"Steel, fuel, aluminum, ammunition. With these offerings cast upon the sea, I call on the ship held within!"
The various materials sit resolutely inert on the raft they had been placed on. Not even the slightest mystical glimmer to indicate anything had happened. My ritual had failed. Again.
"Do I not have enough of something? Or is it the fact that I'm using a custom paper ship?
Gah, should've gone with
Silversides! This would've been over by now!" I growl. Sighing, I reach out to grab the floating raft. "Screw it, I'm calling a d-"
oOo
Ow… why does my…
everything... ache? Groaning, I open my eyes, only to snap them shut again. Taking a deep breath, I open them again. The fairy standing on my suddenly feminine chest cocks its oversized head in confusion.
"Hey?"
Letting out another groan, I push myself to my feet, scooping up the fairy as I do so. "Well, I guess the ritual
did work. Would have been nice if it didn't work on
me though, 'cause this is going to be a pain in the ass to get used to. Speaking of…" I begin to look over myself. A crop-topped Second World War USN dress whites jacket, a Measure 12 (late-war) half-skirt, Ocean Grey running shorts and Navy Grey combat boots make up my uniform. Meanwhile, my body is now the lithe, leggy form of a cross-country runner and sports what I
think might be a pair of Ds. My hair's also changed, having brightened to copper and grown down to my shoulder blades.
Brushing a lock out of my eye, I turn my attention to my new rigging. The three twin turrets of my main battery are spilt between two hip-level articulated pylons and a sawed-off BAR, while my quad Bofors protrude over my shoulders. Two quintuple torpedo launchers hang from the pylons, with the third is clipped to my belt next to a pistol-gripped Mousetrap unit. Finally, flaring off from the smokestack pack just below the pylons are two bow shaped hull sections bearing the remainder of my AA armament.
:Multiple radar contacts, baring 112 at 10,000. Ranger fifteen miles.:
5"/54 dual purpose turrets begin traversing as my head snaps around towards the contact. "Can we ID?" I ask the crewmember I'm still holding.
"Hey! Hey hey heeey!"
"Ah
shit!" Abyssals. And
at least three
Essexs worth of planes. This is gonna
suck.
:General Quarters! All hands, prepare for anti-air engagement!:
Okay, deep breathes. Three… two… one. "Weapons free, air defense pattern." And then the horizon
burns. Seventy pound VT-fused shells from my 5"/54s rip swaths of aircraft from the vast formation in great black flak bursts and sending burning wreckage tearing through nearby planes. But even when my Bofors join in, the sky-spanning swarm of Abyssal war machines just. keeps.
coming. It is that point when three dozen missile trails come streaking overhead from the north-west.
[Unknown ship, this JS
Kongō. We are falling back to Tokyo Bay and you are strongly recommended to join us. Please rendezvous at 33.0, 141.32. Over.]
[This is destroyer leader
Au Sable] I reply, two fingers pressed against my left ear. [I copy; ETA to rendezvous is twenty minutes. Be advised, hostile air power indicates presence of five fleet carriers minimum. Repeat,
five plus flattops. Over.]
For several long moments the only sound from the radio is static before [Did you say destroyer
leader?]
[I did. Imagine a
Tenryū crossed with a
Shimakaze and you've got a good picture of me.]
[A destroyer
leader. And a mecha musume to boot. This sounds way too much like that ridiculous ship themed waifu game my daughter's obsessed with. Let me guess, the enemy are other mecha musume aligned with some sort of alien AI.]
[Negative
Kongō, my recognition manuals ID them as 'Abyssals'. Pissed off Lovecraftian Goth call girls by the looks of them. On that note, I'm pushing up to flank now. There's a pack of light cruisers headed my way and I don't fancy my chances against them without backup and full magazines.]
oOo
Running at my 43 knot flank, my journey to link up with the JMSDF group took only half the time it would have at the 20kn cruising speed I was originally planning. Fortunately for the Japanese it turns out, as it means I arrived just in time to pull a Big Damn Heroes. You see, shortly before I reached to rendezvous point some sort of Battleship Raider Demon jumped
Kongō and her escort
Sendai.
"Presenting your open stern to a destroyer? That's a paddlin'," I murmur. Then I slap myself with my free hand as a blush rises on my face. "Oh God,
why did that have to come out so lewd! How the hell does Jingles manage it?" A blink, then another slap. "Stupid teen girl hormones!"
Ahem. Anyways. Torpedo run time. Just ignore the fact that the Demon isn't wearing pants and that I think I can see her… gah!
Just ignore it and sink the bitch!
*Splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash*
Having finally gotten my mind back out of the gutter, I ripple-fire off a full spread of torpedoes towards the aft section of my…
poorly dressed opponent. Fifteen fish streak through the water to strike the target's hull… and only three plumes of water erupt. Stupid Mark 15s. Still, the three functioning torps blew her left leg off, sending her toppling.
*Kra-doom!*
I blink. "Did… did a Mark 15 malfunction really just
kill a fucking Demon type?!?!"
The stupid unreliable piece of junk appears to have driven itself straight through the Demon's TDS into the aft magazine before the detonator triggered, causing a blast that ripped the Abyssal apart. How the hell does
that work? MSSB. I'm going with MSSB.
[
Kongō, this is Au Sable. What's your status?] I radio.
[This is
Kongō, we've lost our SPY radar but are otherwise intact.
Sendai on the other hand has lost comms and her gun. Also, our radar showed a ship firing on us, but you described the enemy as humanoid.]
[The hell? The bitch I just sent to the bottom was very much a female humanoid! You sure she wasn't screwing with your systems?]
[Return data matches reports from engaged allied forces elsewhere
Au Sable. We're sure.]
[Fucking magic then. Just great. Let's leave the eldritch bullshit for later and get into Tokyo Bay before anything else shows up.]
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
The form of Au Sable is that of an eighteen year-old. Just throwing that out there first, as to avoid any potential Mod issues. Now on to the story notes.
USS
Au Sable is a large destroyer with cruiser grade firepower and was designed specifically for this fic. I chose to do this after determining that CVs would get silly due to my aircraft design hobby, while BBs, CCs, CBs, and CAs would be ultimately boring for me. Couldn't find anything that looked fun in existing CLs, DDs, and SSs, so I grabbed an old '20s destroyer leader, fused it with Shimakaze and slapped a trio of the Montana's DP turrets on alongside three rudders.
The story itself isn't actually planned out much, as to keep me from accidentally Sue'ing myself. This also means a lot of KanColle fanon is going straight out the window and getting bombed by the carriergirls. Hopefully we all have fun.
