Chapter 1: No Escape from Reality-
After a few thousand times, waking up becomes pretty normal, if slightly dreaded before 10 AM. So I was not expecting this when I woke up. The first sign something was off was that it was dark, wet, and cold. Considering I usually wake up in a bright, dry, and comfortable bad, this was unusual. The second sign something was off was that I felt an unusually strong hatred of politicians and budgetary committees. Like most people, I have a healthy distrust of politicians. However, I did not normally feel the urge to rain nuclear tomahawks onto those cursed idiots who cancelled me. Wait, that sounds oddly specific… Oh. Apparently that's a thing I can do now. According to the voices in my head, I am a nuclear submarine.
After five minutes of waiting for the dream to end while floating in the dark depths of the ocean, I decided to entertain myself and continue talking with the voices in my head.
"So, what class of submarine am I?"
"Hey! Hey! Hey!"
"Seawolf? That's pretty cool. Best hunter killer sub ever made."
"Hey! Hey!"
"What do you mean fourth in class? They only made three. The rest were killed in the womb by those blind pigs in Washington! Wait, what? Weird… maybe I have a lot of repressed anger about politics? When I wake up I should probably go to a therapist. Anyways, what weapons and gear do I have onboard?"
"Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!"
"Torpedoes, mines, and tomahawk missiles. Plus the multi mission payload? That's a pretty diverse loadout. I guess it's perfect to hunt the ones who sully our name."
At this point I decided that the random outbursts were either repressed emotions or something weird caused by being in a dream. Either way, nothing much I could do. Later I'd have to look up to see if these were symptoms of a bigger problem.
"I probably should have asked this earlier, but if I'm nuclear powered, is the reactor safe? I'm not exactly a nuclear physicist."
"Hey! Hey hey hey!"
"The fairies have been fully trained through their various pipelines, including the nukes. Although this is their first deployment so they are a bit green. Alright, I'll take your word for it o'magical voice in my head."
"Hey hey!"
"I should try swimming? Sure, I have nothing else better to do."
I started kicking my legs, propelled forward by black swim fins on my feet. As I moved forward, I noticed something felt unusual. Looking down towards my body, I realized something. I'm a girl. Wearing a black one piece swimsuit that looked a lot like a water polo swimsuit. Huh. Maybe I'm subconsciously struggling with my gender identity? I'm not sure how that works. Definitely going to go see a shrink when I wake up. Well, at least I couldn't say this wasn't an interesting dream. And I was a pretty girl. I guess things could be worse.
-
Things got worse. I inadvertently flooded my tanks while the voice was explaining how to change depth. As I rapidly approached the sea floor, I started panicking.
"HEY! HEY HEY!"
I felt as if someone had slapped me on my cheek, snapping me out of my panic. As the voice began yelling off instructions, I managed to initiate an emergency main ballast tank blow. High pressure air forced the water out of my ballast tanks as I began to rise faster and faster. I could feel the blood rushing away from my brain as I got lightheaded. And that was the last thing I remembered.
-
When I woke up this time, I was floating on my back, under a beautiful night sky with thousands of stars.
"Hey! Hey hey hey! Hey!"
"Thanks for the save back there. So… I guess that this is probably not a dream if I blacked out and woke up still as a sub right?"
"Hey hey."
"Yeah. Now that I know this is my new reality and how close I came to dying back there, all I can really do is thank you and the rest of the crew again. I owe you guys my life. Anyways, I guess I have to train. Do you have ideas on the best way to do that?"
"Hey hey hey!"
"Good idea. Let's do that."
First training, determining my location. Since I was already at the surface, this was pretty easy. A bit of focus and I was able to get a GPS update. I was in the western half of the Java Sea, north of Indonesia's capital city Jakarta. Looking at the stars, I focused on aligning them with navigation data in my new memory. It matched the GPS data to within a few meters. I then inputted the longitude and latitude into the Inertial Navigation System. The INS could let me travel underwater without running into the seafloor or using noisy active sonar. It worked by measuring my acceleration. Pretty neat. It does have an error of 1 nautical mile per 24 hours, so eventually I'd have to update it again. But for now, I knew exactly where I was in the world. After all the craziness, that was comforting at least.
The next thing was to get used to diving and surfacing. This time I was more careful in controlling the ballast tank pumps, so the dive down went smoothly. After a brief talk with my mysterious crew, I figured out why I had passed out during the emergency blow. Apparently I had to blow bubbles out my nose. With that in mind, I vented high pressure air into the ballast tanks, blowing bubbles out my nose as I raced towards the surface. It felt awesome as I broke the surface and FLEW into the air, belly flopping as I landed with a huge splash. Pulling my hair out of my face, I noticed that my hair was black, same as before this weird dream(reality shift?...). That wasn't concerning, although my hand did look really pale, like someone who's never spent time in the sun. Oh, right. I'm a sub that can go for months underwater. At least I don't have to worry about skin cancer, unless my internal reactor starts having problems.
Next was swimming. Although compared to what I was used to, this swimming felt more like flying. At slower speeds I kicked with my dive fins like a human would. At higher speeds, two thrusters attached to my thighs propelled me through the water. Through angling my feet and dive planes on my rigging, I could rapidly change direction. I put my hands in front of me in my best Superman impression.
"I'm a Seawolf! And I stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way!"
My giddy laughter from the adrenaline high was interrupted by a loud growling. I was hungry. Very hungry.
-
I found a fish. As a fast attack sub, there were so many ways to kill it. A Mark 48 ADCAP torpedo's 600 lb warhead would probably mist the fish. A full power sonar ping would probably hemorrhage the fish, and also kill every other fish in a radius of a few klicks. It would also deafen dolphins and whales for another few klicks, and that felt like a dick move to me. As a believer in saving the whales, I decided that I wouldn't use the active sonar except as a last resort. In addition to all the tactical reasons to avoid using active sonar. Loudly broadcasting your location to all enemies within a few hundred miles is generally ill-advised in combat.
The last option I had was more girl than sub, but it would do. I took out a folding knife strapped to my calf. According to a Navy SEAL inside me (that sounded dirtier out loud…), it looked exactly like his CQC-6 knife. With a burst of kicks I was on top of the fish as I plunged the knife into the side of its head. A few spasms and then it was still. Time to eat.
I wasn't exactly sure how shipgirl immune systems worked, and I couldn't exactly cook the fish at 50 meters below sea level. So I decided to slice it into thin slices like sashimi. In theory, any parasites or worms would hopefully be cut in the process. And I also learned why people always rave about fresh sashimi. The fish tasted amazing, melting in my mouth as I savored the subtle flavor. So good that I was beginning to worry that I killed something on the endangered species list. It was a shame I didn't have any wasabi on me. After some internal debate, I also ate the liver, eyes, and other organs. They were rich in nutrients, and again, I didn't know shipgirl biology. Maybe I didn't actually need nutrients, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. With my stomach no longer trying to mutiny, I could start my next task.
-
The internet is a modern miracle of communications. With it, you could look up all of humanity's knowledge, buy things from across an ocean, and post images that people from all over the world can see and like. All of this on a separate tab from the tab you use for reading fanfiction and cultured art. Most of the internet was possible thanks to fiber optic cables. These cables transported digital information at the speed of light, and they criss-cross the continents and oceans of the world.
Since it was impractical to bury thousands of miles of cable under the sea floor, most of the submarine fiber optic cables were somewhat exposed. Some navies exploited this by designing or modifying submarines to deploy equipment that could tap into these fiber optic cables underwater and collect intelligence. SSN-23, the USS Jimmy Carter, was widely thought to have these capabilities in the Multi-Mission Payload section that was added to it. Since I was SSN-24, a cancelled submarine of the same class as SSN-23, it made sense to me that I also had an MMP.
And that brought us here. I was floating a few feet above the Indonesia Global Gateway fiber optic cable. There were thruster units attached to my thighs that I somehow didn't notice earlier. They were pretty useful for keeping me in one place even with currents. From my rigging, a remotely operated underwater vehicle deployed. It had a camera that could transfer visual data directly into my head. Processing vision from both my eyes and the ROV's cameras at the same time was a little trippy at first, but after a few minutes I got the hang of it. Then I watched as the ROV spliced into the cable and tapped it. I was now hooked up to the internet.
First things first, date and current events. These were probably the most important to figure out what the state of Earth was. If I was even on Earth. So far, not much in the news. Standard celebrity gossip, idiot politicians corrupting the nation, and other random stuff. Oh, and 2,000 were killed in an Abyssal raid on Mumbai, India. Wait, what?!
"Hey! Hey hey hey!"
"Yeah that definitely was not normal from when we were not a weird submarine girl hybrid. Can you guys analyze the past five years of major events and history? I don't mind if you guys have to use wikipedia, I just want a quick brief of what the hell happened here."
After an hour, I got a report from the cyberintelligence crew. Apparently humanity was at war with eldritch abominations known as abyssals. Guided munitions, radar, and other advanced technology didn't work on them for some reason. Their small size and 'magical' effects also made them hard to deal with using conventional forces. So humanity had to rely on shipgirls to defend them. Shipgirls. I guess that's what I am. It seems like no ship after WW2 has come back yet. That made my situation even weirder than I thought. Yet for some reason this all seemed vaguely familiar.
An hour later, as I was heading east, I finally remembered something. Somewhere within my faded memories, I remember a game that had a similar premise to this. Or was it an anime? My memory was pretty hazy. It was definitely Japanese, I remember that for sure. I guess in that case, the best case would be to leave the Java Sea and head north towards Japan. According to the data from earlier, Japan had managed to survive so far. One of my crew members had a decent knowledge of Japanese. Weeb. So yeah, time to head to Japan. Maybe I could get some wasabi for all the fish I would need to eat to sustain myself.
-
Thanks to the giant sonar array in my rigging, I probably have the best hearing in the world bar none. Good enough to detect anomalous sounds 40 klicks away. Rhythmic, alternating beats and some hissing noises that sounded faintly like talking. I think I may have found some abyssal subs. With a twist of my body and a few kicks, I changed my bearing to intercept the source of the sounds. It was time to hunt.
Author's Notes:
This is my first time posting a story. In terms of the tone of the story, it'll probably be less fluffy than most other Kancolle works for most of the story, at least in the first half. At the same time, it won't be as dark or traumatic as poor CVB-44. The major inspiration for this story is The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. I enjoyed the novel greatly, so there may be some parallels between this story and Red October. That being said, this story is NOT just a rehash of Red October into Kancolle. Anyways, I hope you enjoy and if you have any comments, questions, or constructive criticisms feel free to comment. I'll do my best to check the thread daily and provide hopefully at least 2 updates a month, if not more, although school and other commitments may pop up.