Weapon-Free (a post-WW2 transport ship Kancolle SI)

[Fanficologist]

Have you ever been so tired and sleep-deprived that your brain simply checked out?

You clocked out of your grueling nine-to-five job, got on an imported second-hand Honda SuperCub that was at least a decade older than you were, and there was nothing in your exhausted mind but the singular desire to pass out on the couch until two in the morning. And then, in the notoriously dangerous Asian traffic, you drove home in a trance-like, sleepwalking state, relying on nothing but muscle memory to navigate the crowded streets while only being vaguely aware of other vehicles on the road. Sometimes, things got so bad that not even the freezing cold spells and November monsoon drizzles could prevent your drooping eyelids from slamming shut.

Now imagine that, but with a seven-to-nine teaching job where you had to spend more class time trying to manage the feeble attention spans of pre-teens and teenagers than actually teaching, and a one-hour drive between each school and language center. That was basically every day in my life after graduation. The rare spots of 'excitement' usually came when, either by the effort of some guardian angel watching over me or subconscious survival instincts, I managed to squeeze the rickety brakes just in time to avoid being flung against a light pole or becoming a smear on the road.

The funny part about near-death experiences was that they got your heart pumping and your brain doped with adrenaline so fast that you became instantly awake and stayed that way for hours afterward. Ten out of ten, better than your strongest coffee. Would not recommend.

Anyways, where was I?

Ah yes, sleep-driving and rainstorms. That was basically how I found myself in the middle of the ocean, drenched like a drowned rat in an absolutely massive storm, with nary a clue how I actually ended up in this situation. I also seemed to be skating leisurely on water, doing the best rendition of Jesus and that one guy chilling on his lawn chair with a beer bottle in the middle of a downpour. The realization was apparently shocking enough to kick my brain into reboot, and I skidded to a stop, arms flailing around to avoid falling face-first into the wave from the sudden deceleration.

…

Huh.

Either I was dreaming, or my luck on the road had just run its course and I was now in some kind of afterlife. Or Hell, though the lack of fire and brimstone did discount that notion a bit. While I wasn't by any means a religious person, just living in this part of Asia would let you learn a lot about Buddhist beliefs by cultural osmosis. Believe me when I say Buddhism was just as zealous and creative as any other system of belief when it came to punishing everything from the most heinous to the pettiest of crimes. There was also the possibility that I was still alive, just hallucinating on anesthetic drugs while being rushed to the hospital, but eh, I'd like to think of myself as an optimist.

Speaking of which, I was also in a different body now. It felt light and freeing as I moved my hands around experimentally, and I had to marvel at the ease with which I could twist my upper body without something going pop. More importantly, there was no joint pain of osteoporosis showing up in your body before you were even thirty. Cheers to that. Even if all of this were a dream or hallucination, I wouldn't want to wake up.

I was also a girl now, as indicated by the new additions on my chest and the rather noticeable absence down below.

I suppose I should have had more of a reaction to such drastic biological changes, but it all kind of just felt like another item on the checklist of weirdness. A white, short-sleeved, and thoroughly drenched sailor's uniform clung to my body, though it didn't feel as uncomfortable as I remembered the likely cotton and polyester material being when wet. Below that was a dark-colored pleated skirt that thankfully went past my knees. I might not be as attached to my masculinity as most members of the male gender, but I also wasn't ready for that kind of daring attire yet. On my back was a massive military-looking backpack that looked ready to burst at the seams at any given moment, the kind you would see in war documentaries being lugged by soldiers marching through swarms and jungles.

Lastly, boots. Steel boots that went halfway up my calves with miniature propellers attached. Steel propeller boots that let me ride the turbulent waves with water only going up to my ankles. That's a thing now.

So, let's take stock of the situation. I'm some kind of shipgirl, and given that my body and clothing didn't appear to be too exotic or sensual, I think I could safely rule out Azur Lane, or whatever it was called. There were probably a bunch of other games themed around girls that were also ships, but the only other one that popped into my mind was Kancolle, which I used to play for quite a while during uni, though the official lore and setting details were practically non-existent, while the fandom made up most of the content. For all I knew, I could be in a world where Abyssals and shipgirls never emerged except for myself. I think I remembered one fanfic with that premise.

Still, my best bet right now would be to find land and contact the navy—any navy, really—and to do so as soon as possible. Ocean storms, natural or not, usually indicated bad things in most Kancolle fanfics I had read. For that to happen, though, I would need to have some idea of where I was and which direction to go, lest I turned into the protagonist of one of those walking simulator games about depression.

"Hey!"

I glanced down to see a tiny person with an adorably oversized head in a mini version of my current uniform, waving her (his? their? Fairy gender was just one of the many things people couldn't seem to agree upon about the game) stubby little hand to get my attention.

"So you must be my captain, right?"

"Hey hey, hey hey hey."

'Yes ma'am. Captain Nguyen of transport ship 653, Naval Transportation Brigade 125, Vietnam People's Navy, at your service.'

Is it weird that I understood all of that from just a few "hey"s? There wasn't even the tiny delay you would expect from mentally translating what you heard into information you could internalize. It was just BAM! I could now hear the content layered over a partially muted version of the fairy speech. All well and good, except for one thing.

"Did you just speak English?"

"Hey," she confirmed. I was pretty sure about the gender now that I had heard her speak, unless the auto-translation just had female voice generation by default. More importantly, though, how the hell was my crew able to speak English if they were supposed to be from the war? As far as I knew, our national language wasn't even that well taught among the general populace, let alone the language of their then enemy.

"Hey hey."

"So you can speak it because I know the language? That's… that's bullshit."

You might think I was being pedantic, but it took me almost half a decade to become proficient enough at ESL to qualify for a teaching position, and these lads here just straight manifested the ability to speak perfect, if slightly accented, English. That's just unfair.

Not that I was complaining, since even alone in the middle of the ocean right now, I would probably die of embarrassment if I had to talk in my mother tongue in this situation. It didn't make sense, did it? I blamed my atrocious communication skills and the fact that I wrote fanfics in English in high school just so no one would find out and laugh at me.

"Fine, whatever. Just give me the situation. How's... 'I' looking, I guess? What kind of weapon are we working with?"

"Hey? Hey hey, hey hey hey hey."

I stared. "What?"

"Hey hey hey."

"I heard you clearly the first time."

"Hey hey?"

"What do you mean 'we don't have any'?"

"Hey hey hey hey. Hey hey."

"So you're telling me," I said slowly, "I don't have ANY guns or torpedoes because, quote, transport ships, which is what I am, aren't meant to engage in naval battles, unquote?" Shit, shouldn't even expeditionary vessels have some kind of gun mount? I distinctly remember the Abyssal transport ships in the game having equipment of that nature. "How am I supposed to survive if some Abyssal forces spot me then? How did you guys even survive to complete supply runs back then?"

"Hey… hey hey hey."

Yet even more staring.

"I have a WHAT?!?"

…***...​

Want to hear something interesting about Vietnam's navy during the Vietnam War?

You know the term 'going out with a bang'? It turned out I was explicitly designed to be the perfect picture definition of that. My bow, hull, stern, and cargo hold were rigged with enough explosives to break my keel into pieces, partly to ensure the valuable supply of rations, medicine, and ammunition wouldn't fall into the hands of the enemy, but mainly to keep them from learning exactly which battlefront or campaign they were supplying. For fuck's sake, these guys apparently were even given memorial services while still alive before each sortie, and little miss captain over here sounded particularly proud about it too.

I knew the generations from the war were hardcore about patriotism and self-sacrifice, but goddamn.

We were also paying the price for it too, since I was now sailing blind with no nautical chart or navigation equipment in the middle of a fucking storm, and their seafaring experience and familiarity with the waters could no longer be relied on when we had no idea where I even was. As if constantly having a bomb vest on my person wasn't bad enough.

To rub even more salt in the wound. Half of my current cargo was practically unusable, comprising mainly of rifle ammo and artillery shells for land battle. There were a few anti-tank DKB and B41, though I wasn't sure how effective they were going to be against Abyssal ship armor. Was World War Two ship armor thicker or thinner relative to tank armor? Furthermore, I was pretty sure ship battles were supposed to be conducted at a range greater than these guns could be effectively operated at by trained soldiers. For a decidedly non-combat ship like me and with a crew that at best used their ships as floating platform to shoot at other ships at punching range?

We were FUCKED.

 

[Fanficologist]

You know, I think I was starting to get why my crew was the way they were: a bunch of jolly sailors with barely any experience at actual naval combat, a devil-may-cry attitude, and entirely too much fondness while reminiscing about the time they had to detonate their ships and swim for hours back to shore using plastic water container as floats.

When your navy was so hilariously outnumbered and outgunned on the sea that it eventually became pretty much just an auxiliary branch of the Army dedicated to troop and supply transport, you would have to take on escort-less mission with nothing but stealth and disguise as protection. To make matters worse, your ships had to sacrifice a lot of standard and comfort features to maintain a less-than-100-ton weight while transporting more than half of that in supply, which also meant any attempt at outfitting your ships with actual naval weapons was not only meaningless, but straight out impossible. The deck was so stacked against you that at some point, you would start to not give a shit too.

They were disposable, though not in the sense that they were tossed into the meat grinder to die meaningless deaths. It was more that they already treated themselves as dead men sailing on dead ships, and the only thing left to do was to make the most out of what time they had left before the inevitable end. There must have been some measure of relief and freedom in that optimistic pessimism, and I think there was something in the mindset that resonated with me.

If there was anything positive about going through life having fumbled and fucked up as hard and as often as I did, it was that you learned to ignore flaws and move on from mistakes pretty quickly. More often than not, you did not have the luxury of second chances, and there's no use in shooting for a 'doing better next time'. No matter how 'too far gone' things seemed to be, you would just have to live your mistakes, accept the fact that your life had been irrevocably screwed, and tried your best to not make things any worse for yourself and people you cared about. Because you only had this one run; there was no retry, and there was no giving up.

It took me some time to readjust to my current situation, but I eventually managed put a lid on my anxiety and panic and focused on what needed to be done. It helped a little that my crews were doing their best to rectify my current situation while I was too busy moping. Might had something to do with the fact that they were used to far worse situations in their past lives, but having someone pooring faith into you even when you had none in yourself, it did something for your psyche.

"Okay guys. First thing first." I clapped my hand to get the attention of the crew. "We are facing a new war here. New battle field, new enemies, and hopefully new allies. Things have changed, and new circumstances mean we need to switch up our doctrine to adapt and survive." I paused to take a look at my gathered crew. None of them seemed to protest the fact that a practically untrained civillian was taking charge of the operation, which was a relief. "Our first priority mission right now is to get back to shore and make contact with a naval base, preferably ours. That means the scuttling charge will have to go. Vice-captain Thien."

Another fairy similar to my captain stood at attention and gave a salute.

"Please see to it that the explosives are properly disarmed and safely stored away."

"Hey...hey?"

"We won't be getting rid of them entirely, since they are the only thing we had right now that could feasibly do something against enemy ships." I paused, hesitating. "You guys do know how to disarm them, right? I don't want something exploding inside of me from some rough rocking."

"Hey!" The vice captain gave a cheeky salute in confirmation before disappearing into my hull.

"Oh, good." I sighed in relief. "As for the rest of you, we also need something more sustantial and reliable to fight with. There was no circumventing this fact: my armor is non-existent and my engine can never hope to outrun even the slowest of battleships, so trying to brawl with actual combat vessles will be the height of stupidity. Hence, we will need something sufficiently long-ranged, easy to deploy, and threatening enough to make us not worth the hassle to fight. Anyone has any idea?"

My crew hurdled together in discussion. That was another peculiar thing about mycrew: they did not have a distinct chain of command beyond the captain or vice-captain who made the final decision. Everyone seemed to be able to chime in their thoughts and be heard, even if some of their ideas were particularly hair-brained. No, comrade Tri, we won't be charging Abyssal ships with three-pronged bombs, or chuck them like javelins. We didn't even have those in our cargo, and stop pouting.

"Hey, hey hey hey." My captain spoke up after a few minutes.

"Are you sure that would work?"

"Hey hey."

"Right, it's not like we have any other option. Let's do that."

Twenty minutes later found more than a dozen DKB tripod-mounted missile launchers set up on my deck. Apparently, these nifty little anti-tank weapons were disassembled from Russia-supplied Katyusha missile platforms and repurposed into individual infantry-operated launching tubes. They were a little unsteady on my steel deck with nothing to plant their support legs, especially in this choppy sea, though it also meant I wouldn't have wait for my non-existent turrets to rotate towards the target. Somehow, they also manifested as two miniature halves of my bow attached to my hip and lined with gun props. Probably the vaulted MSSB at work, but it made me look and feel more like a proper shipgirl, so I wasn't about to complain.

The real bad news, though? You know how even destroyers had crew size in the hundreds, including officers and highly specialized crews for maintenance, damage control, gunner, and the like? Well, I had seventeen. Seven. Teen. And less than half of them actually had any formal training on ship operation instead of just being former fishermen and mechanics. In an all-hand-on-deck combat situation, I would have more guns than I had crews to man them, guns that weren't even guaranteed to do anything to ship armor unless I was practically in brawling range of mechanical monsters that could tear me in half like tissue paper with their bare hands.

But hey, that was progress, right? I also had several RPG removed from my backpack and stacked inside my bridge for easy reach. They might only be able to deal superficial damage and more useful for disorienting enemies, but I still felt cool as fuck posing while duel-weilding with one boom on a stick in each hand. There was also the fuck huge bundle of explosives with intact remote detonator in my cargo backpack after my crew had removed them from my structure. If push came to shove, I can give the Abyssal some nasty surprise with my ammunition store. Give them an explosive embrace, you could say.

...I think my crew was starting to rub off on me...

"Good work guys. Next on the agenda is supply." I turned to my captain. "How much do we have right now and how long will it last us?"

"Hey hey." She said and tossed me a tiny bundle of green leaves. Which popped into full size as soon as it landed in my hand.

"Wha..?"

"Hey. Hey hey."

As per her's instruction, I unraveled the bundle to reveal a couple of rice balls. "Are these...for me?"

"Hey."

"Are...are you sure? Don't you guys need to eat too?"

I wasn't sure if she was telling the truth or if she was just trying to give me some peace of mind. It wasn't like I was a stranger to bottling up personal problems to not be a bother to people around me. How did a shipgirl's internal supply work anyway? I remember some fan continuity describing human food turning to fuel, ammo, as well as ration in storage for the crew when digested by shipgirls, But what if the ration was taken from the girl's storage instead? How did food cooked in fairy's portion turn shipgirl-sized when given to me? Would it have to same value as a normal meal to me?

Man, shipgirl biology was bizarre.

The rice balls were delicious though, even if some of them were splashed with sea water while I was cruising. Just some rice and meat floss sprinkled with sesame and crushed peanut. Not the fanciest, but it reminded me of what my mom used to make for breakfast. My little brother was so addicted to it that mom had to pack a dozen vacuumed-sealed bags in his suitcase whenever he left for uni at the end of summer. Kept saying that the store-bought stuffs in the big city never measured up to mom's cookings.

I wonder how my brother was doing.

Logically, I knew that he had great life ahead of him even without my help. Unlike me who ended up with a dead-end teaching job as an introvert and hating every moment of it, my brother had the look, the character, and the talents to build a good future for himself. Also a stubborn and pretty much set-in-his-way guy who always thought he knew best, fun to tease, and easily embarassed by public displays of affection. Everything I could never be, the perfected product to my screw-up of a prototype. Sometimes, I would tell myself that I only needed to endure this shitty life until my filial duty was completed, but then I would feel guilty about how I failed to be a good older brother to him, and how much I could have done to give him something of worth. And now I would never get to do anything more for him.

Shit. Why the fuck was I crying now? Stupid fucking new body.

"Hey." My captain, who had went into my bridge to check on something, popped back out. If she noticed more than the rain and sea water on my face, she didn't comment on it. "Hey hey hey. Hey hey hey hey."

"R-really." Stupid voice crack. Calm the fuck down. "So me eating does replenish my fuel." And at a pretty good conversion rate, too. Thanks to the fact that I was a transport ship and spawned with a full stockpile of ration and fuel, we could hold out for quite a long time at sea. Enough for twenty days at least, if my captain's rough estimation was to be believed.

"Right, the last matter of business now is getting back to friendly shores, preferably without being spotted and shelled on by Abyssals." And wasn't that a conundrum, trying to naviagte on open without any idea where we actually are. Sure, I had more than a few crew members who could tell the direction just from looking at the stars, but with this huge storm going on, there wouldn't even be any star to see.

"My best guess is that I have manifested somewhere in South China Sea and some distance off our own coast. Although we don't know how long I had been sailing before waking up, and that complicates things." I massged my right temple. "And there's no guarantee that my guess is correct, either. For all I know, we could be in the middle of the Pacific right now."

"Hey...hey."

"I know, I don't like it either. So we will just...pick a random direction and hope for the best, I guess. Anyone has preference?"

A chorus of 'hey' gave me their agreement with my half-ass plan, followed by joking protest as I closed my eyes and spun around a bit.

"Aaaaand we will gooo...This way!" I announced with not entirely false cheer as we set sail, and my crew responded in kind.

God, what would I do without these girls.

 

[Fanficologist]

The next few days passed by with nothing much of note.

We would sail for half a day at a time, then have a brief stop in between to gauge the weather and see if we could better determine the directions. And for me to eat whatever my crew could whip up with the limited ingredients and cooking tools we had on board. It turned out that while I should have been able to go on for much longer based on a full tank, missing out on human meals still left my stomach rumbling in protest, which translated to a really weird sound in my metaphysical ship space. They still liked to rib me about it after that first time, much to my embarrassment.

Good-natured teasing aside, I appreciated their company. Though they had worked out a watch rotation of two members keeping a lookout on my deck, more than a few would sit on my shoulders at a time, just hanging out with only songs and stories for entertainment. It turned out that while all my crew members had been on me at some point in their careers, they had all been assigned to several other transport ships before and after me, and more than a few had been transferred several times after their crew had to sacrifice their own ships. Sometimes they laughed about how much their 'old girls' tilted and swayed during sea storms, even briefly turning into submarines in particularly rough waves. Other times, the mood would be somber as they recounted tales of fallen comrades, some so young that they had only been married for a couple of days, and lamented the inability to bring their bodies back for a proper burial.

It felt… calming. Nostalgic.

As a kid, I had always liked rain-watching, either through the steel-barred windows or the tiny front porch of our small apartment in the shabby single-story housing complex. I would hear the cacophony of pitter-patters on the rusted and leaking metal roof and watch the flooded yard bubbling and rippling. The tiny paper boat folded from old newspaper bravely sailed out, only to be relentlessly battered and crumbled, tiny flakes of ink and paper bleeding out from its wreck. Even out at sea in stormy weather like this, I was reminded of those times, seeing a metaphorical microcosm of the chaotic worlds outside from the safety of home. Melancholic, yet grounding and reassuring.

Of course, my crew always chose those times to bring me back to reality with their fascination for modern English slang and lingo, as well as finding as many bad bilingual puns and adult humor as they could. Men and penis jokes. You gotta love it.

And that was how our cruise went, until the fifth day when one of my crew reported dark shapes on the horizon to my right. Feeling a pit forming in my stomach, I took the resized binoculars offered by my captain and scanned the direction my crew pointed at.

Ships. Not just steel-hulled ships, but humanoid like me from their blurry but distinctively upright silhouettes. And a sizable fleet of them at that too, just from my rough count. Whether they were shipgirls or Abyssals, I could not tell for sure. It was impossible to make out any identifying features from so far away, especially with my vision so heavily impeded by the weather. If they were some kind of patrolling shipgirl fleet, then I would need to reach them as soon as possible, while making some kind of distress signal without any radio equipment. I was fairly sure my maximum speed of 12 knots while laden wouldn't be enough to catch up to them if their path didn't intercept mine. Then, I would have to hope that they would be generous enough to put their mission on hold and escort me back to their base. Or at least provide me with some kind of directions and/or any navigating equipment they could spare to get back to the safety of land.

However, it would be the height of foolishness to believe in something just because I wanted to believe it.

If those ships turned out to be Abyssal, then I would be running straight toward my death. While my makeshift weapon system was nice and all, I had no illusions that I would be able to take on any genuine war vessels without an extreme—and frankly impossible—amount of luck. A whole fleet of them? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

Worse yet, I had no actual way to visually confirm anything before my presence was revealed to them. I wasn't even sure if I had popped up on their radar or been spotted by one of their aircraft. They could either be calling in for what to do with me, or aiming guns in my direction for all I knew.

Fuck. There was no good answer, was there?

"Emergency meeting time, everyone," I called into my… hull? It still felt trippy to look down and get a view of both my chests and an overhead perspective of my deck as if I were sitting on top of my own bridge. My crew members all gathered in a matter of minutes, all solemn-faced or deep in thought.

"We need a plan of action, and we need one fast." Some of my crew looked up at me worriedly as if they could sense my anxiety and indecision. "How should we take this gamble? Do we contact that fleet, or do we pass them up and sail away?"

"Hey hey." my captain spoke up.

"Yeah, it's difficult to pass up a chance like this, but..." I bit my lip in worry. "The risks may be too great."

"Hey hey hey."

"I know, and I'm very grateful for your confidence in me. But if I choose wrong, I will be dooming us all. You guys... you guys deserve better than that."

"Hey? Hey hey hey." One of the crew spoke up.

"The only way to win... is to not play?"

"Hey hey hey hey."

My eyes widened in surprise. Why hadn't I thought about that?

"You guys are... well, not geniuses. It's still going to be incredibly risky, but I can't think of any better option. Captain, have our best mechanics man the station. I have a feeling we will be in for a rough ride."

I watched as she saluted and took four of my crew back below deck where my engine room was. I didn't know how human adrenaline meshed with ship machinery, but I didn't want my engines to explode while I was running the nautical version of a marathon. After all, we would be trying our damndest to match the unknown fleet's speed while maintaining a (reasonably) safe distance. Most probably, they either had already spotted me or would do so soon enough if I kept up the pursuit. If they were friendlies, hopefully they would either slow down and wait or send a ship to escort me. In the event that they did stop, I would stand my ground and let them come to me first.

On the other hand, if they were Abyssals or (on a very low chance) hostile shipgirls, I would be banking on the fact that I was too far away and too insignificant of a target to bother pursuing, or I could use the head start to hightail out of there.

It was a shoddy plan with a bunch of holes in it if anyone bothered looking, but it was our best shot. And for a little extra 'incentive' for our potential hostiles to put me in the 'not worth it' category?

"Comrade Tri, have the rest of our men ready the guns. All of them."

In any other case, the smirk on the adorable face of my most battle-hungry fairy would have worried me greatly. Now though, as I pulled out one of the B41 rocket launchers from my backpack?

I felt myself grinning in return.

No other way to go but forward.

---***---​

At a certain Vietnam-Russia-China naval station, one Chief Secretary Yang QiaoYan could be found walking down the corridor toward the Admiral's office. While it would have been much more convenient for her office to be next to his, or better yet inside his, QiaoYan still valued her health, peace, and sanity. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the Vietnamese man, far from it. While she still maintained that the old coots were out of their minds trying to play the political game during an end-of-the-world scenario—what with having both Russian and Chinese personnel and resources in the central Naval base of Southeast Asia—she was still grateful for the chance to work under someone pleasant and professional.

Regardless, the woman composed herself before the Admiral's door, raised her hand to knock once, and waited.

"Come in, QiaoYan."

The woman felt a twitch developing in her left eye but forced her expression back to neutral with practiced ease. It irked her somewhat that the Admiral could tell it was her even without a word spoken simply because she was the only authorized person who bothered. Due to none of his fault, of course, but the stationed shipgirls' blatant disregard for decorum and professionalism galled her. Even the Russian cruiser acting as strategic adviser (and no doubt as a way to limit her country's influence on the grand scheme of South China Sea's defense) had, on multiple occasions, obnoxiously barged into the room and... made a move on Admiral Nguyen, which was nothing short of appalling. Regardless, she had a report to make, so QiaoYan pushed the door open, walked in, and stood at attention.

"Sir, our patrol fleet headed by cruiser Aoba has just made their routine report. I think you should look at this." This implied that whatever was written in it was either urgent or abnormal enough to warrant his immediate attention, though they had worked together long enough for the Admiral to pick that up. He turned away from his stack of the latest requisition requests and gave her his full attention.

"They haven't had a skirmish with the Warden Princess' force, I hope?"

"Negative, sir. However, their scout planes inside Warden's soft border have picked up Abyssal activities from the Pacific moving between Taiwan and the Philippines. Inside the file is everything our Intelligence has managed to compile, including the current and projected trajectory of this new Abyssal force." She handed over the file to Admiral Nguyen, who took it and flipped through the pages with interest.

"I see." Nguyen made a thoughtful sound with his chin on his left fist. "It appears that this new Abyssal fleet is moving into our dear Princess' territory. To pledge allegiance, or to attempt a takeover?" Nguyen looked up from the file at his secretary. "Take a seat, QiaoYan. I assume you have studied the report as well. What is your opinion on this?"

Sitting down on the couch reserved for guests in the Admiral's office, the woman reached for the cabinet space under the coffee table and took out a box of dried tea leaves. "It is difficult to tell for certain what the intention of this new force is without further observation, Sir. However, their composition and lack of obvious identifying features strongly suggest that they do not belong to the Philippine Battleship Princess, and judging from the battle damage our girls had observed, they had even come into conflict with her, or had come to her seeking refuge after unknown prior battles but were denied, before sailing into our South China Sea." She rinsed the leaves with hot water from the red thermos under the table and made a pot of tea.

"Several light to moderately damaged battleships and heavy cruisers. No escort ships and, discounting the apparent flagship Ru-class herself, no air presence to speak of." Nguyen rose from his position with the file still in hand, walked around his desk, and sat down on the couch facing QiaoYan. "If they and the Battleship had indeed come to blows earlier, they had either had all of their carriers sunk or had foolishly decided to fight a Princess with one of the strongest carrier forces this side of the Pacific with none of their own."

Admiral Nguyen picked up the cup QiaoYan had set aside and took a sip. "That doesn't speak well of their strategic intelligence." He chuckled lightly. "You make excellent tea, QiaoYan, as always."

"Thank you, Admiral." The woman allowed a tiny smile to cross her lips at the praise. "That strongly indicates this force is a newly manifested one. They do tend to favor brute strength over tactics and lack the strategic acumen of Princesses and experienced Demons."

"That's true. That's true." Nguyen frowned as he opened the file containing a map of the South China Sea on the table. "Assuming the prediction is correct, they are right on the trajectory to come into contact with Warden Princess' Paracel Islands Base." He chuckled darkly. "Here's hoping that they decide they can take her. Like they always do."

The two shared a weary smile. There was always a sense of grim satisfaction every time some foreign Abyssal fleets were introduced to the Warden Princess' special brand of hell AND high water.

Judging from a pure fleet strength standpoint, the Warden Princess was not a particularly formidable one. She did not have individually powerful ships, only a force consisting mainly of light cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, and most of them weren't even of the powerful mutated variants. However, what she had was very potent weather manipulation and a disturbing preference for hit-and-run guerilla tactics, even those that should theoretically only work on land. At the drop of a hat, numerous small forces could pop up from the water, fire off shells and torpedoes, then slip back down into the water while shrouded by heavy storms. Sonar and radars were also somehow disproportionately affected, allowing her submarines to slip right under the enemy fleet and either fire off torpedoes point-blank or drag down disoriented and isolated ships.

Very few fleets had ever managed to overcome such engagements, and even those that managed to punch through with brute force would soon be met with large swaths of naval mines, which were incredibly difficult to spot in turbulent water. The human-shipgirl force, as well as the Princesses and Demons close by, had had enough of a taste of her unconventional naval warfare to know they wouldn't be able to contest her territory, not without enormous risks and losses.

Newly emerged Abyssals that assumed bigger ships meant superior strength? Not so much.

"Am I to assume we will assign a dedicated force to maintain observation, sir?"

"Reinforce our girls currently out there with an escort force as you see fit. We will need close and continuous observation of the situation, but remind them to hold fire unless directly engaged. We all know how our dear Warden responds to brandished weapons." Nguyen paused for a bit in contemplation. "Notify Hainan Garrison and our allies in Sasebo, but tell them not to go on alert yet. We don't want a repeat of the Hai Phong incident. On that note, inform Gordy of the situation as soon as she gets back from patrol, preferably before she does a Kongou again."

QiaoYan cringed slightly in sympathy. "I'll... see what I can do, sir." God only knew why the Russian shipgirl had decided to express her fondness for the Admiral by imitating a certain British-Japanese battle cruiser. It was difficult to believe that the rambunctious destroyer was capable of any political shrewdness at all.

"Thank you, QiaoYan. Please send me the orders when you finish writing them up. You may leave now."

 

[Fanficologist]

Something I found about "hoping for the best, expecting the worst" was that, at least to me, it wasn't just a caution to be prepared for all possibilities, to hold onto your optimism while not being blinded by it. It was also a reminder that it wasn't enough to be physically and mentally prepared to see your current plans go up in flames. A single failure could—and would—kick off a cascading chain reaction that would make things ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times worse than your most pessimistic expectation.

It's even worse when you have to patiently wait for the results to come out. You can tell yourself that what's done is done, and that even if things go south, you can take solace in knowing that you did everything you could. But had you, really? Could you stop your treacherous mind from conjuring worst-case scenarios one after another? From plaguing you with "if" and "could have"?

At least an hour had passed since we started following the unknown fleet, and still, there were no discernible signs of them reacting to or even recognizing my presence. The longer we were stuck in this chase without an end in sight, the more I began to doubt my decision to take it on in the first place. There was a constant tightness in my chest that only seemed to ramp up as we continued—a foreboding feeling that weighed heavily on my mind, refusing to go away. Even though the fleet seemed to be cruising at a leisurely speed and the storm had subsided into a light drizzle, I didn't feel confident enough to make the push to catch up.

"Hey hey hey!" Before my taut nerves could reach the breaking point, my lookout shouted from above. I quickly raised the binoculars hanging from my neck.

The fleet had stopped.

I was fairly sure it wasn't because they had finally spotted me. Something—no, multiple somethings—emerged from the water in front of them. Even more ships appeared, and the best-case scenario I had envisioned slipped further and further from my grasp. The foreboding feeling transformed into full dread as I sensed something wrong about those dark shapes even from afar. This pressure, this sinking coldness deep beneath my skin that grasped my heart, was unmistakable...

It was an Abyssal Princess.

Worse yet, instead of a fight breaking out, I saw the ship at the head of the fleet sailing forward and bowing before the Princess.

I had been following a fleet of Abyssals right back to their Princess.

"Shit." I reversed course, taking care not to be too conspicuous in my panic. "Shit, shit, shit. Hang on tight, everyone. We need to get the hell out of here!"

"HEY!" My captain fairy shouted her command to the rest of the crew.

My engines, which had been straining to keep up, groaned in protest as I pushed them even further beyond their limits.

"Hey hey hey, hey!" The lookout yelled again, and despite our mad scramble to escape, I turned my head to look behind. I cursed.

One of the ships had detached from the fleet and was sailing toward us at blinding speed. A heavy cruiser, from my captain's guess, and it was gaining on us fast.

"Fuck. Ready the guns." The two miniature decks attached to my hips swerved around, all of their mounted launchers already loaded and ready for this eventuality. "FIRE!"

The blowback knocked me back, and more than a few of my crew were knocked to their asses. My captain, who was hanging onto the railing atop my bridge, took out her binoculars to survey the damage from our first salvo.

Twelve shots. Ten of which missed completely. One bounced off one of the cruiser's armored jaw-fists, and the final one impacted and exploded in its abdomen. Even then, the only result was a small singed patch on its pale skin and a roar of anger rather than pain.

These missile launchers were not meant for naval combat of this nature, and neither was my crew trained for it. And it showed.

"Come on, guys!" I shouted to my crew, feeling desperation creep into my voice. "Reload the launchers. We need to fire—HURKK!"

I felt something hard collide with my backpack, throwing me off my feet and skidding across the water's surface. Gasping for breath as if my chest had collapsed from the secondhand impact, I struggled to roll into a sitting position, however that worked on the ocean's surface. How the hell was it so fast—

The thing's oversized hand seized my throat and, with a painful yank, lifted me out of the water. Baleful eyes lit with pale flames stared into mine, gleefully drinking in the sight of me struggling to pry off its iron grip to no avail.

"F-Fir..." I gasped out.

Only for the cruiser to grip my weaponized decks and rip them off my back. Hot, searing pain shot through my system. My feet, which were kicking ineffectually against the monster's chest, went numb. Shit, not like this. I didn't want to die. Not like this...

"HEEEEEEY!" One of my crew, who I barely recognized as Comrade Tri, cried out as she popped up on my shoulder and ran up the Abyssal arm. Before it could swat her away with its other hand, I used all my strength and its hand as leverage to land a kick at its face. It wasn't enough to do any real damage, and my foot went numb from the impact, but it was enough of a distraction to let my little battle maniac shoot the RPG straight at its face, blowing off its lower jaw.

Even now, I didn't know what had come over me at that moment. Maybe it was some kind of trance-like clarity that takes over your mind in moments of distress. You wouldn't really have time to think when danger and death were a hair's breadth away. To judge the odds of clearing the distance between you and a child safely while an out-of-control truck barreled down the road. To calculate the optimal angle to swerve your bike and avoid a car running a red light. To weigh your sibling's life against your personal safety. You just...did it.

As the Abyssal let go of my throat and let me fall into the water, I bent my knees to land in a crouching position. A pair of RPGs stowed in my bridge manifested fully in my hands, and I jammed their business ends into the cruiser's gaping mouth like two oversized lollipops. I pulled the trigger.

The blowback knocked me back just enough to avoid taking the full explosion. I could still feel hot fire and shrapnel pummeling my body. Skidding across the water for the second time, even as my consciousness slipped away, I rolled over to catch a glimpse of our handiwork. The cruiser, now with the front plating of its face blown into a gaping hole, stumbled while flailing its arms before falling backward into a flaming wreck.

Damn it. I should have said some kind of one-liner before I gave that bitch the biggest deep throat in history. Would...have been...so...coo...

---***---​

Far away from the messy brawl, the Ru-class battleship known as Caesar watched in horror, then hot rage, as the cruiser she had sent to deal with their tail slowly sank beneath the water.

"It appears your cruiser is so incompetent that it can't even sink a mere transport. How...pathetic."

Caesar's head whipped around to look at the Abyssal Princess, biting words and hot metal alike ready to spew at such blatant disrespect for one of their fallen. Kayle had been one of the first ships she recruited before their rogue fleet was absorbed by the late Pacific Light Cruiser Demon, and there was no way her battle sister could lose to a non-combat ship like that. There had to be a trick. There had to be.

Yet as she glared at the imposing figure of this Warden Princess, cold rationality took over her mind. She could do nothing to avenge Kayle, even if the Princess had rigged the game against them in the first place. At least for now. Letting her rage take over at this moment would only spell certain doom for all of her remaining sisters still standing. They had gone through too much, sacrificed too much to escape the battle of the Caroline Islands. To die such ignominious deaths here would be to spit on the sacrifice of those who fell to make their retreat possible.

So she ground her teeth, looked down, and said nothing.

"Oh?" The Princess cooed with interest, even if her serene face betrayed no emotion. "I know that face. The anger. The hatred. You think I had something to do with your ship's ignoble demise."

Taking a sweeping scan of the battered fleet huddled behind Caesar, the Warden raised her voice to address them. "What use will I have for you lot? What are these rusting hulls good for but being broken down for parts and scrap?"

"We..." Caesar swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat refused to let go. She could not mess this up. Could NOT mess this up. "We will give you our undying loyalty. We will serve you until our last breath. So p-please..." She looked up at the impassive face of the Warden, searching for the tiniest hint of compassion.

She found none.

"Undying loyalty, you say?" With a hum, the Princess swept her hand through the fleet, before pointing to the far left at the Ne-class heavy cruiser, who looked to be the most damaged. One of her tail appendages had been broken off at the base, and she was missing her right arm, the stump still leaking black, viscous oil. "Then prove it."

"...what?" Caesar stared unblinking at those words. On some levels, she expected such a response, yet her mind refused to acknowledge it.

"Are your electricals so fried that you have turned stupid? Such a broken wreck serves no purpose in my fleet. Get rid of it."

Slowly turning her head toward CA-146, Caesar looked into her terrified eyes. The heavy cruiser had only been summoned by Pacific for barely a month, not even long enough to pick a name for herself yet. Gritting her teeth, she felt the metal in her balled hands groaning in protest. For a silent, terrifying moment, Caesar felt the shells loaded in her cannon hot enough to burn her insides.

"No."

"No?" The Warden Princess asked with the barest hint of amusement.

"No." Caesar glared defiantly into the Princess's eyes. "I will not sacrifice another of our own for your amusement. If this is how you want us to show our loyalty, then you haven't earned it. We're leaving."

"Is that so? You have decided to put your loyalty in your fleetmates over me." The Princess tilted her head as if looking over the Ru-class's shoulders. "But have they done the same?"

"What are you..." Caesar only had enough time to turn around before her back erupted into unimaginable pain. Hot, molten metal tore through her frames, her armor belts buckling under continuous shelling. One shell clipped a chunk of her bridge, and she was sent face down into the water, her whole body burning and sizzling and screaming in agony. Vaguely, she caught glimpses of CA-146's upper body falling apart from the merciless assault, her head floating in the water in a terrified scream. She could hear the dismayed cries of Rampage and Implacable before they too were silenced in a cacophony of booms and explosions.

And then it all abruptly ended, and Caesar could see nothing, feel nothing but the water lapping at her ruined body.

"I have no use for dregs without a shred of loyalty." The Warden narrowed her eyes. "Sink them."

Ignoring the surprised cries and pleas for mercy, the Princess approached the dying battleship and stooped down in an elegant kneel.

"You have had a taste of it, the betrayal at the hands of those you thought your friends, all to save their own pathetic skins." The Warden Princess took the Ru-class up by the chin and lifted its head to face her. Even as those sneering words left her lips, the Princess's face was as serene and expressionless as ever. "Taste it. Savor it. Revel in that pain, that anger, that humiliation. Etch it into your hull, and I may yet have a place for you in my fleet."

For a brief moment, the Abyssal battleship Caesar stared uncomprehendingly at the Princess. Her eyes darted around, only to catch brief glimpses of her fleetmates, her sisters sinking all around her in flaming pieces. She felt no vindictive satisfaction nor vengeful rage at witnessing the demise of those who had just moments ago shelled her without a shred of mercy. There was only sadness, pity, and a sobering clarity filling her mind. She had just escaped the rule of a witless master who lacked even the most basic understanding of tactics and the value of her own ships. To once again be put at the mercy of a sadistic Princess who so readily toyed with their lives...

"That's...funny. Rea...cough...really funny." The Ru-class started to chuckle wetly even as she felt her systems fail one by one. Yet, despite her hull screaming in protest, Caesar reached out to grip the Princess's hand and used it as leverage to pull herself up to kneel on one knee.

"I don't...cough...don't begrudge my...sisters. They were...young, and they...wanted...to live. But you..." With the last bit of strength she could muster in her abused body, the Abyssal battleship stood on her shaky legs. "To you...who played...with our lives...with our pride...with our...DIGNITY." She grunted out, forcing all her rage and despair into those three syllables.

Her legs gave out beneath her, and Caesar fell forward. Yet, instead of stepping aside and letting the battleship fall into the water and sink like the smoldering wreck she was, the Warden Princess accepted her body in a one-handed embrace. The lower half of the Ru-class, which was hanging on only by her spines and outer plating, finally broke off and sank quickly beneath the water.

"To you...I only have...one thing...to say..." She could feel it, the cold grasp of the Abyss reclaiming its pawn. Back to the darkness. Back to the cold, desolate void between existence and non-existence. She felt herself unwilling, yet powerless to stop it. Something wet and hot escaped her eyes, neither fuel nor oil. "...f-fuck...you..."

It lacked the resentment, the hatred she wanted. Her final words, she didn't know if they were meant for the Princess or for this cruel, cursed existence. Yet the Ru-class couldn't bring herself to care as the last scrap of her consciousness slipped away, and she knew no more.

Holding the lifeless torso of the Abyssal battleship before her with one hand, the Princess frowned. It was true that she never intended to absorb this ragtag fleet into her own to begin with, yet this one had made her pause. Such loyalty, even in the face of betrayals by her own battle sisters, upset her. The Princess used her other hand to close Caesar's eyes and brought the Abyssal's ruined arms to rest on her chest. With as much care and reverence as she could muster, the Princess lowered the torso into the water and, on a whim, plucked one of her pale feathers and placed it into the battleship's hands.

"A pity." Warden had truly intended to take this little spitfire under her wing. So much rage and resentment, yet so innocent and naïve. Like all those infants born of hatred and despair, yet lacking the guidance of worthy Princesses to mold them, to help them channel those emotions so ingrained in their existence into power and drive. Betrayed and so thoroughly broken by those close to her, the battleship could have given her eternal loyalty to Warden.

What a waste of potential. She let go and watched as the wreck quickly sank into the water, swallowed by the murky depths. "Truly a pity."

Standing up, the Princess gestured to one of her light cruisers, the Tsu-class, which had retrieved and was holding the unconscious transport ship in its oversized hand. Taking the tiny thing by her head, the Abyssal turned and sailed toward the fleet of shipgirls hanging back at the edge of the conflict, her entourage following closely behind.

 

[Fanficologist]

Having a human-like body for their second incarnation was, as Aoba had come to realize, both a blessing and a curse.

While some of the perks were admittedly pretty amazing, this hybrid existence between steel hulls and organic bodies came with its fair share of flaws, limitations, and redundancies. The sense of pain, for example. There wasn't much use for a biological alert system when each of them already had an experienced and diligent damage-maintenance /damage-control crew. While shipgirls appeared to have significantly higher pain tolerance than baseline humans, when accumulated damage pushed past that line, it could prove to be a fatal distraction. There were also more structural weaknesses they never had to deal with as metal ships, and it messed with their combat sensibility. Sections that they never had to worry about being targeted except at point-blank range now required protection priority. A battleship that lost its bridge could still float and even battle, if at a much lower capacity. If, however, the equivalent damage was dealt to a shipgirl...

Aoba was forever thankful that the Asiatic Defense Treaty and its counterparts around the world had the insight to allocate a rather significant budget to standardizing rehabilitation and counseling procedures for shipgirls, with the service of professional physicians and psychiatrists.

Even more so when their new empathy and emotions, Aoba argued, were probably one of their most crippling weaknesses. Not in the 'war machines didn't need emotions' way, mind you. More in the sense that such feelings, whether positive or negative, were often heightened and intensified among newly summoned or manifested shipgirls who had never felt them before, and the results were often... messy. Excessive joy, excitement, love, and other such positive feelings were often credited for the ridiculous shenanigans shipgirls were up to in public, but that was only thanks to the Navy's effort to keep a lid on the more volatile outbursts for the sake of preserving morale and public support. Anger, grief, guilt, self-doubt, recklessness... they were all things those like her had to deal with.

Anxiety, something Aoba herself was intimately familiar with, was one of the worst. It was a pervasive, corrosive feeling that slowly ate at her more than any rust or barnacles ever could. Making it hard to move. To think. To breathe. In Kure, it haunted Aoba while she was waiting for official assessment records after her atrocious first combat practice, despite the reassurance from the staff and her fellow shipgirls that such things were to be expected from the newly summoned. In Sasebo, as she watched her friends and comrades go on dangerous missions while she was stuck in Akashi's workshop listening to the repair ship list and then cross off upgrade plans to bring her fighting capability up to standards. Here in Hai Phong, every time the scouting/patrol fleet she commanded skirted the soft borders of Warden Princess' territory, with her double-checking every few minutes to make sure they hadn't sailed too far inside and provoked the Abyssal.

And right now, it was while they were stuck in place, waiting for that same Princess to approach them with her full entourage in tow, all the while having to play into her ridiculous charade of non-aggression. The fact that the Abyssal fleet also did not have their guns elevated and aimed at her girls was but a small comfort when their chance of survival depended solely on the whim of one of humanity's greatest enemies. It was useless to engage or flee now that they had her attention, and Aoba had no illusion about the Princess' ability to twist words and events in a way that justified a full offensive on human shores while somehow still sticking to her neutral principles.

Trying to calm her burning nerves, Aoba instead focused her attention on the thing the Princess was holding. Or rather, the limp shipgirl dangling by her head in the Abyssal's oversized hand, looking like she had just crawled away from a melee with a capital ship. Which was probably not that far off the truth if the brief glimpse caught by her floatplanes sent to investigate the sudden explosions were to be believed. The destroyers had been rallying for an extraction when they heard the unidentified shipgirl had been heavily damaged and captured by the Abyssals. Fortunately, Aoba had managed to reign the little ones in before they could do something irreversibly stupid—like trying to surprise the seven-foot-tall Abyssal into dropping the hostage by shooting her in the face.

"This little rat of yours..." The Warden Princess raised her hand, letting them take a better look at the battered shipgirl. "...has been scurrying around in my territory for five days. Have I or have I not made clear that such blatant trespass would be severely punished?" The Abyssal practically sneered out the last word despite the complete lack of emotion displayed on her face.

Aoba swallowed hard. Diplomatic maneuvers were never her forte, especially when it involved an anomalous (and probably insane) Abyssal Princess and the possibility of igniting the powder keg that was the current South China Sea four-way impasse. She had neither the authority nor political shrewdness to make any decisions, so all she could do was try to stall the conversation until the Admiral could be informed of the situation and give his orders. And with the options of either being truthful about them being blindsided by the sudden appearance, or trying to bluff against a Princess who likely had much more information on things happening in her own territory...

"She isn't one I recognize in our current roster, and at the moment we don't have any information on who she is or where she came from." Aoba doubted the scant description she had her crews radio back to Intelligence would be of much help with identifying the girl, considering the complete lack of any visible flag, insignia, or hull number. "Whatever she has been up to, I can confirm that it was not under any of our official orders."

"And yet she is one of your kind all the same. Or are you claiming that since she's not under your jurisdiction, you cannot be held accountable for her actions?" Warden lifted her finger to press against the girl's chest, and Aoba could see her face forming a grimace. "Would that mean it falls to me to mete out the appropriate punishment, then? Since you just renounced all responsibility on your part." The index easily sank into her hull, drawing a groan of pain from the still unconscious shipgirl.

Shit.

[Stand down! Don't take the bait.] Aoba practically shouted into her radio, yet she could see two of the destroyers beside her, Chien Kang and Tung An, raising their guns to aim at the Princess with a look of outrage. [She's trying to rile you up. Don't be reckless!]

[But-]

[Remember the order.] Aoba tried her best to draw on her authority as the unofficial guardian of the two Japanese-returnees. [We have to trust the Admiral to make the best decision. Until then, we must not engage.]

"Or do you choose to point your guns at me, knowing that it would instigate a conflict that involves not just my force, but the Battleship Princess' and Heavy Cruiser Demon's as well? A war that you and your beloved humans could hardly afford, all for the sake of one nameless transport ship." The Abyssal ships behind the princess brought their cannons into firing position, and the perpetual storm clouds behind them rumbled like an awakened beast. "By all means, surprise me."

Aoba turned back to the rest of her fleetmates, most of whom were struck with indecision at the Princess' words. While it went against their fundamental reason for existing to acquiesce in the demands of an Abyssal, Aoba knew that the Princess spoke the truth.

"Everyone, lower your guns. There's..." Aoba turned to the Princess. "There's no need for a fight here."

For a few nerve-wracking moments, the Princess stared silently at Aoba, and she tried her best to match the Abyssal's gaze. After a while, Warden raised her free hand, motioning for her ships to stand down, and the shipgirls reluctantly did the same.

"How... typical." For the first time since the start of their conversation, the Princess showed a hint of emotion on her face—a tiny lift of the corner of her lips in a smirk and, curiously, a subtle frown of disappointment. "All that talk about honor and strength in unity, but it's all just empty words when it's your lives on the line. There will always be a convenient scapegoat to take the fall, and you and your humans would offer it up with a smile if it means saving your own skins."

"I-We..." Before Aoba could form a retort, her radio operator gave a shout to the captain. Response from Intelligence.

[Home base to Heavy Cruiser Aoba. How's the situation?] Aoba breathed a sigh of relief at Admiral Nguyen's voice.

[Aoba here. The Warden Princess still has the hostage and we are currently engaged in conversation. She appears confrontational, but not actively hostile. What's your order?]

[Hang in there and keep the girls calm. Mobile task force one is approaching your location, and we have a representative that Warden Princess will be more receptive to.]

Thank God, reinforcements are coming.

[Be advised, however, the representative is sailing ahead of the fleet. You should be seeing her right about...]

"Hiya Wardy!" A loud, obnoxiously cheerful voice boomed in the distance. One that Aoba unfortunately recognized.

[...now.]

Oh God, GORDY is coming!

And so, with dread and no small amount of exaggeration, Aoba and her scout fleet watched as the blonde Russian destroyer sailed toward them at great speed, kicking up an impressive amount of water in her wake, and charged head-first into the Abyssal Princess. Who moved her hand holding the hostage to the side and caught Gordy's head with her other palm. Had the prior situation not been so tense and nerve-wrecking, Aoba would have whipped out her beloved camera to take a picture of the destroyer's head being literally held at arm's length like an excessively energetic toddler. She did, however, wonder how long this bizarre relationship had been going on for, for the Abyssal ships behind Warden Princess to not even react.

"L...ng t...m... n... s... W...dy! C...mand...r N...en s...nds h...y h...l...!" Undeterred by the massive hand grabbing her face, the destroyer started babbling off with a muffled voice.

Annoyance, and slight exasperation if Aoba didn't see wrong, briefly flashed through Warden's face before her grip on Gordy's head tightened, drawing a stream of 'ai ai ai' from her.

"Hello, Gordy." The Princess remarked before releasing the struggling Gordy and letting the inertia carry her stumbling backward onto her butt. "It hasn't been a pleasure."

"Jezz! You're grumpier than usual today." Gordy massaged the sides of her head. "That seriously hurt."

"As it was intended to." Warden raised her head to look at the direction from which Gordy came, where Aoba could see the faint outlines of the shipgirls of Mobile Task Force 1. "I see that Admiral of yours had deemed this little transport worth the cost of carrying a bigger stick. The effort is commendable, if nothing else."

"Oh, them?" The Russian-born casually gestured toward the approaching fleet. "They're just here to escort our little lost girl safely back to base. You know how dangerous these waters get."

"And what makes you so confident that I would be handing her to you, Gordy?" The Abyssal derided. "She shall face appropriate punishment for her trespass and all the damage she has caused in my waters."

"Oh come on. I know you know that she randomly manifested in your territory, technically, she never even crossed your borders. Give the poor girl some slack. B'sides," Gordy shrugged. "We can all see that she's an unarmed transport. What kind of damage could she have caused anyway?"

"She fought and sank a heavy cruiser one on one."

"Oh... shit." The shipgirl responded sheepishly. "Er...How the hell did that happen?"

Warden silently stared at Aoba, and with a jolt, she clambered to respond. "She was carrying some kind of explosive, I think? Though the explosion was far too small to be naval mines. She also had several guns that were lost during the fight, but I couldn't identify them..." Aoba trailed off, but immediately added. "The cruiser also didn't belong to Warden Princess' fleet, but rather the rogue one."

"Aha! So she also didn't cause any damage to you!" Gordy exclaimed excitedly. "So if we can kindly hand her over to us, we could go our separate ways and remember this as just a silly misunderstanding, we would really appreciate it."

The Warden Princess stared emotionlessly at the Russian blonde, and Aoba nervously wondered if the Abyssal was about to fire on Gordy for her insolence.

"In fact, we will appreciate it so much that we are willing to provide you with some super-secret intel that you will definitely want to hear."

"Intel, you say?"

Aoba couldn't tell if the Princess was genuinely interested, or if she was just humoring Gordy.

"Yup, such as the recent traffic our submarines managed to spot between Java Sea Heavy Cruiser Demon's territory and Philippines Battleship Princess', as well as the new faces showing up to contest the territory our dearly departed Pacific Light Cruiser Demon left behind."

Those were things that Aoba herself had only heard gossip about. She only had some vague ideas about how significant that information would be, but Gordy must have gotten the Admiral's approval to make such a bargain. Warden adopted a frown on her face, whether from the negotiated details or pondering their implication, she wasn't sure.

"Fair enough." The Princess said after a moment. "You can have your ship back." She tossed the girl to Gordy, who caught her seemingly without much effort.

"Thank you! We will be sure to take good care of her, don't you worry."

With a 'hmmp,' the Warden Princess turned around and sailed away, quickly submerging and disappearing beneath the surface. They stood there silently for a while, waiting for the signal on their radars to fully disappear.

"Man, no matter how many times I've seen it, that's still freaky as hell." Gordy said. "Here, carry her for me, Aoba. Don't think I can tow her back to base no matter how small she is."

Aoba received the girl and joined her fleet in following Gordy toward the waiting task force.

Now with a closer view, the first thing that stuck out to Aoba was how small the poor girl was. The Japanese heavy cruiser had had the chance to meet and interview one of the rare few transport ships from the war to come back, and the Liberty-class didn't lose to Aoba herself in size by that much. This one, however, could have been mistaken for the trawler vessels she had seen while visiting one of those fishing villages close to base. What the hell was she even built to transport? What's even more jarring was her human form. You would expect a small ship of her apparent size to be closer in appearance to the kaibokan girls, yet this one looked to be more comparable in height to the light cruiser girls or one of the more mature-looking destroyers.

"Looks like the girl has seen some real shit." Gordy whistled while peering at the shipgirl in Aoba's arms. "Still, a fucking heavy cruiser. God damn."

"I wouldn't believe it myself if my planes hadn't spotted it." Aoba admitted.

It then struck her how bad of a condition the girl was in, especially considering her diminutive stature. Their new physiology allowed them to survive and recover from extensive damage that would have had their past steel hull thoroughly sunk, yet even by that standard, it would be a miracle if the girl could even stay afloat to be towed back on her own. Her bow and front deck had been torn up badly like a tin can, revealing an equally roughed-up and exposed cargo compartment, as well as an almost exposed engine room right underneath her bridge. There were multiple dents and scratches on her hull that made for quite a ghastly sight, and that wasn't even speaking of the visible damage to her human body. The indirect impact of the two explosions she took during her tussle with the Ne-class shouldn't have caused such a degree of damage, and to see her riggings so easily torn off by the Abyssal cruiser was nothing short of a cruel joke. And then it clicked in her head.

This girl wasn't a war vessel. She wasn't designed for war, and it showed. Never mind the fact that she was carrying infantry weapons of all things, a civilian transport ship had manifested and was stuck in hostile waters that she had no business sailing in, fought an Abyssal heavy cruiser and won, then almost became the casus belli for an open conflict with the Southern Warden Princess, one that they could hardly afford at that moment. And then there was the puncture hole on her chest, courtesy of the Princess herself, with what alarmingly looked like dark purple rust around the edge. Anything involving spooky Abyssal magic was already alarming enough. The fact that a shipgirl, even one not geared for war, could be infected by it?

Aoba couldn't even begin to comprehend how ridiculously messed up this situation was, and she didn't envy Admiral Nguyen when he eventually got the reports, and had to give one to those high-ups in the Asiatic Defense. She wouldn't even take discreet photos of or post this scoop on her blog this time. The man would need some slack.