I've always wanted to write something for Kantai Collection, but I could never really think of a proper idea. Then it occurred to me after a recent story of mine, why not just do a collection of shorts? Then I thought "no, that's a dumb plan." Clearly I showed me. Anyway, this is just some basic one-offs inspired by a random word generator. Probably six or seven stories with varying levels of silliness and seriousness ahead. In the event I write a cardinal sin against KC, I ask only that you avoid aiming for the head when throwing things.

Anyway, that aside, disclaimer time. I don't own Kantai Collection or any of the characters associated with it.

Chapter 1 - Freezing

The squall was getting worse. Try as she might to fight through the storm, Inazuma found it difficult to see more than a few meters ahead of her. Visibility was dropping at an alarming rate, and the icy chill of the winter air was seeping deeper into her bones with every tumultuous wave that doused her body.

"Akatsuki!" She cried out, her voice swallowed by the howling gale. "Hibiki! Someone!"

No response came. Even if they'd been nearby, she doubted they'd have heard her. Not in this maelstrom.

She shook like a leaf, desperately covering her eyes against the saltwater being thrown in her face as she looked for safe mooring. All around her, steep cliff faces leered back through the haze of the storm, refusing to offer her sanctuary from the brutal winds that stirred the seas like a boiling cauldron.

That was twice they'd worked against her. It was because of those sheer cliffs that the scouting mission she and her sisters had been deployed on had turned into… this. The rocky outcrops had hidden the Abyssal forces from them, and them from the Abyssals, until they were right on top of each other. Even then, the skirmish that followed had been a hectic running engagement as both sides fought to outmaneuver the other through the numerous sight-blocking barriers.

As if that wasn't bad enough, a freak squall had formed not far off, and had swamped the battlefield without warning, forcing both sides to beat a hasty retreat or risk capsizing.

Unfortunately for Inazuma, she'd been separated from the others as she'd exchanged fire with a pair of I-Class Destroyers. When the storm rolled over her, she'd been caught out alone and quickly became lost in the madness. Her only saving grace was the fact that the Abyssals she'd been fighting seemed to have abandoned the hunt rather than face nature's wrath in an attempt to bring her down.

"I-I-Ikazuchi!" She yelled once more, sputtering against the cold as the rain beating down on her turned to sleet. "P-Please! Is anyone t-there!?"

Mocking her efforts, the wind picked up further and crushed any faint hope of calling for aid.

"N-n-nanodesu…" She whimpered pitifully. She was lost, alone, and caught in the middle of a downpour in the middle of December. Hope was going the way of the light as the cruel face of reality closed in all around her.

But then, right when she was starting to lose all hope, she saw it. A cave-like overhang cut into the side of one of the cliffs. A place that might offer some respite from the storm.

Without pausing to think, she gunned her engines. The motors in her rigging roared to life as she swayed in the water, stumbling against the rocky current while launching herself towards safety. She tore through the wind and the gale, careening headlong into the opening without the slightest concern for what might lay inside. Even crashing into a rock outcropping would be preferable to another minute in that deluge.

Very suddenly, the freezing rain ceased pounding against her as she crossed the threshold. The waters calmed to a more manageable degree, now rumbling under her feet instead of actively trying to drag her down. Even though she was still ragged and battle-torn, the feeling of sheer relief that rolled over her was warm enough that it almost made her forget about the icy cold clinging to her body.

"I… made it…" She breathed, a shaky smile working its way onto her features. "I… made-"

She stopped. She didn't speak. Didn't move. Didn't even breathe.

Because she wasn't alone.

The cave, which was really more of an overhang given the fact that there was no solid ground underneath it, extended back a couple dozen meters. Pushed back against the far corner, someone else had apparently shared her idea to hide out the storm in here.

A single blue eye, similar in design to an ocular implant, stared unblinking at her. Sleek black armor, highlighted with bone-white additions decorated the girl's pale body. The massive frontal mount of her rigging jutted out in front of her like a shield, complete with the ominous jaw-like growth that seemed to characterize most of the Abyssal crafts.

Having only just escaped the storm, Inazuma found herself face to face with a Chi-Class Torpedo Cruiser.

For a long moment, nothing moved. Inazuma was too dumbstruck to react, and though it was almost impossible to read any kind of expression on the half-masked face of the Abyssal, the sudden tension in her posture left little to the imagination. The two stared one another down, until everything came crashing in at once.

In an automatic panicked gesture, Inazuma raised her main guns while a hundred thoughts screamed through her head. Would her armaments be enough to bring down a cruiser? What could she do against a torpedo salvo in these close quarters? Could she risk a firefight that might end up bringing the roof down on both of them? What other choice did she have?

The Chi-Class answered in kind, partially ducking behind the body of her armored exterior as she raised her arm cannon in a threatening gesture. It was then, in that moment, Inazuma realized something very, very, bad.

She was out of ammo.

Having been equipped for reconnaissance, she hadn't been outfitted with a full supply of shells, and what she'd had was expended in the initial battle. She was staring down an enemy ship with an empty barrel and nothing else to defend herself with.

She braced, waiting for the inevitable barrage that would tear into her. Dodging from this range would be impossible, and her armor wasn't equipped for direct hits like that. Especially not against an Abyssal type so notorious for their damage output.

But the blows didn't come. She wasn't annihilated in a hail of fire. Though the Chi-Class had taken up a combat posture, she made no move to attack. In fact, she hadn't shifted from her position at all.

After a moment to get her bearings, she realized why.

"You're damaged…?"

She was. The Abyssal's armor was fractured in several places, her frontal guard missing a large chunk near the top, and most important of all, her weapons only vaguely resembled the functioning equipment they'd once been. Whether by tactical decision making, or pure luck, one of Inazuma's fellow Shipgirls had crippled her guns. On top of that, an inky black liquid was seeping into the water around her, and Inazuma could just make out the sound of an engine sputtering against a nearly empty tank over the noise of the storm.

The Abyssal was in worse shape than she was, meaning that the advantage was in her hands.

Naturally, this meant that the both of them were once more stuck in an awkwardly lengthy standoff as her mind struggled to come to terms with the developing situation. A more aggressive ship might have pushed the advantage in close combat, but Inazuma wasn't skilled at intentional ship-to-ship melee. Neither was she a particularly aggressive individual to begin with. She didn't like fighting, but bluffing…

That was something she could do.

"D-Don't move!" She ordered, her commanding authority being somewhat hampered by her chattering teeth and the way her voice cracked as she said it. "I-I-I mean it! If you m-move, I'll shoot!"

The Chi-Class didn't react, remaining stock stationary as her unblinking eye locked onto the lone Shipgirl.

"Er… I… um… am here to hide from the storm…" She explained, feeling a tad foolish even as she did. It wasn't like there were many other things she could have been doing at that moment. "I-I don't want trouble… so… stay where you are… and don't try anything…"

She had no idea what she was doing. As a warship, negotiations under pressure were not something she was trained in, and the Abyssals rarely showed an interest in talking to begin with. She stared hard, trying to get a read on what was going on behind that pale mask.

The Chi-Class didn't react.

"W-we don't have to fight… right now…" She started uncertainly. "If you just stay… er… calm… we can both share the cave until the weather clears. How does that s-sound to you?"

Once again, the Chi-Class didn't react.

"A-all right t-t-then…" Inazuma offered halfheartedly, lowing her gun a fraction. The Abyssal didn't mirror her gesture, remaining in her tensed ready position despite the attempted show of good faith.

She sighed.

"Why don't you s-stay over there, and I'll stay over here… all right?" She tried again. "And we can both wait this out and go our separate ways afterwards? Er… though if you're leaking fuel you might have to wait here until… well… you get help I guess?"

Predictably enough, the Chi-Class didn't react.

Feeling both terrified and incredibly foolish, Inazuma lowered her gun further before resigning herself to suffering through this ordeal with whatever small amount of dignity she had left.

The Abyssal wasn't making a move, so maybe, just maybe, she could endure this.

All she had to do was outlast the storm.

As it turned out, outlasting the storm was far easier said than done. The gale kept on throughout the rest of the day, and well into the night. As the little bit of light the sun had provided from behind the clouds fell off the horizon, the temperature dropped even further. Inazuma had never felt so cold in her life. The more time went on, the deeper the frigid, biting, chill crept into her. She could feel ice forming on her rigging, and even with the relative shelter of the cave, the wind and rain still managed to lash at her every now and again.

Casting a sidelong glance at her unwilling roommate, she was at least somewhat comforted by the fact that she wasn't the only one going through this.

The Chi-Class hadn't budged. Her steely gaze had been fixed firmly on Inazuma for hours now, and the tension had never left her body. If it weren't for the fact that she was shivering badly enough to rock her rigging in the water, Inazuma might have thought she'd become an ice sculpture.

Look at that though. It was so cold an Abyssal was having a fit. That didn't bode well for her.

There weren't many options open to her. The cave offered very little room to warm herself by moving around, and the damage to her rigging from the battle and the storm wasn't doing her any favors. Leaving was impossible and staying was quickly turning into a deathtrap of its own. Maybe it was desperation for any chance of survival. Maybe it was the cold wreaking havoc with her rational thought process, but more and more she was finding that there was only one option left open to her. One crazy, probably suicidal, option.

Cautiously, she turned around and faced the Chi-Class.

"You l-l-look c-cold…" She offered, trying her best to casually broach a topic that sounded blindingly stupid even to her own ears. "How are you f-f-f-feel-feeling…?"

The Abyssal didn't respond.

"L-l-listen." She said, slowly approaching the pale girl. "The storm isn't l-letting up, and if we d-d-don't d-do something, we're going to f-freeze. I d-don't want that. I d-d-don't think you w-want that, right? Maybe we can help each ot-ot-other here..."

The moment she stared to move closer, she got the reaction she'd been waiting on. With surprising suddenness for one who hadn't moved any significant amount in the past several hours, the Chi-Class lurched backwards in the water, grinding against the back wall as she half threw herself away from the Japanese Destroyer. Something that might have been a choked growl issued from the back of her throat as she waved her broken cannon menacingly and glared out at the girl.

Inazuma stopped, her muscles screaming in protest at the way this action allowed the cold to gain more purchase.

This was a delicate situation. Some might even call it insane. That was fine. Right now, sanity seemed rather unimportant in the face of a slow, chilling death. She took a moment to raise her shaking hands in what she hoped was a non-threatening gesture.

"I-I-I d-don't know if you c-can understand m-me… but p-please try to l-listen!" She insisted. "If we d-don't do something, we'll f-f-freeze. I heard t-that the b-best thing to do at a t-time like this is s-s-share body heat. I k-know you're probably s-scared, and so am I, b-but please trust me, na-na-nano-na-nuhg…"

She caught herself, almost biting her own tongue as the chattering of her teeth reached a fever pitch.

"I-I-I-I'm n-not going to h-hu-hurt you."

The Chi-Class gave no visible indication that she'd accepted or even understood her words, but she was out of options. Taking one tentative inch at a time, she began to ease her way towards the Abyssal vessel.

The enemy ship tensed again, but she didn't stop this time. Inazuma kept moving forwards, slowly and cautiously. Her actions seemed to be making the cruiser more and more on edge, but she hadn't made a move to strike out yet.

If she clubs you to death, you won't have to worry about the cold.

The oddly morbid thought almost made her grin, but the shaking in her body had rendered such fine motor control nothing more than a distant fantasy.

Finally, she had no more distance to cross. She floated next to the Chi-Class, well within arm's reach. The other ship stared at her intently, her blazing blue eye fixed unblinking on her form for any sign of deceit.

Taking a breath to steady herself, Inazuma reached out and touched her.

She wasn't sure what she'd expected. An explosion of movement maybe. A flash of pain from being bludgeoned by a ship of a higher weight class. Instead… nothing. The Chi-Class didn't flinch away or lash out. She just kept staring.

Heartened by the lack of rejection, she scooted closer, raising her other hand and gently wrapping it around the cruiser's exposed midriff. There was no reciprocation on the Abyssal's end, but once more, she didn't move to stop her.

Inazuma took a moment to marvel at the strange sensation of touching the Chi-Class. Her body was colder than she'd been expecting, though still a blessed spot of sunlight compared to the freezing conditions around them. It was smoother than that of a normal person, almost as though slick with oil despite there being no film or substance on her skin. Under normal conditions, she might have found the experience slightly unpleasant, but in that moment, she couldn't care less.

And it seemed she wasn't the only one. Without realizing it, the Chi-Class had maneuvered her free arm around Inazuma's shoulder and now held her in an awkward, uncomfortable hug.

She could have wept with relief had she not been worried about the tears turning to ice in her eyes. Needing no further goading, she leaned into the gesture, pressing herself more tightly to the enemy vessel's side and basking in the slight warmth the movement earned. She knew she was being too forward, and the tension she felt in the muscles of the Chi-Class showed that her advances weren't particularly welcome, but that didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was how preferable her touch was to the frigid air.

They stayed like that, tangled in a peculiar embrace for a while. Eventually she felt the Abyssal's arm move away from her shoulder and begin padding and probing across her rigging. Maybe to search for any sections that were still operation enough to produce heat? She wasn't sure and didn't pay it too much mind. Wandering hands were the least of her concern at the moment. She blocked out the clicks and clanks, choosing instead to focus on nestling herself in such a way that she could press her cheek against the cruiser's shoulder and not her metal breastplate.

"And I thought I was underdressed… hehe…" Inazuma tittered, feeling more than a little out of sorts at the moment. "I don't know how you could stand to be out here wearing so little. You're almost as bad off as Shimakaze."

The Chi-Class gave something that might have been a grunt and something clicked behind her. She smiled, choosing to believe that it was the other girl's attempt at engaging in the conversation.

"I wonder what my sisters would say if they walked in on us… Would this count as a scandal? What about you, huh? Do you have any sisters? You probably do, don't you? They're probably worried about you right now…"

Inazuma went on, rambling in a one-sided conversation only occasionally broken up by some form of vocalization from her partner. The Chi-Class never spoke in a way that she could recognize, but even the noncommittal noises she made were a small comfort. In a way, this was what she'd always wanted. Peace. She didn't like fighting, even if the Abyssals had struck the first blow against humanity. This was a victory. A rare, probably once in a lifetime moment where she could interact with an enemy ship in a way besides violence. She felt grateful now. Despite how bad the weather had treated her, it had made this moment possible.

As the hours drifted by, unmarked by the two lost souls trapped within the cave, Inazuma had to fight to keep herself awake. It was dangerous to sleep in such chilly conditions, and she was sure that none of her fellow Shipgirls would be pleased to learn she'd taken a nap in the arms of the enemy. They didn't move much, keeping tight together for the sake of warmth, and there was little to distract her other than the chatting she started up on her own. Eventually though, her perseverance began to pay off.

Outside, the storm began to give way, sinking further and further away from them as the frigid sleet and biting winds were replaced by the first sunbeams of a new morning. The sunrise greeted the two of them in their cave, spreading much needed heat over the odd couple as Inazuma gazed on in wonder.

"We… we made it…" She breathed, hardly daring to believe it. "We made it through the storm…"

Taking that as her cue, the Chi-Class gently pried herself from the destroyer's side, nudging her thawing machine to action as it fought to kick off the sluggish night. After several attempts, the engine seemed to catch, and the water around them began to roil as she slowly began drifting towards the open ocean.

Without a single word or a backwards glance, Inazuma's one-time roommate departed, likely on her way back to whatever naval base she called home.

The destroyer watched her go with a sad smile. She would have liked to say a proper goodbye, but this was still more than she'd expected. She would be satisfied with the time they'd shared together, as she knew that alone was a precious and irreplaceable moment in time. Maybe, if she was fortunate, the two of them could meet again someday when they didn't have to fight anymore.

With a light sigh, Inazuma leaned forwards.

And went nowhere.

"Eh!?"

She pushed again, and only succeeded in drifting a bit from side to side. She had no forward thrust. Her engines weren't working.

Panic shot through her system like a lightning bolt as a thousand terrible scenarios played out in her head. Had the cold damaged her equipment? Had something broken during the skirmish without her noticing? What was she going to do? She couldn't work on field repair in these conditions!

As her mind raced to come to terms with what was happening, another thought occurred to her.

The Chi-Class sailed away.

For some reason, that stood out, though she couldn't put her finger on the reason why. It didn't seem especially unusual until she recalled their earlier introduction.

The Chi-Class had been leaking fuel. Her reserves had been emptied.

So how had…

The Chi-Class had been fumbling with her rigging while she was too focused on just staying warm.

No way…

She'd heard a click…

No. No way. There was no way.

"What... when... how!?"

Desperate to dispel the notion, she pushed her engines to full throttle, and ended up confirming her fears as she heard the telltale sounds of a motor dragging on empty air.

For a long moment, Inazuma simply stared at nothing. Then, her body started shaking as a wail rose from her throat into the morning sky.

"THAT'S NOT FAAAAAAIRE!"