The ocean was burning, filled with black smoke and roiling oil fires. A hundred yards off Enterprise's port bow, the scorched remains of an oil rig buckled and collapsed. Its derrick teetered before gravity's claws dug deep enough to bring it down. The steel titan crashed into the ocean, throwing up geyser in its wake. The wave broke over her bow and saltwater soaked Enterprise's deck, but the derrick's splash did little and less to put out the fire that had toppled it. Instead the fire only spread, the burning oil slick churned by the collapse.

Standing on her own bow, Enterprise barely spared the wreck a glance, giving it only enough attention to ensure she would clear it as her formation passed. The first such sight she had seen had surprised her, but it was by now a common sight. There were dozens of rigs already burning, their hulks billowing black smoke that rose and combined to choke the sun from the sky. Her nose burned from the acrid petroleum stench, and she could feel the spots on her deck and her skin where the oil clouds had thickened enough to drizzle down in sporadic squalls. Between the weather and toxic smoke, visibility was nearly nonexistent.

To her starboard side, heavy guns boomed. The bright flash of fourteen inch guns cut through the pall like lightning in a thunderstorm. She did not need her radar to recognize the gunfire as coming from Prince of Wales. Between the thundering of the Battleship's artillery rose a crackle of smaller guns, Destroyers with their light cannons and torpedoes.

Before Enterprise could move in their direction, the smokebank glowed a brilliant violet and the sound of the guns faltered, stuttered. Choked off with terrifying finality.

Enterprise launched herself forward at a run, pulling tight the tether that bound her two physical forms together. Light broke through the deck plating, her entire ship shining a brilliant sky blue. Enterprise leapt from her bow just as she felt the ship shatter apart.

She did not need to look to see the whirling storm of her ship reforming, she could feel every piece as it swirled and coalesced around her to form her rigging. The handle of her bow filled her palm, the island bridge erupting with the weapon she wielded to fight the monsters she'd been created to battle against. Oil and aviation fuel flowed through her as much as blood in her veins, bombs and torpedoes waited at her fingertips for the call to summon forth. Her heart pounded and her engine roared for battle.

The sea sprayed against her skin as she cut through the waves towards the sound of the guns. She'd told the other girls to keep close, and it was only a few moments before the outline of a Siren became clear through the gloom.

Sirens were otherworldly, without question. Everything about them was wrong. Unnatural. They manifested in forms similar to the Ship-Girls themselves, but the resemblance was merely surface level.

Their skin reflected light strangely, seeming almost to poison it by mere reflection. Their eyes shone gold, but seemed to darken rather than sparkle even in the brightness of high noon. They had voices warped in ringing disharmony, wrought of panes of shattering glass and wails of the dying. It hurt to look at them, hurt worse to hear them. The fabric of reality rejected what they were and what they were not meant to be. Living madness, or as close to as Enterprise had ever seen.

But beyond their avatars, the Sirens wore rigging, too. Most often mimicking aquatic creatures of one sort or another and adorned with bizarre trim that glowed a sickly yellow. Enterprise had personally witnessed Sirens with rigging that mimicked crabs, fish, sharks, or whales. A handful slithered about with sea snakes or monstrosities that vaguely resembled shrimp, but she had only ever known of one whose rigging resembled the Sawtooth Shark.

Enterprise's boilers were running hot. The booming of Wales' heavy guns had stopped, but Enterprise had eyes sharper than even Grim's and she did not fail to miss the gathering light of the Siren's charging particle cannon.

Raising her bow, she reached out and manifested an arrow into being. The air crackled and her skin tingled as the particle cannon readied to fire. She drew back and loosed the arrow, not a moment wasted for aim. The bolt shot forward, shifting and splitting into the triple form of three five hundred pound armor piercing bombs.

Whether it was the sound of her feet slicing through the water or some other sense that alerted the Siren, she didn't know. Whatever it was, the Siren's head raised and twisted about to look at her. Were she to turn her head so far it would have broken her neck, but Sirens were unnatural and strange creatures. The thing only smiled, its grin wide and insane as it launched itself away.

Enterprise reached out and detonated the bombs in midair. She was hoping the effect would catch the Siren before it escaped, but she knew before the smoke and steam cleared that it had gotten away.

With the Siren gone, Enterprise pushed forward. The vague outlines of ship girls solidified into Prince of Wales half slumped over in the water, burns and nasty scratches marring typically immaculate uniform. Javelin and Laffey were working together to prop her up, each of the little Destroyers holding one of the Battleship's arms slung over their shoulders.

"What happened to her?" Enterprise demanded, skidding to a halt in front of the girls.

There were tears in Javelin's eyes, but it was Wales herself who answered. "Caught by surprise, I'm afraid," he said, face twisted in a pained grimace. "Thank you for the save, Enterprise."

Wales was leaning heavily on Ayanami, and a moment's inspection revealed that the burns along her side were even worse than they'd first appeared. The Battleship's cloak was singed and burned as was the uniform beneath. Wales' entire left side had been hit nearly dead on, and even through the salt air there was the faint odor of cooking flesh.

It wasn't quite a direct hit, but even a glancing blow from the Siren's particle cannons could send a Destroyer or Light Cruiser to the bottom of the sea. It was only that Wales was so well armored that she was still conscious, much less still standing. Had she not come along and chased the Siren away, Wales would not have survived another such hit.

"She pushed me out of the way," Javelin whimpered, the tears that had been brimming in her eyes now well and fully spilling free. "You shouldn't have done that!"

The Battleship only chuckled and shook her head, though the laugh broke as her burned side rose and fell, her breath hitching. "Nonsense, I'm fine, dear. Just a flesh wound, I assure you."

Behind her, Enterprise felt her radar ping. Contact approaching.

She whirled about, her bow leveled with a golden arrow knocked and drawn. Rather than a Siren or one of their harsh angular warships, it was the forms of more of her fellow Ship-Girls. Belfast and Hornet, joined a moment later by Prinz Eugen with Zuikaku in tow.

There was a heartbeat's hesitation at the latter two's arrival. The conflict between Azur Lane and Crimson Axis had been short, but not lacking in skirmishes. It took a conscious effort to remind herself that these girls were once more on the same side as her. The side they all ought to have all been on all along.

Lowering her bow and releasing the summoned arrow to dissipate back into her stores, Enterprise nodded a greeting. The girls returned it, their eyes traveling past her and widening at the sight of Wales. Eugen was the first to move, her floats carrying her forward and half around Enterprise to where she could see the Battleship properly.

"Gott, Wales, what did that thing do to you?" For a brief moment Enterprise wondered with surprise if Eugen was about to reach out to replace Javelin at Wales' side, but she blinked and the faint illusion was gone.

"Just a scratch, darling, never you mind," Wales replied, but the limpness in her left side paid truth to the lie.

"She caught us by surprise," Ayanami said, speaking up from Wales' other side. "By the time we opened fire she was already too close, we couldn't spot her approach through the smoke."

The Ship-Girls shared frowns of worry. Whether the Siren's rampage through the oil field had been for the sake of the obscuration it produced or whether it was merely a side effect of wanton destruction, in either case the result was the same.

"I clobbered her good before she managed a shot off," Wales said, shifting herself about so that more of her weight rested on Javelin and her right leg than on just the wilting Ayanami. "Hard to tell with their lot, but I think she's hurt."

Nodding, Enterprise turned to the other girls. "She's close. We need to go after her." Belfast's head rose, her eyes widening in surprise.

"Wales is severely injured, Enterprise. We must get her back to base, "Belfast said, glancing aside towards the injured ship. "And please do try to say otherwise, Miss Wales."

The Battleship only shook her head with a pained smile, few strands of blonde hair falling into the water to be quickly washed away by the worsening waters.

"You'll have no argument from me this time, Belfast." That on its own spoke of the severity of her wounds. Had she not already been planning to, that would have been enough to convince Enterprise of the need to send Wales back to their base for repairs.

"We can't let her continue with her destruction, and we're too close to base to simply withdraw." Looking about, her eyes settled on Eugen. "Eugen, go with Ayanami and Javelin, make sure Wales gets back safely. The rest of us will go after her."

"Nein, I go after her as well" Eugen shot back quickly, steel in her voice. The Iron Blood Heavy Cruiser's eyes briefly flittered over to where Wales slumped before returning to meet Enterprise's own, challenging her to argue. "She has harmed one of ours, I will be helping in destroying her."

Enterprise thought for a moment about ordering her to go anyway. The girls had chosen her as their Commander, after all, and the Iron Blood and Sakura Empire Ship Girls that sailed with Azur Lane once more had agreed to follow her leadership.

In the end she decided it wasn't worth the argument, Enterprise instead turned to Zuikaku. "Go with them, please. If the Siren finds them again before you all make it out of the smoke, you'll have to protect them. I'd like at least one capital ship to go along."

Having worked with Zuikaku for several months now, Enterprise had finally learned—after much difficulty and a quiet conversation with Shoukaku—that the best way to convince Zuikaku not to argue was to make it clear she wasn't being dismissed for being weak.

It seemed to work. Enterprise could see the reflexive argument form on Zuikaku's lips, but it fell away as Wales grunted in pain as she tried and failed to stand on her own. Instead, the Carrier nodded. "I'll make sure they get back safely."

With Zuikaku close at hand, the two Destroyer girls turned gingerly and set off at a slow pace towards home. It was barely a fraction of the speed they were capable of, but with the heaviness of Wales weighing them down, the girls couldn't afford to move any faster. Hopefully, once they had reached clear waters at least one of the girls would be able to bring her ship out for Wales to rest on more comfortably.

The four remaining girls watched them go, their wakes disappearing in the wash of ocean.

"Right, let's go." Enterprise had seen the direction the Siren had disappeared, and her internal compass told her it was in generally the same direction it had been following since they'd arrived. She set off and the other girls. Belfast took up on her right with Prinz Eugen, and Hornet took to her left.

Enterprise could feel the others' radars reaching out as well as her own, all of them searching with every sense given to them by the nature of their hybrid existence. Sirens were difficult to pick up on radar in clear skies and calm seas, much less in a growing storm. They showed up only as faint ghosts, echoes and brief blips where there shouldn't have been anything at all. With the wreckage of so many burning and destroyed oil rigs as well as scatterings of small islands and reefs that littered this particular gulf, it was almost impossible to tell between stray returns and actual contacts.

They were heading deeper into the vast oil field. Beside her, Hornet drifted closer. "Is it really her? You're sure?"

Without taking her eyes away from her sector, Enterprise nodded once. "A Sawtooth Shark for rigging, and still missing half its snout."

She couldn't see her sister's reaction, but she heard the faint growl and revving of her engine even over the constant noise of the ocean. She knew exactly what Hornet was feeling. The same emotions were running through her, pushing her onward into the burning hell around them.

The scenery was eerily reminiscent of the nightmares that had plagued her when that phantom of Orochi and the other version of herself had haunted her. A broken mirror image of what she knew she could have become. Had it not been for Belfast's intervention, she doubted she would have had the presence of mind—or the strength—to reject that version of herself.

Even now she could feel herself walking on a path that was but one of two, the other trail ready to branch away as soon as she gave into that temptation to drown herself once more in the mindless purpose of battle and blind duty. She had been on that path already when Belfast had found her, and she knew exactly when it had begun. It was an easier path, one that ran downhill and had made carrying the burden that had fallen on her a little bit easier to bear.

The burden that had fallen on her after the Battle of Lonely Reef.

Enterprise wondered how much Belfast knew already, and how much she suspected. Enterprise hadn't talked much about that battle in their time together and Belfast hadn't asked. Not outright, exactly, but she doubted the Head Maid of the Royal Navy was entirely without any knowledge on what had happened. There hadn't been any Royal Navy ships there that day, but it had been one of the largest engagements of the war to that point.

They continued on, their four-abreast line moving cautiously. Twice Enterprise had to remind Eugen to ease back and keep with the rest of them, and each time the Heavy Cruiser had only grown more impatient with their slow pace.

The gulf through which they were sailing was a narrow one, and they were quickly coming near to its narrowest point. Soon the shores on either side would be barely more than two miles apart, and the wrecks of ruined rigs and derricks were growing more numerous. The wreckage was both old and new, as this area had been lost to the Sirens on their first coming only to be briefly recaptured by the first human counterattacks. They'd lost it again shortly after with heavy losses, and only the creation of the Ship Girls had managed to push the Sirens out again.

Besides the scorched and burning drilling platforms there were half submerged hulks of warships and oil tankers scattered about chaotically. Some had broken in half before they'd gone down with bows or sterns canted upwards, others had settled almost flat with their bridges and the tops of their superstructures rising out of the water in the more shallow areas. It was a submerged graveyard to the world that had been before the coming of the Sirens.

Reaching back, Enterprise summoned and launched a pair of her Dauntlesses. The twin planes formed, their engines roaring to life as they soared into the sky to scout ahead. The weather was poor and the cloud ceiling low, but it was better than relying only on radar and their eyes alone.

Behind her, she heard Hornet doing likewise and in moments a pair of her sister's bombers were rising into the sky to join her own. Without speaking, the two flights banked and turned to alternate their overhead search patterns. It was far from the first time she and Hornet had fought together, and they worked well as a pair.

"See anything?" Belfast asked, and even so close the maid had to raise her voice to be heard.

Enterprise shook her head. "Nothing yet. We'll keep looking."

For all her maid skills and talent at espionage—cloak and dagger, as she preferred to say—Belfast rarely seemed to bother hiding her emotions. Even glancing from the corner of her eye Enterprise could see the way the light cruiser furrowed her brow.

"The deeper we go, the easier it will be for her to ambush us." Her tone was mostly neutral, but there was clear warning in it.

Eugen spoke before Enterprise could reply. "Pah. If you wish to turn back, so be it. I will continue the hunt." She had returned to her haughty, dismissive arrogance it seemed. Without bothering to wait for a reply, Eugen quickly pulled ahead of the rest of them.

"Eugen! Stay in formation!" Enterprise shouted, but when the Cruiser ignored her she scowled and accelerated after her.

It was then, their formation broken and reforming, that the broken stern section of an old Battlecruiser exploded with violet light. Two lances of crackling energy reached out towards Eugen, almost blinding in their power.

"Found you!" For all her faults, Eugen was an experienced fighter. She twisted in the narrow gap between the twin lances, loose strands of her hair singing as they strayed too close and were burned away. She came out of her dodge firing a full broadside of her heavy guns.

They were not as powerful as a Battleship's main armament would have been, but she could outgun any other Heavy Cruiser Enterprise had ever met and her aim was impeccable. The shells streaked out, moving faster than any but a Ship Girl or a Siren could ever hope to see. What was left of the ship was blown apart, followed quickly by a second volley of Eugen's guns for good measure.

In the cradle of her rigging, Eugen remained in place as the others joined her. Her eyes were narrowed, not leaving the drifting smoke cloud where her shells had landed.

"Did you get her?" Hornet asked, coming to a stop beside her sister.

"Nein, I do not think so."

"You didn't," Belfast chimed in, her own guns raised and ready. "There were no secondary explosions."

Eugen only grunted, continuing to scan. Reaching out, Enterprise brought her Dauntlesses in to circle closer. It required little thought, each of the planes she'd launched to scout was an extension of her will, a limb of its own even detached from her. What it could see, she could see. It was that ability that gave her a moment's warning.

Eyes widening, Enterprise shouted, "Move!"

She launched herself to the left, narrowly avoiding the particle lance that passed neatly through where she'd been standing a moment before. The other Ship Girls, experienced fighters all, hadn't hesitated. Three other lances speared the places they'd been as well, the four beams reaching out and exploding against the far shore. Even a mile away the explosions could be felt as much as seen or heard, a deep vibration that rattled their bones.

Twisting, Enterprise brought her bow up and knocked a golden arrow. There was a tiny scrap-covered island behind them, barely large enough for the four girls to have stood on together. Standing atop it, the Siren hovered in place, grinning its insane smile.

The Siren lounged against its rigging, casual as could be imagined. As if it weren't a bristling wound in the fabric of reality. As if its very presence didn't make Enterprise feel unclean. There were scratches and long scraping cuts everywhere along the creature's body, and her rigging looked in even worse shape.

Enterprise knew the missing portion of the Sawtooth's snout was an old wound, but now the twisted thing's tail was likewise a shredded mess of wriggling black flesh. What she could only call ichor dripped from it like oil, sizzling and hissing dark grey steam wherever it hit the water. Little tendrils flailed and writhed, looking like black maggots crawling out of and over what was left of its tail.

"Hello again, Enterprise," it crooned, running a finger lovingly along the toothed snout of its beast. Every time she heard one of the things speak Enterprise longed to stuff her ears with guncotton, and this one was no different. Breaking glass and shrieking metal, discordant and echoing. A dozen voices all speaking at once, each one just out of synch and tune with the others.

Her skin crawled. It always disturbed her how every Siren she met knew her name. She'd always thought it was a price of having slain so many of their fellows, a sort of infamy among their kind. Orochi had changed that, and unsettled her even more than before. She pushed it from her mind.

Her reply was to loose her arrow. A Wildcat burst into being, already firing its machine guns. The Siren's grin widened and it launched itself aloft. They were too close for her fighter to turn tightly enough to follow, and she instead had it bank sharply, roll to the outside, and start to climb. Its nose rose, engine roaring as it clawed for altitude and climbed after the Siren. She drew and launched a second Wildcat after the first, this one better positioned to chase.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?" Whatever sort of madness that drove the Sirens, Enterprise had never seen one anything but bordering on euphoric. Even in the last moments before their demise they would grin and cackle as if the entire thing were nothing more than an elaborate joke that only they were in on.

Despite the lackadaisical attitude, the Sirens were still deadly. Still grinning, the thing's secondary weapons trained downwards and began to glow. Her Wildcats hadn't caught up to go to guns on her yet, and Enterprise clenched her fist. The two fighters peeled away in opposite directions just as the secondary weapons opened up.

Spewing bolts of energy, the weapons trailed after her fighters as they rolled and dove to escape the return fire. One escaped cleanly towards the deck, but the other was nicked by a stream of fire. Its vertical stabilizer was torn away, and with its maneuverability crippled, it was barely a moment before the rest of the fire caught up and the aircraft was blown apart.

From somewhere behind herself, Enterprise heard the roar of six and eight inch guns opening up. The Siren turned, clapping as the shells soared upward to meet it. "You've made some friends!"

Raising her arms together and spinning like a ballerina, the Siren danced through the narrow gaps between shells. Enterprise felt the wind rustle her hair as Belfast and Eugen sailed swiftly past her, one to either side. Their guns continued to fire as they advanced in a rush, Eugen's heavy guns booming and Belfast's snapping off so quickly it was almost a staccato.

Even as the two cruisers closed the distance, however, the Siren continued to dance through their fire. Even bracketed, in the air she was able to drift backwards quickly enough to maintain distance so that the two cruisers couldn't pin her down.

"Hornet!" Enterprise shouted, looking about and finding her sister with her flight deck swarming with planes readying to launch. "We have to drive her to the deck!"

"Already ahead of you, big sis," Hornet grinned, and in a wave a half dozen Wildcats shot forward and began to climb. Nodding, Enterprise raised her bow almost vertically and drew back. She felt the manifestations of weapons and aircraft at her fingertips, a familiar and welcome tingling. She launched her bolt aloft, and it exploded apart to birth a Wildcat with its engine roaring at full throttle. Another followed it, and then she added another pair of Dauntlesses to the fray.

Her fighters and Hornet's rose together, her sister's slightly ahead of her own by their head start. She guided her earlier survivor to join her fresh planes, her three fighters following Hornet's six and her two Dauntlesses leaving them behind to climb for a bombing run.

As it was Hornet leading the gun run, Enterprise directed her planes to climb slightly above and behind Hornet's in the formation. They trailed, all nine planes looping in a wide arc to come around at the Siren from behind.

Eugen and Belfast continued to fire, but the smoke and poor weather only aided the Siren in making their aim more difficult. It hampered Hornet and Enterprise as well, as she and her sister had to devote extra attention to guiding their craft in the buffeting winds, but it also served to mask their approach and engine noise.

Whether it was the weather hiding them, the continuing attack from Belfast and Eugen, or simple inattention, the Siren failed to react until Hornet's Wildcats opened up. All six fighters began their gun run in line, twenty-four heavy machine guns unleashing their firepower at once.

The streams of bullets reached out, every fifth round a red tracer. Rivers of raining fire, all quickly converging on the Siren. While she couldn't see it with her own eyes, through her planes Enterprise saw the wide-eyed surprise on the Siren's face as it twisted its head a full hundred-and-eighty degrees around. The streams of gunfire closed in around her and converged, but the Siren dropped like a stone through the air to avoid them.

Enterprise heard Hornet curse as her planes overshot and continued on, half banking left and the other banking right to come around for another gun run. The Siren stopped itself in midair, but that left it a perfect target for her trailing planes. They too opened up, and the Siren dropped once more. This time, however, Enterprise had staggered her fighters and the Siren couldn't arrest its dive without being hit.

Her blood sang with the glorious feeling of it. It felt like justice, like correcting the greatest injustice the world had ever delivered. The planes were a part of her, and she pushed their guns until their barrels glowed red within their housings.

The thing dove all the way to the deck, Enterprise's last fighter chasing it almost all the way down before it had to break off to avoid crashing into the water. Even so, Enterprise could feel the wavetops tickling the belly of the fighter as it recovered and began to climb again.

"Now!" Enterprise shouted, and brought her clenched fist down. Though she could not see them, she could feel her Dauntlesses begin their screaming dive. Beside them, the two Hornet had launched earlier fell with them. As Belfast and Eugen's gunfire finally managed to catch up to the Siren as it was forced into a splashy landing on the water, six Dauntless dive bombers broke through the low cloud ceiling.

The clouds were at less than five hundred feet, and by the time the Siren looked up to see them it was only as they were already pulling up out of their dives. Six bombs came screaming down almost directly where the Siren stood, a half dozen armor piercing five hundred pound bombs that would have gutted anything humanity had ever put to sea.

Artillery fire and bombs converged all at once, and the Siren disappeared in a cacophony of explosions. The shockwaves slammed into the ship girls, hammer blows following one after another. The sea trembled, red-hot debris and shrapnel flying high and arching away as gravity slowly reached out to grasp every scrap thrown about by the cataclysm.

Belfast stopped firing first, though Eugen continued for another few moments. At last, the Heavy Cruiser's guns ceased their barrage, smoking and steaming from the accumulated heat of constant firing. There hung a heavy tension in the air as the four girls waited for the smoke and spray churned up by their bombardment to clear.

Belfast and Eugen were panting, their gun runs having been mixed with dodging the Siren's continual return fire of primary and quick-firing secondary particle cannons. Enterprise and Hornet's planes were gathering themselves in the sky, a half dozen formations slowly taking shape as they waited to see the results.

Cordite stung her nose, joining the burning oil in poisoning the sea air. The sea had become a burning hellscape once more, as it always seemed fated to do. It was these moments that reminded her why she had feared the sea, and made it harder to convince herself that it was a fear she had overcome.

"Ooooh," a piercing voice cooed from the slowly clearing churn, "Now that smarts."

The haze was clearing, brushed aside by the building storm's wind, and it revealed a ruined mess of dripping black ichor and flickering golden lights. The Sawtooth Shark had taken at least one bomb strike directly to its top fin, and a massive crater had been gouged away from its upper body. Pieces of body and fin were missing, evidently blasted away by either her and Hornet's bombs or Belfast and Eugen's guns. It had already been missing almost half of its distinctive sawtooth snout, and now even that had been broken and splintered apart.

Of the four twin particle cannon turrets that had been part of the Siren's rigging, one was gone entirely with only a gnarled outrigger remaining. Of the remaining three, two were twisted and mangled to be almost unrecognizable as turrets at all. There were entire sections of rigging missing, their former existence marked only by charring and dripping ichor.

The Siren itself was no longer lounging in its rigging, but draped limply across it. Even so, it was frustratingly intact to Enterprise's eye. There were scratches and patches of burns all over its body, but it seemed it had used the Sawtooth as a shield, and the rigging beasts of higher level Sirens were notorious for surviving terrible punishment.

"It is still alive," Eugen breathed, and there was almost a sense of awe and appreciation mixed with the anger in her tone.

"Damn it," Hornet cursed, and Enterprise had the strange thought that if Yorktown had been with them, she would have scolded their youngest sister for her language. The reminder stoked the boilers that were already pounding in her breast, red hot and near to exploding from building pressure.

"Stay focused," Belfast chastised, her guns leveled and ready for the Siren's next move.

The Siren's rigging was bobbing unsteadily just above the water, and it was with a clear effort that the creature pulled itself up enough to sit properly on one of the few support struts that remained.

"As fun as it has been reuniting with old friends," it creaked, "I think it's time I head out. People to do, things to see." Cackling at its own joke and waving its legs back and forth like a child on a swing set, the Siren raised a hand. With a snap of its fingers, a dozen portals swirled to life in the air around it. What began as motes of light quickly grew, and from each of them emerged a twin barreled particle cannon turrets of the sort the Sirens deployed on their warships.

Another portal flashed into existence behind the Siren, and it began to slowly drift backwards into it. Hand still raised, the Siren grinned savagely and waved at them. "Ciao, Enterprise! Oh, and say hello to Yorktown for me, won't you?"

It was too much, too similar. The grin was the same. When Siren aircraft had come screeching out of the sky above her and her sisters, it had been this creature with its too-wide toothy grin following after.

When bombs and missiles had slipped through the hasty curtain of anti-aircraft fire the Eagle Union had thrown up, this Siren had followed them with cackling laughter.

When violet lances had run through her elder sister's ship, it had been this creature's turrets that had fired them.

The Siren turrets opened up on them, but it was Yorktown's shrill screams of agony that filled Enterprise's ears.

A faint hint of golden light illuminated Enterprise's eyes, and the lead carrier of the Eagle Union launched herself forward.

"Enterprise!" Belfast shouted, but she and the others were immediately forced to cover themselves from the barrage of violet particle cannon fire.

Rather than retreating, Enterprise accelerated. Her engines screamed, her heart pounded like thunder. Overhead, the sky shattered as lightning struck the water. The storm had arrived, and she cut through the boiling sea without mercy.

"Oh?" The Siren was slowly drifting backwards, deeper into the portal, and it sat up in interest as Enterprise rapidly closed the distance between them.

"Not again!" Enterprise shouted, raising her bow even as she pushed her body to move even faster. Her body answered her call, obedient and loyal and thrumming with eager power. "You won't get away again!"

Bolts of violet energy exploded all around her. The Siren had danced through the hail of gunfire from Belfast and Eugen, and there had even been a perverted sort of gracefulness to it. There was nothing graceful about the way Enterprise barreled through the punishing volley of destruction.

She moved fast enough to split the sea with her wake, but there were too many turrets to avoid entirely. Where she could she blocked or knocked aside bolts with her bow, but even so some slipped past her guard to strike true.

She felt sizzling shocks of pain whenever she was struck; her shoulder, her legs, her chest. A bolt skimmed past only narrowly missing her head as she shifted aside with impossible reflexes. Her eyes only glowed brighter, the faint backlight coming to the forefront at her unknowing beckon.

She did not understand what exactly was happening, just as she hadn't understood what was happening the first time this power had flown through her. She only knew it was here, and that she needed it.

She could deal with the consequences once she was done, but she would defeat this Siren at long last. She could finally look Yorktown in the eyes again and not feel as if she had been the one to have her legs cut out from under her, rather than her beloved sister.

She did not focus a Dauntless or a Wildcat into her arrow, there was not enough room for either to properly manifest. Neither did she shape the form into a torpedo or bomb, or even a volley of them. The force she focused was raw, almost wild. An animal barely tamed and pulling at the leash to be set free, to maul and destroy.

The Siren's eyes were wide, and its grin had given way to a confused 'oh' of slowly dawning understanding. The turrets continued to track her all the way to her target, and her body burned as each wound was joined by another and another.

Enterprise leapt, bringing herself almost eye-to-eye with the Siren. The arrow was leveled directly with the creature's heart, its light sizzling almost white hot. From some distant place, Enterprise heard her sister scream her name.

She loosed the arrow, and the world ended in fire.

What Is this? Something that doesn't belong.

Enterprise opened her eyes, but she could not understand what it was she saw. The world was not. It was not even wrong, it was simply not. Lights swirled in impossible patterns, flashing inside and outside of themselves, existing and not existing at once. Darkness was the absence of light, but it sparkled brighter than the sun at its summer zenith and burned her to look at.

She was not seeing with her eyes, Enterprise realized, but with her skin. She was looking in every direction at once, seeing distant mountains of hollow emptiness and the inside of her own clothing at the same time. She watched her own heart beating inside her chest, watched her blood flow in her veins, and it flowed backwards. She tried to breathe, but her lungs sucked in sunlight instead of air.

This is interesting. A data point without foreplanning. Pieces gone missing and wayward and on.

Enterprise didn't understand, couldn't understand. There were voices and they were in her ears, inside her head, and she was speaking to herself. "Where am I?" she shouted, and her voice became a mirror of empty silver. She could taste the reflection, and she was not in it.

The place between places, the space between spaces.

Everything was wrong. Around her was wrong, inside her was wrong. She clutched her head and felt her fingers sink into sand. She pulled them away and spread a web of spider's silk over her face. It choked her, but it was not there. She screamed.

A key unlocks the door, but should never step through. Wrong lock, wrong door, wrong room.

"What does that mean?" If only she had been shouting into the void, but the void was nothingness, and this was nothing and everything both. It was day without the sun and then it was night without the sky. She blinked and tasted a thousand years pass her by before she'd opened her eyes.

Enterprise was breaking apart. She could feel what she was fracturing. More than body, more than soul, the thing she was could not exist and would not exist and had always existed and never had.

Here is not for you. A fish in an aquarium by the sea. Bigger fish and bigger fish, there is always a bigger fish.

"I don't understand!" She was her ship and sinking through solid steel, and the steel was her and she was it. Sinking through herself, drowning in herself, dying and living and never living and never dying. Only living things can die but there is no yes and no down, but she is falling in every direction away from herself. Splinters and splinters, pieces growing smaller.

A Key has gone astray. Keys on an endless ring, side by side but never touching. Wrong lock, right key, right lock, wrong key. Wrong lock wrong key. A Key for every lock. Two Keys in a single lock? The tumblers turn, but the door does not yet open. Collect data.

"Please!" she begged, but her voice was gone and her mind was breaking. She no longer understood what it was she had once had and lost. She had been born here and died here many times already. She was her mother and her father and daughter and son, a cycle without beginning and always ending. Error, begin again.

Turning pages of infinite books on infinite shelves, each page the characters are the same and yet changed. The Key in one world and the next and the next, but the Key stumbles and falls from the binding. Close one book and open another. Every failure a success. Collect data. Start again.

Round and round it goes. It arrives having never left at all. Collect data. That is our Enterprise.