Disclaimer: I own neither Halo nor Kantai Collection.

"Oh, man, what the hell?"

The first sensation the girl experienced was confusion. How had she wound up lying on an ocean? As she dragged herself to her feet (noting the fact that, yes, she was standing on water, something she assured herself was impossible,) the girl noticed her equipment was scarred in several places. She wracked her brain, trying to remember what she was doing last.

"Oh right, I was in a knife-range fight with a fucking cruiser. 'Cause that's something we Stalwart's were definitely designed to do." She shook her head. "At least those civvies got away…"

She rubbed her arm, then shook herself out of it. God only knew how, but she was still alive, and that meant she still had her duty. "All stations, check in."

Reports flowed into her bridge, few of them any good. Archer pods and even the point-defense guns were completely depleted; she'd need a complete resupply once she reported back to the Fleet. The one Longsword she was assigned was gone, probably left back where she charged those Covie ships.

A ping to Engineering on the status of her Slipspace drive was answered by the kind of laughter one makes when they're trying not to cry. She decided to let the crew there be for a little while.

Checking around the bridge revealed further bad news. Navigation was completely thrown for a loop; their last known position was deep space, where they had jumped in compliance with the Cole Protocol. Now they were deep inside a planetary gravity well whose atmosphere was right in the habitable zone, but all comm. checks found no traffic on UNSC channels, and calls on any UNSC network went unanswered.

"So let me see if I have this straight. We don't know our location, and because we don't know our location relative to any known star, we can't determine our own location, or how far we are from home." An affirmative; the girl sighed. "Is there anything we do know?"

Surprisingly, short-ranged sensors replied in the affirmative: an unknown contact not too far away. The girl's eyes narrowed. "Still nothing on UNSC hails?" A negative. "Anything matching Covenant configuration?"

After some study, the sensor operator replied no. Nothing matched Covenant, UNSC, or even Insurrectionist. "So…what, a possible first contact?" An affirmative.

"Well," the girl sighed, "let's give it a try, I guess." Who knows? Maybe they would like to be friends.

Maybe they'll want to be friends, part of the girl's mind incredulously repeated a short time later. Boy, am I stupid!

"Yipe!" she called out, dodging to the side to avoid enemy fire as she tried to get away. The unknown contact—some girl/snake combination and a host of others—hadn't so much taken one look at her and opened fire. She had approached cautiously, MAC spinning, but as she saw the enemy fire she was forced to choose: shoot and hope she could weather the damage, or dump the MAC charge back into thrusters and dodge for her life.

Eight months of hard-earned experience fighting the Covenant led her to dodge instinctually. The first few ships that encountered the Covenant over Harvest probably believed in their Titanium-A armor plating, but over twenty years of war has shown the complete inability of UNSC armor to stand up to plasma fire. With no Archers or even point-defense guns, her only hope was to gain enough distance to spin up her MAC—and even then, experience fighting the Covenant proved that even a MAC shot was far from a sure thing.

A small part of her brain idly noted the enemy's use of projectile weaponry, and posited that her armor might indeed stand up to it. But that one part was immediately countered by a very recent memory of a Paris heavy catching a plasma torpedo on the nose, explosions cascading back until they reached and detonated the reactor. The girl decided it just wasn't worth the risk to be wrong.

But that still left the problem of trying to outrun snakegirl and her friends, who remained doggedly on her tail. She needed help—anything to distract the hostile so she could reengage.

"Open comms," she muttered, "no encryption. There's gotta be someone out there…" Her fairy immediately balked—for all they know, the Covenant or an Innie might respond; what then? "Then we're dead," the girl growled, "but we're dead anyway if no one comes to help. I'll take the chance."

The fairy still glared, but opened the comm. channel anyway. UNSC frigates were no strangers to choosing between the bad and the worse option.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is UNSC frigate four-one-three light. Am being pursued by unidentified hostile. Armaments depleted, navigation inoperable. Requesting assistance. Message repeats. Mayday, mayday, mayday…"

Destroyer Division Six and their two babysitting cruisers were barely a quarter of their way through their resource expedition when the radio rooms of the six ships registered a repeating message coming from the East. Though the transmission was not in a language any of the ships spoke, Tenryuu and the others didn't need to speak English to understand the gist of the message.

It was a cry for help.

Tenryuu set her jaw in frustration, her hand absently perching itself on her sword. Even after the best efforts of the Kanmusu of Japan, most of the Pacific remained deep in Abyssal territory. Even Kanmusu ventured into the Pacific only in force—a lesson enforced when the destroyer Kisaragi was caught on her own and sunk. A few months ago several Kanmusu fleets were dispatched to strike Abyssal forces on the island of Midway, but Tenryuu knew from Nagato that the Midway plan was never intended to secure the Western Pacific: rather, it was a piece of strategic deception, aiming to force the Abyssals to focus west against further Japanese incursion and allow the Americans a window of opportunity to storm and re-secure the Hawaiian Islands, the major center of Abyssal threat in the Eastern Pacific.

Even though the plans had succeeded, Tenryuu knew it had been a close-run thing. CarDivs 1 and 2 had needed weeks of repair, and even with their huge fleets the Americans were fighting tooth and nail to keep the supply train between the mainland and Pearl Harbor open. Despite the victory, the latest large supply run from the United States was still having to take the long southern roundabout, leapfrogging from South America to Australia to the British contingent in Singapore and up to Japan. There was no prospect of further offensive Kanmusu action in the near future.

And if Abyssal territory was dangerous to Kanmusu, it was far worse for conventional ships. Tenryuu shook her head, wondering what idiot had thought it a good idea to venture so deep into the Pacific. Those were dead men, without question.

"Tenryuu-san!" A shout broke Tenryuu out of her grim thoughts, and she looked down at Inazuma's earnest expression. "We have to help them!"

Tenryuu broke into a small smile—Inazuma, ever compassionate, always wanting to help others—but as she looked back up her lips formed back into a frown. She tried to let her kids down easy. "We have our orders, Inazuma. The Admiral is expecting us to succeed. We can't just go charging off and forget our mission."

"But we have to try!" Ikazuchi insisted. "We are Kanmusu of Japan! It's our duty to help! The Admiral will understand!"

"We're not even sure where this ship is, let alone whether we can get there in time," Tenryuu countered regretfully. She was confident in her abilities, but she really had no inclination to charge off deep into enemy territory when it was doubtful they'd even be in time to recover the remains of the crew.

"Actually," Tatsuta spoke up, her radio range-finding working full-bore, "they don't seem too far away—an hour's sailing or so."

"Yeah! Hear that, Tenryuu? We're in range; that means we have to help!" Akatsuki now spoke her piece, and a glance at Hibiki told Tenryuu all she needed to know about the last destroyer's thoughts on the subject.

Tenryuu sighed, glanced at Tatsuta, and then looked up with fire back in her voice. "You're right. We won't just leave them to die! Come on, girls, we've got to get there as fast as we can!"

These people really don't know when to quit! the girl thought. She'd lost track of how long this chase had been going on, nor did she have any idea where she was going. For all she knew, snakegirl was leading her into a bunch of her friends. What would she do then?

Overload the reactor, she decided grimly. Give snakebitch a hug of a few megatons, and take them with me.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday," the girl started her message yet again, when suddenly her tactical officer screamed that more projectiles were coming from ahead.

Damnit, this is it then, was all the girl had time to think, before the shells screamed over her head and landed amongst snakebitch and co.

In that moment of confusion, the girl watched as six figures charged past her to engage the enemy, none of which were on any recognition chart in her database.

Still, best not waste the opportunity. The girl swung around, unslinging the weapon on her back and flipping the switch on the side. Instantly her momentum plummeted as her reactor's power flowed from her thrusters into her Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, as the readout on the back of the weapon showed a percentage, rising far too slowly for the girl's liking.

The Stalwart and Charon-class light frigates were the smallest UNSC ships able to mount MACs, but though that meant their reactor was capable of generating enough power to fire a MAC, it was far too small to do so effectively, or in concert with other systems like thrusters. A UNSC light frigate could be speedy and maneuverable, and it could charge and fire a MAC. What it could not do was both at the same time.

Noting the percentage and the rate of increase, the girl calculated it would take over two minutes to build up to full charge. In combat, where ten seconds is an eternity, two full minutes might as well be the next century or so.

Still, there was nothing else she could do, so the girl resigned herself to looking at the battle, where, she noted with some amusement, snakebitch was tangling with someone wielding, of all things, a sword.

Tenryuu stared at the scene in front of them. A Kanmusu Tenryuu had never seen before was being chased by not only a flotilla of destroyers, not only a heavy cruiser accompanied by said destroyers, but a goddamn Re-class battleship.

Oh, we're so gonna die.

"Take the destroyers and the cruiser! I'll keep the Re-class busy!" Tenryuu shouted, as all six girls opened fire, startling the unknown Kanmusu and scattering the Abyssals.

Gotta hold on to my torpedoes and make them count, Tenryuu thought. It's all I got that will damage that battleship. She glanced at the odd-looking gun the strange girl was carrying. Hopefully she can help me out!

Yelling at the top of her lungs, Tenryuu swung her sword, but the battleship dodged out of the way faster than a battleship had any right to move. She swung and swung and swung, but never connected. Tenryuu glanced at the unknown Kanmusu, hoping to see her coming to her aid. But though the girl had unslung her weapon, she was just standing there and looking on, as though deciding whether she should intervene or keep running and leave Tenryuu to her fate. A little fucking help would be greatly appreciated, you know!

Unfortunately Tenryuu's distraction cost her; she barely had enough time to dodge a return strike from the Re-class' snake, and then she was on the defensive. Dodging strike after strike, Tenryuu noticed the Re-class barely moving, content to watch with a slasher smile on its face as the snake did the dirty work. This thing is toying with me!

Tenryuu whirled around another snake attack and loosed her torpedoes. The Re-class' eyes went wide as she tried to dodge, but with only partial success. Doubled over in pain, she snarled as she looked up to see Tenryuu charging again with her sword, and opened fire with her batteries. Now it was Tenryuu's turn to frantically dodge, but one shell hit her directly through her stomach, bending her over and forcing the pair to disengage.

By the Emperor and Amaterasu that hurt, Tenryuu thought, as she and the Re-class circled each other. The Re-class suddenly charged, and though Tenryuu leapt out of the way in time she realized she was not as fast as she needed to be. The midships hit may have been a through-and-through, but clearly something had been messed up in engineering.

She dodged the Re-class' next strike, and the one after that, but the third one connected with her chest, sending Tenryuu flat on her back. She tried to stand back up, but clenched her eyes and her teeth when the attempt led her entire right side to explode in agony. Opening her eyes, she froze, taking in the Re-class standing directly above her. As the slasher smile slowly made its way back on to the Re-class' face, Tenryuu slowly inched her left hand closer to her sword, trying for one last attack.

The Re-class noticed her move, however, and the snarl suddenly returned in full force, and it reached its hand back. Fear, anger, and rage raced through Tenryuu's system, finally settling on almost a peace as she came to terms with the fact that she was about to die.

Better me than any of my girls, Tenryuu thought, slowly closing her visible eye. You better take good care of them, Tatsuta.

The girl known to the UNSC bureaucracy as light frigate four-one-three found herself rather impressed at the sword skills shown by the eyepatch-wearing girl facing off against snakebitch. She smiled at the sword attacks keeping it off balance, and she cheered internally as she used snakebitch's laziness against her, launching a close-range explosive attack. But she winced at the hits eyepatch took, and as snakebitch loomed over her, the girl realized she was out of time.

She glanced at the charge on her MAC. Eighty-seven percent. It'll have to do. She shouldered the weapon, and taking notes from her compliment of ODST's and Marines, aimed at snakebitch's center mass.

Here goes everything, she thought. Please, let this be enough to get snakebitch's attention away from that ship!

She squeezed the trigger.

*POW!*

Tenryuu's eye shot open at one of the loudest noises she had ever heard, coupled with what felt like a punch to the gut. But instead of beholding her own demise, she found herself staring dumbstruck at what was apparently once the hips and legs of a Re-class battleship, the upper half of its torso simply gone. Glancing slightly to the right, she beheld the Re-class' snake tail, also simply staring dumbstruck at where the upper half of its master was just a second before.

Thinking quickly, Tenryuu snatched up her sword in her left hand, sheer adrenaline blasting through the pain as she drove the sword through the snake's head, putting it down. She noticed what looked like a slight smoke trail from where the Re-class's chest once was. Turning, she followed the smoke trail back to the gun of the strange Kanmusu, who seemed just as dumbfounded at the result of its work as everyone else was.

"Shit," Tenryuu called, drawing the Kanmusu's attention down to her. "Why didn't you use that sooner?"

"Tenryuu-san! What was that?" Tatsuta and the DesDiv Six destroyers sailed up, taking in the unknown Kanmusu, her odd weapon, and the rapidly sinking half of a Re-class battleship, before finally refocusing on Tenryuu herself, and her condition. "Tenryuu-san! Are you alright?" Inazuma asked.

"I've been better," Tenryuu admitted as Tatsuta lifted her up and supported her on her shoulder. "We should probably head back to port. I don't think I can make it through the expedition." The fact that Tenryuu was advocating heading back rather than boasting she could continue onward told the destroyer girls more than anything else how serious their minder was hurt. Suddenly, Tenryuu raised her head. "Hey, new girl," she called to the strange Kanmusu, "What's your name?"

The Kanmusu suddenly snapped to attention in a salute closer to the British-style ones Kongou sometimes did than the straight up-and-down arm like the Japanese did. Tenryuu couldn't follow most of what the girl said, other than her name was apparently "Yoo-Enn-Ess-See Hah-Vest," followed by what sounded like numbers.

"Yeah, I didn't really catch much of that, sorry," Tenryuu ground out. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, which meant that the pain was coming back. She'd start to really feel it soon. "I don't know how much you can understand me, but we're heading back to port. You're free to join us; it's up to you."

Yoo-Enn-Ess-See Hah-Vest apparently could get the gist of it. She nodded, and together the seven Kanmusu began the slow journey back to Yokosuka.