Forlorn Hope – a group of soldiers assigned to perform a highly deadly/dangerous task where the risk of casualties is high
Every once in a while, everyone has that kind of a morning when it feels like there are jackhammers drilling into your head and you just know the day is gonna be shit. You probably know how that feels, especially if you've been drinking heavily the night before. Why the hell didn't I leave the party early? Oh right... I had jumped in with one of my friends and his gang like some bloody paratrooper and begged him to drive me home because I was a lazy bastard who didn't want to catch the last bus ride. Wait a moment, wasn't he also drinking, rather heavily in fact? It's kinda fuzzy but whatever, I guess I got home somehow.
Ugh, my mouth felt like I swallowed a fistful of sand. I blearily opened my eyes and waited for vertigo to become bearable and my vision to settle in.
The fuck?
You know how on some parties there is some poor sap who falls asleep and people around him start playing Jenga by stacking whatever junk they find on top of the guy and get a few laughs once the sucker wakes up? Yeah, that was me right now, but instead of pillows, plates, bottles and other miscellaneous shit there was half a dozen steel girders and a bunch of planks and half smashed crates.
It took me embarrassingly long to gather a coherent thought and actually notice that I didn't feel neither pain nor discomfort under this mountain of crap. I seriously doubted I had somehow spontaneously manifested superpowers, Marvel style, no matter how awesome that would have been. The two options I was going with was either I was dreaming or tripping. Probably both as my gut was telling me that I had been particularly stupid yesterday. That usually comes with heavy drinking. Well, if I was high or something then I should be able to move the entire pile off of me as I was likely hallucinating and all of it probably didn't exist. Few pushes and grunts later and I had successfully extracted myself from underneath the pile of metal and wood which all crashed with a series of loud clangs, engulfing the area in a cloud of dust. As a coughing fit overtook me, I started mentally congratulating myself for proving my hypothesis while wiping the dust and grime off my clothes.
Few swipes later and I grinded to a halt as I've noticed that some things weren't proportioned as they should be. I looked down and oh boy, those were some man-boobs.
What the fuck brain?!
And why is it so drafty down there?
Is that a fucking skirt?!
WHAT. THE. FLYING. FUCK?!
I'm some fucking twisted individual if I'm imagining all of this!
My imminent mental meltdown was interrupted as I felt something squirming in the pocket above my left breast. Forestalling my mental breakdown for a few precious moments, I took the presented lifeline and thrust my hand inside the pocket. After few seconds of struggling to get a grip on the squishy thing, I yanked it outside. Moments later, I felt my jaw hitting the ground as my mind instantly blue screened. Dangling upside down, as I was holding it by one of the legs, was a trashing figurine. And it was squawking things at me! I could do nothing but stare blankly as the little man got more and more angry. Was that steam literally coming out of his ears?!
After my brain finished rebooting, some things were starting to click into place and the implications were worrying. Once I got the picture that this could be one of those navy games with girls as ships it was time for full denial.
NOPE. Nope, nope, nope, I'm not having any of this. I threw the fuming little man back into the pocket and started pinching myself.
Time for a wakeup call!
I'm not, ouch, having any, ouch, of this crap, OUCH, anymore. Oh come on, wake up! Why isn't this shit working?!
Abandoning the pinching approach, I started frantically looking around the broken-down warehouse for anything that would help me with some self-harm. Moments later my view settled on pieces of broken glass sticking out of the snow. I snatched one jagged piece, not even registering that I could feel the cold of the snow, and in one swift moment raked the sharp object across my forearm.
I screamed like the little girl I was as blood started gushing out of the wound. Holy shit, did it hurt! I buried my forearm into the closest glass free snow, slowly painting it red as I struggled to keep in another scream. No way. No way! This can't be happening! The mantra was on repeat in my head as I greedily kept sucking in the chilly air.
After a minute of being a hyperventilating mess, it slowly started dawning to me that no, I wasn't waking up or going anywhere and that I was stuck, and bleeding, in a warehouse who knows where. And slowly, that was starting to make me pissed. I mean, really pissed. I'm not the kind of guy that gets angry easily. Most of the time I grumble a bit but stay quiet not wanting to escalate things further. However, push the right buttons or keep tilting me and be ready for me to scream your face off or deck you. As there was a severe lack of punchable faces, it was time for throat exercises. I got up, flicked the little man, who for some reason was again gibbering things at me, back into the pocket, marched my way towards the doors and knocked them of the hinges in one swift kick. Once outside, I looked up at the cloudy sky and with my fists clenched, started my litany of fury.
"Fuuuuuuuck yoouuuuuu! You massive fucking cunt! Whoever or whatever piece of shit dropped me here, fuck you! I will fucking find you and I will strangle you with your own fucking intestines! I don't care if you are God or something else, I will murder you! I just got my life in fucking order! And what do you do?! Fucking throw me in another universe! Fuuuuck! Arrrghhh!", I smashed my fist into a concrete pillar, taking a chunk out of it and continued venting myself to the uncaring grey sky. After a few minutes of profanities in at least three languages, including some proto-slavic variant, I dropped on my knees, feeling like someone had drained the life out of me.
I thought I was going to start crying, yet the tears weren't coming. Maybe it was because the anger numbed me or my mind was running some last second denial scenarios in the background, but I simply kept staring into the gently bending sea surface like a doll. Lifeless green eyes observed me in turn, partly obstructed by messy blonde hair. The image on the surface looked like a sixteen-year-old girl in a ruffled navy-blue uniform with a cavalry saber attached to the hip and a red dragon etched on her left arm. I'm not sure how long I sat there in a trance although however long it was, it didn't prepare me for what I had seen later.
I come from a country that had seen war relatively recently. Take a thirty-minute drive from most lager towns and you will find plenty of scars on buildings and people, or if you've gone walking in the countryside and are particularly unlucky, minefields. Maybe that is why I thought that no picture of devastation could shock me, yet this place… it was like something scooped up the entire bay, put everything into a giant blender, powered it on for a second or two, just enough before everything turned into paste and poured the contents out.
Over a dozen of ships were scattered across the bay and every single one of them could be classified as a wreck and completely written off. Some of them only had the upper portions or even just masts sticking out of the water while others were capsized, listing over sixty degrees to one of the sides. I could spot out what looked like a warship among the wrecks with a single banged up turret on the prow and a row of empty cylindrical missile tubes. To the side of the warship, a nearby dry dock was occupied but whatever was sitting there was an indistinguishable mess. Buried under the deformed and twisted mess of several dockyard cranes, now it was all just a heap of rusted metal.
I walked up onto the road going through the port, noticing that it was dotted with vehicles, but if they had been operational once, they most definitely weren't now. A few of them looked abandoned and left to the elements while a vast majority were nothing more than charred and burnt out lumps of metal. The buildings themselves were probably the biggest evidence to the devastation that visited this place. I couldn't find a single one that didn't have some part of it collapsed. The entirety of place looked as if someone thoroughly bombed the place making sure to cause as much destruction as possible.
What the hell happened here?
I could taste the lump in my throat and my heart felt like it was trying to rip itself out of my chest. To say that after five minutes I was scared shitless was an understatement. Naturally that was the perfect moment for something to scare the bejesus out of me as a blur of white and brown crashed out of a nearby building. I would like to state that I had screamed only a little.
The speeding object promptly slipped on a nearby ice patch and planted itself, nose first, into the asphalt. Once I realized that was actually a human, I gripped my right hand to stop it from shaking further and released a breath I wasn't even aware I was holding. So, we are having jump scares now? For fucks sake…
After making sure I wouldn't drop dead from a heart attack, I moved up to see if the fallen girl was okay. Thankfully she looked uninjured, the nose looked a bit swollen, but there was no blood anywhere so I guessed everything was fine. Also, that had definitely confirmed she was a shipgirl because you don't get up from that kind of fall without breaking something. Noticing my approach, the short girl gave me an energetic wave and started rapid firing words in what I could only assume was Japanese.
Of bloody course… why would it be simple? I sighed internally before answering, "I don't understand a word of that, English maybe?"
The girl froze for a moment, tilting her head to the side in confusion like a little puppy that was not quite sure if he was a good boy or not. Suppressing a giggle from an adorable scene in front of me, I continued, "Sprichst du Deutsch? Parlez-Vous Francais?"
And that shake is a negative…eh, it was a long-shot anyway.
Okay, thinking time. How do you talk with someone who can't understand a thing you are saying? We could always try some weird-ass pantomimes… but yeah, that was not going to be a long-term solution. Hmm, I knew some ASL sings, perhaps that could be a solution? I glanced back at my companion who was sheepishly standing aside and watching me pace around.
Nah, it wasn't going to work. My knowledge was limited to maybe a few dozen basic signs and I kind of doubted she knew any. Sorry if I was doubting you kid, just thinking we needed something better. The ideal solution would be to acquire some kind of a common alphabet. Of course, the Morse code! Wait… I smacked myself in the head. Idiot, even if you had sent messages in Morse code they would still be in English. And now I was arguing with myself and was probably looking like a lunatic. Fantastic.
Okay, enough of this crap, I required help. I was a ship now and that meant that there was probably someone on board of me, God that had sounded weird, that could come up with a solution. First, to summon a rigging… did I need to say something or willpower it into existence? Oh, it was on… neat. Not a moment later I became aware of every single member of my crew, from the grumpy captain bellowing orders all the way to the steward's assistant who lied about his enlistment and was moments ago peeling potatoes in the galley. All 220 of them.
Listen up!
I said quiet turret No. 5!
We have a problem and I heard the navy has the brightest and best in-
Stop snickering back there, I'm trying to motivate you!
Okay, just for that you are going overboard. A tiny figurine was thrown out of the hatch on my rigging and was now dangling off a minuscule railing.
Nobody get him, this is a lesson. Now, where was I? Right, we need to open a comm- Oh for fuck sake, stop interrupting me!
She is what? Ohhh…
While I was in a shouting match with the crew, my companion took the initiative and was now standing in front of me with an outstretched palm and her rigging out. There was a small blue and yellow flag on her rigging which, as I was informed by my observers, meant that she wished to communicate with me. Also standing on her palm was a picture-perfect officer in pressed uniform holding a sharp salute.
Brownie points for the starboard observers.
You will get them later! Shush now…
Hmm, so should I take one of my officers out, maybe the little guys can understand each other? The other girl kept nudging her hand forward and gesturing between me and the little officer with the other.
You want me to take him? Let's see… I extended my hand. Huh, the little guy jumped over. I guess you want to come aboard, a translator perhaps? Probably should drop you somewhere on the bridge. And gently with no manhandling, don't want to cause an incident now. I dropped the guy off on my rigging and he in turn gave me a deep bow and entered inside. Some proper fella.
The girl started speaking again and I picked up that she was slowly repeating the same phrase over an over but nothing was happening. Just as I was about to give up and wave everything off, the incomprehensible words turned into a heavily accented question. I cracked a laugh. "Yeah, I can understand you now." confirming it with a couple of nods. It took a few seconds for my answer to reach her and when it did, she bounced in the air and gave me the biggest smile I've seen in a long time.
This was an amazing piece of quick problem solving. Fucking A plus work kid. Sure, it was like talking with a few seconds of lag and the English was heavily accented, but those were minor kinks we could iron out in time. For now, the most important thing was that we could talk to each other.
"That was some fine thinking, great work. Guessing your guy is sitting in my radio room translating everything?"
"Yes, and it's nothing, desu," she answered with a slight twinge of red in her cheeks.
"Hey, no need to be shy now. Seriously, amazing work," I flashed her a thumbs up. It only made her flare up more. It was followed by a few seconds of silence after which she decided to steer away the attention from herself by asking: "Does it hurt, desu?" and pointed at my right hand.
"Oh that…" I started, remembering my slashed arm. "Don't worry about it," I tried deflecting it.
"Wounds are a serious thing desu!"
Aww, was that a pout? "Look, don't wor—AAAAAAAAA!" I clenched my teeth and held back the rest of the scream as a horrible burning sensation spread through my arm. Before I realized what was going on, she had already finished disinfecting my wound and was in the process of bandaging it.
"Open wounds are dangerous and should be properly treated!" I was being chided by a ten-year-old, wow.
"I will try to keep that in mind."
"Hmph!" Finishing the conversation with a sharp nod, she continued working on my arm.
I didn't know from where she had pulled out the first aid kit or how she knew how to perform basic wound treatment, but it was freaking me out a bit. In addition to solving our communication problem, she was one terrifyingly competent kid. Then again, she was a warship from one of the bloodiest periods of human history molded into a human form. Still, getting my shit fixed up by someone who looked like an elementary schooler and whose main problems in life were probably homework and missing out an episode of a favorite cartoon was seriously weirding me out!
Bloody hell, I was going to pop a vent! Better start talking about something because this was making my brain go on the fritz.
"So, um… you are Japanease? Did I get that right?"
"Yes, I am special destroyer Inazuma of the Akatsuki class! And you desu? What is your name?"
"Actually, I have no idea," I shrugged my shoulders. Good question though as I've completely forgotten to check. Guessing right now on the spot, I'd say I was some kind of a destroyer.
Inazuma stopped bandaging me for a moment and gave me a worried look. "You don't know? That is horrible desu! Did you maybe hit your head and forgot?"
"I woke up under some heavy things so it could have happened," I lied through my teeth.
"Not even the…" she got a distant look in her eyes. "War?"
"Nothing, it's all blank."
"So you don't remember your family… I'm sorry desu."
I remember them all too well and that was the problem! Fuck… this conversation was opening a can of worms I really wished remained sealed for some time because this really wasn't the time or place to break down in tears. C'mon, stay strong man, deep breaths.
Despite shaking like a leaf on the inside, I put my good hand on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure I will find them and things will turn out fine. And I bet you have sisters too and worry about them. We'll find them too."
She didn't look convinced, "You think desu?" she answered while glancing at the scenery around us. "When I… sank, I had a wish. I had hoped to wake again in a world with no war, destruction… somewhere nice with my sisters. But this place… I'm scared desu."
You are crushing my hearth kid, nobody should have a look like that. Without much thinking I grabbed her in a tight hug. "Please don't lose hope. That is the one thing nobody can take away from you. Let that torch burn bright and it will help you when things look bleak. Have faith in us and I'm sure we will find them." I wasn't quite sure which one of us was I meant to be reassuring with those words.
"Do you promise desu?"
And there it was… one of my personal rules was to never give a promise if I wasn't absolutely certain I could keep it and this was exactly one of those not sure situations, yet looking at it all, I didn't have the heart to say no. Finally, I answered, "I promise." while releasing her from my grip.
She looked me directly in the eyes, weighting my words. For a moment I thought she would reject it all and call me a liar. Instead she gave me one of those small innocent smiles that just make your day that much brighter. It was a silent thank you.
"Now," I started, ruffling her hair in the process, "let's go scour this place, maybe we'll find out where we are."
"Hey, not so fast! I'm not finished with bandaging you!" She exclaimed with a furrowed brow, placing hands on her hips. "Are you avoiding it desu? Is it because you are afraid of blood or doctors?"
That gave me a hearty laugh, "No, no, no, please finish it," I motioned forward my injured arm, "then we can sort out something from this mess."
Inazuma continued working with a hum.
"Oh, and I will call you Dragon desu."
"Um, Dragon? You sure that says me?" I gestured at myself with my good hand.
"You have a cute dragon tattoo and I like it. That means you are Dragon desu!"
I mulled it over a bit in my head and shrugged in the end, "Okay, Dragon it is." With an agreement reached, Inazuma continued fixing up my arm after which we went on our little treasure hunt.
What followed was pretty much several hours of spelunking through a ruined port. We were searching for any kind of a sign, street post, map or preferably a person that could clue us in on where the hell we were. Unfortunately, alongside us and a couple of birds we saw while rummaging through the area, there wasn't a single living thing to be found. The closest we found to a human were a few skeletal remains, I do hope those images won't haunt either of us, which were partially buried under the rubble. Given the state those poor sobs were in, literally piles of bones, meant that whatever happened to this place, it had happened a long time ago. I wasn't certain whether that was reassuring or not.
Thankfully Inazuma made a breakthrough close to the evening when she found a filling cabinet and a ledger containing maps and documents that weren't completely destroyed by the weather. Also, not being an idiot like some people I knew, she called me over when she couldn't understand a thing that was written in them. Why, because everything was written in Cyrillic. Finally, this was where I came in, actually being useful for once this day.
Twenty minutes later and I had our location. The translating and sifting through the notes were the easy parts and actually took me a few minutes at most, despite me not being Russian and having taught Cyrillic myself. When you know one Slavic language you can kinda understood the rest of them. What the actual problem was, was that it had gotten dark and I couldn't see shit without light. When I tried turning on my searchlights, the bloody things wouldn't work and my crew had absolutely no idea how to fix them. If that was the representation of my damage control, I was screwed six ways till Sunday. In the end, Inazuma had provided the light. Couldn't do even one thing myself, ugh, what a confidence boost.
We decided to return down to the pier. I knelt on the ground and unfolded one of the maps we had found. "We are here," I picked up a pebble and placed it on the map, "Sevastopol." I looked at Inazuma. "I garner we have two options. Option one is we stay here and hope we encounter some passerby's or maybe pick up some broadcasts on the radio. Option number two is we pick a direction or another port and we sail there. Thoughts?"
Inazuma looked pensive for a bit before answering, "I don't feel like we should stay here desu, I don't like this place."
"I agree with you on that, this place gives me some bad vibes and I doubt anyone is coming. That just leaves us with a destination," I left the sentence hang in the air.
"Um…" She was wringing her fingers, looking reluctant to put anything forward.
"No wrong answers here, I'm simply fishing for suggestions."
"Then, hmm…" she picked up another pebble and after observing the map for a few more seconds, placed it on the edge of the map.
I shouldn't have been surprised by that, giving a small chuckle before answering, "You do realize that is almost on the other side of the world?" She only gave a tiny nod to that. "Was looking more for some place that was a bit closer, but let's keep Japan as sort of an ultimate destination."
"You are okay with it, desu?"
"Well, it's not like I know where I'm from, so why the hell not," I countered before turning my attention back to the map. Where to go? Preferably I'd like to find someone who knew what was going on because you don't just raze a major Russian port without consequences. The only two explanations I've had so far was that either world war three had happened or an Abyssal surface force wrecked the place. Right now, it was hard to tell which of the two was more terrifying. Deciding that was a mystery to be answered later, I turned back on our problem and came up with some sort of a plan.
"How about this, I would like some questions answered and that means finding people or other ships like us. The best way to do that would probably be going along the coast and hitting up major coastal towns like Odessa, Constanta and Varna," I pointed the mentioned places on the map. "However, I feel that it could be a bit of a detour since we can achieve the same result if we went straight for the Bosporus. It is one of the busiest straits in the world and Istanbul is the biggest Turkish city, we are bound to find someone there. What do you think about that?" the entire suggestion was rounded up by me placing another pebble on the map.
Inazuma who had been listening attentively so far nodded energetically. "It's a good plan desu and it gets us a bit closer to Japan so I'm happy with it."
"Then we are settled!" With the planning done, I folded up the map and placed it one of the pockets on my dress. We approached the edge of the pier and with one jump in the water later, the first step of our journey had begun.