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South of Óstrov Vrángelja (Wrangel Island), approximately 500 kilometres northwest of Mys Dezhnjóva (Cape Dezhnjóva) at the eastern end of Siberia, Wednesday 25 May 2016, mid-morning (Tōkyō time: Two hours before breakfast)...
"Again, we failed, Admiral. We blunted the attack, but the nature of our opponents prevents us from destroying them."
Hearing that declaration from the commander of the Sixth Naval Air Flotilla, Captain Aoshima Susumu, the elderly gentleman currently seated at the head of the table inside the meeting room near Flag Plot could only shake his head in growing despair. "Have the Kami cursed the world with these filthy creatures?!" Admiral Fujita Hiroshi growled as he thumped a tiny fist onto the desk while the others in the room gazed on him. "With our experiences and with what we've monitored over frequencies since we got out of Sano-wan, the kantai musume can't be JUST the only beings capable of dealing with these yōma!"
The 1904 graduate of the Eta-jima Naval Academy could only shake his head in disbelief and private horror at such a vicious jest by the gods on humankind which had been inflicted on Earth in the last decade. Even if Fujita found it almost impossible to believe that humanity had been driven down so much by the so-called "Abyssals" that they had to resort to such odd magic to bring back the living kami of Yonaga's fleet mates and contemporaries from the time of the Greater East Asia War, he and the over two thousand naval warriors who manned the fifth of the Yamato-class warships and the first to be converted to an aircraft carrier had seen stranger things in the last seven decades, ever since they were imprisoned in a cove at the eastern end of Siberia by massive glaciers thanks to an earthquake, several months before Yonaga would have joined the others of the Kidō Butai in Operation Z. Never mind those kami being made human women, an outcome that thoroughly sickened the native of Nagoya since he believed a woman's place was in the home, not on the field of battle facing murderous enemies...!
Before anyone could say more, a whistle echoed. "Bridge to Admiral," a voice spoke out in American-accented Japanese.
Fujita reached over to open two-way through the small telephone unit on the table. "Fujita here. What is it, Brent-san?"
"Sir, lookouts just spotted one of the Ryūseizen near Wrangel Island. The two-stack one with the sixteen Mark 7s in the four four-gun turrets," Brent Ross answered. "She was spotted by Lieutenant Takii's patrol flight about forty kilometres south-southwest of Zvjózdnyj, moving towards the island. That was an hour ago. She faded into the fog shortly afterwards." As the others nodded on hearing that, the retired naval intelligence officer — and the only child of a distinguished veteran of the Second World War whose actions years before had forever endeared the Ross family to the crew — then added, "Right now, she seems to be at station-keeping, with all her radars and other detection gear focused on the island."
"They might believe the enemy is there, Admiral," ship's captain Ogawa Gorō then advised.
"Most likely," Fujita said. While many of Yonaga's crew had long speculated about the true origins of the mysterious super-battleships designed on Western patterns that had patrolled the oceans like grim undertakers during both world wars and fought to destroy great kaijū similar to the fictional Gojira which threatened the warring ships of both sides, only the admiral knew the truth of their origins. He had been sworn to silence by powers beyond imagination years ago when Yamamoto Isoroku let him in on that particular secret. "Tell me, Brent-san, what did Yoshiro-san say about this one's current state?"
"Warship at this...!"
Silence fell for a moment as Ross' voice faded, which made the people in the room tense. "What's happening, Brent-san?!" Lieutenant Commander Matsuhara Yoshi, Ross' best friend among Yonaga's crew and one of the many doho from America who had come back to Japan before the war to fight for the Heavenly Sovereign, then demanded.
"Yoshiro-san just reported that she just shifted to shipgirl format, Yoshi-san," Ross replied, a touch of astonishment in his voice at the idea of an actual warship doing something like that. "Looks like she's sailing in."
"Put the scout frequency on!" Fujita demanded.
"Hai!"
Crackles echoed, then a new voice called, "Iceman, this is Tora One! Can you hear me, Iceman?! Brent-san, are you there?!"
"We can hear you fine, Yoshiro-san! The admiral's listening in!" Ross called back.
"My thanks, my friend! Admiral, the Ryūseizen that we spotted an hour ago has shifted herself to kanmusu form to approach what's left of Zvjózdnyj. It appears there is a young child on the dock there! An abyssal child...!"
People perked on hearing the experienced torpedo bomber pilot's report. "Similar to the one called 'Hoppō' that Nagato-san now fosters at the Yokosuka Naval District, Lieutenant?!" combat officer Lieutenant Commander Kawamoto Masao asked.
"The very same, Commander! I...wait!"
Another pause as people listening in again tensed. "Admiral! The Ryūseizen has raised a national flag!" Torii Yoshiro declared, his voice cracking with excitement. "It's the new Canadian White Ensign! She's Canadian, Admiral! I...!"
Yet another stretch of silence. "What is it, Yoshiro-san?!" Ogawa demanded.
"She's moving to retrieve the child now, Captain. But she's put up another ensign! A black Canadian ensign defaced with a golden badge. Crossed rods in saltire in a wreath of maple leaves, the Queen's Crown at the top! I don't recognize it...!"
Fujita smiled. "The silence is broken..."
"Sir?" chief scribe Lieutenant Commander Hironaka Kenji then asked.
The old admiral nodded in reassurance. To the others in the room, it seemed as if a huge weight had just been taken off his shoulders. "I can explain about our Canadian friends now that they've done that, Kenji-san. As our Western friends would call it, a Fidelius charm kept my silence until now." As the eyes of all in the room again fixed on him, he took a deep breath. "As you'll all know, my ancestors possessed the gift of magic though I was not blessed by the Kami to use that power when I was born. I've long briefed you on our hidden magical brethren and the great battles that rocked Europe and Asia during the Second Sino-Japanese War as led by our own Supreme General of Magic Yomigawa Tsukiko and her ally Gellert Grindelwald to forever wreck the tyranny of the so-called 'international confederation of wizards' on all mankind and magical beings alike."
As the others nodded, he added, "The Ryūseizen were constructed by one of the greatest naval warriors I've ever had the privilege to meet, one even Fleet Admiral Tōgō himself held with great respect." As the others in the room gasped, he nodded to Yonaga's northeast. "That vessel rescuing that child kami is Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Odyssey, second of the Argo-class battleships, which was planned to be launched around the time our friends carried out Operation Z in 1941. The name-ship was the one who rescued a third of H.M.S. Hood's crew and half of battleship Bismarck's crew during the Rheinübung operation some months before our entrapment in Sano-wan. By international treaty — a treaty by which Taishō Tennō agreed to honour at the personal suggestion of Marshal Yomigawa's honoured predecessor Marshal Takemitsu Kyōsuke in 1914 — Odyssey and her sisters are neutral during times of conflict in the normal world, but stand ready to protect us all from the kaijū that always seems to emerge because of such mass bloodshed on the high seas. The first commander of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron and the man who designed the first vessels of the squadron with Fleet Admiral Tōgō's suggestions, Her Majesty's Canadian Ships Sunbeam and Sundown, was Admiral William Harlan. Admiral Harlan always vowed that those who were left to the 'mercy'..." — here, one could coat the decks of Yonaga with his scorn — "...of those kaijū would be saved by his crews if chance so welcomed it. And, no doubt, they are saving seamen from their yōma cousins we fight now!"
People exchanged looks, then Matsuhara screamed out, "BANZAI HARLAN!"
The others all leapt to their feet. "BANZAI HARLAN!"
«Actually, I'm not called 'Odyssey'.»
Gasps filled the room as that soft voice echoed in people's heads. "Who...?!" Ogawa demanded as eyes darted around.
An amused titter responded. «Yonaga was willing to allow me to speak to you this way while I'm busy with Vrángelja now,» that lovely woman's voice came back as a wave of pure peace flooded the room. To Fujita's sharp ears, the voice had a curious mixture of accents, part eastern Québec...and part eastern Texas of all places! «I would have been named 'Odyssey' save for the sacrifice of a very brave man when my sister's crew saved Bismarck's from one of the sea leviathans that wanted to turn those poor souls into a mid-morning snack!» As the officers in the room visibly winced on hearing that, that voice added, «I am the second of the Argo-class battleships, flagship of the Pacific Division of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron, Royal Canadian Navy Magical Service: Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Chennalton, pendant 49.» Everyone noted she pronounced her name with the voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant "sh" as the first consonant. «Admiral Fujita, I can personally assert Admiral Harlan will be quite happy to learn that you're still alive all these years.»
"Chennalton-san, you are too kind to me!" Fujita said as the others in the room exchanged incredulous looks; this was the first time ever that any of the carrier's crew had actually spoke to a real kanmusu! "Tell me, are those kaijū you were constructed to fight loose on the oceans?! Is there a relation to these Abyssals we've been fighting these last five years?"
«Not that we've discovered, but there's still too much unknown about them. This is the reason I'm getting Vrángelja off the island now and to safety,» the living incarnation of Canada's longest battleship responded. «I hope your wonderful scout pilots in those Type 97s above me are keeping an eye out for potential Abyssals!»
"None will harm you or your charge, Chennalton-sama!" Takii Yoshiro then called out from the cockpit of his Nakajima B5N2.
"BANZAI!" many of the officers in the meeting room and the bridge — including Brent Ross, much to the private approval of Fujita and Matsuhara — screamed out in approval of the pilot's vow to protect the transformed battleship.
«Then I request permission to lay alongside to allow you people the chance to meet young Vrángelja,» Chennalton announced, making people gape. «She wants to meet the 'nice men' who give the 'Angry One' the power to fight on, even in the face of the challenges our abyssal 'friends' love to give humanity as a whole, magical and normal alike.»
Blushes instantly crossed the faces of many of the men in the room at such a compliment. "Please lay alongside us when you can, Chennalton-san," Fujita then bade. "We've long wondered what's driven these beings to do what they've done. If young Vrángelja is willing to aide us as much as young Hoppō-chan and others like her have done, we'll be able to finally sweep these monsters clear of the seas and restore the peace your Queen and our Heavenly Sovereign desire across the world."
"BANZAI!" the officers in the room howled their support...
The Seventh Shipgirl
by Fred Herriot
C&C by Rose Ash, Té Rowan and RDMCMains.
Winged Hussars (2016), written by Joakim Brodén and Pär Sundström, produced by Peter Tägtgren. Mississippi (1975), written by Werner Theunissen, produced by Eddy Hilberts. Taps (1862), arranged by unknown persons at the order of MG Daniel A. Butterfield USA, lyrics composed by Horace Lorenzo Trim. Soldiers (1981), written and produced by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.
Based on Kantai Collection, developed by Kadokawa Games; The Seventh Carrier, created by Peter Albano; Mahō Sensei Negima, created by Akamatsu Ken; Katekyō Hitman Reborn, created by Amano Akira; Azumanga Daiō, created by Azuma Kiyohiko; Alpha Flight, created by John Byrne; Men In Black, created by Lowell Cunningham; Colourful Kiss, created by Giga; Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, written by Seth Grahame-Smith; Kidō Keisatsu Patlabor, created by Headgear; The Bionic Woman, created by Kenneth Johnston; Hōkago Ren'ai Club, created by Libido; the Indiana Jones series, created by George Lucas; Sentimental Graffiti, created by NEC Interchannel; Sweet Valley High, created by Francine Pascal; Harry Potter, written by Joanna K. Rowling; The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin; Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2, created by Takahashi Rumiko; the Suzumiya Haruhi series, created by Tanigawa Nagaru;The Guns of the South, written by Harry Turtledove; normalman, created by Jim Valentino; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon; Dial "H" For Hero, originally created by Dave Wood and Jim Mooney, with follow-on stories by Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino, based on characters created by multiple fans; Stargate SG-1, created by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner; and Doki Doki Pretty League, created by XING.
Including characters and situations from Belated Battleships, created by the JMPer; Greatest Generation, created by sasahara17; Harry Potter and the Shipgirls, created by Harry Leferts; Gaijin Teitoku, written by IJNFleetadmiral; Misuteru, created by Brian Drozd; Urusei Yatsura: The Senior Year, created by Mike Smith and Fred Herriot; and Phoenix From the Ashes, Magic and Canada and The End of the Circus, created by Fred Herriot.
On the Arctic shore of Siberia, Friday 19 May 2017, mid-morning...
"They were stuck here for HOW long, Onē-san?!"
"Well over seventy years," the twenty-something woman with the dark shaggy hair and the almost black eyes mused as she used her ki senses to reach out and scan what still remained of a certain aircraft carrier's long entrapment in this protected cove close to the now-deserted village of Ènurmino, about a hundred kilometres northwest of the eastern tip of Siberia, Cape Dezhnjóva. "An earthquake entrapped them in September of 1941. A second one around late November of 1984 enforced the trap. But the mesonium deposits in the bay kept the ship intact and the crew young. When the Abyssals came to destroy them five years ago, they were able to finally break free and beat them back." Here, Moroboshi Negako smirked as she straightened herself, automatically doing an isometric kata to allow the blood flows in her legs to restore to normalcy.
"And this ship is this 'angry one' the Abyssals are scared of, right?" Moroboshi Ataru then asked as he followed his adopted sister — and for ten years, his mental "house guest" in the subconscious elements of his brain — towards the inner end of the half-kilometre cove surrounded on all sides by hundred-metre escarpments topped with nearly fifty metres of glacial ice. "The missing sister of the Yamato-class? Yasuko-san's, Mutsuko-san's, Shimizu-chan's and Izumi-chan's sister?"
"The same."
"You sure it's the same ship Ō'oji-chan served on?"
"Positive. My interview of Miura Daisuke proved that."
Ataru tried not to smirk. Colonel Miura Daisuke was one of the last surviving members of the infamous Unit 731, the biological warfare research centre of the Imperial Army before and during the Second World War. Having nearly killed himself thanks to helping the Americans understand what he did sometime after he had been allowed to escape the Tōkyō war crimes trials, Miura had been imprisoned in a sanitarium until he passed away over a decade ago. Before he did, Negako — then resident in the subconscious mind of Ataru's paternal second cousin once removed, Hana Hirosuke — was able to extract from Miura all the information concerning the fifth of the Yamato-class warships, Tennō Heika Gunkan Yonaga, the Seventh Carrier of Operation Z. The ship where Ataru's paternal granduncle, Lieutenant Moroboshi Kyōsuke, had served as junior navigation officer on until Yonaga disappeared in the summer of 1941, some months before the start of the Greater East Asia War.
No doubt, Negako's "interview" of the murdering racist bastard hastened his final demise.
Shaking his head as he tried not to allow the darker side of his very soul to surge up once more from the blackest pits of his own heart and take control over him as it had done several times over the last year in his personal timeline, the Terran "tag race" champion who had "saved" Earth from invasion by the Urusians a year before (in real time) could only sigh as he took another casual look around Sano Bay. Named after Miura's co-worker Colonel Sano Akira, the cove had been a perfect place to place the modified Yamato-class warship that had been rebuilt into the perfect floating airfield for a whole naval air flotilla of a hundred and fifty strike planes. Extended to a total length of 320 metres with a flight deck width of 46 metres at the widest point, Yonaga tipped the scales at over 85,000 tonnes displacement with a full war load, most of that being consumed in layers of armour protection that even outstripped that of her battleship sisters Yamato, Musashi and the never-completed Izumi (once only known as Warship No. 111), to say anything that of Yonaga's own sister aircraft carrier Shinano.
"So what is Yoiko-san now, Onē-san? Ship or shipgirl?" Ataru wondered.
Negako tried not to smile on hearing that girl's name applied to Yonaga. Thanks ironically to the attitudes towards women that she had deliberately fostered inside her last host over a decade, Ataru had written an anonymous letter to the Yomiuri Shinbun three years ago decrying how much the commanders of the world's shipgirl forces were treating the beautiful arahitogami who were now the primary defenders of humanity against the monsters of the Abyss. Treating them as nothing more than mere weapons against such a foe...while totally forgetting the fact that they were now effectively human women with all the abilities that human women had been blessed with at first. Along with that — and keeping such totally hidden from Ataru's parents Muchi and Kinshō — the last host of "Imperial Special Agent #49" had devised human names for all the kanmusu of the world, then secretly sent those names out to the beautiful angels of the seas to have available for them to use when they finally retired from service and moved on to live their rest of their hopefully long lives as they hadn't done as warships.
For the five Yamato-class ships built by Japan, Ataru had chosen these names:
Yamato was Itō Yasuko.
Musashi was Itō Mutsuko.
Shinano was Itō Shimizu.
Izumi — who was never named before the order for Warship No. 111 was cancelled — was Itō Izumi.
And the just-revealed Yonaga was Itō Yoiko.
In the wake of his returning back from a year's sojourn in deep space — in his own personal timeline, which began when he had been fired back in time by a three millennia-old spirit dragon from the planet Noukiios after he had been saved from being forced to marry his "wife" at the Onishuto Cathedral on Uru to avoid marrying his other would-be "fiancée", the sixty-fourth Queen of the Rose Kingdom of Elle — Ataru had learned through Negako that the shipgirls, while having not learned who their "hidden fan" truthfully was, used the human names in private or with those people they trusted such as Rear Admirals Gotō Kiichi and John Richardson, the joint commanders of all shipgirl forces currently based in Japan.
Given the wonderful news some months ago of what happened to battleship Mutsu — to Ataru, Yamamoto Chiyoko; soon to be Lieutenant Commander Chiyoko Richardson of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force — it was only right and proper.
"Wait...!"
Ataru's head snapped around. "What is it?"
Negako was now gazing northeast towards the Chukótskoe Sea and the tip of the Lisburne Peninsula of Alaska well over 250 kilometres away. "Yoiko is currently heading towards the Bering Strait. It appears there is a new Abyssal shore installation establishing herself on Little Diomede Island, no doubt to find some way of choking off transport through the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage to avoid longer deployments orbiting south of Eurasia and North America demand."
"Is she alone?" Ataru demanded. Much that he still found it quite hard to focus fully on the many military issues that governed the lives of the shipgirls, the fact that his granduncle's ship was now about to engage the enemy...!
"No. Patricia Chennalton is shadowing her now." Her eyebrow then twitched. "It appears that Patricia helped Yoiko become a proper kantai musume six months ago. Her crew are now magically transformed into faeries."
That made him cringe. "You mean like...?"
"Exactly as the former crews of the First Canadian Battleship Squadron allowed themselves to become five years ago."
Hearing that made Ataru's heart nearly break as something deep inside him surged up from his heart, that reflected by the fact that his left eye was now glowing with a deep crimson fire. "Yoiko won't fight alone, Onē-san," he declared in a voice that boomed with a noticeable metallic echo, as if he was speaking through a steel tunnel. "Excuse me."
With that, he raced off to the nearby hovercycle they had used to travel here from Japan. Watching her last host/adopted brother go, Negako could only shake her head. "You need to learn to better master that side of you, Ataru."
In the Bering Sea, two hundred kilometres south of Little Diomede Island (local time: Thursday 18 May, an hour after lunch)...
"Aircraft just spotted the installation princess!"
"Got it!" New Jersey said with a cold smile as she urged her engineers to push her turbines to the limits and let her go all flank out to close in and destroy the enemy. "Any sign of surface or sub-surface forces, Anna?"
"Negative, Kathy-san!" Akagi replied from the battleship's starboard beam after hearing a report from a flight of Nakajima B6N Tenzan bombers now soaring over the eastern side of the straight to get a detailed look at the closest piece of American territory to Russian territory. As they were alone and the people monitoring this from Yokosuka near Tōkyō, Sasebo near Fukuoka and Kitsap near Seattle were aware of the shipgirls' human names, the converted Amagi-class battlecruiser addressed the second of the Iowa-class fast battleships by the intimate form of the middle part of her human name Anne Katharine Hyde, just as New Jersey called the carrier by her human name Fujita Anna. "There is a combat air patrol, but Kei and I could deal with that." Here, she indicated Kaga (Fujita Kei), who was being shadowed by Iowa (Minerva Abigail "Gabby" Lewis) as this ad hoc grouping of veterans from the Kidō Butai and Task Force 34 moved to close on Little Diomede.
The namesake of the Garden State nodded, bangs of her strawberry blonde hair fluttering over her bridge as she scanned the calm seas while her radar reached out to pick up any returns from the little shit who DARED to invade American territory like she did. "If it's a kid, we'll coax her into switching flags," she said, earning her a nod from the lead ship of Carrier Division One. "Hopefully, there will be no need for the Dragon Killers to put it down with a meson version of a Katie."
That made the line of fast battleships and carriers wince on hearing that dark observation. "That would be dishonourable, even for these creatures," Kaga snarled as she readied her daikyū. "Let us pray it is a child..."
"No such luck," Akagi then warned after getting a message from her scouts.
The other shipgirls' shoulders slumped. "Shit!" Iowa spat out as her blonde hair whipped like a demon around her head.
«Must have been transplanted from elsewhere,» a voice then echoed over secure communications from the support force over two hundred kilometres to the south of the main attack line. «There was no real battle fought over Little Diomede during World War Two. The Coast Guard was able to evacuate the civilians from Ingaliq just prior to when the Abyssals closed the strait before your fiancée helped call you back to duty, Dragon.» As Jersey blushed and the others in the attacking line giggled on hearing Enterprise address the man the battleship deeply loved, Professor Arthur Crowning, by that title, the former naval intelligence officer and the first true American shipgirl to be summoned added, «How big is the CAP, Anna? Need some help?»
"No, Yvonne-san, we can handle this," Akagi stated as the others of the Kidō Butai prepared their daikyū to launch a first waive. "Have Roberta-san or any of the others sensed out any submarines close to us? Given the seas here..."
«Negatory on sub contacts via CANTASS or SOSUS, Anna-san,» came the curt voice of destroyer Haida, who was leading a small division of Canadian shipgirls up through the strait to scan the Dominion's Arctic islands to ensure none of the Abyssals had set up new bases well away from patrols by the native hunters who also wore the red vests of the Canadian Rangers. «The idiots should've done something to blank themselves out from SOSUS. All's quiet there.»
"Let's not call in Master Chief Murphy, T-Bird!" Iowa called back. "You girls ready?!" she called out to the other battleships.
"Always ready to unleash burning love, you foolish Yank!" Kongō asserted from Zuikaku's starboard side, her turrets splaying.
Iowa laughed as Kongō's sisters chimed their affirmatives. "Ready to kick ass and take names, Dragon?" she asked her sister.
"Age before beauty, Stick?"
That made the namesake of the Hawkeye State jolt. "Why, you ass...!"
"WAIT!"
Heads snapped over to Akagi. "What is it, Anna-san?!" Zuikaku called out.
"Recon flight just spotted a massive wave of aircraft approaching the target from the northwest, Suzue-san!" the second-oldest of Japan's carriers called out. "All Japanese planes: A6M2s, D3A1s and B5N2s! Over a HUNDRED of them...!"
"We don't have carriers up here!" Hiryū exclaimed. "Who'd be flying all that old stuff?! We've got our Kai-ni upgrades...!"
The others nodded. "Any sign of markings, Anna-san?" Kaga asked.
"Checking now, Kei-chan," Akagi affirmed as she listened to the excited chatter from her scouts, ignoring her oldest friend's blush at such an intimate form of address. "We should have sent submarines up here to scout ahead...!"
She stopped as a stream of scrambled messages came into her, the information being decoded immediately in her secure communications room to be relayed to her inner mind. A second later, her face turned almost white as a look of total disbelief crossed her face, that mixed with what appeared to be delight and even hope. That was instantly picked up on by her old mission mates from Operation Z and the other ships escorting them. "Anna-san, what is it?! Who's here?!" Sōryū demanded.
Shaking her head, Akagi then blinked as her eyes teared. "An old friend, Sei-san," she hissed out. "A friend that missed out on everything...yet appears quite ready to dive into it even if she hasn't come back through Eta-jima or Sasebo..."
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then...
"Yonaga...?!" Hiryū croaked.
"Hai...!"
"Who or what is Yonaga?" Kirishima demanded from beside Shōkaku.
"Warship No. 797, fifth of the Yamato-class...even if she was the first actually 'commissioned', Isabel-san," Akagi answered before a wry grin crossed her face. "So to speak. She was even more modified than Shizuka-chan was! Made as long as any of the Americans' Forrestal-class carriers; she could carry a whole air flotilla on her with room to spare!" As the two American battleships gaped on hearing that, Akagi smirked. "The man behind the construction of Yonaga — that's her name — was mine and Kei-chan's old division commander, Admiral Fujita Hiroshi. He was one of the main planners behind Operation Z even if his name was wiped out from the history books because of what was decided concerning Yonaga."
"How was she made to disappear, Anna-san?" Haruna asked from Sōryū's starboard.
"Unit 731, Harumi-san."
All the Japanese shipgirls present winced on hearing the name of THAT particular Imperial Army unit while the two Americans among them shook their head. "Yeah, you guys sure loved to keep your secrets," Jersey wryly noted as her own radar picked up the massive alpha strike now closing in on Little Diomede. "Looks like our princess there just woke up to the Big Yama's dropping the hammer on her! You think you can swing your Jills over to scan where our missing flattop is?!"
"Trying to signal her, Kathy-san," Akagi called out before she concentrated. «Yonaga, this is Akagi!» she transmitted on the special frequency that Yamamoto Isoroku had given to Nagumo Chūichi before the Kidō Butai deployed from Hitokappu Bay off what today was known as Iturúp to communicate to Fujita Hiroshi aboard Yonaga when the seventh carrier of Operation Z joined her mission mates somewhere close to Midway Island on the voyage to launch the Greater East Asia War. «Yonaga, this is Akagi! Please respond! My scouts just picked up your attack force closing in on Little Diomede! Do you need assistance?»
Silence.
"Is she asleep?" Iowa wondered.
More silence.
"She was under EMCON before the signal to climb Mount Niitaka was to be sent out from Navy HQ, Gabby," Jersey then warned. "She might be still following those orders. If she's been isolated all this time, she's no different..."
"Than any of the people who refused to heed Shōwa Tennō's call to surrender in 1945," Tenryū affirmed from the head of the formation, guiding the members of her "kindergarten" to act as forward screen for the whole force.
Still more silence.
"Yonaga-san...!" Kaga hissed out.
Then...
When I die,
Above my grave
The fair bird flies.
And with her,
I will soar to Infinity.
All the destroyers looked ready to cry after hearing that lovely poem echo over the radio waves, even the ever-stoic Hibiki. "That's so beautiful!" Fubuki said as she instantly braced herself for whatever might come next.
"Was that Yonaga-sempai?" Mutsuki wondered as her gunners loaded rounds into her four 12.7 centimetre 40 calibre Type 89 naval guns in preparation to defend the carriers and battleships in case the installation princess got off a strike.
"The attack's going in!" Akagi called out...
Little Diomede Island...
The Strait Princess howled in nearly-helpless outrage as she watched the massive swarms of bombers and fighters moving to blanket the sky above her head, making it an effective no-go zone for her own defensive fighter force. As her own fighters leapt off the runways to get into the air, the first of FORTY-FIVE Aichi D3A1s peeled over into power dives, coming down in squadrons of nine to saturate bomb her with their loads. The escorting group of an equal amount of Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero-sens split into two formations, a top cover of two squadrons maintaining over-watch while the other three dived in to chase the enemy fighters away from the bombers. At the same time, an equal amount of Nakajima B5N1 torpedo bombers were coming in at nearly wave-top level with their own ordnance to take out the small amount of enemy ships that were there.
«CURSE YOU, ANGRY ONE! YOU WILL NOT WIN!»
«My! You flatter me with that title, little yōma!»
Another screech escaped the Abyssal as several of her fighters peeled off to the northwest, they being chased by a squadron of A6M2s before they could attack the dark kami in human form now closing the island. «WHY DO YOU FIGHT, YONAGA?! WHY DO YOU CARE FOR THE HUMANS THAT ABANDONED YOU?! THAT ABANDONED YOUR CREW TO FREEZE IN SIBERIA FOR SEVEN DECADES?! WHY FIGHT?!» An insane cackle then escaped her as bombs came down to crater her runways, causing several of her air wing to explode before they could get aloft. «ALL BECAUSE YOUR CREW SAW THEMSELVES AS MODERN DAY SAMURAI?! BECAUSE THEY NEVER CONTEMPLATED LAYING DOWN THEIR ARMS IN 1945 WHEN YOUR HEAVENLY SOVEREIGN COMMANDED IT AFTER THE ATOM BOMBS BURNED HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI?! BECAUSE THEY — NO, BECAUSE YOU! — BETRAYED YOUR OATH OF LOYALTY DUE TO STUPIDITY?!»
«HOW DARE YOU?!» came a outraged shriek from the south, making the installation spin her human head towards the Bering Sea. «YOU DARE INSULT YONAGA-SAN AFTER ALL SHE'S BEEN THROUGH?! HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW THAT ONE OF US IS SO POWERFUL, EVEN THE STRONGEST OF YOUR KIND — MUCH LESS THE SEA DRAGONS SOUGHT BY THE RYŪSEIZEN DURING THE WARS — WOULD TREMBLE BEFORE OUR FRIEND'S TRUE MIGHT!»
The princess cackled. «WELCOME BACK...KEI-CHAN! SOON, YOU'LL BE...!»
Explosions rocked around her as the last of the D3A1s from the seventh carrier of Operation Z straddled her, holing her legs and arms and dropping her to her knees. Two squadrons of B5N2s then streaked over her, dropping their loads to cause wounds to appear all over the creature's body. As cheers echoed from the south while Akagi continued to report the litany of damage being delivered, a strange turbine roar echoed through the skies over the Bering Strait, making the princess look up...
KK-KLONK!
The princess croaked as something slammed into her face with the force of a meteor, driving her against the rock wall that formed the base of the mountain which made Little Diomede Island nearly uninhabitable even to the hardy natives that once resided in Ingaliq on the west coast facing Big Diomede and Siberia beyond. As the creature bounced all over the barren stone now stripped bare of soil, the being that just dropped her landed daintily on the ground nearby, rising to his full height...which was actually just a little taller than most dreadnought battleships in shipgirl scale. Racing overhead as this humanoid thing's left eye glowed a deep crimson fire, faerie pilots from two carriers could only gape in bowel-loosening horror at such a ghastly creature having just imposed itself between them and their target. Before the ones from Yonaga could steel themselves to attack, a voice ringing with power hissed out, "Excuse me, but only those who have earned Kei's respect and friendship can call her by that name. A mere hit'kyechtechhu..." — hearing the scorn on saying that strange alien word made the pilots wonder if it was some weird equivalent of calling someone a burakumin — "...like you has NO right to do that to her."
Snarling as she got up, the princess sent a half-dozen bombers towards this thing that would abuse her so. "DIE!"
Bolts of starlight lashed out from that glowing eye to vaporize the bombers before they even got close. "Oh, did I hurt your feelings?" the creature teased with a noticeable level of mocking as the smoke cleared, revealing a human form with half the body gone. The missing parts had been surgically replaced by dark grey cybernetics that approximated the whole right arm, the right side of the chest, the lower left arm, all the left leg, the right leg below the knee and three quarters of his face. The remainder of the body was sheathed in a black form-fitting jumpsuit, that embossed with the symbol of a golden ascending phoenix on his chest displaying well-muscled pectorals, which melted into dark grey gunmetal once it passed his breastbone. "I do apologize. The bandits I killed at Morningstar Plain a year ago desensitized me to the feelings of monsters..."
Approaching from the south...
"Um...Onē-sama! Doesn't he sound familiar?"
As Akagi tried not to mindlessly babble at the thought of encountering something that seemed to leap straight out of The Terminator — she was being comforted by Kaga as Iowa and New Jersey closed up just in case someone tried to bushwhack them — Kongō blinked before she gazed on Kirishima, who was escorting Hiryū. "What do you mean, Isabel?" the English-built fast battleship known more commonly to her sisters, friends and her beloved admiral as Chihaya Anne then asked.
"Don't you remember that strange broadcast out of Nishitōkyō a year ago?" the third of the Kongō-class possessing the human name Chihaya Isabel asked. "Just before the government put in those blackouts about everything there?"
Kongō blinked before she gaped. "The supposed alien invasion...!"
"Even if the voice has changed thanks to what happened to his face, that is clearly Moroboshi Ataru, Onē-sama!" Kirishima asserted. Akagi had projected pictures of the creature attacking the Strait Princess to the others through data links before the sheer scale of the wounds the poor man had suffered — and what had been done to keep him alive — just overwhelmed her.
Even if shipgirls were well experienced with death, something like THAT...!
«Kirishima-san, are you sure?»
People perked. "Yonaga-sempai?!" Fubuki called out.
"I don't understand, Yonaga-san...!" Kirishima breathed.
«Is he Moroboshi Ataru?»
The third of the Kongō-class battleships blinked before she ran the images Akagi had transmitted from her pilots through her mind once more. Seeing the general body build, the shape of the skull, the full head of shaggy dark brown hair, the one good brown eye on the right side of the face, the only part of his features which was still human...! "It's him, Yonaga-san."
«I see...»
"Yonaga-san, what are you DOING?!" Kaga demanded on sensing the pained tones in her old mission mate's voice.
«The only proper thing, Kaga-san. To see the grandnephew of my junior navigation officer MUTILATED like that...!» a near sob answered from the oncoming carrier, which New Jersey and Iowa could now detect approaching the entrance to the strait several hundred kilometres away. «To think of how badly wounded his karma must be! Standing on guard against alien yōma, then to see him become THAT! My crew WEEP at such a sight!» As the others in the formation exchanged looks, the hissing sound of a well-oiled katana being drawn from its scabbard then echoed over the communications links. «NO! By all the Kami, NO! I will not stand by and allow him to suffer like this! He is of the blood of my crew...!»
A strange yet clearly amused man's laughter echoed over the air, that sounding ominously like the sound of a machine gun going off at full rock and roll speed. "Forgive me for saying this, Yoiko...but to quote Alex Hopper when he took command of Abigail's and Katharine's sister Marguerite to deal with those fool aliens in that one movie some years ago..."
"Which was a lousy movie," Jersey quipped as she rolled her eyes heavenward.
"Embarrassed the shit out of Mo...!" Iowa wryly added.
"...I'm going to die..."
That statement was accompanied by the sound of the Strait Princess screaming in mortal agony as Akagi suddenly looked like she was about to throw up from the images that were being transmitted to her from her reconnaissance pilots.
"...you're going to die..."
As the leader of Carrier Division One nearly collapsed to her knees retching from the sight — transmitted from her pilots — of that transformed man RIPPING OFF the princess' arm like he was Superman dismembering Darkseid...!
"...we're all going to die..."
A ghastly wailing noise then echoed through the air from Little Diomede, making Inazuma cry in fear as Hibiki shook her head, drawing out a flask of handy vódka from her skirt pocket to fire down a shot and steel herself from what was coming...
"...but except for this thing..."
Silence fell.
"...just not today."
Then...
"KONTŌ!"
A titanic explosion of energy then fired up from the west side of the island in the near distance, causing all the shipgirls to gasp as the creature's death-scream boomed through the air...before blissful silence fell.
Akagi blinked as the report came from her scouts came of that being using some sort of ENERGY SWORD to hack off the head of the princess, killing it before it could try to reconstitute herself, then she barked, "ALL AHEAD FLANK!"
The others jolted, before their engineers forced their turbines to full speed, making them charge ahead for Little Diomede...
Little Diomede Island, over three hours later...
"Whoa...!" Kongō breathed out.
As the Akatsuki sisters all came ashore and dispersed their rigging before they scanned around the wreckage, the battleships and carriers stood off at several dozen metres to take in all the damage unleashed by Yonaga's air group. There was no sign of the Strait Princess whatsoever. Nor was there any sign of the man who had supposedly come in out of nowhere to destroy the creature; the fog that was a perennial issue with weather in this part of the world had once more closed in over the Bering Strait. "Damn!" New Jersey breathed out. "If Big Yama was with you guys in 1941, this could have been Pearl."
"Perhaps keeping her away from it all was the Kami's expressing their disapproval of the whole sick venture, Katharine-san," Kaga stated as she looked around; she had gladly taken in Akagi's reconnaissance flight and launched her own scouts to scour the area to ensure no enemy reinforcements came along to try to take the island back and block the Bering Strait again...
"Found him!"
Heads snapped over as the fastest destroyer in Japan raced over to join them. "Where is he, Zekamashi?!" Kongō demanded.
Shimakaze jolted. "STOP CALLING ME 'ZEKAMASHI', YOU DUMB BRIT!" the blonde shipgirl looking to be just at the cusp of puberty snapped. At her feet, the three "Rensōhō" gun mounts familiars squealed in echo of their mother ship's outrage. "You always keep doing that! You're just as bad as that slow standard that's always on me because of my...AWWWK!"
Everyone's heads snapped around...
...then they gaped on seeing the incredibly tall shipgirl — at least a half-head taller than Iowa and New Jersey, who were two of the tallest shipgirls alive! — now standing in the water behind Shimakaze, having yanked the experimental fast destroyer by the back of her sleeveless seifuku top right out of the water, a look of scandalized outrage on her severe, weather-beaten face. "Yonaga-sempai...!" Fubuki then gasped in wide-eyed awe on seeing the Seventh Carrier of Operation Z in full battle rigging, looking not the least bit exhausted after she had launched a massive air strike on the installation princess that had taken over Little Diomede Island in hopes of choking off all trade movement around the northern coasts of Eurasia and North America.
As the other shipgirls took in Yonaga's features, Shimakaze moaned, "Hey, you big bully! Put me down! You're worse than...!"
"SILENCE!"
What little the destroyer wore was nearly blasted off by the carrier's drill petty officer-like shriek. As the other destroyers gave their friend worried looks, the two Americans gazed on the other. "Late Meiji era, Dragon," Iowa whispered to New Jersey.
"Seems to me that Ari's getting a new friend soon, Stick...!" the latter quietly advised.
Silence fell as people took in all the incredible features of the fifth of the Yamato-class warships. Everyone was quick to realize that Yonaga still possessed all the great curves in the body that marked she had been a battleship before being rebuilt as a carrier. Her face was angular and stern with worn features, marking the years she had been clearly trapped wherever she had been. Her eyes were the stormy grey of a hurricane and her silver-tinged, raven black hair was tied in a simply ponytail at the neck, extending to her waist. She was dressed in a kyūdō-ka's kimono top, coloured dark green and covered by a kendō-ka's black dō that shielded her chest and abdomen. In lieu of the skirts and thigh-high socks her mission mates had, Yonaga wore a black umanori hakama that reached down to a pair of red socks covered by zōri with ship's hulls under the soles, plus rudders and twin propeller shafts. Over her groin was a kendō-ka's tare shaped like the aft end of her flight deck, black with landing stripes, a white katakana ヨ over her right hip. She also bore kusari sheathing that covered the rest of her hips. She had sode covering her shoulders and deltoid muscles, kote tucked under her kimono sleeves to brace her lower arms and suneate under her hakama leggings to protect her lower legs; seeing the armour, the others wondered what sort of protective armour she possessed as a warship. To mark she was Yamato-class, the dark grey bow-like gorget with the Imperial Chrysanthemum that Yamato and her sisters all proudly wore protected this shipgirl's neck, the gold flower shining brightly.
Yonaga's rigging included a large rectangular flight deck with her identification markings and national insignia at both ends, that now hanging by a strap around her shoulder. Her superstructure with its outward-tilting funnel was fused to her back, that laced to a quiver now filled with arrows. A kyūdō-ka's yotsugake covering her right hand. Like the others of the Kidō Butai, she made use of a hassun-nobi daikyū to launch her aircraft. However, her defensive armament was quite modern: Twenty OTO Melera Mark 75 76 millimetre rapid-fire guns, a hundred Alliant Techsystems M242 Mark 38 Mod 3 Bushmaster II 30 millimetre chain guns, six Raytheon Phalanx CIWS systems firing M61 Vulcan 20 millimetre rotary cannons and four Mark 29 eight-cell box launchers for the Raytheon RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile system; all the weapons were on sponsons wedged to the exposed armour plates on her arms and legs. Noting that, everyone was quick to see the metallic hairband around the woman's forehead etched with her name in kanji — 代永 — with small bridge wings sticking out over her ears, they clearly displaying the hexagonal sensor pads for the AN/SPY-1 phased array radar, the key defensive component of the Aegis Combat System once fitted on modern American destroyers and cruisers. Seeing that made both Iowa and New Jersey gape; somehow, this old warrior from World War Two had got the chance to modernize herself in ways no shipgirl to date had.
To top it all off, a beautiful samurai's daishō was lashed to her left hip.
"So cool...!" Fubuki gushed on seeing such a well-armed carrier.
"A real eleph-...!" Here, Akatsuki caught herself. "Elegant lady!"
That made Yonaga blink in confusion. "'Elegant lady'?"
Tenryū laughed. "Akatsuki here always wants to make people see her as a lady," the light cruiser explained as she gazed fondly on the most childish of her core "kindergarten" before she sailed herself over to lean closer to the carrier and whisper, "She's always trying to make herself more mature than she really is these days, Yonaga-san."
The carrier took that in, then she sighed. "If what I've heard ever since I escaped Sano-wan five years ago about what operations have been like since you were summoned back to duty at Eta-jima and Sasebo...and Kitsap as well..." — here, she focused on the American battleships that had escorted her old mission mates to this place — "...the lack of serious discipline among all the kanmusu is hampering things. If this particular yōma I just destroyed is typical of these Abyssals...!"
"We know that, old friend," Kaga said as the others came over to join her.
Yonaga sighed as she lowered Shimakaze to the water. "You need to dress to mark your station, Shimakaze-san," the carrier then scolded as the three animated turrets that always accompanied the fast destroyer moved to attend her.
The younger-looking shipgirl blinked, then she sighed. "Well, much that I don't mind looking like this, if I could get one of those neat skinsuits the Canadians always wear on their hulls when they go out to sea..."
"That would look a lot better, Shimakaze-san," Fubuki noted. "Arizona-sempai wouldn't be bothered so much about it."
Yonaga blinked. "Arizona-san has returned?!"
"Her presence isn't advertised that much," New Jersey noted. "She came back to duty at Sasebo in her commissioning rigging! From 1916, for Christ's sake! No one's been able to figure out how to get her gear upgraded!"
"Sempai's coming now with the backup force, Yonaga-sempai," Fubuki immediately reported. "They'll be here in four hours."
"She should have stayed at Sasebo!" Kaga hissed out, her eyes tearing.
"To deny her the right to perform her duties is wrong, Kaga-san!" Yonaga snapped.
"To see her die like she did in 1941 is even worse, Yonaga-san!"
That made the larger carrier gape. "It was a legitimate attack...!"
"Launched BEFORE the proper declaration of war was made!"
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then...
Yonaga was now red with outrage. "WHAT?!"
"It's true, Sempai!" Fubuki cut in. As the carrier focused on her, the destroyer added, "It was no fault of Yamamoto-gensui or Nagumo-taishō! Some stupid clerk at the embassy in Washington couldn't decode the communiqué that declared diplomatic relations were broken fast enough! By the time it was handed to Hull-chōkan, the attack had already been executed!"
Hearing that made Yonaga hiss. "Sacred Buddha! No wonder you Americans saw that battle as a sneak attack!" she snarled as she gazed at Iowa and New Jersey. "That was something not even my admiral would have approved of...!"
The two fast battleships smiled. "We're still trying to talk these two here away from slitting their bellies open over Ari's wreck when it's all over with!" Iowa added as she thumbed Akagi and Kaga, which made the destroyers pale in horror.
"We have a right to do that, Abigail-san!" Kaga snapped.
"Oi!" the namesake of the Hawkeye State snapped as she glared at the other shipgirl. "When is it enough, Kei?! When we're all dead and in Yasukuni or Valhalla or wherever?!" She crossed her arms. "Yeah, Sonia's still wallowing in the guilt she felt before so many of her crew died when that bomb hit her! Don't get me started about Maggie's problems! But we don't need to compound it, especially with the little cockroaches combing the seas like they've done over the years! We need you guys!"
A shrill whistle echoed over the air as the sounds of pistons tickled the shipgirls' ears. "Abigail, please," a metal-tinged man's voice called out from the direction of the shore, making the shipgirls look over. Sadly, the fog that often permeated this part of the world was too thick for their optics to focus on the speaker. "Kei has her right to her opinions, just as you do. Both the Heavenly Sovereign and President Bartlet desire all of you to work together as one dealing with the hit'kyechtechhu. Even if some from Japan would see this as drinking gall because one's honour has been blemished, the hit'kyechtechhu won't allow you to settle things out as you would want. Can we stow this, PLEASE? The girls don't like this talk!"
The capital ships blinked before they gazed on the destroyers, all of whom had wary looks on their faces, even Hibiki. Seeing that made Iowa and Kaga blush. "My apologizes, my friends," the carrier said. "We forget ourselves at times."
"Yeah! Sorry about that, guys!" the battleship added.
Yonaga took that in, then she sighed. "The Letter..."
Everyone looked at the large carrier. "You know of the Letter?!" Hiei asked.
"Hai, Hiei-san, I do! By the time it was published, my crew had been joined by a former member of Jersey-san's ship's company who had come to the area of Sano-wan on the northern shore of Siberia in search of his long-missing father." As Jersey perked on hearing that, Yonaga added, "His father was a former member of Enterprise-san's crew from the war who died saving several of my crew from drowning when their fishing boat capsized and he dived in after them when he saw it happen from his own fishing boat." She focused on Jersey. "He was an ensign, an intelligence officer assigned as advisor to you when you were recommissioned the third time, Jersey-san: Brent Ross. He retired a lieutenant commander after his father, Theodore Ross — he was a gunner's mate first class when he served on Enterprise — was reported to have vanished."
Jersey blinked as her mind suddenly sharpened, memories of her crew from the early 1980s coming back to her as clear as it was projected on a modern television screen. A bright, tall, blonde and blue-eyed ensign, one with a temper that he fought constantly to control, a limited line intelligence officer who was quite quick with both his brain and fists. Then-Ensign Brent Ross served briefly on America's most decorated battleship before he was assigned to the Pentagon, where his career clearly progressed until he finally decided to take off the uniform sometime after the turn of the millennium. "How'd he die?"
"I will explain it to you in private, Jersey-san," the carrier quietly vowed.
Hearing the strong undertone of warning in Yonaga's voice, the battleship grimly nodded. It wasn't pretty and the fifth of the Yamato-class didn't want to hurt the destroyers by speaking of it in public. "Right..."
"Hey, everyone!"
Heads jerked, then they looked to the south...
"I, MUSASHI, HAVE ARRIVED!"
"Musashi-san, please...!"
"Onē-san! Don't embarrass Onē-sama like that!"
...to see the girls in the support force now arriving, seated on tan-coloured machines that looked like Bombardier Ski-Doo snowmobiles but with a turbine jet for a central hull mated to long ski-like projections bearing anti-gravity units to allow the machines to carry girls with metaphysical weights ranging from twenty to seventy thousand tonnes with ease. As they came to a stop before the wide-eyed carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers, a cultured man's voice then echoed from the one now transporting Yamato and Enterprise, "Commander Itō. Commander Swanson. I believe you can both disembark now."
"Arigatō, Kūkisaikuru-san!" the planned first of her class of warships said as she stepped into the water, allowing her rigging to form while the second of the Yorktown-class aircraft carriers got off on the other side, her rigging forming around her body.
As the others did the same from those strange machines now hovering perfectly like hummingbirds over the water, Yonaga was quick to see the "grey ghost" of the American Navy from World War Two made use of a modern-looking hunter's bow with dual pulling lines to launch her aircraft in lieu of the obvious Thompson M1928A1 sub-machine gun fitted under the flight deck of Saratoga, who had accompanied Nagato to this rendezvous. Also present at this meeting were what clearly was a highly-upgraded Pennsylvania, a nisei girl who was clearly a New Orleans-class heavy cruiser, a blonde woman with the rigging of a German Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser even if she bore American flags over her former wartime service's insignia, several smirking American destroyers in ripped Navy dungaree dress with 5 inch 38 calibre dual purpose guns...!
...and a woman who bore many burn scars on the exposed elements of her skin, that cloaked under an old-style greatcoat over what appeared to be a proper naval officer's uniform, though the clothes were also heavily singed.
And who was now shivering as if she had been caught naked in the Arctic.
"Oi! Arizona! Get off that thing! We've having a rendezvous!" one of the American destroyers, a red-haired girl about the same physical age as Fubuki wearing a native American headdress, called over. "You can sail, can't you?!"
"She's been a freaky prude lagwagon again, Johnson...!" Shimakaze muttered.
Pennsylvania glared in outrage at the young destroyer before she moved to her sister's side. "You okay, Sonia?"
Arizona blinked before she took a deep breath. "Battleships aren't meant to FLY, Margaret!" the namesake of the Canyon State muttered before she slipped off her air cycle and stepped into the water, her rigging forming around her.
"I bet it was a tonne of fun!" Hiei then mused as Yonaga openly winced on seeing Arizona's cage masts and range clock, both of which had been taken off when the second Pennsylvania-class was modernized in 1929-31. "Who sent these things?!"
"Imperial Special Agent #49 herself, Hiei-san," Nagato stated before she sailed over to join the large gaggle around Yonaga. "Welcome back, Yonaga-san. The admiral was quite worried about what happened to you in Operation Z."
"My admiral can only blame an earthquake that trapped me there until five years ago, Nagato-san," the carrier stated as Shinano and Izumi moved to hover close to Yonaga. "That was when the yōma came to the cove I was trapped in to kill my crew and make me one of them. Fortunately, I was able to break out and chase them away." As her youngest sisters gasped in horror on hearing that, Yonaga calmly added, "I'd like to credit the Yamato damashii of my crew that allowed us to escape those yōma that day so I could hunt them down and deny them the chance to seize the Arctic for themselves...but the truth is that there was a large diamond mesonium deposit in the cove I was trapped in. The radiation of which kept my crew young in body and repaired all the deficiencies in my systems, which made me as tough as my class' designers wanted us to be in the first place. My crew still felt themselves bound to the orders demanding I attack Pearl Harbour as per Operation Z..."
"Tennō can override those orders," the flagship of the Combined Fleet at the time of that particular operation then vowed.
The seventh carrier of Operation Z bowed her head. "If that is Tennō's desire, this unworthy warrior will obey," she declared reverently. She then perked before she gazed once more on Nagato. "Wait! Negako-sama sent these machines...?!"
Nagato grinned. "Hai! The Promise of Bunka-gonen is fulfilled, with her last host — your junior navigation officer's grandnephew, Moroboshi Ataru — having survived it when Negako-san was finally given her own body a year ago. That required some heavenly intervention from another planet of all things, but it happened." She then gazed knowingly into the fog. "I don't think you need to keep that armour on anymore, Ataru-kun!" she called out. "Can't you transform back?!"
"Not with all the heavy ki that thing threw up, Reiko," that metallic voice called back as the sounds of engine pistons echoed through the air, part of the fog turning dark before something emerged, that making the shipgirls who had been involved in the first attack all pale in horror and Yonaga openly wince. "It's alright, girls. Becoming this doesn't physically hurt me even if Yoiko will argue that my karma's been heavily damaged. Which, in a way, she's right about..."
"You need to have your karma cleansed, Ataru-san!" Yonaga hissed out.
The fog finally pulled away to reveal the transformed Moroboshi Ataru. "I am ninja, Yoiko. Not samurai. My purpose is to live," he quietly said as a look of contentment flashed from his good eye. Given that the rest of his face was a metal skull with a formed nose and piston analogues of a person's masseter muscles that helped move the lower jaw in chewing and speaking, he would have a perfect poker face should he ever confront someone. "I'm sure Ō'oji-san understands that."
The seventh carrier of Operation Z stiffened before she slowly nodded in pained acceptance. "It still worries me, Ataru-san."
"I'm grateful for your concern, Yoiko. More than you can ever understand."
That made her blush. "Okay, so we got rid of the Abyssal," Pennsylvania muttered. "Even better, we found a lost shipmate...!"
"Cool it off, Lieutenant!" Enterprise barked out, causing the older battleship to wince. "If Dragon and Admiral Richardson haven't already told you, knock it off with that damned attitude of yours! There's no time for that crap now...!"
"She seeks the vengeance of the Forty-Seven Rōnin, Enterprise-san. Don't be surprised."
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then...
Pennsylvania stared in confusion at Yonaga. "'Forty-seven Rōnin'...?"
"The Chūshingura."
Yonaga's head snapped over to gaze upon the martyr of Pearl Harbour. "You know of the Forty-seven Rōnin, Arizona-san?"
"I've seen the actual Kanadehon Chūshingura as performed by a beautiful troupe at the Kabuki-za in Tōkyō itself sometime after I first read that awful story," the younger of the two standard battleships present stated, which made the carrier gape in surprise. "A beautiful performance for a story that strikes me as tragic, both for Lord Takumi-no-Kami and those brave fellows who followed him into the afterlife after they dealt with that scoundrel Kira Yoshinaka." She then gazed in tired exasperation at her sister, who was now shuddering in burning outrage at the sight of her little sister sopping it up with the once-missing Japanese carrier. "My sister seeks her white whale because she was denied vengeance for my death at Pearl, Miss Yonaga," she announced as she focused once more on the carrier that could have totally wrecked Pearl Harbour had she been present that late autumn day off the north coast of O'ahu. "She was denied that chance when she formed the battle line at Surigao Strait, unable to strike down Miss Fusō and Miss Yamashiro because of friendly ships standing in her way. She went to her final demise after Crossroads..." — here, she ignored the winces from Nagato, Saratoga and Prinz Eugen on mentioning THAT — "...without gaining a chance to avenge my falling at Pearl. Since she was summoned at Sasebo, she has been...difficult."
«When you have learned how to fight as a human being, Yoiko, you can indulge Margaret's zest for useless stupidity then. Sonia grows weary of trying to tame her sister's temper,» a strange women's voice echoed from the northwest, that cold and even tone making the shipgirls shudder as Pennsylvania squawked. As Saratoga and Enterprise snickered and Iowa guffawed at that statement, Moroboshi Negako added, «In the meantime, join me in Sano-wan. We can arrange to have your crews' remains and this 'shrine of infinite salvation' of yours transported to a better place than this.»
"Everything okay, Onē-san?" Ataru called out.
«All is well, Ataru. I must commend Hiroshi and his crew for their determination to remain ready to perform their duties in this place. The advantages of this cove were quite many given the circumstances they found themselves in.»
That compliment from Earth's first true artificial intelligence made Yonaga blush deeply as her old mission mates grinned...
Tomobiki in Nishitōkyō (outside Tōkyō proper, west of Nerima), that moment (local time: Friday 19 May, an hour after breakfast)...
"Lost...! He's lost...! He's lost...!"
Hearing his daughter wail as she tried not to reach for something sharp to slit her wrists or her throat at the fact that the man she had deeply loved with all her heart and soul had been transformed by forces beyond all comprehension into a being that would even scare most of They Who Must Never Be Named, Redet Invader could only shake his head before he gazed on the sympathetically smiling Maritime Self-Defence Force rear admiral with the cool dark eyes and the well-styled black hair seated in front of him. They were all relaxing in the living room of the Moroboshi home. "If it's anything, Captain, I can only express my condolences at what your child's going through," the commander of the Fleet Shipgirl Project now defending his homeland from strange sea devils whose existence hadn't been known to the intelligence forces of the Union of Uru even right up to the moment the Tag Race had been launched a year before at the local sports complex some blocks away stated. "Believe me, much that her feelings for Ataru-kun are quite obvious, the sheer level of changes he has undergone thanks to what happened at that cathedral outside your capital city a month ago would be hard for even most of the shipgirls I command to take."
Hearing that from Gotō Kiichi, Invader sighed before nodding in grim understanding. Being the leader of the "invasion" that was actually meant to ultimately keep other rival alien powers away from the inner core of this solar system and subjugating the incredible race of humans living on Earth to their own desires, he understood about keeping things secret. But given how incredibly powerful these "abyssal" things were...! "I can't blame anyone for what just got revealed thanks to Mr. Groom's rather remarkable mental 'house-guest' after she was allowed to live her own life, then moved to see what really prompted this damned two-way 'news blackout' between what happened in Tomobiki and what was going on in this war you're fighting."
"Don'tcha know why these creeps are doing all that?!"
That was a pale-faced Redet Ten, who was floating close to his uncle's shoulder. "Sadly, we don't, Ten-san," Ōyodo stated from her position beside her commander. "Those Abyssals we capture or who surrender to us such as Hoppō-chan are instantly cut off from their brethren as soon as any sort of 'treason' is sensed. Try as we might to get help from our magical friends to probe their minds to see more, we haven't learned much. Fighting them to extermination is the only way."
Seeing how much the reborn light cruiser regretted such an action, the very gregarious Oni-Urusian warlord and would-be heir of the Throne of the Maidens were the Urusian Union still an intergalactic empire could only nod in sympathy. "Well, hopefully with the Avalonians on Earth moving to help out now that lunatic Ōgi's finally out of the way, you'll learn more. I have to admit, Mr. Groom sure did the damned right thing for them even if the loss of my daughter's so-called 'army'..."
"Which she would never have claimed as hers in the first place," Mutsu noted as she gave the sobbing Redet Lum a sympathetic look; she had come to represent the American commander in Japan, Rear Admiral (Lower Half) John Richardson.
"No, she wouldn't, Madame Mutsu," Invader said with a wry chuckle as he reached up to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment. "Maidens only know, my wife and I have a lot to do to make up for all the pain we allowed our daughter to go through because of this damned policy of appeasement we had to follow to keep the Niphentaxians on our side." He shook his head. "I hope that the Avalonians succeed in winning those planets they want to get from the Seifukusu. It'll make all but the idiot hotheads everywhere else finally calm down for a change and stop wondering what's happening to this system."
"The Republic of New Avalon would be a buffer state between yourself and the Seifukusu Dominion," Gotō stated. Much that the experienced naval operations officer had to concentrate on the Abyssals, he had been forced thanks to the actions of other agencies in government to keep a weather eye on things in Tomobiki. While the whole town had been made an "exclusion zone" where aliens from other worlds could reside in without much in the way of government interference — this was done to ensure that damage from the culture shock such "first contacts" could have unleashed wouldn't spread elsewhere in case visitors sought different places to live than that one suburb of Metropolitan Tōkyō — a plot by Lum's "most faithful" that could have easily wiped out all life on Earth had it been triggered was discovered by Moroboshi Negako within a week of her last host being literally fired back a year in time by the great Noukiite sky dragon Nengmek'i. The revelations of THAT had soured opinions in the Diet and the Imperial Palace concerning the presence of aliens on Earth.
That had led to this very meeting now in the Moroboshi home near Tomobiki Senior High School.
One that wasn't being crashed in upon by all the many whose lives had intersected that of Redet Lum and her "husband" Moroboshi Ataru in the last year, especially those of their former classmates from Tomobiki High.
The presence of several shipgirls with full rigging deployed — with orders to shoot down ANYONE who dared tried to break into the property in some hopes of seeing Lum's "will" reinforced again upon Ataru — guaranteed that.
Invader shuddered as he tried not to focus on the beings seated beside his current host. To believe the Terrans had resorted to such incredible forms of metaphysical energy manipulation to bring back the living souls of the many warships who had fought during the planet's second worldwide war seven decades ago...and all to take down creatures who had been effectively born from the combined rage and anger of many who had fallen over the high seas throughout the past several millennia...
To believe that these beings — from the smallest destroyers to the greatest battleship and carrier — could potentially take down even the most powerful of the one race in the galaxy that the Urusians NEVER spoke of in public by name...!
No.
No matter how much it hurt Lum, his daughter was NOT going to live on this planet anymore.
And if her "husband" — Invader knew that the whole issue of the legality of the "marriage" between Lum and Ataru was questionable given that it was during a Tag Race that the contact with her horns happened, when tagging an Oni's horns for marriage were never to happen — was determined to find some way to help the reborn living spirit of his granduncle's ship to adjust to being a human being again, just as thousands like this "Yonaga" had been forced to do for the past half-decade...!
Before he could move to close the meeting and then contact Lum's friend Oyuki to allow them to travel through the Central Warp Chamber of Triton from Tomobiki to Kōri City and an eventual return to Onishuto on Uru, a cell phone chimed. Ōyodo perked on hearing that, then she reached into her skirt to pull out her iPhone. Gazing on the screen there as she called up the picture message that had just been sent in, she then smiled as she held it out to Gotō. "Success, Teitoku!"
Curious, Invader and Ten — Lum was now being comforted by her other best friend, Shigaten Benten of Fukunokami — leaned over to gaze upon the picture that had just been posted to the Twitter account that Enterprise ran:
LCDR Yvonne C. Swanson USN * USS Enterprise CV-6
Helped Moroboshi Negako and Moroboshi Ataru just find THG Yonaga! The Seventh Carrier of Operation Z is back in service!
# FansoftheAngryOne
Invader nodded on seeing the tall shipgirl — as tall as he was, he instantly wagered — standing behind two people in black martial arts gi, they now at the shore of an ice-lined cove somewhere far north of here. "He made the names?"
"Excuse me, Captain?" Ōyodo wondered.
"The 'human' names you all use?" he asked as he indicated the heading of the app on the iPhone, which revealed the name the cruiser had been given, Kobayashi Okiku. "He did this in some letter he wrote to the news media three years ago?"
"He did," Ōyodo said with a smile as Mutsu nodded. "All of us."
That earned them a laugh from the alien warlord. "Ha!" He then sneered at Ataru's mother Kinshō. Who, as the visitors from Yokosuka and Sasebo were quick to sense, was shuddering in outrage at the fact that within minutes, her "daughter-in-law" and her cousin would soon vanish from Earth, never to return. And what was worse, the one who had seen to it such would happen was her own estranged son, who had moved out of the house when everyone who had been involved in that incident with Ataru's other would-be "fiancée" had been still stuck on Onishuto thanks to some nosy alien dragon of all things.
"To believe he's far smarter than you always thought, madame," Invader sneered out, making Ataru's mother quake. "You brought this on yourself. It's no wonder that your son wants nothing to do with you anymore." As Kinshō squawked on hearing that cold observation from the elderly battlewagon warlord, he gazed on Gotō. "Much that Ataru did vex my child a lot, I did care for the lad. Much more than his own flesh-and-blood ever did!" Ignoring the angry shriek from Ataru's mother at his saying that, Invader rose. As Benten helped Lum back to her feet, the "hosts" also got up. "We'll be out of your way from now on, Admiral Gotō. Good luck to you all." He then smiled as he pointed to Ōyodo's cell phone. "And especially to that one."
"Appreciated, Captain Invader. Good luck to you as well," Gotō said as he and the two shipgirls at his side saluted.
Invader nodded in delight before before he and Ten moved to head upstairs to Ataru's old bedroom, where the warp-in point from Neptune's largest moon was now awaiting for their use. Benten moved to walk Lum up after her father, but the Oni teenager stopped just at the bottom of the stairs. As Kinshō brightened in hope that her idiot son's "wife" would change her mind, Lum then gazed on Ōyodo. "Please tell Negako-san to take care of Darling, Okiku-san," she then said in a voice full of ashes. "Funny that the being that was inside his very mind cared more for him than his other relatives EVER did!"
As Kinshō fell flat on her face, Lum and Benten headed upstairs. "I'll do that, Lum-san," the cruiser then vowed...
To Be Continued...
WRITER'S NOTES
Translation list: Ryūseizen — Dragon-killing ship; Doho — Compatriot; Rheinübung — Rhine Exercise; Tennō Heika Gunkan — Warship of His Majesty the Heavenly Sovereign (short-formed as THG); Arahitogami — Divine being who is human; CANTASS — Canadian Tactical Towed Array Sonar; SOSUS — Sound Surveillance System; EMCON — Emissions Control, the military term for total silence by radio, radar or any other form of energy transmission that could be detected; Hit'kyechtechhu — Angel of the abyss; Kontō — Soulsword; Gensui — Field marshal/Fleet admiral/Marshal of the air force (NATO rank code OF-10); Taishō — General/Admiral/Air chief marshal (NATO rank code OF-9); Chōkan — Literally "government chief", this marks a head of a section of government (like an American secretary of state); Sano-wan — Sano Bay; Kūkisaikuru — Air cycle; Yamato damashii — Japanese spirit; Bunka-gonen — Fifth year of Bunka (the year 1808 CE); Chūshingura — Treasury of Loyal Retainers; Kanadehon — Literally "assumed model"; KMS — Short for Kriegsmarine Schiff ("War Navy Ship"), the unofficial ship prefix used in the universe of this story for German warships of the World War Two era.
And a special list of clothing, armour and weapons parts: Daikyū — Great bow; Dō — Cuirass (breastplate armour); Umanori hakama — Horse-riding pleated trousers; Zōri — Thong sandals; Tare — Fauld (groin shield); Kusari — Chainmail; Sode — Spaulder (shoulder guards); Kote — Vambrace (forearm guards); Suneate — Greave (shin guards); Yotsugake — Four-fingered archer's glove; Hassun-nobi — Literally "eight-sun long", this is a 245 cm long bow; Daishō — Literally "long and small", this is the combined katana and wakizashi blade set carried by all samurai.
Note that the name of HMCS Chennalton is pronounced /ʃɛnoʊ'tən/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with stress on the second syllable. The first two syllables are spoken the same way the family name of famous American pilot Claire Lee Chennault (1890-1958) is pronounced, with a "sh" sound starting off in lieu of the "ch" as it is written.
The Canadian Rangers (CDN RANG) are part-time military forces composed of platoon-sized patrols located in isolated communities in Canada's northern regions and on the island of Newfoundland, well away from where standard military units could be realistically based due to lack of decent ground transportation networks or other economic support issues. Numbering around 5,000 these days, the Rangers are composed of both First Nations, Inuit, Métis and non-Aboriginal volunteers. The whole force is split into five patrol groups of battalion-level strength, distributed as such:
1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (1 CPRG) — Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut
2e Groupe de Patrouilles des Rangers Canadiens (2e GPRC) — Québec
3rd Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (3 CPRG) — Ontario
4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (4 CPRG) — British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba
5th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (5 CPRG) — Newfoundland and Labrador
And a list of kanmusu names and human names for this chapter:
CANADA
HMCS Chennalton — Patricia Beatrice Chennalton
HMCS Haida — Roberta Petra "Bobbie" Welland
JAPAN
THG Akagi — Fujita Anna
THG Kaga — Fujita Kei
THG Sōryū — Sumire Sei
THG Hiryū — Sumire Hiyoko
THG Shōkaku — Matsubara Kanako
THG Zuikaku — Matsubara Suzue
THG Yonaga — Itō Yoiko
THG Yamato — Itō Yasuko
THG Musashi — Itō Mutsuko
THG Shinano — Itō Shizuka
THG Izumi — Itō Izumi
THG Kongō — Chihaya Anne
THG Hiei — Chihaya Sarah
THG Kirishima — Chihaya Isabel
THG Haruna — Chihaya Harumi
THG Nagato — Yamamoto Reiko
THG Mutsu — Yamamoto Chiyoko
THG Tenryū — Shimosuwa Tamiyo
THG Ōyodo — Kobayashi Okiku
THG Fubuki — Fukushima Fujiko
THG Mutsuki — Kisaragi Mutsuko
THG Akatsuki — Akamatsu Tsukiko
THG Hibiki — Akamatsu Himeko
THG Inazuma — Akamatsu Inoue
THG Shimakaze — Toyama Sumie
UNITED STATES
USS New Jersey — Anne Katharine "Kathy" Hyde
USS Iowa — Minerva Abigail "Gabby" Lucas
USS Enterprise — Yvonne Claudia Swanson
USS Arizona — Sonia Lily Owings
USS Pennsylvania — Margaret Hannah "Maggie" Penn
USS Saratoga — Olive Dionysia "Dionne" Doolittle
USS Johnston — Rose Victoria Johnston
USS (ex-KMS) Prinz Eugen — Olympia Catarina "Rinnie" von Savoyen
A nod to Sasahara17 for Enterprise's human name, as always!