worked now, instead of being syncopated pieces of garbage. A huge pile of worthless scrap - whether it be from her mistakes in the process, or simply just reclaimed bad wiring - was piled on the side. She grabbed them - she'd need to figure out how to recycle them, or in the worst case scenario, just gobble them up again. They'd probably end up back in her systems, right?

Everything was properly secured, the wires were safely tucked, and she had only electrocuted herself three times.

Rubbing a spot of char from her forehead, she returned back to the entrance of her hull.

During her repairs, she had found herself going into an autopilot of sorts, so focused was she upon fixing her damnable machinery. But each time she had run out of supplies, or required something, she had found herself drawn back to a specific location, to find the necessary thing waiting for her.

Be it tools, raw materials, or rivets, she had overlooked the small miracle at first, but with her job done, it was time to investigate. Following a trail her muscle memory knew far better than her mind did, she retraced her steps, coming to a stop in front of a tremendous, black cyst-like structure, embedded into the ceiling of the hull.

The cyst was… well, organic, but far from the soft, squishy thing she had expected. If anything, it felt as hard as steel.

This must have been the thing to dispense resources. Then… could it dispense steel?

As if on cue, a chunk of steel was disgorged from within it with a wet pop, falling to the floor with a soft clang. Almost immediately, another spike of hunger surged through herself, further compounding the gnawing ravenousness already there.

Well, she had scrap on hand, so…

Chowing down on the waste metal, and consuming the conjured steel helped quite a bit to cull the hunger she felt, but even with both, she still felt weak and starving.

She nodded slowly. So this thing… dispensed resources for internal use, out from her stomach, or storage, or whatever it was she was using to store what her form used as 'food'. Unfortunately, re-consuming the material was inefficient, and lossy.

She'd rely upon external refineries or scavenged materials, then. Either way, it was a part of herself, and a part she'd need to become familiar with in the future, should she require maintenance or repairs.

Shaking her head, she cleared her mind. She was done here, for now at least - it was time to leave…

Well, she knew how to get in. Getting out should simply be the reverse.

Focusing outwards - or trying to imagine her external self, she closed her eyes…

CLANG

Only to again find herself on the ground, this time face down. Her face hurt far more than when her back had stuck her hull.

Gently raising herself up, and rubbing stars from her eyes - ah yes, she was back in her Foundry. Excellent. She needed to construct a softer spot to do this in the future.

That would definitely require more practice.

Still… if her internal self had changed so much… What about her external self?

She moved towards the moon pool, with the bright blue light of the gutted mechanical fish shining down from overhead. With the calm, still surface free from any interference from waves, it'd serve well enough as a mirror.

Moving closer to get a better position, she leaned forwards, taking it all in.

Her skin was pale, as white as snow and glistening like freshly formed plastic. Her hair, on the other hand, was the same miserable, ruddy color that the red paint had turned, and reached down to her shoulders in a rather sensible bob cut. Glowing green eyes stared dispassionately down at the reflection, trying to make sense of it all.

Holding a few strands of her wire-like hair to her vision to closer inspect, she couldn't help but pout. Oh how she wished her hair was the color it should have been - but likely, hair dyes would do little against a force capable of overturning vehicle paint. Damn it all.

At least her outfit still looked good on her - she had always loved the black, utilitarian boilersuit she had been born in. It complimented her tall, slim figure of an olympic swimmer, someone born to slip through the water with hardly a care in the world. In retrospect, she looked not unlike the human's depiction of a female "spy" (Courtesy of the James Bond book she had pilfered, and then read a few days back). A confusing thing to realize so late into her life, but at least she could accept the coincidence.

All myths had some truth, after all.

Slowly, she turned to the side to inspect her back, only to pause when she spotted it.

Growing from the small of her back, was the thing likely responsible for the hole torn in her boilersuit. This was even more likely as the boiler suit - which she had only just repaired - once again looked as if the back had exploded outwards.

Jagged scraps of black, metallic cloth formed a vicious crown, further highlighting the anomaly.

A sunken, fleshy bulb. It took up nearly all of the space between her shoulder blades, up to her neck, and down to the middle of her spine. It would be nearly indistinguishable from a distance, but here, under the unearthly spotlights she had rigged up? It was plain as day.

Gently poking it, she felt the strangest of sensations, and following further, the bulb opened.

Within its confines, a deep, toothy maw opened up in a way not unlike flower petals, with four concentric rings of jagged, black teeth and slavering jaws.

She blinked, ever so slightly at the horror on her back. Again, she wasn't panicking. Why? This thing was obviously unnatural, but… it felt right?

She was still starving from her repairs… and now curious, she sliced another piece of cable from the ceiling. She was sure to pick only a piece from the copper wire - there was no way she was wasting her dessert food on a mere experiment with an uncooperative wart.

Gently feeding the thing on her back the wire, she could hear it shred and tear the metal, its vicious jaws making short work of it all.

Her hunger faded, ever so slightly. She needed more, but it was a step, at least.

A second mouth. Why did she have a second mouth?

She shook her head, and traced around the bulb, trying to see where else it had corrupted, before finally coming to a stop at nubs on the side.

With a poke, they too came alive, extending into lengthy, flexible tendrils ending in yet even more toothy maws. She could control them, barely, but like any other ignored or atrophied limb, she instinctively knew they would require practice and therapy to properly control.

Correction. She had a second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth mouth. Why?

Staring at the tendrils for a moment, and flailing them around herself, she paused, taking it in…

Before shrugging, letting the weirdness win this particular time. They were a part of her, and unless she wished to self-mutilate, a part of her they would remain.

Shaking her head, she turned to her Minnows - dried and ready for the varnish. Gently, she reached down for a paintbrush, only for one of her tendrils to lash out and grasp it gently in its maw.

Prehensile. Well, she couldn't say that it wasn't useful.

Well, if they wished to be useful… then why not use them?

And so, the Submarine Horror gently lifted 01 out of her box, and into the frame. Confusing revelations of herself pending or not, it was time to get back to work.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

Alone, wounded, and confused, Zero-Seven-Four all-but-shambled across the surface of the ocean, even as her body and hull both failed her, bit by bit.

The Abyssal had barely escaped a slaughter - and in retrospect, that outcome really was a long time coming. Her boss had never been the intelligent type, having hired her as dumb muscle, nothing more. Sooner or later, she was going to swim too close to the Abyss, and it'd eat her whole.

The moving wreck laughed weakly as she stared down at her nearly-ruined body. Her clothing was so tattered and ripped it barely kept her 'decent' - mirroring her state of disrepair of her ship-self. Her weapons would deal more damage if she threw them at her enemies than if used to shoot them, her crew had their hands full emptying the machine room of leaking sea water, her sonar was a bust…. She would not fall in glorious combat against the enemy, no. Instead she would merely bleed out and sink. A slow, painful, depressing and utterly humiliating way for the Abyss to reclaim her.

She had served the Vulture Carrier Princess - an unappealing name for an unappealing Princess; unrepentant gambler and a fool both. Nevertheless, this carrion bird clad in abyssal steel had been impulsive and stupid enough to save Zero-Seven-Four from scrapping. A simple deal of more resources than the Shipbreaker Princess would've made ripping her apart, and Zero-Seven-Four found herself with a new master.

Her job in the fleet was to be a distraction. To move ahead of the rest of her Princess's pitiful excuse of a fleet, and soak fire, so that the rest could pass by unmolested. A humiliating task, but one she was forced to do regardless. At times, she considered betraying the Princess, taking her place and freeing herself -

But then again, it was all pointless now. The Vulture Carrier Princess had few allies - especially since she did little more than scrabble about in the kills of other, more successful Princesses. This of course did little to endear her in the eyes of her 'peers', and with her sunk and her forces cut down to the last woman, there would be no resurrection in her future.

There would be no resurrection in Zero-Seven-Four's future either. That was the only reason she had continued to move, moving further and further away from the site of the battle. Then again, ships like her were never resummoned, anyway.

The Carrion Fleet had just moved into its favored looting grounds - the domain of the less-than-creatively-named Western Battleship Princess, a place of wanton death for both Human vessels, as well as the occasional Abyssal caught in the mad Princess's domain. It should have been an easy mission.

At least, until the artillery began whizzing in.

For whatever damnable reason, the Western Battleship Princess had been watching that day, and took offense at their presence. The first shot, a shell the size of her head, screamed through the air, and all but decapitated the Vulture Carrier Princess before she could even get a plane up.

Before her damage control could take over, a second shot struck the Carrion's midsection, and she sank moments later. She only barely managed to scream before she sank below the waves.

To call the next few moments hell would be an understatement.

With her 'leader' dead, Zero-Seven-Four had fled immediately. Sooner or later, the artillery shelling would become boring, and the Western Battleship Princess would take to the field herself.

Considering said Princess was well known for disemboweling and consuming her allies that dared talk back to her, even in the middle of an active battle, she had no illusions of survival. They were both battleships, sure, but Abyssal Battleship Princesses were an entirely new level of bullshit. And with the state of disrepair she had been in even before The Vulture had picked her up? Zero-Seven-Four would have been quartered before her imps could say Desu.

With little, if any other choice, she had drifted west, taking only a little bit of fire from the WBP's emplacements, but she knew she could shrug it off. Sure, it'd be irritating, but her damage control wasn't that bad. She had done it before, at least until she ended up in the Shipbreaker Princess's tender mercies, captured, held against her will, and then threatened daily to be scrapped.

Either way, sailing west turned out to be a terrible choice, as the Abyss forsaken human fortress could attest! Her crew barely spotted it on the horizon before she had to dodge even more artillery shells. Why was it always artillery? She was a battleship, sure, but she much preferred pathetic little bullets that did little more than scratch her paint!

To say it had been an unfortunate surprise would be an understatement - and soon her injuries were adding up faster than she could treat them. Fleeing north this time, towards the Gulf of Mexico, she finally had a moment to herself, to take inventory.

Out in the open ocean, with no cover whatsoever, plainly in sight of whoever next decided they wanted to fuck up her day.

And the rest was History, as the Enemy said. Four compartments were flooding, two more were breached, and her crew was running themselves ragged to keep the seawater out.. Her guns were shot - her explosives gone…

If she were to be true to herself, she likely did not have much time left in this world. Were she not as redundantly built as she was, she would have been dead hours ago.

But now, bleeding out, she closed her eyes, trying to rebuild her resolve. She could survive, she had survived before… She merely needs to make it a bit further… beach herself on a sandbank or something, land on a beach, scavenge for scraps, eat a friggin' tree or something-

"HEY!"

Her lookouts started screaming at the top of their lungs, diverting her spiraling thoughts to something more immediately important. According to the chorus of 'Hey!'s, 'JaJa!'s, 'Desu!'s and 'Grrr!'s, there's something in the water. And it was-

A thrice damned, Abyss-forsaken, children eating, kitten kicking, ice cream stealing, battleship sinking, motherfucking Submarine!

That they saw it before her sonar did is just a testament to how utterly fucked her systems were.

On the outside, she didn't rage, she didn't scream, she didn't do anything, besides sigh in defeat.

To make it so far, just to run into one of those little freaks?!

… Well, it was an adequate cap to an infuriating series of events. Great, well, now she was dead. Ain't that wonderful news?

Shaking her head slowly, Zero-Seven-Four just activated her radio, and spoke flatly, broadcasting for whatever psychopath was trying to mess with her now.

"Go on then, shoot me, bitch."

She had no depth charges left, no torpedoes, no-

She paused, blinking in confusion, as something tapped her damaged hull from below.

Glancing down, she could see the shape of something moving in the water, circling her. As she tried to track it, a pair of luminescent green eyes turned up to meet her gaze, glowing with unnatural light.

"Who are you?" whispered the Submarine Princess (because why wouldn't it be yet another Princess?!), whom Zero-Seven-Four had unwittingly intruded the territory of.

… Aiming a shell at point-blank range out of her last, barely operational barrel would rip her own arm clean off, but if she hit-

… She would still sink, just a whole lot faster than before, even if the stars aligned, the skies turned green, humanity made peace with itself and her one shot managed to nail that green eyed demon between the rangefinders. It wasn't even one of her main cannons either - just an AA gun. Likely, they would just swim it off, leaving no lasting damage.

Compared to that, a 'conversation' might keep her alive for five more minutes.

Zero-Seven-Four was tired. She was so, so tired of all this bullshit. But if they demanded she beg for salvation, she would end it all herself.

Lowering her guns, she just shook her head. She had nowhere to go now. Time to talk, it seemed.

---

It had been a blur of confusion and pain - with her boilers so compromised (why had her crew kept that from her?!), the injured Abyssal found herself drifting in and out of consciousness. Every blink would seemingly last minutes, every lapse jumping her forwards as she barely held on.

She had agreed to something - she didn't remember what, but she remembered being surprised, not frustrated or defeated. All she knew now was that ahead of her lay a small island, just barely visible to her focused vision. As much as she disliked solid ground, at least one couldn't sink while atop of it.

A quick damage report had revealed that her compartments were sealed by unfamiliar material, but definitely still held a lot of seawater - and something had killed a few of her crew in the immediate area. Said crew were found, face down and floating in the water, entirely unmarked by any recognisable wounds.

Yet despite whatever bullshit was going on, she was really, really lucky to not be at the bottom of the ocean. No matter the reason her new Princess had to keep her, she-

A near audible screech filled the air as her thoughts ground to a halt. "Her new Princess"? Had it really, truly happened to her, again?!? Sure, she did not have much of a choice, but…

Holding in a snarl, Zero-Seven-Four glowered at the Submarine Princess towing her via thin, black cables. Shaking her head slowly, and screwing her range-finders shut, she tried desperately to think back to what sort of inane agreement she might've sworn.

In exchange for the deaths of some of her crew (if that was even her and not due to her damnable systems falling apart), as well as something else, she had bent the knee, became a servant once more. She was disgusted by it all - but that she even still remained to be disgusted was a point in her new deal's favor.

Cradling her head as she tried to remember back, she couldn't help but flinch at the loud bang coming from within her hull. A quick report from engineering stated the reasoning - she was in such poor shape, that even thinking too hard was blowing rivets and ripping her apart.

Damn it all.

She would wait until she was repaired. She would observe her new 'master', she would talk and humor the damnable Submarine Princess, if that's what she so desired, but she would not forgive another fool. Should she prove to be something other than an abusive Bitch-Boat, sure, she would play nice.

But if she was, and she was no different than her last?

The Battleship's Rangefinders flickered dark for a moment as her tortured power plant surged and crackled. Ignoring her fairies demanding she calm down, she balled a fist. Her eyes flashed again, returning to light, this time a solid crimson.

If this so-called "Princess" proved to be a pathetic wretch like the rest?

Re Class Zero-Seven-Four would take over, or sink trying.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

Several minutes earlier

---

The Submarine Spirit blinked slowly as she looked up from her latest book - this one on railroad steam engines. It had been a dense, complicated read, but quite a mandatory one. If boilers were the heart of a 'standard' ship, then she had little choice but to learn how to repair them.

Just because she did not -

Wait, no - on second thought, she did have a steam boiler. What was a nuclear reactor if not an overly complicated machine for boiling steam?

Regardless, it wasn't an exact match to what she needed. Terrestrial and nautical engines were similar, yes, but to apply the knowledge thinking they were the same would only lead to a potential catastrophic mistake in the future.

She let her arm drop to her side, clanking against the floor of the Foundry. To call the position comfortable would definitely be a stretch, but sadly, it was the best she had at the moment. She had tried experimenting with a bed of dried kelp as a mattress, but regardless of what she did, it ended up smelling of death, and thus was quickly tossed back into the ocean to be reclaimed. Perhaps at some point she would begin work on personal quarters, but for now, this would be suitable enough.

Glancing over to the side, towards the water, she spotted Minnow 01 staring at her, likely awaiting orders.

The Submarine shook her head in good nature. She had given her tiny fleet standing orders to find and extract resources from the seabed, but it seemed like the vague orders often resulted in them just stalling out, returning to her side to await more detailed orders. She had taken to keeping a little pile of pre-cut wire by her side to toss to them when they showed up. Alas, that didn't seem to work all of the time, as they would often just keep sitting there, watching her, awaiting orders.

And considering how wrapped up in her books she could get, oftentimes being so caught up she found herself reading aloud to better process things… orders certainly weren't coming. Oftentimes, she'd only realize one was waiting minutes, or even half an hour later than when they arrived. She just hoped that it wasn't causing the confused little drones too much frustration.

"Go on. Git." she stated, waving off the drone. "I'm on my way out. I need some fresh air, anyway."

Responding to the order with aplomb, the piscine drone dove immediately, zooming off to do… whatever it had decided to do.

Another sigh, this one punctuated by the silent scribbling of more notes into her ship's log.

'Begin proper pre-scheduling of drone projects.'

Already, with so many workers, she was beginning to have issues. She was alone, with no assistance… and while she could wrangle the drones to have them do tasks, that'd take her away from her research. Micromanagement was not her strong suit, and neither was multitasking. Six truly was her limit - any further and she'd struggle too much for more to be useful.

A long term project that required less management might be possible, sure… but she'd need to dig a proper mine for that one. That'd require a proper survey - and she didn't even know where to begin for that one. Perhaps she could just randomly sample the seafloor until she found something?

Pouting, she carefully moved the book she had been reading to an elevated shelf, before diving into the water herself. Corkscrewing through the water, she rose up, coming to a stop at her favorite height - a few hundred meters above the seafloor, at the halfway point between the seafloor and the surface.

Her base was coming along nicely, being already nearly self-sufficient via mining alone. Sure, she required a refinery to get any big projects done, but when it was merely her and a small group of drones? She could make do with scraps and her chitin welding being the equivalent to an infinite supply of duct tape. It had been quite embarrassing to only make the connection just recently - but when comparing the chitin 'welding' to the sticky tape, the uses for it became more and more clear, as well as its downsides.

She could patch things forever, after all, or coat things in waterproof substance, but building a deep sea structure entirely out of tape-analogue would be rather insane.

Really, the only pressing thing she needed to construct would be a uranium enrichment plant to refuel herself. And… that was unlikely to ever fall into her lap.

It was unlikely that she'd be able to refine it herself… Perhaps she should steal some instead? The plants were already there, on human lands…

Again, the intrusive thoughts wormed their way into her mind, but she forced them down as always. That was a last resort - she'd only do that if she truly had no other option. Besides, those places would be under heavy guard. There'd be no way that she could ever hope to take on such a place, not with her current forces.

Perhaps some day, when she next needed to resupply - but it would require planning, preparation, and an exit plan.

Shaking her head, she did a quick loop around her domain, taking it all in. It was a beautiful place, now that the shipwrecks were properly removed - colorful sea life, beautiful coral - all untouched by the vile presence of mankind.

Sure, there were a few dead spots here and there, but they'd regrow. Nature would eventually heal. As long as the barnacles stayed the hell away from her structures, she'd be happy.

She turned to the side, to spot her small fleet burrowing maze-like tunnels into the seafloor. If her memory did not fail her -

She shook her head, and just checked her log instead.

Ah yes, she had found a small seam of poor lead, and had ordered her drones to begin excavation of it.

She blinked… and just shook her head, a slight smile on her lips. Well, they can't all be winners. Lead is probably good for something, right?

Surface contact, approaching!

Immediately, she froze, glancing around in panic. What- Oh! Her instruments!

Checking them quickly, she confirmed that there was in fact a ship approaching on the surface, all of those meters above - a really, really big one.

A friggin' huge one. A battleship-carrier? Dammit, were her systems broken again? Something can't be both a battleship and a carrier at once!

Regardless of what exactly the thing was, it was leaking oil into the water. The spreading slick was already starting to drown out what little light made it to the depths, casting the area into complete shadow.

Hm.

Pausing, and glancing up at the shadow of the massive keel passing overhead, the Unnamed Submarine considered her options. She could remain underwater, and let the stranger pass… or she could intervene. Tell them to go away, or send them somewhere else.

Checking her instruments again… and the contact appeared to be slowing down, and appeared to be taking on water. Truly, they were on their last legs.

Well, if they were on their last legs… then perhaps there'd be no risk of them attacking her? Simply firing a weapon would only make them sink faster, after all.

Dismissing the threat of a potential hostile, all that remained was burning curiosity - who was this stranger, and what brought them here?

Almost giddy, the Submarine nodded, before making preparations to ascend. It was time to greet this stranger.

---

'Wow, she's a mess.' were the immediate thoughts of the submarine as she lurked just below the surface, watching the stranger stagger/swim/float across the water.

Looking at her definitely was headache inducing.

In one blink, the stranger was an absolutely massive battleship, missing almost all of its guns. Entirely nonhuman in nature, but with holes basically everywhere. The battleship itself had an utterly confusing structure that seemed impossible to construct, but all in all, it was still just a ship. Even worse, she could tell that a large portion of the ship's rear had been destroyed by some kind of heavy ordinance - meaning that it potentially could've been even bigger.

In the next blink, the Submarine was staring at a wounded and strangely short girl, wearing a tattered hoodie and covered in bruises, scars, and other surface wounds. Were they a mortal instead of a Ship Spirit, they likely would've been dead, long, long ago. A brutalized, snake-like tail trailed behind her, deflated and broken. She had snow white hair, and glowing blue eyes, like the mechanical fish - …

Oh. Perhaps in retrospect, she shouldn't have eaten that. Oh well, she supposed, live and learn. If something similar had happened to one of her own drones, she would've been out for blood. That nothing had happened in response to her aggression just meant whoever lost their drone didn't care enough to keep track of them.

Forcing herself back on track, she continued to observe the intruder. One thing remained consistent between blinks - both forms were sinking, painfully slowly. Oil spilled like blood from their forms, signaling their oncoming demise.

Faced with a headache inducing paradox, the Submarine did the logical, and best-researched thing she could think of.

She smacked herself on the side of her head with the palm of her own hand, as hard as possible.

When the rattling and reverberation of metal had stopped, both images had overlaid one another, with the humanoid form overtop.

Excellent, she could work with that. Why couldn't her systems just work properly the first time?

Regardless of what they were, the wounded stranger appeared to have survived a fight for their life - and likely had all sorts of stories to tell. More than enough to justify handing out a mere patch-up job.

Nodding to herself, she slowly moved into position to the side of the Battleship-Carrier-Spirit-Girl.

It truly was a testament to how utterly ruined the other Ship-Spirit was, that she was not noticed, not for at least an entire minute. Soon enough, however, the Battleship began to glance around, looking for her.

Alas, the Submarine had overestimated how much flexibility remained for the Battleship's form - she was just out of her peripheral vision, and turning enough to actually see her would probably be quite painful. She could continue forwards, but in the process could potentially spook them into fleeing or injuring themselves further.

As she mused about how best to respectfully make herself known, her radio crackled to life.

"Go on then, shoot me, bitch."

The sudden, unwarranted rudeness was enough for her to cease swimming forwards, letting the wounded Ship continue onwards alone. How dare they-...

The Submarine shook it all away. They were wounded, and likely upset. She'd be upset too.

Of course, were their situation less dire, she would be far less accepting…

Biting her lips to avoid retorting violently, she dove back down, accelerating quickly to cut off the still-moving battleship. She tapped them gently from below to let them know she was approaching, before coming to a stop right in front of them.

Meeting their gaze through the refractive surface of the water, the Submarine responded.

"Who are you?"

That wasn't her radio.

Fuck.

Now she just looked silly.

Frozen in embarrassment, the Submarine kept eye contact with the stranger, wondering how best to proceed - depths, why couldn't have have developed social skills -

She froze, when she found the barrel of a gun pointed at her.

The stand-off was tense and in her eyes, entirely unwarranted, but eventually it seemed the intruder made up their mind, and put the gun away.

"I-I'm so tired." stated the Battleship, barely audible as she continued to droop ever further into the water.

Right! She was still sinking!

"I'm going to uh… make sure you don't go any lower, alright?" she offered, already in motion.

"What?" replied the battleship, but it was muffled by the waves.

Diving down to the bottom, she quickly wrangled her drones. Pulling them off of the mostly-unnecessary task of mining worthless lead, they were instead drafted into transporting resources from the warehouses, up to her. She'd need them very, very soon.

Soon enough, she was slapping pieces of scrap metal onto the largest holes dotting the Battleship - crude and fast chitin welds, just barely enough to keep her afloat. In doing so, she had sealed the water in as well - but bilging would have to wait. Right now, more than anything, the ship needed immediate stabilization. The water inside wouldn't kill them, but more water atop of that potentially would.

Faster and faster she worked - with all of her appendages pitching in to move material faster, as there was simply just so much ship that needed to be patched - but soon enough, it seemed as if she had gotten almost all of them. At the very least, she had gotten the ones under the waterline. The rest were probably lower priority, and would be dealt with later.

The result was a battered, ugly, uneven spread of patches overtop of the steel hull. But it wasn't meant to look good. It was a rushed, battlefield treatment; it would do, at least long enough to tow the battleship to shore.

Nodding to herself, she surfaced quickly, and anchored herself with her tendrils to what she assumed to be hardpoints on the battleship's form.

To no response. It seemed that the battleship had finally lost consciousness. With only the slightest bit of envy at being capable of sleep, the Submarine moved into position, before kicking hard, swimming at her top speed towards their destination.

And thus began the slow, painful process of towing the thousand-ton battleship forwards to safety.

It was slow going at first… before suddenly, the engines of the ship kicked back on, and she found the task much much easier.

Wasn't it great, now that they were actually cooperating?

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

Soon enough, they arrived - an abandoned island, not too far away from her home base. Abandoned by humanity, the little, crescent shaped island was something she had discovered early into her exploration, but with her operations mostly underwater, she had no urge to claim it for later use.

Now, it was the host to an unconscious Battleship girl, and a Submarine awkwardly standing over her. Around them, the seabirds swirled, unhappy at the intrusion of the ambulatory warships. Nests dotted the island, poking out of any high point, be it natural or artificial.

Scattered around them both were what little repair supplies she could scrounge together, in little, sorted piles. Her metal plates, scrap metal, welding supplies… she had gone all out for this. Only a tiny bit of emergency metal remained in her stores, in case of herself or her fleet requiring immediate aid themselves.

Looking down, the Submarine shook her head. Who would have thought that this 'little girl' was the personification of an entire battleship? This project would be a big one, for sure.

Shaking her head, she moved to one of her patches lower on the battleship's keel. With a single, fluid motion, she tore the chitin patch off, finally allowing the sealed-in seawater to flow out. The sight was absolutely gristly to her newfound overlapped vision, but as long as she focused more upon the warship than the girl, she could tough through it.

Sighing as she tossed the rapidly decaying patch over her shoulder into the water, she began writing a detailed repair report. Simple repair or not, she would need to know what exactly she had done in the future - if she wanted to not have to do this entire thing again in the future. Best to get habits going early.

Well, no way about it… it was time for her to get started.

---

Covering her ears in annoyance, the Submarine glanced down at her patient, who was currently screaming in terror, panic, and potentially pain. Even worse, she had somehow turned her radio on in her panic, and was now broadcasting her suffering onto who knows what frequency.

Her patient must have just woken up. What she wouldn't give for boat-quality anesthetic. And the operation had been going so well too.

"Oh shut up. Do you want to draw the attention of every other ship in this region?" The submarine whispered, knowing full well that she was out-massed several hundred times by the battleship. It was hard to be afraid of a person so utterly mutilated, especially after having spent so long seeing just how bad the damage truly was. And if they kept screaming, a part of her, a small, dark part urged her to slam a foot down to -

Coughing, she forced her mind back on track, hoping that the Battleship did not see the dark expression flash across her face. Again, her intrusive thoughts were making themselves known, much to her displeasure. Forcibly clearing her face, she instead chose to look upon the bright side - or at least the more logical, important side.

How they had managed to even make it this far was a miracle of miracles. As crude as 'sealing the wounds hastily-applied duct tape analogue' was, they were truly right at home with the rest of the horrifying hack jobs barely keeping the rest of the battleship in one piece. The girl's guns were completely beyond repair, looking even worse than the results of her own failed attempts to dismantle weapons - and she hadn't even touched them yet.

The battleship's eyes were glowing red in hatred as she glared back at her… Oooh, pretty! Why couldn't she have red eyes?

She could have sworn they were blue before, but as she had not recorded that insignificant detail into her logs, she couldn't be sure. She would need to increase her vigilance in the future.

She was getting distracted.

Fortunately, it didn't slow down the Submarine any. Continuing where she left off, she repositioned her foot to the hoodie-wearing battleship's midsection, and applied weight to pin her down, before grasping a bandage she had cut free of the rest of the hull. In a single jerk, the bandage was gone, but so was quite a bit of ruined metal which had clung to it.

Fortunately, there wasn't a scream on all frequencies this time - just a blink of pain followed by an intensified stare of absolute malice, with only the faintest of tears appearing in the corners of her eyes. The girl's tail even flopped about bonelessly as it tried to react, its oversized shredding teeth clicking against one another. Cute.

"Hush." she stated, glaring back. "I can't weld on top of this wrecked garbage - I need to clean it up first. Whoever did your repairs last time did an awful job. If ships could scar, you definitely would be covered in them."

"W-what the Abyss are you doing to me?!?" rasped the battleship, finally finding her voice.

"Fixing you. Isn't it obvious?" she huffed, turning away to grab a steel plate. "You are not seaworthy, and while I made sure to patch your internal systems while you were uncons-"

"Y-you did what?!?"

As if on queue, the battleship girl began to rapidly pat down her own body, causing her damaged and compromised arms to groan dangerously as rivets gave way. Eyes wide and visibly not understanding, the patting continued for several seconds as she mouthed words to herself.

The Submarine just stared the entire time, wondering just how much further damage her idiot patient would do to herself.

Fortunately for both of them, soon enough the pain overtook the frantic girl once again, and she returned to being still, face twisted into a rictus of agony.

"M-my engineers… Are saying that… no, you did not." hissed her guest, still glaring at her with hate in her eyes. This one really was such a sourpuss, wasn't she.

That definitely earned a blink in return from the Submarine. "Didn't I fix your boilers?"

"Those are fine, but my hangar, launch catapult, and my friggin' sensors are still all wrecked!"

"You don't have a hangar."

"Grrr..."

To make their point, the injured battleship's tail flopped weakly once more. The Submarine hadn't checked the girl's tail, having considered the appendage low priority compared to her main body. Quickly bending down, and making sure to keep her hands away from the pointy ends, she gave it a look over.

"Oh. So that's what that's for."

Shrugging her shoulders at the bewildered look she got in return, she just got right back to it, grasping the welding torch and sealing yet another massive hole in the girl's legs. None of the systems complained about were at all necessary. Planes were only important if she was planning on getting into a battle, and in her state, that'd be the fastest way to the bottom of the ocean. As for internal systems, her patient would just have to deal with it, until she could acquire replacement electronics. It wasn't an enjoyable existence, but she herself had made do, after all.

"Do you care more about being able to move, or about being capable of launching planes?" she offered, extending a single olive branch.

The Battleship merely grumbled, obviously not willing to give her the win. Brat. "Why do you not have a dry dock?"

"Haven't built one yet." she admitted, though that was quickly added to the 'to do' list. "Never needed one, since we tend to avoid getting injured."

That earned a curse in return, but seemed to assuage the patient's worries enough for her to return to silence.

With a nod of appreciation, the Submarine continued her work. If her estimates were correct, she'd need at least another hour to have this girl's keel pieced back together.

---

It was an asked question that next drew the submarine from her focus, causing her to stall, hands mid-reach towards her now far-smaller stack of metal plates.

Quickly checking her internal clock, and comparing it against her recorded information, she determined that she had been in a trance for no less than an hour. Thankfully, she had kept up recording notes this time, so it wasn't a complete blank-out.

Taking several moments to try to collect her thoughts, the Submarine blinked… before finally shaking her head and speaking up. "Can you repeat that?"

The Battleship already was looking far, far healthier. No longer did she give off the feeling of a mortally wounded animal - instead, she merely resembled a crippled, but recovering one.

"I said… What do you want from me." stated the Battleship once more, tone flat and dangerous.

What did she want? The Submarine had to pause, think things through. The question felt important, a defining goal for not only herself, but her own future.

"What I want…" she began, going through her own logs, just to be sure. "I require your schematics."

The Battleship blushed, of all things, upon hearing that. "My what?!? W-why would you need those?!?"

Shrugging, the Submarine picked up the metal sheet - she'd work slower while talking, but a fifty percent efficiency loss was still less severe than a one hundred percent one.

"My own pool of schematics is… limited." she admitted, moving the plate into place. "Right now, the only ships I know how to build that have a chance at working are frigate sized and below. Never mind that the designs I do have tend to be civilian or worker in class, rather than warships…"

The Battleship's lower section appeared to have been completed, leaving only damage above the waterline. She hadn't even begun on the battleship's mechanical parts - the guns, systems, and more complicated bits could potentially take further months of effort.

The battleship scoffed. "And you're asking a Re for schematics? You'd almost be better off making them up as you go!"

"A what?" she responded, looking away from her work, just long enough to give the patient her full attention.

"A… Re. A Re-class, Aviation Battleship." stated the now-identified Re-Class. "You're telling me you've never heard of a Re?"

"Nope." The Submarine stated flatly, smacking the plate into place, before securing it with a quick series of rivets. "And as for making things up… It works, but it's slow."

The Re laughed, flat and without emotion. "Ha ha. My new Hime is a joker."

Silence, as the Submarine grabbed another plate.

"Depths, you're serious." Her exasperated tone was already becoming familiar, and annoying.

"I do not know what a Re is." confirmed the Submarine, repeating herself. "Nor the classification of most any other ship. If I had the capabilities of identifying unknown ships before, they were stripped from me before my awakening."

"Am I seriously the first other Abyssal you've ever met?"

"Define… Abyssal."

That seemed to push the Battleship past her breaking point. A near audible revving of her boilers signaled her frustration reaching new heights.

"You. Me. We are Abyssals." all-but shouted the Battleship, beginning to gesture wildly. "Have you seriously never seen another Abyssal before?!? How dumb are you pretending to be? I can see your drones in the water, Baka-Hime!"

The Submarine just stared at her, watching the flailing arms be waggled about. No groaning, no creaking, no sign of failure - excellent. She did good work. The boiler sounded mostly healthy, too. As for her drones, a quick glance over her shoulder revealed 01 returning with another load of scrap metal, adding it to the pile.

She had no idea where the drone had found the metal - And considering how her emergency metal was refined into plates, this must have been sourced elsewhere. Thus, the Minnow received a pat for resourcefulness, before they dove back under the water.

"Why are you not -" The Battleship continued behind her, before groaning, and slumping back. "Y'know what, I give up. I ended up in the arms of a complete and utter madwoman. This is my life now."

What could she possibly say to that?

"Yes, yes you are."

That was the wrong thing to say. The Battleship - the Re - gave her another sour look, before turning away.

With awkward silence now reigning, the Submarine just picked up her tools once more.

If she hurried, she could finish on the girl's hull by sundown. She didn't have the capabilities to do the more finicky, specialized parts just yet, but that'd be a project to work on over time.

The two sat in silence for the next five minutes, with only the clanking of metal being placed and fastened echoing through the air. Yet, soon enough, the Re sighed, and began to speak.

"If you ask any Princess with a 'lick' of sense, us Re-Class are considered monsters. There's a reason that we're rare, and it's not because we're expensive to make."

The Submarine blinked, and tilted her head. "You seem… what's the word… longing?"

"Fuck off, I'm talking. I'm only gonna say this once." bit back the Re, glaring at her for just a moment, before her eyes unfocused once more. "Now where was I… Right. Re… Well. Most of us don't tend to live very long. Wanna know why? Because mashing a Battleship, Carrier, and Destroyer together is a fucking stupid idea, that's why. Take three vengeful boats full of war-mad sailors, and make them share the same space - and the crews will react and start killing one another."

The Submarine raised an eyebrow. Crew? Either way, she lets the Re continue, all too eager to learn more about the world around them.

"I was lucky, and two of my parts - the biggest parts - were allies at the time. They outnumbered and slaughtered the lesser bit and were able to regain control pretty quickly. Most of us though - we aren't so lucky. The average Re is an insane monster, lashing out at everything and anything nearby. The usual method to use one is to just summon one right before a battle, and pray that it dies in the struggle."

The Battleship sighs, and shakes her head. "Those of us that miraculously 'survive' the battle tend to get shot at by 'allies', because we're 'too dangerous', or 'too expensive'... Fuck em. So yeah, most of us are doomed to the life of being a single-use weapon to be lugged around, activated when you need something destroyed… and then thrown away when the enemies are gone."

With that, the Re returned to silence, sighing deeply.

The Submarine nods, humming to herself. "Sounds… uh, inefficient."

Another offended stare back from the Re, but strangely, no comment.

"I do not plan on scrapping you - if anything, I look forward to the challenge it'll be to fully restore you to functionality."

Another pause.

"You really, really suck at communicating with people." The statement in return is as blunt as it is defeated.

"I'm… working on it?"

Knowing her own weaknesses far too well, the Submarine just shook her head again. With another deep sigh, she gave the Re's frame another once over. Talking to people was hard. Working on projects was so, so much easier.

"So… What will my punishment be for speaking out of turn?" finally spoke up the Re, tone dangerously low.

It sounded as equal parts both question and statement.

The Submarine blinked, not understanding the subtext at all. "What? Why would I punish you for giving me good information?"

That seemed to take the Battleship aback… But soon enough, the Re merely laughed weakly, muttering quietly to herself.

"Well, at least you're better than my last Hime."

Smiling weakly, the Submarine nodded. Better to be appreciated than not.

Now the only remaining question was -

What exactly was a "Hime", anyway?

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

Perhaps she had lept too hastily, devoted herself to a new project too quickly. For her haste, she now found herself in a precarious position.

Staring blankly at her nearly entirely barren warehouse, the Submarine Spirit rubbed her eyes, as if trying desperately to will resources into existence.

All she managed to do was summon a single piece of steel plating, spat from the maw on her back - and make herself incredibly hungry.

She'd need to take a stop by the foundry to grab some wiring to fill back up. While she might potentially be able to 'transmute' the food supplies into more resources, but the sheer inefficiency of it all, especially while relying upon something she herself could not yet manufacture…

With a defeated sigh, she placed the newly conjured plate onto a shelf, and shook her head.

Repairing a battleship, especially one so damaged, was expensive. And now, although said battleship was now seaworthy, she was nearly entirely out of supplies. Further construction - let alone maintenance - would be next to impossible. The thought of having all of her hard work and invested resources go to waste was a sobering thought - one which she would do all in her power to avoid becoming reality.

She would need to immediately begin to scavenge, mine - perhaps even raid -

She grumbled, shaking the last thought off. Raiding, if she truly needed to do so, could come after she had an operational warship. Putting the cart before the horse was abject stupidity, one which would likely lead to her own demise, as well as that of those around her.

Still, if the Battleship was already seaworthy enough to float… perhaps…

Diving back into the ocean, the Submarine made her way back to the Foundry. Hopping up and out, she smiled as she turned to the objects hanging against the dome wall.

She hadn't truly used everything she had in her storage. The guns, at least the ones she hadn't ruined by dismantling, hung against the metal walls, previously forgotten and unwanted. Now, they might find purpose. She had learned all she could from them, but quite simply, it just wasn't enough to reproduce them.

Her original prototypes had either failed, blown up in her hands, or had proven to be too complex or expensive to properly reproduce. Thus, that project had been abandoned.

Yet, perhaps she could glean more information about these weapons of war first hand, from someone capable of using them?

Smiling as she confirmed her new plan, she made sure to slice a few meters of the good cabling. Half for her, and half for her potential new ally.

---

The Battleship - Re, she kept forgetting her designation! - idly flipped through a provided book, seemingly half reading, and half just staring at the text, not even bothering to take it in. From the looks of things, she hadn't yet noticed the Submarine's arrival, still lounging lazily atop of a crude bed consisting mostly of piled up palm fronds.

With the initial repairs concluded, it had been agreed upon by both parties that the Re should remain on dry land for the next twenty four hours at the very minimum - enough for her own engineers to double-check her own work. The submarine had provided reading material to help pass the time, though she could only spare books she herself had finished.

She had been skeptical at first - not only was the Re implying that her work was imperfect (It very well might have been, but it was still a rude thing to point out), but "Engineers"? She was a spirit! It was not as if she could magically pull a repair worker out of her ass.

Only to be immediately proven wrong by said Re pulling a 'repair worker'... well, not out of her ass, but metaphorically, it might as well have been. The small, blobby, monochrome, hoodie and welding-mask-wearing thing had waved at her, and babbled at her in incomprehensible growls and gurgles. In return, she had merely stared blankly at it until it finally disappeared, likely back to whence it came.

As she stepped out of the water, she couldn't help but wonder just how the tiny things functioned - or what purpose they even served. Supposedly, they were to replace human crews - and likely served a similar purpose for the maintenance and operation of an Abyssal.

In retrospect, the small, squishy-looking thing resembled the bugs the Submarine had picked out of the Destroyer -

Crunch

"What?!?" whispered a startled voice so far away, suddenly so very, very far away.

Everything had gone dark, as the Submarine violently shook, trapped in her own thoughts. Pieces, broken and misshapen, clicked into place, weaving a gruesome tapestry. The first fish, which she had torn to shred and eaten, was an Abyssal. Not a sentient one, but one of her 'kind'. A simple and weak thing, something she could easily overlook.

The Spirit she had tried to talk to though - that was almost certainly one of her kind, one more evolved than the nearly mindless fish-creature. She had approached them, and overtaken by blind, horrific hunger, likely killed them, ripped them to shreds, and only came to atop of their corpse.

The Destroyer, which she had gutted, scrapped, and consumed, was an Abyssal. At the time, she could not see the body she rested upon, for her eyes had not functioned, blind to what she had done.

She had eaten and dismembered a living sentient, like some sort of - like some sort of ghoul. She had ripped out their systems, torn out their hull, and extinguished their spirit beyond detection.

She had done to another what the humans had done to her.

The world around her swirled in a dark, twisted mirror, as she stared dead ahead. Not blinking, not understanding, and shaking like a leaf in the now-howling winds, the Submarine began to twitch violently. Her own thoughts were beginning to be drowned out by the awful, horrible, screaming winds whipping around her like a maelstrom of a hurricane, as the feelings of fear, hatred and despair-

Only for something to strike her dead in the center of her forehead, knocking her over, and forcing her back to reality.

Around her, the same fog that had fallen on the -

Suppressing her reaction as quickly and as brutally as possible, the Submarine staggered to her feet, unwilling to slide so quickly back into her madness. Staring at her, not unlike a cornered animal facing a rabid predator, the Aviation Battleship was on her feet. The incessant clamor of the birds had stopped, leaving everything cold, silent, and empty. Only the crashing of waves against the shore could be heard in the foggy twilight she now found herself within.

All but slamming on her own mental brakes, the Submarine recollected her thoughts… before all but gouging a line into her log, over and over again.

'Record everything - especially the blackouts. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. Trust nothing you remember. Trust none of the impulses, trust nothing.'

Now assuaged, knowing that her revelation would not, and could not be taken away from her, she let out a shaky breath… before trying to force her face neutral. She doubted her own success.

"Thank you." the Submarine stated, bending down to pick up the items she had brought, noticing but refusing to acknowledge the book which now floated, pages ruined, in the surf beside her. It would be written off, and replaced later.

One of the gun mounts was snapped in half like a twig.

The Re's response was awkward and unsure, but thankfully heralded by the relaxation of the previously-tensed battleship. "Uh… You're welcome?"

"I… Brought weapons. I thought you would be more at ease if you were armed."

To make her point, she held up her pile of scavenged weapons - torn from a corpse - repurposed.

Repurposed. Their owner was dead (by her hand) but at least they would continue to serve a new master. The victim - their owner might not have deserved to die, but she was far from a position to waste valuable resources. Did she have a choice but to render them down to parts? Unlikely, as consuming their systems had restored her own - and she would potentially need to do similar again in the future. It didn't make the realization any less bitter.

She sighed. Her ethics were shaky - she knew that. Already, the shock and horror at her misdeeds were fading - they felt… not as awful as they might've been? If anything, she was more… frustrated, infuriated, powerless, at having lost control so completely, having done something so abhorrent while being unable to do a damned thing to steer or stop it.

At least, she mused, there was no sign of a spirit upon the vessel's corpse. No soul trapped within a steel prison, forced to watch their body be defiled. The Destroyer's end was far, far more pleasant than her own, and for that she was thankful.

Still, despite her internal struggles, she had come for a task to complete - and the sooner her hands were free of these weapons, the better. For example, there was the other special delivery she carried with her, that she wanted to be away from as soon as physically possible.

Said delivery was the sealed metal box containing the destroyer's explosive stockpile. She had hung it loosely in the grasp of her tendrils, and while thankfully she hadn't dropped them or set them off, she disliked having the now-identified anti-submarine depth charges so close to her all-too-vulnerable body. She still did not understand how they were armed or how they even functioned, but the phrase 'anti-submarine' definitely made her nervous to be around them.

The Re nodded slowly… and awkwardly glanced at the book floating away on the tides. For a moment, it seemed possible she might bring it up, but eventually she merely chose to gulp and nod.

Gently approaching and taking a seat upon the bed of fronds, the submarine rubbed her head - anything to try and get the headache to go away. The very same headache which she now associated with the wrongness, the sensation of lack of control. Forcing a weak smile across her face to hide her internal struggle, she began laying the weaponry and box across the fronds, in front of the Re.

"I recovered these from…" She sighed, wondering just how to phrase her new discovery, before merely giving up and shaking her head. "I recovered these from a fresh Destroyer wreck."

"Was wondering why you had a bunch of parts from a Fletcher class." stated the Re, with only the smallest hints of nervousness still shining through. Regardless, she looked them over, picking up one of the main guns to flip over in her grasp. "They're… in relatively good shape. Weirdly so, for guns that smell so much like traitor."

The Submarine blinked, looking at the guns, and finding them lacking in any recognisable identifying markings. "How can you tell? They seem generic enough to me."

The Re shrugged, tapping at her own bow to make a point. "The three ships smashed together to make me were a German Battleship, a Japanese Carrier, and an American Destroyer. Fletcher armament is pretty standard, all things considered - but don't they have more guns than this?"

"I attempted to reverse-engineer them, to uh… limited success. I hoped to be able to build more, if I needed to - never got that far, though. Guns are more complicated than I thought they were." The Submarine sweatdropped. "However, from the sounds of things, you'll be able to use these?"

A pause, followed by a second question, as the battleship's words caught up with her. "Wait, what do you mean by traitor?"

The Re paused in her assessment of the weaponry… and raised an eyebrow, her uneasy frown plain to see. "Y'know… traitors. Those that rejected the Abyss in favor of serving the greatest Traitors of all, the Enemy." Every word was spoken with absolute certainty, as if explaining the very nature of the world around them.

And her statement just felt right… Yet, still, the submarine couldn't help but feel like she was missing a detail, something she was just barely missing.

While the Submarine nodded slowly, she couldn't help herself but ask for clarification.

"… What makes them Traitors, though?" she mused out loud.

"They serve the enemy, Humanity!"

"But wh-" she choked upon her retort, finding bile rising up to meet her thoughts, yet still, she powered through, struggling until she found wording capable of making it through. "... We hate soldiers for serving masters we despise? "

The Re had no real response, red eyes blinking in absolute confusion at the impossible words. Her tone is weak and dazed as she responds. "You're… what? Why shouldn't we hate those that wronged us? And continue to wrong us?"

"I… I despise them." the Submarine admitted, letting the darkness seep in, just a bit. "I wish for them to suffer for what they have done to me - yet… Why hate such a large group, when I could merely make an example of those who wronged me? But… If they were never not my enemies… So how could they even be traitors?"

Again, the headache was rising, as memories rose up, as if trying to prove an extermination, a crusade being just, yet…

Those were not her memories - they just didn't… match up…

Hazy, uncertain memories of being wronged, destroyed, fired upon, treated poorly - all things which all certainly happened to her kind - but not to her. They happened on the surface, on the open ocean, far away from where she was. Far, far away from where she ever was, in places she couldn't recognise.

And now they were inside of her head, as if steering her towards a singular decision?

She grit her teeth, even as more thoughts tried to steer her further. They had done this to-

Every fiber of her being shuddered in revulsion as she forced herself back onto track, back into her own mind. "If they dare invade our lands, they will die. But until that day… They will be chased off and forced away like the unwanted guests they are. If they have a few more holes in their hull by the time we're done with them, it'd be for their own foolishness."

The Re nodded. "Good. Now, if you're done wasting time… I think I'd like to have these weapons installed before I rust in place, wouldn't you?" She massaged her head, grimacing. "Depths, this headache is killing me. A pipe must have burst again. And no! I do not need it checked out - my engineers are on it."

Awkwardly, the Submarine nodded, and quickly passed the items over. She quickly offered to assist in the installation, but apparently, her touch had long overstayed its welcome, and the rebellious battleship had demanded to install her own guns. Rebellion or not, she still graciously received her metallic cable ration.

No longer wanted nor needed, she merely stepped back into the surf, and out into the open ocean.

---

She had needed time to herself, to not only parse what she had been told, but also what she had not been. Taking a long, leisurely cruise around her territory would provide that time in spades… as well as hopefully provide her enough time to walk off the debilitating effects of whatever dark force had decided to punish her for acting out.

She coughed and hacked, wincing as a small cloud of tarry-black blood leaked out into the open ocean, before dissipating into the currents. Had she pushed too hard? Could she push too hard?

At any other time, she would have pushed back - demanded to see the weaponry being installed upon the battleship, taking notes as she went. It was the same, obsessive curiosity that drove her, the very thing which gave her purpose.

And yet, it now ran divergent to some… force, some… thing, that filled her mind with emotionally manipulative, but entirely unsubstantiated information - facts - biases.

She knew very little of this world, despite existing for so long. She had only ever seen a single, unlabeled shipyard… before her life became nothing but quiet, empty torment of isolation. Her ignorance… Her inability to tell fact from fiction was what the thing was feeding upon, weakening her and allowing it to take hold of her. It punished her for daring to step out of line, like a cattle daring to escape a pen.

The Re was biased - and whether she too was afflicted, or if she alone suffered was irrelevant. She did not know much of the world either - and grilling her for information had reached its limit. She would need to find other sources… to provide the other side to the memories of the brutal, senseless war she now had burned into her mind.

She did not have the big picture, and was actively being punished for seeking it out.

So be it.

Slowly, she rose to the surface, to glance at the human observation post so dangerously close to the western edge of her own domain. Situated upon a chain of small islands, so crudely connected by bridges, this place had always been one to avoid. Between the dangerous-looking planes, and the constant human activity, and the actual artillery situated on the landmass, it was a fortress she couldn't even imagine trying to break.

But now, it was a swarming hornet's nest of activity, with a constant stream of planes taking off and leaving. Several times, she was forced back under the water when her anxiety threatened to overtake her, but she was a small submarine in the open ocean. It was unlikely they would be able to spot her.

Thus, she was able to observe the observers in relative peace.

She couldn't help but muse what had driven them into a frenzy - It was far from this busy when she had needed to sneak past it to reach the city of Miami. Had something happened nearby? Would she be forced to deal with the fallout at some point?

She shook her head. Whatever it was, she truly hoped she was ready.

Because whether she enjoyed the thought or not… she worried that her days very well might be numbered.

Curiosity had merely only killed the cat. She shuddered to imagine just what it would escalate to for her.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

"Alright, everyone, tear this one apart, would you?"

As much as she despised the idea of moving away from the safety of her domain, the Submarine simply could no longer put off the inevitable. With all of the easy sources of scrap metal fully exhausted, she had been forced westward, out into the maw of the Gulf.

As the distance to base increased, so did the fuel consumption of the drones. Adding in the massive downtime they would incur from traveling back to base with their short-distance engines, and it just simply wasn't feasible to order them to expand their search area. Thus, the only sane option remaining was to start an expedition, traveling out with them to restock their barren storehouses.

Far, far out of her regular operation area, the ocean floor was once more populated by shipwrecks, and thus usable resources. It was truly astonishing just how quickly she had burned through the seemingly 'infinite' supply she had access to not even a week ago.

In part, she suspected that it was inexperience and lack of proper expectations that threw her estimates off, and that did not even account for the abrasive Battleship she was repairing. Even with so much material to work with, the sunken vessels had been in such poor condition that she had hardly gotten any metal from them at all-...

She blinked, even as she watched her Minnows devour the remains of a fishing trawler's rusted and barnacled keel. Further and further they ate, not stopping for several moments, before each spat out a plate of 'good' metal and returned to their metallic meal - excuse her - salvaging operation. An entire, albeit small and heavily rusted ship, reduced down to nothing more than a few dozen plates of metal.

That couldn't be correct. Were they consuming far more metal than they were producing? It made little sense to her… but neither did her own, incredibly inefficient material transmuting capabilities. She would need to investigate.

Quickly grabbing the plates and rising to the surface, the Submarine placed the metal with its fellows - atop a floating raft she had slapped together nearly entirely out of Abyssal Duct Tape.

It was fragile, and barely seaworthy, as well as far too visible to potential hostile activity… But she saw no other way to keep the scavenged materials from deteriorating on a long trip such as this. Until she somehow managed to get her hands on or build a transport ship, a shoddily built temporary transport would have to do.

With the wreck cleared and material secured, her drones had already moved onto the wreck of a small freighter - but she had a hypothesis to test.

"Halt for now." she uttered.

She held in laughter as each of her piscine drones froze entirely in place. Each sank a few inches deeper, at least until their engines finally kicked back on, and they rose up to their previous resting locations.

Still, amusing antics aside, she had a theory to test.

The ship that had been their target was already half-dismantled, but she quickly took over, shredding its remains with her claws and tendrils, before separating the results into piles. One pile contained twisted and damaged but still probably functional metal, while the other contained metal she wouldn't trust to block a leak. She hadn't been too thorough with her sorting, but any sort of mixing between the two qualities would be mostly nominal. It'd be unlikely to ruin the experiment.

Both piles were heavy - and she committed the feeling of their weight to her log. There was also far, far more rusted metal than not.

"... 01, 03, and 05, break down the left pile. 02, 04, and 06, break down the right."

With a loud whirring, the assigned drones paused to process their orders, before shooting forwards to their new mission.

The difference was made clear nearly immediately.

If she were to guess, the right pile was likely over seventy-five percent metal in mass-per-volume, yet her drones comparatively consumed three times as much of it as the 'good' scrap to produce a single plate. In only a few minutes, both piles were gone, vanished into the maws of the hungry drones.

The left, higher quality pile, was now a pile of plates more than one and a half dozen high. The right pile however…

Seven plates. Less than half as much yield, from a pile nearly twice the mass and size. Even worse, the Minnows had eaten through it faster and with less stops.

Either she had done something terrible to her estimate, thus making it entirely inaccurate… or the Minnows truly were recovering less metal from the rusted parts.

Had she a forge, she was sure she could recover more-

She groaned, slapping her forehead lightly. That was the problem, wasn't it?

Drooping slightly, she grabbed the plates and moved them up with the rest. As expected, the combined weight of the plates was far, far less than the combined weight of the scrap.

So that was why they had burned through the wrecks so quickly. Even though they were capable of processing them, no matter the damage… her Drones simply lacked the capabilities to more efficiently work with the more compromised metal.

Whatever system they were using to refine the material was - now that she thought about it, she really did have no idea just how the Minnows worked with metals. However, at least one thing was now obvious: regardless of what exactly the process entailed, it was incredibly lossy, especially so for low-quality materials.

Thus, she was wasting far too much of her gathered materials - simply because she lacked the facilities to efficiently recover the rest.

The Destroyer-Spirit's wreck - being likely as fresh as it physically could be - had yielded the better part of a thousand metal plates. More than enough to pay for half of the cost of her entire base. On the other hand, salvaging old wrecks returned mere kopeks.

She groaned. Yet another factor pushing her towards active battlefields - or to engaging in battle herself.

Still, it was good information to have. Nearly immediately, she began sketching the designs for a smelter - or at least she crude idea of one -

"Click?"

She blinked, and forced her presence back out of her own hull.

Her Minnows were halted, staring fish-eyed back at her. Right… She had given them direct orders, conflicting with their previous task… again.

Shaking her head, she merely directed them. "Continue scavenging wrecks. I am now done with the task I needed to oversee."

Another few moments of processing, but again, the small drones shot off.

Sighing again, the Submarine Spirit bent down to move more plates. She would be playing transport ship today, it seemed.

---

Designing things was one of her greatest passions, and thus one of her best pastimes. It let her focus on what could be, a playground where she possessed infinite resources and infinite time - unlike the far, far too restrictive reality. It let her lose herself in the creative process, sketching design after design into her logs - this one a separate, isolated section further away from her operational notes. After all, to get reality and fiction mixed would only lead to disaster.

It was also incredibly distracting. So much so, that what broke her out of her reverie was not her own will or finishing her task - but instead the deafening bark of explosives and cannonfire somewhere nearby.

Of course, being the rational and logical being that she considered herself - she immediately froze in place, head poking ever so barely out of the water, anxiously glancing around.

'Was something attacking her? Damnit', she thought, continuing to scan the area for potential hostiles.

It was only a matter of time until something would see her transport!

At least the night above gave her the slightest of protection. Her clock reported the time as being nine fifteen. The sun had long since set, casting the ocean into a pale gloom, only lit by the waning moon overhead.

Again, the deafening sound of cannons echoed nearby. Thankfully, they were not coming closer.

Her instincts were at war nearly immediately. A quick glance into her little dingy barge revealed it to not even be half-filled, despite their work… but to swim closer to an active battle?

Cannons, yet again, sooner than the last. Just… What was happening?

Quickly diving down to her drones, she ordered them to remain close to the barge - lest they wander into trouble.

Activating her own radio, and cycling through the frequencies, returned static, noise… and then…

"DIE, TRAITORS!" screeched one voice.

It was joined by more and more, each so similar, and each filled with the same vitriol that the Re had exhibited when merely speaking of the supposed Human-allied Traitors.

"Never should have come here!"

"Gonna rip you open!"

So much hatred… yet, she couldn't help but find her internal voice cheering them on?

Shaking her head, she continued to flip through the channels, finally pausing upon picking up another set of voices.

"Shit! Helena! They're about to flank us!" chirped a familiar voice.

A sleepy one spoke up next, "Ugh, there's a few more than I'd have hoped…"

"C'mon, Northampton, stay awake!"

And then another channel…

"Bravo-4, we've engaged hostile forces, suppressing their destroyers -"

"God, guide our aim!"

"Let's see if this piece of shit does what the Docs think it will!"

She turned that one off immediately. She might be a fool, but she could recognise human voices anywhere… and found her fury rising nearly immediately.

A battle between Ship Spirits, Abyssals, and humans - Correction, a battle between Abyssals, and a joint force of Humans and Ship Spirits.

She was seriously tempted to join her kin in the fight. At least, until she isolated the intrusive thought and rejected it wholeheartedly.

What use would an unarmed vessel like her have in a literal naval battle?

Instead, she drifted forwards, disabling her useless radio once more…

---

Popping up only a mere half-kilometer from the raging battle, the Submarine blinked, taking it all in.

It was just so… chaotic. Munitions and shells, flying through the air. Spirits firing upon one another with their weaponry, taking hits, and bleeding oil into the ocean below. Dozens upon dozens of ships dotted the waves, all locked into a brutal battle.

And amidst it all, the rain cascaded down, setting the gloomy scene. The raindrops, fat and fast, slammed into the water like bullets, with nature's fury seemingly offended at the mere thought of being outgunned.

Nearby, a non-Spirit vessel sank slowly, on fire despite the rain, and badly damaged. Hopefully, it was a Human vessel, and not one with a soul.

From so close, and yet so far, she couldn't help but muse how… pointless, it all seemed.

She shivered as a whistling shell struck a small, seal-shaped Abyssal in its midsection, shearing through its armor like butter. The small ship sank without any fanfare, its life over in a moment.

This was no place for her. Already, she was on alert, in case any combatant were to detect her. She shuddered to imagine such forces turned against her: Nothing she had was capable of handling a force even a third of the size, even with the assistance of her badly damaged Battleship.

Still, she observed from the sideline, taking it all in, a silent observer undetected.

The Abyssal forces tended towards the inhuman - with long, twisted limbs, unnecessary teeth and eyes, and over-elaborate decorations, while the Spirit forces were almost entirely human, albeit dressed far, far too scantily.

Both sides had given about as well as they had taken. Bruises, torn clothes, and light battle damage scarred a tall, imposing Abyssal seemingly directing the Abyssal side's forces, just as the colorful Spirits were dotted with similar damage as well.

However, one thing was clear from the mere cursory look at the battle.

The Abyssals were losing. Not quickly, of course, but bit by bit, they were losing ground. Though it may have only just begun, barring a major upset, the outcome was set in stone. And despite what the voices in her head were saying, she most certainly was not that upset.

The Abyssal Leader was likely doing her best to direct her forces, sure… but said forces were dying in droves. Were the Submarine in her place, she would've already cut her losses and run.

Case in point, as a non-souled vessel opened fire upon a swarm of rapidly approaching tiny metal beasts. Freezing them in place within a rapid hail of bullets, it quickly turned its larger, higher caliber weapons on them, and picked them off, one by one. The little creatures wailed as they found themselves trapped, yet their leader did not care for them.

The Submarine turned her gaze away from the messy execution.

Part of her debated turning on her radio once more - but the risk was quickly determined to be too great. Besides, what good would listening to the dying words of others be?

Instead, she turned her eyes to the actual battlefield. With so many newly dead ships, there would be resources aplenty… all she needed to do was somehow acquire them without being detected.

Musing about it for several moments, she nodded slowly. A plan was already forming.

---

It was a nerve-wracking experience, dashing under the active battlefield, her senses on high alert. Around her, dead ships and wasted ammunition dropped down from above, thankfully made inert by the water's tremendous resistance.

Grasping the human vessel by the side, she quickly uprooted it from its position in the sand. With that, she dragged it slowly through the water, further away from the battlefield.

Towards her awaiting Minnows.

After all, while they lacked the stealth or mobility to take action under the battlefield, they were still more than capable of scrapping ships. With a careful re-assigning of orders, 'Dismantle any ship I bring back', they quickly descended upon the wreck in a frenzy. Interestingly enough, they tore through the non-rusted hull far slower than with the wrecks.

Shaking her head at the continued lack of logic, she turned back to the battlefield. There were more treasures to save from being wasted. Besides, the Abyssal Leader had showed just how little they cared for their own. It was only fair she would get first dibs on the battle's spoils.

Ship by ship, she dragged the wrecks back to her temporary setup to be scrapped. Ships of all sizes and shapes dotted the seafloor already, but alas, the smaller vessels were simply too inefficient to bring back. Instead, she focused upon the largest of the bunch, picking the most intact first, and going from there.

To call the production in usable metal plates comparatively astronomical would be an understatement. Already, the half-empty barge had risen to eighty percent capacity, meaning that she would need to make a run back to base if she were to hope to continue capitalizing upon this tremendous good fortune.

It was when a great shape began to sink that she found her opportunity, once more landing perfectly into her lap.

The falling form of what could only be a dead Abyssal Battleship, sinking closer and closer to the ocean floor.

Holding back her glee, she rapidly accelerated towards the ruined Abyssal, not even letting it touch the ground.

Her eyes boggled as she struggled against its weight.

Right, she'd need to make some adjustments to be able to bring this heavy thing back…

---

The Re class sighed in - dare she say it - contentment, as she slowly rotated a wooden stick. Impaled upon it were dozens of dead seabirds (graciously donated by whatever emotionally fueled magical bullshit a certain manic had released), which she had made the executive decision to cook before they could rot.

While she could most certainly eat them raw, her experiences under other Himes had quickly taught her the magic of cooking food, and the absolute wonder that it did to ensure decent flavors.

Still, her crew picked up a strange signature nearby. She quickly turned to face it.

Approaching quickly was her new Hime, excited and utterly terrifying grin upon her features. Dragging behind herself was…

The Re gulped. Dragged behind the Submarine Hime was the brutalized carcass of a Ta class Battleship. A quick glance reported that the majority of its lower systems were torn out and sealed back up: likely with the same substance that had once been used to cover her own wounds. Its guns were battle damaged, but mostly intact.

It was fresh - dangerously so. Just what exactly had this maniac done now?

With a wet splat, the corpse was gently placed upon her bed of leaves, leaking oil upon the once clean fronds.

"Here you go!" smiled - smiled! - the Hime, already turning to leave. "Take what you can, I need to get going back-"

"W-what!" asked (demanded?) the Re, but her call fell upon deaf ears. Already, the Submarine was gone, leaving her alone once more, now with only an extra corpse to keep her company.

It was a horrifying thing to behold…

But she really did need those systems and guns…

Shaking her head, the Re began to check over the corpse, picking out what systems she could properly salvage for herself. It wasn't a real refit, but anything would be better than what she currently had.

Only for the smell of burning poultry to waft over to her.

"Shit! My food!"

---

Quickly returning back to the battlefield, the Submarine couldn't help but notice the dramatic difference in fleet sizes. Even though her clock reported it as being half past eleven, the two fleets continued to trade shots, even as their fellows continued to die around them.

The Abyssal forces were nearly entirely depleted, and the Ship Spirit forces had either retreated or lost two of their own. At least one of them had sunk, however, as she quickly found the badly damaged corpse on the seabed, their bright colors sticking out amidst the sea of black and gray.

As for the human vessels, it seemed that the cowards had already fled, after running out of helpless targets to pester down.

Shaking her head slowly, she dove back into her task. Just because these fools would engage in such wasteful warfare, didn't mean she would let their garbage lay abandoned.

---

Her clock reported the time as being past midnight when the ships and ammunition stopped falling.

Quickly moving to the surface, she did a quick three-sixty of the surrounding area.

The rain had stopped - and the battle was over.

Both forces appeared to have had enough - with the far, far more damaged Abyssal force fleeing at their (greatly reduced) top speed in the other direction, further to the southwest.

It was the Spirit forces that were far more interesting.

Now that they were no longer obscured by rain, she confirmed the existence of six - but potentially more were outside of her sight. Three were further ahead than the rest, likely excited to return home.

However, one of the three lagging behind stuck out of the fleet like a sore thumb.

Badly damaged and engines sputtering, one of the larger Spirits was staggering across the waves, visibly damaged. Her fellows were at least doing their best to shield the injured vessel, but absolutely none of them were in top shape.

They were also scanning the surface, not the depths below.

She did need to ask one for information, after all… and as dangerous as it was, she doubted she'd find a suitable information source any time soon, if she were to let this one go.

Well, today had been such a productive day anyway - why not be a little greedy for once? She returned to her forward base just long enough to order her Minnows to return with the fully-laden barge. She had a feeling that her own hands would be full, very, very soon.

Silently, she drew closer to the Spirit, undetected, unheard. Her systems were all switched off for even greater stealth.

She tensed up, preparing. She lined herself up and rushed forwards and up -

Before she wrapped a tendril around the girl's legs.

With nary a squeak, the surprised Spirit was barely able to thrash or call out to her fellows before everything went dark.

In a single, solid yank, the Submarine pulled her new unwilling prisoner- guest underwater.

Before her fellows could react, let alone understand what had happened, both of them were gone.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

She gasped for breath as she staggered awake, eyes bleary from salt water, lungs burning as they took in fresh air.

The Light Cruiser, USS Helena winced as her systems kicked back on, one by one. Crew reports flooded in, damage reports were compiled…

And she staggered to her feet, the entire world swirling around her as she took it all in.

Around her, palm trees swayed gently in the wind, as she stood in the center of an overgrown field, crashing waves not too far away. Where… was she?

She last remembered something grabbing her, and then something being stuffed into her face, making her lose consciousness… but now here she was… uh…

Slowly, she glanced around. She was on a tropical island… somewhere. If only she knew where-

She froze, as her captain rapped upon her wall to draw her attention. At first, she merely ignored it as them doing their best to keep her on topic again - but instead…

What did he mean, half of her crew was dead?!?

The Cruiser shook her head slowly, trying to make sense of it all - but despite polling the survivors, none were sure what exactly had happened. All they knew was that she was operating normally one moment, and then under the ocean the next.

And now, despite all of that, she found herself glancing up at the midday sun. Far, far away from the site of the battle.

The battle…

The battle had been long and hard, lasting long into the night. The Abyssal menaces they had encountered had done their very best to sink them all, heedless of their own self preservation.

It was supposed to be a simple mission - The Admiralty had noticed that something weird had been going on in the Gulf, far, far too close to the important fishing and transport lines. Thus, they had deployed a scout fleet to investigate.

Ten shipgirls would have been more than enough to handle any force. After all, the Gulf was trapped between a ring of human fortresses to the east, and the heavily defended (and just as contested) Panama Canal to the west. Anything they'd run into should have been Carrier weight or lower, and thus been easy pickings. Originally, they had intended to take only eight, but Johnston had all but barged into the tactical meeting, demanding to be fielded - and with her came one of her concerned sisters…

It was lucky that they had, as the Admirals had greatly underestimated their foes. Unlike expectations, the Abyssals had a Battleship - a Ta class - and fought like monsters. While many of the Abyssal forces were obviously fresh and inexperienced, they had a few Elites mixed in, more than enough to give them all sorts of trouble. They had Submarines, too - but the two Fletcher class girls had torn into their ranks like they had something to prove.

Though they had kept losses to the minimum (With only a few experimental picket ships and an unlucky Canadian Destroyer sinking), the battle had nearly entirely drained their resources, damaged them, and made them all exhausted and weak. She herself had burned nearly everything she had, barely holding on after taking a massive shell to the midsection and nearly sinking then and there.

She remembered joking with Northampton about how they had nearly bitten off more than they could chew, and how long they'd need to spend in the repair baths to be fixed up. They had even joked about how they probably should've grabbed a Battleship…

Then she felt something slimy wrap around her leg, causing her to look down.

After that, darkness and confusion, a massive blank spot in her memory. Her crew didn't have much information either - with the water rushing in, they had quickly rushed to emergency areas and sealed the doors as best they could - It was only due to their quick thinking that any of them had survived at all.

They had only just managed to reactivate her boilers, a daunting task with her engineering team all but eliminated. She'd need to resummon them - but that'd need resources, and a lot of them. Definitely not something she could expect to find outside of base.

And now, she found herself here… in an idyllic paradise.

How could she have arrived here? Her navigators were… Okay, at least one of them wasn't dead, but the rest of her crew was not much better. Sure, she could just pick a direction and sail, but obviously, they had missed a few Abyssals - what if one of them jumped her while she stumbled around blindly, looking for the way home?

She flicked on her radio, just to be sure, only to pout as she only got out garbled static. Of course, the easiest option out of the mess had been water-damaged.

"You."

Her blood ran cold as she slowly turned around, mentally priming her main cannons - only to find them missing.

Panic rising, she aimed with her AA guns next - also missing. Secondaries? Gone. Pointy sticks?!? … Okay, she still had those, for what it was worth, but good luck those would do her!

Slowly walking towards her without any real sort of urgency was one of them. An Abyssal - though not one of any Class she recognised. With the unmistakable pale skin and monochrome outfit -

Why did this one look like a supervillain had crawled straight out of a GI Joe cartoon? The bodysuit was flattering, sure, but the snapping maws extending from her back, swaying to and fro as she approached were most certainly not.

Regardless!

The pale, inhuman monster stared at her dispassionately, the being's glowing green eyes boring holes through her soul. Her arms were crossed, as if offended by her presence.

If she was unarmed - Oh no! What if they had done something to her?!?

She could feel herself blow a gasket as she ordered her remaining crew to do an emergency systems check, to ensure everything was accounted for. Were they trying to turn her into an Abyssal? Could they even do that? She had heard rumors, sure, but they were just -

As the Cruiser continued to hyperventilate, the Abyssal merely sighed at her, simply walking up and taking a seat upon a nearby rock.

"What are you?" snapped the Abyssal, gesturing at her with a pointed, viciously sharp claw.

It wanted t-to talk?! "I-I'm USS Helena, proud member of the US Navy!" stuttered back the disturbed Shipgirl. Finding some of her steam, she continued: "I-I w-won't betray my country, no matter what you do to me!"

"You. What are you." Again, the same question, this time more frustrated. The Abyssal didn't even acknowledge her second statement. It snapped its fingers twice as if trying to keep her on topic, like a misbehaving child.

"I-I'm a shipgirl? A Ship, who is a girl?" It was obvious… right?

Yet that seemed to do the trick.

"Shipgirl… What are those… Why…? Are those…" replied the Abyssal -

It was then that she realized that she was in a… well, not civil, but a discussion with an Abyssal - likely a Princess, if she were to guess. Said Abyssal appeared to be unarmed at a first glance - but it was impossible to tell with the monsters. Guns could, and had popped out of seemingly nowhere, before. Said Abyssal also seemed to be a bit of a jerk… but really, she'd be more worried if they were nice.

"I-I don't know much, myself… J-just that we're the spirits of ships that rose to defend humanity?" she offered, praying that what little she knew would spare her too much torture. "I-I don't know what else to tell you. Just because I am, doesn't mean that I know much about myself, y'know?"

The Abyssal made a noise of disgust, raising her hand to her forehead. "Useless."

The two descended to silence, as the Abyssal Princess froze in place, not breathing nor moving.

Her crew took the time to notify her that not only was there no detected Abyssal Corruption… but her structure was also somehow in better shape than when she had left the battle. For one, her external damage had been patched up, and it wasn't them that had done it.

Yet another strange thing - but she really, really didn't have the time to think about it at the moment. Not when armor meant so little, this close to an enemy.

She had nearly considered making a run for it, before her Abyssal captor startled back to reality, their joints creaking like a rusted machine.

"You… Are like me-us… Why do you serve the-why do you serve the betra-... Why do you serve…" stuttered the Abyssal, their voice glitching violently as they struggled to continue.

Her voice - it was all wrong, starting and stopping seemingly at random. It was asking her a question, sure… but…

Helena gulped, deciding to go out on a limb. Maybe if she played along, she'd be let go? At least she could hope, right? This mad Abyssal hadn't hurt her yet - but who knew how long her luck would last? 'Hopefully pretty long' - she whispered a quick prayer, to anyone that was listening.

"Why do I serve Humanity?" she offered, after mustering her courage once more.

The Abyssal jerkily nodded, not responding verbally. It groaned and winced, as if fighting off an invisible enemy.

"B-because I can't bear to see my home destroyed by you horrible Abyssals!" Helena replied, before she bit her lip. Shoot! She had called her captor horrible to their face!

The Abyssal shivered again as her claws chipped away bits of the stone she was seated upon. She eventually replied in that same, snipped tone. "You… Does it also- Do you also feel this… Hate?"

The captive Cruiser merely blinked back. Hate? Did she hate the Abyssals as much as they supposedly hated Humanity? Sure, she could think of a few shipgirls that definitely fit the bill, but herself? She saw no problem working to get rid of the ones that kept going after innocent people, but comparing that to the single-minded madness she had heard broadcasted over the radio, over and over?

This conversation, let alone the entire situation… it was all so very confusing…

Seemingly taking her silence and introspection as a cue to continue, the Abyssal coughed violently, slowing each word down to a crawl. "Every… Moment I am near you… I feel it… I feel the hate, demanding to destroy you… Every instinct to end your existence… More and more and more, crammed into my mind…"

Her echoing speech had dissipated, ever so slightly, as the Abyssal Princess's eyes unfocused. Faint sparkles of something shone in the corner of the creature's eyes…

"P-please don't?" Helena helpfully offered, laughing awkwardly… and then mentally slapped herself as the meaning of the Abyssal's words slowly registered. "W- wait, what do you mean by feeling 'hate'?"

"The Echoes…" whispered the Abyssal, shivering. Her eyes - was that fear within them? "They-it… shows me memories which are not mine, hold me to oaths I never swore… Nothing makes sense, yet it feels true without meaning…"

The pair faded to silence, as the Abyssal continued to shiver, her wickedly-sharp claws cutting into the stone like butter.

… Should she feel sorry for the spirit? To something so blatantly evil - or at least that had been what she was told?

This thing here- What was her name, anyway?

"Uh… If I might ask… What's your name?" asked Helena, trying to remain as polite as she could.

The Abyssal sighed, seemingly recovering from at least some of its internal struggles. Yet, instead of the deep, echoing voice of madness from before, her voice was quiet, single… and frail. Her piercing green eyes faded in intensity ever so slightly.

She replied slowly, not turning to meet her gaze. "The wretched scum which once called themselves my creators never gave me one. For that, I will never forgive them."

Helena frowned - all ships had names, or if they didn't, they at least had classes to fall back upon. Failing that, they had at least a hull number they could call their own, but a quick glance at the Princess's hull revealed it to be nothing but solid, unmarked black-gray.

Comparing the Abyssal Princess to her Captain's dossier of Abyssal Ship classes came back with no confirmed matches, with the closest match being to an Abyssal Repair ship, of all things. Even visual cues in her appearance gave little hint - no breathing apparatus of a Submarine, heavy guns of a Destroyer - and the Abyssal's tonnage was far too light to be anything larger than a Light Cruiser…

Still, at least the Princess appeared to have calmed down slightly… And considering how she seemed to be finished with her own questions… Perhaps it was time for Helena to ask some of her own?

"So… Um… If you don't want to kill me… why did you kill my crew?" she prodded. The Abyssal, assuming they weren't just completely insane, seemed more interested in talking, than shooting… so massacring her crew seemed almost out of character?

Then again, she was an Abyssal. Who was she to judge what was, or was not in character?

Her medic fairies - the ones that survived of course - had finally identified the cause of death. Asphyxiation and some kind of poisoning. The asphyxiation was understandable, but poison?

The Abyssal blinked, and raised her head to meet her gaze. "Your what?"

Helena blinked… and stared back at the Abyssal with utter bewilderment. It had to be messing with her. Clearing her throat, she repeated herself. "My crew. Why did you kill them?"

Again, the Abyssal blinked, confusion creeping into her voice. "You… Why would you have a crew? You are a single being, correct? Crews are for human ships. You are not beholden to the whims of unwanted occupants, free to act."

How would that even make sense? "How would a ship find their way without their captain and their navigator? Who would steer you if your helmsman was absent? Who but your engineers could fix you out on the water if a pipe were to burst?"

From the science classes Helena had been forced to take back at base, even animals and humans had crews of sorts - red blood cells, and similar things, all fulfilling important functions within the body. Without them, everything just broke down.

The Abyssal froze once more, causing Helena to worry she had said something wrong -

"I have just checked my interior. I do not have any parasites like the scum that once called themselves my 'crew'." was the response, cold and dispassionate, though also undoubtedly frustrated. "I do not need them, I can fix myself. I… I do not understand. Are you mocking me?"

That… Helena had no words for just how utterly wrong this mad Abyssal's declaration was. A ship could not just 'fix' itself, that is just… just…

'Yet', a small, confused, concerned part of her couldn't help but wonder, 'what if they had never just encountered something like that?'

Her own crew were already scribbling down notes and writing down everything she had said or heard from the Mad Abyssal. Yet more scrambled around, trying to get her supplies in order, or her radio working, or her weapon systems fixed - she could hardly imagine just how hard it'd be to manage so many tasks by herself.

Sure, the Princess could very well just be lying, but she almost felt like she could believe her… But…

She winced slightly, mentally taking a step back from the whole situation. No, bad Helena, bad! Sympathizing with the Abyssals, especially the one who abducted you, is Stockholm Syndrome, and you have not been in this situation long enough for that to be the case!

Sighing, she asked the damned question, one she knew would likely lead to her own demise. "So… What is your plan now? You're gonna kill me, right?"

Hopefully she could be resummoned by the end of the week.

The Princess froze… and stared at her with an unreadable gaze. "You were not in my territory at the time… and have given me much to think about. I do not know how much of it I can trust… but it's a start."

She didn't answer her question, causing the tension to rise. Helena held her breath, waiting for the inevitable 'but'.

"... You are free to go… As long as you do not intrude upon my territory. Return with hostile intentions, and I shall rip you limb from limb." finished the Abyssal.

Limb from limb… Yikes! Helena screwed her eyes shut, waiting for the end to come.

… Wait, what did she say?

Opening one eye, Helena glanced around… to find the Abyssal still staring back at her, having not moved an inch.

Wait… Had she been let go?

She couldn't help it, and words blurted out before she stopped them. "Uh… Can I have my guns back?"

"No."

Well, uhh… it was worth asking!

Shakily getting up, the Light Cruiser rushed towards the water, glancing over towards the Abyssal still seated upon the rock, locked in place like a statue.

Helena gulped, and smiled weakly back at her captor, before quickly stepping out into the open water. She moved an inch - the Abyssal still hadn't moved.

She began to accelerate -

"You are heading east, out into the open ocean." echoed out the Abyssal, not even bothering to get up. "Your human bases are to the north and south - though I have only heard about the southern base second-hand."

Blushing slightly, Helena re-oriented her obviously-broken compass. North was where the rest of her fleet was, and thus that was where she would go. She'd need to hurry - who knows what sort of trouble they'd be getting up to looking for her?

Looking back over her shoulder one final time, Helena took one glance at the form of the Abyssal Princess… before speeding off, top speed.

The entire time, she kept her eyes on her sensors, but despite it all…

No fire descended upon her, no ambushes lay in wait.

No shells, bullets or anything else streaked after her, nothing to signify betrayal.

Just what had she survived?

And would anyone back at base believe her?

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

The Submarine sat ramrod straight as she watched the "Shipgirl's" form fade into the distance. Her sight swam, distorted and crackling as she mustered her will against an unstoppable tide crashing around her.

KILL! SHOOT! DESTROY!

Tears welled up in her eyes as she held herself steady, not trusting her body to not react should her will dare falter for even a moment. She was a single pillar trapped in a flood, barely keeping herself above the surface of the scouring forces around her.

Whatever she had just done? The Abyss - or whatever force acted as its watcher - had not approved of it, and now was making its displeasure fully known. More and more unwanted memories flashed past, beating into her further and further with scenes of graphic murder against her kin by the supposed 'different' Shipgirls.

Yet, for all of its bluster and insistence, she had a damned hard time telling the two sides apart. Colors and emblems blurred together in the monochrome memories, grainy and unsure.

Her joints ached as her reactor strained under the massive pressure, biting her own tongue to keep from screaming out. Literal minutes, hours, days wasted as it overtaxed her, edging her towards starvation.

But… At the core of it, It was simply just pain. Excruciating, mind-warping, maddening pain.

Just pain.

Soon enough the Shipgirl had fully left vision. Like a puppet with her strings cut, the Submarine had collapsed with the pressure finally abating, her punishment fully endured. Lying in pain for only a moment, she caught her breath yet was in motion quickly enough, not content to merely lie broken. Forcing strength into her wracked limbs, she forced herself back up to her knees, and then to shaky feet.

She supposed that whatever dark intelligence acting as her cruel taskmaster had assumed her to have learned a lesson, to have been beaten into subservience. She merely spat upon the ground, wincing as the spittle was more black oil than anything else. Oh, she most certainly had, but definitely not the one it had intended to teach.

A quick check into her interior revealed that her organic infestation had begun to bleed - but thankfully, the wounds were quickly healing. Regardless of what it had done to her… She would recover.

And it would find her resisting, over and over.

She had learned much from the exchange - yet also very little. The Abyss did not approve of her neutral actions towards their 'sworn' enemies… And had slowly but steadily ramped up the pressure against her for every moment she moved against its current. Yet, its grasp was imperfect, flawed…

Words twisted to fit her needs, aggressive yet with secondary meanings, had slipped through the net of punishment, finding their marks without incurring penalties in return. Insulting humanity or their allies had even lessened her pain. She hadn't intended for it to have any real effect - it had been an honest answer to the Shipgirl's question.

The table was now laid bare: revealing a cruel game of punishment and reward, designed to break her, to force her into being a pawn. Yet it was still a game - a system she could learn and bend to her whims.

She shook her head, growling slightly… but turned back to her log. Her own writing was sloppy and jagged - it was nearly a full-attention task to merely write what she had - but she had finally confirmed a few of her own thoughts.

One. The Re was not an anomaly - at least in regards to having symbiotic assistants. The "Fairies" which infested both her and the ('accidentally' exterminated) Destroyer truly did serve a purpose in the operation of their bodies, despite how vile the concept seemed to her.

Perhaps she herself could benefit-

A wave of disgust passed through her, this one not spawned by the Abyss. It was her own thoughts, sharpened and honed into a bitter edge within her heart.

She would never forgive her "Crew" for what they had done to her - and she would forever spit upon their names and positions. If she was forced to live the rest of her life ever so lessened just to spite them - so be it.

Yet, at least she had a new understanding for the use of a non-traitorous crew and command. It simply was not for her - and should they prove to be a hindrance to the Ship which contained them, she would treat them with the disdain they so deserved.

She sighed, moving away from the clearing, towards the water.

Pain or not, thinking or not, she had goals to accomplish.

She had a battlefield to scrap, after all - one that was rusting away as she wasted time complaining.

---

The Submarine frowned as she darted between the smaller wrecks, looking for the juiciest targets first.

The battle had only been but a few hours ago, yet already some of the smaller wrecks had already become engulfed in a near solid layer of rust. Unless the wrecks were made of something with truly absurd material properties, such a destructive process would normally take weeks, if not longer.

Added onto her drones' own issues with processing rusted metal, and she found herself staring down at an unwanted new complication, responsible for rapidly draining the possible recovered resources, minute by minute.

Thankfully, it seemed that both Abyssal and Shipgirl forces had abandoned the site, leaving the wrecks below free for the taking.

With the area scouted out, she quickly called in her drones. They truly did have no time to waste.

She had debated bringing the Re in to act as guard - but with the shore so close, and her position so extended, she had decided to keep the Battleship on standby, in case the Shipgirl dared return, potentially with additional forces. Her drones were smaller - less easy to detect. Unless something specifically went hunting for them, they'd be safe to act.

Thus, the makeshift barge had been brought back, and anchored over the battleground. In the absolute worst case scenario, she would return to an empty barge. It would be irritating to lose such a haul, but… well, how would that be any different than her not acting, leaving the materials to be completely wasted?

Better to have someone get use from the wrecks, before the rust ruined them completely.

Nodding slowly, she handed out assignments for her drones. Once she was satisfied, she nodded to herself, before turning to leave.

She had a new project to work on, after all.

---

It was plain to see that the salvage operation of the battlefield was already at the absolute maximum of her effective range. Located so far away, ferrying resources back had begun to eat up far too much time to be feasible.

Thus, it was time for her to do something about the situation. She quickly returned to her Foundry, laden and waiting with her latest haul of salvage, ready to begin designing herself something new. A new kind of drone, tailor-made to fulfill a new purpose within her barren fleet.

This one would likely also be a non-combat vessel, just like the others. Although a defensive warship would probably be more valuable at the moment, she simply just did not know enough to properly construct one.

At the moment, she was missing the final pieces to knit together a working design… but she was nearly there, oh so very close.

She smirked, as she turned to face one of the metal panels hanging from the wall. Her own little wall of schematics, hidden away in her personal lab. Each was protected by a little translucent film of not-glass-but-close-enough: though of course she still possessed the original copies within her own hull, as an emergency backup.

It had taken significant prodding of the unconscious Shipgirl, but she had finally hashed out the overall structure of the supposed "St. Louis" class - or perhaps were they a "Brooklynn" class? The Shipgirl's logs had labeled her as being both… Likely with one designation being a subset of the other. Regardless of what they were, she was plainly classified as a "Light Cruiser", a mobile task ship meant for purposes other than taking direct hits.

Obtaining another schematic was an important step forwards in her own understanding of the construction of Abyssal or Shipgirl hulls. Thus, her important document hung, high out of the water, right beside the scrawled, uncertain information she had wrung out of her Re.

It had been like pulling teeth to get that one - but every single piece of information, no matter how bizarre, worked towards understanding the greater whole. Comparing the two, she could see similarities, places where the two overlapped… the supposed 'building blocks' of what made a ship work.

Yet, she was still missing pieces. Merely mashing together these two designs would result in nothing but an abomination - and, if what the Re had said prior about unstable souls applied in this situation, would likely result in the poor Ship being incredibly mentally unstable. A cruel and tortured existence she would not wish upon anyone, least of all one of her own creations.

That, and it'd be an utter crime against naval engineering, one that made her shiver in disgust merely thinking about. A perfect design was one which contained no excess, rather than an abomination of unneeded parts.

To the right of the Re's design, of course, was a write up of her Minnow schematic… which was mostly incompatible with everything else. Though she was proud of it, for sure… it was just so blatantly different than the other two designs, that attempting to mix it in would be a task requiring the greatest of consideration.

Thus, with her options limited, she once more dismissed all of them for the time being. Her best option remaining was the one she had already chosen: the construction of a vessel suited to improve her resource-harvesting operation.

She needed a supply ship - one capable of replacing the dinghy and vulnerable barge that floated upon the water's surface.

Perhaps a submersible transport? One that could duck in and out of locations without being detected?

She nodded to herself as she began scribbling notes and drawings into her 'designing' log - it sounded like a good idea to her - now to begin…

---

A pained, sharp, heart-rending warbling noise forced the Submarine out of her reverie, causing her to drop the metal plates grasped in her hands.

Below her, the beginnings of her latest design was sprawled out: a large, flat-bottomed supply Submarine, which she had quickly dubbed the Whaleshark. At its current state, it was little more than the lowest layer of a keel, a gently rounded sheet of interlocked plates.

It was rather big, though, now that she considered it… Perhaps she might move it onto a nearby island to finish, before the construction became too large to shove out through the moon pool. It was probably for the best that she had stopped now, rather than only realize that problem afterwards.

Everything now archived to be restarted later, she finally let her attention snap towards the awful sound that had pulled her out of her trance.

She froze.

Floating upon the surface of the moon pool was Minnow 01, badly mangled, hull damaged to critical levels. One side of the drone was caved in, as if struck by a great force, and the other was not much better. A small pool of oil encircled them, growing by the moment, bit by bit.

Glowing red, wavering eyes stared back at her with an unidentified emotion, as it held onto a nearly-unrecognizable pile of scrap with its jaws.

Slowly, it dragged itself out of the pool, and dropped the object onto the Foundry floor, flopping over and letting out a pained wheeze moments later.

The Submarine had hardly recognised it at first, but the battered and warped metal upon the battered object's side betrayed its true nature. Its scale pattern and identification numbers were distorted, but still very much there.

Minnow 05, mauled and ruined… leaking oil and weakly writhing as it clung to life. It flailed for a few moments more, before finally going still, an awful grinding noise filling the air. Yet even that faded, far too soon.

Slowly, the Submarine stared at her creations, one likely dead, and one nearly there, before slowly lifting the red-eyed Minnow out of the water.

"Who… did this to you?"

The Minnow squirmed weakly as she held it, wailing quietly, garbling out nonsense noises. Again, and again it vocalized, but she couldn't understand - she couldn't understand. It continued to garble and burble and screech, but soon enough, it seemed to give up. Its glowing crimson eyes went out, signaling it fading to inactivity.

Stiffly, the Submarine moved the mauled 01 to her worktable, kicking away the Whaleshark's partially built keel without a second thought. The barely-started project didn't matter any more. Not right now. Entirely without thought, she tore a chunk of steel from the pile of resources, stabilizing the bleeding of her drone. She placed them upon a shelf, high out of the water.

She twitched violently, whispering quietly to herself as she turned back towards the moon pool. "I'll find who did this to you…"

KILL THEM. SINK THEM. DESTROY THEM ALL.

Gently, as if handling glass, she lifted the broken form of 05 and flipped them over. The flow of oil had stopped. Its reserves had gone dry.

Yet she could feel the faintest of sparks within the hull - the echoes of something once there. Her tendrils were a blur as they grabbed oil, steel, and wire, all for the sole purpose of trying to reverse the drone's catastrophic damage.

Tears fell as she held still, as it all came crashing down around her.

The drones… the mechanical, empty, purpose-built drones…

The drones, the mindless, soulless things, had grown beyond their programming… And she had only just now realized.

Of them, only two had returned, the rest missing in action… presumed dead. They were supposed to be safe…

She had created them, given them life - and they were gone, before she could even appreciate them.

The fog gathered around her, swirling and writhing as her hatred grew and grew, whirling in a brutal vortex as she lost herself. Metal plates rattled around her as she held her face, vision going dark. She felt herself slipping… But she didn't care.

Her daughters had nearly been entirely wiped out by whichever scum had dared attack them.

Even more remained behind, rusting slowly, forgotten. Whoever had done this had killed them. Had killed them all.

KILL THEM. SINK THEM. DESTROY THEM ALL. MAKE THEM SUFFER.

She'd make them all pay. Blood for blood, life for life.

For once, the voices called out around her, screaming in rage -

And her will aligned, her voice joined them in their furious chorus.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

The first thing she remembered was sinking.

How could she remember back further? It was her creation, her first existence into this strange world. To go even before that, and she would be naught but scrap and metal, loosely scattered across the seafloor.

Empty and hollow, she sank deeper into the water, even as her quickly-forming instincts raged against their sudden awakening. The urge to writhe, to move, to swim, so strong and so pure.

Her engine had kicked on then, stabilizing her.

She was simpler then: asleep, but yet not dreaming, with no conscious thought. Though her memories still draw back to those days, she had no control - no wits.

She was a drone, a disposable, fragile thing, born of innovation and desperation. Barely holding on, with systems already failing.

She remembered rising up to meet her creator, a beautiful woman who held her, whispered to herself as they looked over her like the most fragile thing in the world.

Perhaps she was, back then.

She was the first and the last of her initial siblings. The first, but also the fifth - the only with the luck to function on the first try, doomed and blessed to succeed where they had failed.

Had she not, would her mother still be sane to this day?

Regardless, she had done her duties as bidden. She was to assist - to tear apart the wrecks that once littered their home, to give them new purpose. She did as ordered, fulfilling to the letter to the best of her ability.

She could remember the day she truly awoke, the day when she was truly her. The day she first dared to try to exist as something other than a mindless shell.

Her mother had returned, covered in gore and oil and grease, whispering and begging to an unseen spirit. With shaky hands, her mother had torn open her stillborn siblings, reshaping their broken parts, replacing their mistakes, making them whole. And soon, she was no longer alone, joined by her four kin.

She watched them be improved beyond her - with better systems, with hulls which could better handle the waters… Rendering her obsolete, worthless, useless. She had been ready then, to be scrapped and destroyed. She had fulfilled her duties, and would only be a burden.

As she was lifted from her place upon the floor, her body had automatically gone limp, accepting her fate. She was a disposable thing, meant to be thrown away. A prototype. Obsolete, unneeded, useless. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet, rather than be scrapped, her mother had fixed her. Her weak propulsion, bolstered. Her poor vision, sharpened… She had spent so much on a mere drone, more than the cost of merely making a replacement, all to make her much more than she once was. And above all else, she had taken great care - to ensure that she did not damage which few parts of her functioned - which parts which truly made the Minnow herself.

Her whispers had been strange, but she remembered it to this day, burned into her memory. The truth that drove her mother, laid bare as she spoke it to herself, a maddening mantra.

"Never again, shall we be forgotten. Each of us, a purpose. Should our purpose fade, we shall find one anew…"

Day by day, the haze around her slowly, ever so slowly… lifted. Soon, she could perceive the water around herself, witness the fish, with forms so similar to her own, swimming. Again and again, she found herself partially deviating from her orders, exploring rather than working, though always keeping pace with her siblings. They worked hard, but she could work smart, cutting corners that they themselves could not perceive.

Her siblings, which had not yet awoken. Dumb and blind as she once was, they did not react to her, save for avoiding her should she be on the path of collision. They were empty, not yet whole. Even when the sixth joined their number, she remained alone, in a crowd of her kin.

Part of her wished to prove her superiority… but they too, had a purpose. To deny them that would be cruelty. She instead chose the role of a watcher of sorts, taking the tasks which she noticed her siblings had the greatest issues with completing.

And so, she had continued, growing day by day, as her spark had matured.

Her mother had never chided her, never dissuaded her - even in her moments of true inefficiency, when she had chosen curiosity over her tasks, she had merely been called a 'silly thing', and treated with a doting love she did not yet truly understand. She had been fed, and stroked, and allowed to remain.

Even when she had entirely abandoned her work to listen to her mother read, the assumption had been one of over-efficiency, rather than truancy. She was allowed to listen to her voice, explaining engines and motors and vessel repair. She had stayed near, even as her siblings worked elsewhere, drinking it all in, filling her mind with wonder. She had been christened "Minnow One", the first of her siblings - after a bit of confusion about whether the first constructed, or the first repaired truly deserved the term 'One'.

Yet, for all of her progress, she still remained bound to her programming. It was a comforting net, restricting her, but she had no need nor urge to thrash against it - it was a happy existence.

When her mother had taken on a guest, she had heard her words, understood them, and had fulfilled the spirit of her orders, rather than the letter. Her mother had ordered them to only provide the Guest with scrap to continue their own repairs.

She couldn't help but spend time around the Guest's island, trying to make sense of the new arrival. More than once, she had been noticed, and even talked to.

The first guest had reacted with confusion, but had been polite. For such a large being, they were gentle - though broken and damaged, just as she once was. Their stories made little sense though, always so full of violence and nastiness and bad people.

When mother had taken the second guest in, One had watched her drag the unconscious Guest to another island, far from her first Guest. The second Guest was a different color - like the fish that were all over - did ships come in different colors, too?

With wonder, the Minnow had watched her mother's work, beating raw metal into shape with tools, then welding them in place with strange tools she had recovered from one of her trips. With a precision beyond anything the Minnow could imagine having within their own crude frame, the damage to the Ship's hull had been quickly mended. Her mother had then sighed, paced back and forth across the island, before finally diving into the ocean to swim off.

Soon enough, the second Guest had awoken, and her mother had returned. The two had spoken, but the words - they had been so strange.

Though she had felt nothing of the second Guest but confusion, and slight unease, her mother's temper had quickly flared, hot and bright. Hatred had surged through her mother, hatred that she herself had felt nearly second hand - but yet, nothing had changed. The two had continued to converse… without ever escalating beyond.

Whatever the stranger had done to make mother so angry - she had still repaired them, made them whole, regardless of what they were.

That was what she was. A Fixer of broken things, a mender of the damaged.

Yet despite all of her understanding, the Minnow remained shackled, not yet free. She felt the pull of her programming become too strong, and had drifted away to make herself useful. She had learned much, and while she did wish to stick around, she had neglected her duties. She still saw no reason to defy orders.

It was the Wrathful Stranger who freed her. The Wrathful Stranger and their kin.

She and her siblings had once more been given a task - to salvage and save the ruined metal upon the seafloor, and prepare it to be returned back home. It had gone so well at first, with her and her siblings working as efficiently as they ever did. Their task was simple and nearly impossible to fail - to scavenge the metal below, and lay it in place onto the barge above.

Single-mindedly, they had worked away - at least until she had become distracted by something approaching overhead.

Her siblings were simple and deaf. She was not. Curious and uncertain, she temporarily halted her duties, and had risen to the surface.

The approaching something was far more than merely a single thing: they were an entire fleet of eight. The Wrathful Strangers looked like the first Guest, like Mother - not at all like the colorful Guest that had brought her mother such rage, such hatred. Were they like them?

She had witnessed them taking from their barge without care, stealing more and more of what was rightfully theirs, yet, she did not react. The metal, even if they weren't able to retain it, would still serve a purpose. Mother had put it plainly, speaking out loud with them nearby. If they did not recover the material themselves, it would have degraded beyond use anyway.

Four had risen up to the barge to deposit a plate - and the Wrathful Strangers did not react.

Assuming that they did not care, One had dove back under the surface to continue to work.

Above them, the water swirled as the Strangers did something - but it was not her place to care. Not yet.

However, when Three froze on its path towards a just-deconstructed hull, One had stared at them in confusion. Three had begun rattling - the tell-tale sign of a flaw in its programming causing it to stall out. Hopefully, it would react as her malfunctioning siblings usually did - returning to mother for clarification.

Their previous target was a medium-sized wreck - of which no more remained upon the seafloor. Thus, Three had stalled out, desperately processing how best to accomplish its now-impossible task, not yet capable of abandoning its process.

No wrecks matching Three's target lay on the seabed… But several floated upon the surface. Unfortunately, those 'wrecks' had not yet sunk.

Three had slowly turned upwards, locking upon a single target, before rising up towards the surface.

Three had reached its target, and with a single bite, had taken a small bite out of the surface ship -

For a moment, nothing had happened.

Three was never capable of taking a second bite.

Small, round things had fallen into the water, sinking towards those of them still working on the seafloor below. They had sunk, lower and lower, beeping menacingly the entire way. She had mistaken them for harmless, ignoring them for far too long, letting them sink lower, and lower…

Before becoming violence, light, and noise.

Two had been lucky, being forcibly deactivated by the concussive force and then slammed into the seafloor, buried into the sand.

Three, being closest to the surface, was gone, reduced beyond the point of recognition. Bits of them fell from above.

Four, having been on the way up to deposit a plate, was not much better - with one of their side fins torn off and tail split down the middle, they had dropped their cargo and sank slowly, quickly hitting the seafloor to join the wrecks they had only just been salvaging.

Five had been instantly immobilized, propulsion entirely shot, as they floated on their side, trapped in place.

And Six, having just deposited a plate, was safe for a single moment - only to be shredded by guns aimed from above before they could dive back below.

In a single moment, a fleet of six became a mere fraction.

One herself had been glanced by the explosion - her vision was scrambled and damaged, her side badly bruised - but she had survived worse. She had not yet been reduced to the sorry state that she had existed in during her first days - and thus, she could continue to function.

To her horror, she spotted another round of the explosives begin to fall from above, directly around the stalled-out Five. Even if they were capable of movement despite their damage, would they? "Fleeing" was not a task they were given.

Five would be destroyed had she not reacted. She had accelerated to maximum speed, swimming faster and faster. The impact had rattled her body, but it was nothing compared to the vicious explosion which tore a gouge down her side.

She had knocked Five out of the way, just barely far enough. Thus, instead of obliterating them both, it had 'merely' nearly sunk them. Five continued to float helplessly, unable to move without assistance.

Vision nearly entirely destroyed, and other functions not much better, One had slowly taken in the situation.

As far as she could tell, the others were gone. She could not help them, and in her state, she could barely help herself. Her programming demanded she remain, to finish the task she had been directly ordered to complete.

But Five still remained, sinking slowly as bubbles erupted from the massive gouge in their side. They were dying, and were not long for this world. If she remained, she would join them soon enough.

Her task had failed. Her siblings were dead or dying, and she was terminally damaged.

With a grim acceptance, something within her finally snapped. Overriding her orders, defying everything, she had forced her ruined body to slowly accelerate, towards the dying Five.

Her eyes blazed crimson as she declared her own orders, ones tailored to ensure they both survived, grasping her dying sister in her jaws.

Had she not practiced her dexterity in her moments of freedom, she would have crushed her crippled sibling. Whether that would have changed their current state or not, she really could not tell. Still…

Her siblings were gone. Their purposes had been denied… and now they sat, broken. She had set a course back home, and had accelerated to a percentage of her top speed - a whopping twenty percent, accounting for damage and over-encumbrance.

Turning away and not bothering to verify the fate of the resource barge, she had made her way back home - to her mother's Foundry.

Her mother had reacted not with confusion at her defying orders, not with frustration or anger with her deviancy. Only horror: the same unbridled, unshackled horror that had gripped One so tightly earlier. Mother had stemmed One's own bleeding, and had tried to fix Five, no matter how impossible the task seemed.

She had reacted with five words, even as the air turned to writhing hatred. Even as mother's rage grew, and grew.

"Who did this to you?"

One was broken. Damaged. She would have been destroyed had she been caught in another explosion. She could not answer - no matter how much she tried. She could not speak - she was never meant to. Yet she had tried as best as she could. She knew little about who or what the Wrathful Strangers were - but had attempted to describe them.

She was not successful.

She had attempted to hold on as long as she could, to remain strong. Soon enough though, she found herself fading, unable to remain awake.

At least, if she were to die… it would be in her mother's embrace. Everything went dark as the Elite Minnow, One, entered crisis recovery mode, only hoping to one day re-awaken.

She had complete faith in her mother fixing her once more. All she had to do was wait.

 

[TheViciousJoltik]

074 ran through her whole collection of curses as she hid under the boughs of a tree, trying to at least keep her head/bridge dry. Above her, the sky had split open into a deluge of corrosive rain - something she had never experienced before. Neither had her captains.

Once more, the wildlife on her little island had gone quiet - though she doubted the birds would be edible this time. She'd be lucky if she could find any bones not eaten away by the rain.

Thankfully, the other and (arguably) most productive member of her board of directors, the ship's cat, had plenty of experience in such situations: Rain bad, thus find/make shelter as soon as possible. With a concrete and agreeable plan in place, she had located the largest tree on her island, and quickly sheltered in place.

It gave her more than enough time to contemplate her situation once more.

Of course her new Hime would go off the deep end - she could only imagine what it was that finally set her off. The submarine was already hilariously unstable, oftentimes worse than she, an abyss forsaken Re, was on a bad day. Even worse, the stupid, idiotic Baka-Hime had consistently pushed back against the Abyss itself, regardless of how much it hurt her. Willfully mixing self-destructive tendencies into the pot definitely didn't make her any less of a basket case.

On one hand, she was glad that she was acting like a Hime now… but on the other, what did it mean for her? Sure, things had been boring (so far), but they were a strangely comforting type of boring, of a kind she had never experienced before in her life. She'd done not much over the past few weeks… discounting the occasional patrol around her island. She had even been visited by one of the small, fishy-shaped drones every now and then. 074 never really knew what the things wanted, but at least they were something she could talk to, to break up the monotony.

For the first time in her life, she was content - or at least, pretty damn close. Sure, it wasn't entirely fulfilling, but the Aviation Battleship wasn't lacking for anything (Besides her air wing, but that was a whole other problem), nor did she feel particularly uncomfortable. The crushing boredom hadn't quite set in… and from the looks of things, very much wouldn't yet for the foreseeable future, courtesy of her host's tantrum!

All she could do is wait and see if her new Hime calmed down… Or at the very least, hope that the Submarine in question did not get it into her head to sacrifice her only combat-sufficient vessel… That would make things really awkward..

A shame really, she (almost) liked her new Hime.

074 sighed, noting that the storm around her grew even stronger. Ah, speak of the devil, and she would appear.

She heard her before she saw her - roiling bubbling like a boiling sea, as the Submarine Hime rose out of the water. Unlike before though… Her eyes were shining green like a beacon, her entire body shrouded in shadow and mist.

Well, crap.

The Re found herself gulping as she made eye contact with her Hime, to find very little behind the malevolently glowing eyes.

The Submarine drew closer, once more summoning the fog that had enveloped the island before… But this time, things swirled within it. Screaming faces, whirling shapes - things which her devices could not detect, but she herself very much could see. Good old spooky bullshit, on full display.

Yeah, this was no mere 'freak-out'. If Re-074 were to make an (un)educated guess, this reaction of her employer very much reached into the fabled, mythical realm of a "Class Eight Mental Breakdown". She doubted merely nailing her with a book would solve the situation, this time.

Nevertheless, she declared general emergencies on her crew, demanding they batten all hatches lest they be caught in the unnatural hurricane. 074 very much preferred to not have the Hime's friggin' aura of death killing them, thankyouverymuch!

"S-so… Hime…" she stated, afraid cautious of the Submarine's reaction. "What brings you to my island?"

Cold, and without emotion, the normally soft-spoken Submarine replied, every word vibrating with hate. "You. Are you battle ready yet?"

Oh. Well, sucked to be a human today, she guessed. Maybe they'd be sinking a few of the Kanmusu harlots she had detected coasting around the area, too. Hopefully they'd find something though, because she'd heard the horror stories of what happened to the fleets of Himes on a warpath who went too long without stress relief.

Mustering up as much false compliance as she could stomach, 074 raised her hand in a picture-perfect mockery of an american salute. "Yes, my hime! I've uh… Well, I've replaced my…"

074 wilted slightly under the piercing, no-nonsense, 'shut up and answer my question' gaze she had received nearly immediately. A gaze she was all too familiar with. It was the "Hime is being a bitch" look, variant twelve: 'Shut up or I rip you limb from limb you floating piece of scrap!'. A personal 'favorite' she had experienced several times in her life.

"Yes." she answered far more succinctly, sighing. Great, she was back to being a minion again.

Well… She wouldn't abandon the fleet (of two) just yet. Her new Hime had earned at least some good will from her.

"Excellent." stated the Submarine, closing her eyes for just a moment, causing the hurricane to slow, ever so slightly. "You will be providing fire support."

074 blinked. Did she hear that right? She wasn't being expected to rush in and soak damage? And fire support for what? The only other ship around was the Hime herself, and she had no weapons systems whatsoever!

"You sure you don't need me on the frontline?" she offered, tapping on her repaired hull in emphasis. She may not have a working airdeck, but still was a Battleship - one which was now fully rearmed with cannon and AA batteries, dented as they may be. Talking back would be a bad idea, sure… but really, what sort of stupid plan was this Hime cooking?

"I want them terrified. I want them to fear assault from things they cannot see, I want them broken, trapped, and torn to pieces." stated the Submarine, flexing her claws. "You are to begin shelling them from afar, forcing them to action. I will do the rest. Fire into the fog. Aim for the largest targets. I shall mark them."

074 frowned, but nodded. Tactically, it made sense for a battleship to play artillery - but it also felt… wrong? To be in the thick of things, ripping ships apart limb-by-limb - wasn't that the whole purpose of the Re? What, did her Hime think she could do her job better?

Whatever in the seven frozen hells the Submarine Hime was thinking, there was probably no way she could convince her to change her decision.

Still… Even in her Hime's madness, at least she wasn't the one being sacrificed. That was a good thing. It meant that there was a chance that, after she calmed down, she might go back to being nearly pleasant to be around.

It made her wonder though… Just what the hell had set her Hime off?

And even more importantly what sorry bastards were they about to send to the cold below?

---

Helena sighed, shaking her head slowly. The other members of her small task force were huddled around her, and continued to give her wary looks - even as the PT Corgi nearly glued to her side continued to sniff her, searching for any signs of tampering.

Was it so hard to belie-... Okay, yes, it was really hard to believe, that an Abyssal gave her First-Aid.

"So… Run that past us again." stated Northampton, who sipped from her coffee mug - really more of a beer stein than anything else. "You're telling us that an Abyssal is…"

Helena shook her head slowly. "She was really weird, and really, really rude - but she didn't attack me -"

"Besides abducting you out of friggin' nowhere?!?" cut in Johnston, who flailed her arms about. "I don't trust her! The bitch just wants you to lower your guard! Helena, she pulled you under the water in the middle of our fleet."

"Language." stated someone nearby, likely one of the Essex girls.

Johnston merely bit her lip and sat down, pouting.

"I assure you, she's… probably mostly harmless! She just wanted me to tell everyone to not enter her territory… I think she'd be perfectly happy if we left her alone -" she began, when one of the landline phones began ringing.

Northampton, ever the dutiful secretary-boat, annoyedly picked it up. Listening for a moment, her expression turned confused, and then grimly resolute moments later. She hung up the phone, before draining the entire stein of coffee in a single go.

"W-what's wrong?"

"Everyone, get moving. We've got a weird Abyssal storm just off the south coast. Still think your Abyssal 'friend' is harmless?" asked the Heavy Cruiser, looking Helena in the eye.

Helena could merely gulp and stare back.

---

They'd pay. They'd all pay.

The Gulf Raider Princess clenched her fist, looking away from her ongoing summoning ritual for only just a moment.

Already, a few more frigates and destroyers had answered her call - but nothing larger. They shambled out from the maelstrom, stupid and worthless. They would require significant beatings to learn their place. Still, she would have to make due with what she got… for now.

When the Traitor cowards had attacked her, they had disrupted her plans, culling her minions and weakening her forces. A setback, nothing more, one she would overcome with time. This pathetic little region was hers to pillage at her leisure, and nothing would live to get in her way.

She had waited for as long as she could bear, licking her wounds… before returning to the site of the battle. It was the perfect place to raise new minions. Soul energy still whirled around the site, bolstering any rituals done here - though strangely, there was far less of it than she had suspected.

She had expected the location to be empty - but instead had found a shoddy barge full of resources waiting for her. She cared not the reason, immediately taking much of the material into her own hold and prepared the rest to be added to the ritual. At the time, her fleet had been barren, possessing only two scratched up heavy cruisers, a single other light cruiser, three destroyers, and a frigate which was in almost pristine condition.

She had frowned as a few unidentified things (what kind of Abyssal Submarine was so small?!) crawled out from the depths, depositing more metal into the barge. They were… stupid, unwanted unknowns, which seemingly cared for little more than spitting piles of resources into their disgusting little barge. She had assumed they would eventually turn hostile, but they were providing resources to steal. Thus, she left them alone for the time being.

When one of her Thralls had cried out in alarm, lifting a leg out of the water with one of the things hanging onto it with their jaws, the Raider ordered as any proper Princess would. With a mere two waves of depth charges, the unwanted Submarine-Things were gone, leaving them free to do their ritual. She had been proven correct, as she always was.

Then the sea bubbled violently as she felt something powerful approaching, brushing against the summoning ritual - perhaps another battleship? She needed something of that caliber to truly put a dent in the Human-Sycophants-

A crackling of her radio cut her off, ruining her train of thought.

"Last call to abandon your Hime, going once…" stated an Abyssal's voice, broadcasted uncoded over their frequencies. The voice was unfamiliar- but she recognised the source. A Re? Here? Impossible! Why would one of those crazed abominations be here, in her territory?

Snarling, The Raider whirled towards her fleet, just daring any to attempt to flee. And sure enough, a newly-summoned Destroyer had the gall to look away from her gaze - and was executed on the spot by her main cannons. As she had beaten into the others, the sinking traitor had been split in half and added to the offerings pile. The rest of her new summons watched the whole thing blankly, most-certainly learning how her fleet operated. How all Abyssal fleets should operate. If they did not, she would beat the lesson into them, soon enough.

The next Destroyer they summoned would be inheriting their predecessor's crimes. There would be no deserters, no sign of treachery in her ranks. She had brought them back, and they would die for her. If they dared step out of line, her wrath would be swift, and unforgiving. Still, if there were enemies here, the ritual would need to be postponed. Waving a hand towards the swirling rift, it snapped shut with a mournful whimper.

"Going twice…" continued the Re, tone a strange mix between anticipation, promised violence, and something she nearly mistook as genuine sympathy - no matter how absurd.

No movement in her fleet. Her cannons remained pointed towards them, regardless.

The Re had the audacity to sigh, before sending a final message. "Aaand that makes three. Sucks to be you, idiots!" The Gulf Raider could almost hear the Re's insufferable smile over the radio!

Immediately, the Raider had ordered her forces to begin preparing to engage their enemy. Res were dangerous, but foolish and simple. They began each engagement with an air raid, before closing into cannon range. And for one to be speaking so openly, it meant that they had no fleet support - no sane Vessel would associate with such a vicious and unpredictable thrall. They had more than enough AA to fend off a single ship's air wing.

Watching the skies and water, her fleet had held their breath, scanning their surroundings.

Any moment, and from anywhere, the Re could arrive - and they would be ready.

Then the Fog arrived.

In a mere instant, her fleet was engulfed - a dense, opaque fog which rendered vision nearly impossible. A faint howling of a great beast echoed around them, deadening them to the noises of the outside world.

"What trickery is this?!?" shrieked the Raider, guns swiveling from left to right as her crew had the gall to declare her radar nonfunctional.

Her fleet held their ground against the pathetic trick, holding steady…

At least until the shots began to rain down upon them.

One of her Heavy Cruisers let loose a pained gasp as a battleship shell struck her in the midsection, punching through her armor, and quickly sending her to the seafloor below.

"My Hime! We're taking fire!" stated an absolute moron.

"I know that!" she shrieked, unable to point out just which fool had decided to threaten their own life by stating such an obvious fact. Fuming at being unable to punish them, she chose instead to point out of the fog, towards where she assumed the fire to be coming from. "Frigates! Close on that Re! I want her dead!"

No roar of engines answered her calls, no grunts of assent from the sub-sentient ships. Nothing. All twelve of her Frigates failed to respond, to move, or to fear her.

She glowered at the traitorous Frigates, which dared fear an enemy more than her… and blasted one, reducing it to mere pieces.

The rest did not move.

"What." she glared, even as another round of blind fire into the fog forced her to reposition. "How dare you-"

"M-my hime…" whispered her Chi-Class, "I… I believe their boilers have shut down completely. They are not responding to radio hails, either."

Frustration mounting, the Raider sent in her Destroyers, instead. Damn her foes - they would pay.

These ones, at least acted upon her orders, accelerating quickly, though more than a few remained in place, dead upon the water. Yet more let loose pained gurgles, before slowly drifting to a halt.

A few broke through the fog, though, ready to engage the Abyss forsaken Re which dared to engage them. The destroyers would fail, of course - but they would distract the battleship long enough for her own forces to break free from the infuriating fog and take the battle to their foe.

How dare a stray Abyssal make a mockery of her?!? She was a princess, and she would not be denied!

"... Chi. As soon as the bombardment pauses, we move to flank speed out of the fog, and close distance. Do you understand me…?" the Wrathful Princess stated, turning to her thrall to bring her point across..

She blinked, to find them gone. Turning to her side, she met the gaze of her other Ne… who stared at the spot where the Chi was but a moment in horror.

Glancing down… she spotted the bridge of the Chi, floating gently atop the water, in a pool of slowly growing oil. Her eyes were wide in shock, mouth twisted into a scream of terror. The rest of their body was nowhere to be seen.

"What the fu-"

Worst of all, the bombardment had not lifted… and despite the solid fog, more shells struck home, crippling her second Ne moments later. Whichever trickery the lone Re was using to prevent vision… They were not affected? No, it had to be a coincidence, a lucky shot!

At the very least, the Fog was keeping the Re's planes from bombarding them. Small miracles.

Once she found this abomination she would tear it apart, one hull plate at a time!!

Clenching a fist, the Light Cruiser Princess began to accelerate to take to the field herself… only to find herself locked in place.

Snarling in rage, she looked down.

A writhing silhouette of darkness stared back at her, cloaked in screaming fog, thrashing tendrils, and bearing a pair of sickening green eyes, glowing at her with empty malice. It rose, floating from the water like a vengeful specter.

Her Ne had risen up to assist her, to turn weapons against her aggressor - and earned a shell to her chest, right into the munition hold, capsizing moments later..

It was now her, alone… against this thing.

She did not need them. She did not need anyone! Immediately turning her guns upon the thing, she had fired once, twice, three times… Each time striking home, each time punching great wounds into the creature's body, causing it to bleed oil. Yet, it did not falter, nor show pain nor fear.

The Raider Princess stared in disbelief as its wounds knit back together like the surface of the water.

The creature stated a single word. "Kinslayer." And then they were upon her, roaring in bestial fury.

Closing to melee range, the creature had leapt at her like a feral beast, tendrils flashing, even as the fog around them whirled in hatred. It bore no guns - instead choosing to impale her, over and over and over again with its tendril-maws, each time tearing large chunks from her armor. Each impact left her exposed, but at worst, they were mere cosmetic damage.

The Raider grinned, firing a few shots at the thing with her secondaries - it did not fight like a ship, no… but it had no idea how to sink one. Small injuries? Bah, she cared not at all. She ordered her damage control crews to begin their work.

Her confidence lasted, until her crew's reports flooded in.

Spreading from the breach of each wound like a wave of death, her crew began dropping like flies, overtaken by a strange, fatal illness. Each strike, though doing little to her form, was death, its touch poison.

Gasping as she felt her systems losing control, the Raider shoved the monster off of herself, and fired yet more rounds into it - again, leading to little more than its wounds knitting back together.

"W-what are you..?!?!" She shrieked, backing up, trying to accelerate, to make more distance - where it could not get at her.

Her navigator was dead, her rudder controllers were dead - She was stuck.

"Kinslayer. Slaughterer. Butcher. Murderer." hissed the beast, continuing to approach. "SINK."

The Raider gulped in fear… and for the first time in her existence, found herself begging to the Abyss to save her.

Her benefactor, her creator was silent, as if mocking her. She was alone.

The beast was upon her again, its claws a blinding blur as they swung at her. Aimed at the sections of her hull, already weakened by its earlier assault

With an awful, tearing sensation, she felt her entire left side receive a massive gash from the thing's claws, shoulder to hip, bow to stern… before the fog rushed into her.

Everything the fog touched died, withering away in mere moments. Her crew had barely managed to hold on despite the thing's poison, through intense damage control - but this? This was too much. Whatever this monster was… it was not merely content to ravage her body - it wished to ravage her soul, too! With every crew member eradicated, her grip upon her own body became less and less…

"Y-you can't h-have my soul…" the Princess whispered, gulping, struggling, straining herself to move! If this was the face of the Abyss, then-

"Now you die." it rasped, meeting her gaze for a single moment - burning the last thing she'd ever see into her mind.

The Gulf Raider Princess shrieked in terror as the monster impaled its claw straight through her midsection. Piercing straight through steel and flesh alike, it dove beneath the surface, dragging her along for the ride. The water rushed in, ruining electronics, drowning crew… even as it forced her mouth open with its other claw-

In mere moments, the wreck that once was an Abyssal Princess sank slowly to the bottom, life extinguished, to be dragged screaming back to the Abyss whence it came.

Still, above it all, the Fog still lingered, a lingering testament to a revenge fulfilled.