AN: Found this old WIP document that I apparently was working on this time last year; thought I might as well post it. This story is technically canonical with Zuluverse (the over-the-top incidents excepted), but takes place in a different theater in the Abyssal War sometime after the events in Z4Z.

Prologue: Confusion and Dismay

Her first sensation was that she had things.

Lots of things.

Widdle. Widdle.

Big things. Little things.

What did they do?

Pish.

She instinctively recoiled as the little things blindly dipped into something cold and utterly unpleasant. After wavering ever-so-briefly she experimentally dipped them back into the environment.

Not nice. Pish. Nice. Pish. Not nice. Pish. Nice.

Her experiment was rudely interrupted by a colossal wave that flipped her over, face down.

Now everywhere was not nice.

And…well, just not quite right. Too…not lighty. She couldn't see anything.

But how to go back to lighty?

That's right, she had those…things. With the nimbleness of a run-over sloth and the gestures of a drowning T-Rex she flailed about until she was on the right side-up.

Just to be still met with not lighty. Wait, that didn't sound right. What was this not lighty thing?

Puh. A distasteful breath quickly dispatched the offending object from her vision, although much to her annoyance it was still attached her. Several sharp tugs in close succession quickly informed her that whatever the not lighty thing was, it was there to stay. Ah well, she'd win that war another day.

Her first priority was to do something. She didn't have the vocabulary yet to properly explain it yet, but she knew was in the right environment but in the wrong place.

But where to, exactly?

At that moment, a round whirly gadget inside her brain, her…compass? stopped madly whirling about. No matter how much she twisted and turned, it kept pointing in a bizarre direction, North.

But what was "North?" Why was she going "North?" Was there even anything up "North?"

No matter. "North" it was.

And so, the dark-haired woman crept northwards on all fours, resembling a satanical dog walking on water.

"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"I SAID, I NEED SMOKE!" Bismarck shouted, instinctively raising her arms in a pointless attempt to deflect an abyssal battleship's shell.

"You need Supreme Leader Snoke?" Campbeltown cupped her ears, faking a confused expression.

"SMOKE!"

"Can't you make your own with that genius German engineering of yours?" Błyskawica offered impishly

"I'm out of titanium tetrachloride, and the wind's blowing the wrong way so a diesel one won't help at all. I'd be in your debt if any of you lot would give me one."

"Fucking hell, y'knoo smoking is bad for yer health, you gallopin' biscuit?" Wanderer chided the German battleship. "There's a reason kids cannit have it."

"For crying out loud, I AM NOT A KID, AND WE'RE NOT HUMAN!" Bismarck shot back. If the blonde wasn't in the middle of battle, she was oh so sorely tempted to lob a Fritz X missile plushie at the trio. Anglo-Polish assistance in the Baltic was a godsend, but by Jove were their destroyers insufferable.

Fortunately their battleships weren't.

"Girls, would you be so kind as to provide our good friend Bismarck with a screen for respite?" A crisp voice chimed in. "She's taken a hard pounding while you lot were prattling."

"Eerrrr, yes madam. Sorry madam."

"Nevermind me, focus on Bismarck," the voice chimed in again, this time more reprovingly. "Don't make me use my Glasgow voice now."

The three destroyers swallowed and redoubled their efforts, quickly enshrouding the allied battleline in thick white smoke. Bismarck gave each of them a grateful salute in passing as the trio steamed past and returned to their skirmish with abyssal destroyers. No sooner had Błyskawica disappeared from sight than Bismarck's savior appeared, with Tirpitz close behind in tow.

"How are you feeling, Bismarck?" Hood inquired, her blue eyes radiant with genuine concern.

"I've been through worse," she grunted, absentmindedly brushing over the numerous cuts and scrapes over her torso.

"I disagree," Tirpitz corrected. "You look like a bullfighter who tried to wrestle a train." Hood quickly hid her smirk as Bismarck sent her white-haired sister a wrathful glare.

"I appreciate your vote of confidence."

"I find myself agreeing with Tirpitz's assessment, as frank as it was," Lütjens interjected from Bismarck's bridge as he cautiously closed a blast-battered door. "Your targeting systems have been shot for good measure, and Schneider reckons that the slightest sneeze will wipe out what's left of your radar."

Bismarck sighed. "So be it." She turned to Hood. "You and Tirpitz two got this, right?"

"Of course!"

"That might not be necessary," Captain Lindemann amended as he materialized behind his superior. "It appears that the Polish destroyer Grom scored a lucky hit on a capital ship, and the enemy is in now in retreat. Seeing as the demonic monstrosities will likely be returning to their fjord strongholds in upper Skagerrak, aggressive pursuit will be impossible. Allied command requests that we regroup and return to port for repairs. Aerial support is attempting to mop up any isolated abyssal squadrons now."

"Excellent! I was hoping to see Graf's new bombers in action…"

"Yeah, about that…" Lindemann tugged on his collar nervously. "Marat had engine troubles during her routine Baltic patrol, so Graf Zeppelin and her escorts had to make a detour and escort the Russian battleship to safety."

"Ach, a shame…WAIT! If Graf Zeppelin isn't the one providing aerial support, then who is?"

Her question was quickly answered by the sickeningly familiar whine of Fairey Swordfish buzzing overhead and an equally familiar voice radioing in.

"Worry not, my fair German damsel, for the noble, most honorable knight ARK ROYAL is here to save the day!"

"There, there," Hood soothed as Bismarck began gagging uncontrollably. "She's not here to add more pictures to her Candid Bismarck™ collection."

"Yet," Tirpitz corrected.

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-

What was that noise?

RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRR-

Why was it so loud?

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr….

She paused in her journey just in time to see a flock of loud, noisy, buzzing…thingies zooming overhead. They were strange objects, looking like…well, that they shouldn't be there. At least not naturally there, if that made any sense. Another group followed close behind in her wake, this time flying so low that she swore that there were little creatures inside making strange faces at her.

"The bloody hell was that?"

"The bloody hell was wot?"

"That thing over there. It's on our six now."

"I'm not an owl, Perkins," the pilot grunted. "Describe it to me."

"It looked like an abomination."

"Abomination?" he scowled. "Do you mean an abyssal?"

"An abyssal? Don't be daft," Perkins snorted. "I know an abyssal when I see one. Abyssals look like slags in Soho. That thing looked like a moving kelp forest."

"Well, we can't turn back to go seamonster hunting. They're ship girls heading to Copenhagen behind us and some easy pickings in front."

"But what do you suppose that thing was?"

"No idea." He tilted his head in Perkins's direction. "Once we take out that abyssal minelayer we can take a closer look to see if it's still there."

She gave a jolt as the epiphany came to her.

Planes. Noisy buzzing thingies are planes.

But what was a plane? How did she even know that those were planes?

"Feels nice," she murmured half-heartedly to herself. Now she wished she had planes. Rifling through the pockets of soaked, Prussian Blue jacket, all she found were Arado Ar 196's.

Wait, those were planes.

"Planes," she repeated once more, happily stroking a monoplane's nose. Then she had an even better idea.

"Make noise," she demanded, giving the Arado Ar 196 an angry poke. Unfortunately one angry poke was one poke too many, and the plane unceremoniously rolled over, broke its right wing, and plunged into the ocean.

"Bad plane, come back!" Unfortunately, Earth's gravity decided that said Arado Ar 196 had a dinner date with lobsters on the seabed. She only had two more tries before her Arados were no more.

Maybe some additional force and elevation was necessary.

"MAKE NOISE!" She thundered, and hurled it with all her might skyward.

Graf was not amused.

She had just spent her entire morning protecting Marat as the latter limped to Kaliningrad. A relatively simple task, were it not for the fact that Marat had been sunk by Junkers more than seventy years earlier.

Graf Zeppelin's newest aircraft complement included Junkers.

Needless to say, it took a lot of convincing to assure the Gangut's sister that German aerial support was not a trap. Now the carrier had to return to her original mission of helping her comrades in the Northern Baltic. All on one glorious hour of sleep.

"Kaffee?" Z1 held up her thermos in offering. Graf snatched it without another word, and began mindlessly directing her aircraft in one hand and downing the drink in the other.

At least aircraft direction wasn't too taxing. That was one of the perks of being an aircraft carrier. Sure, it was stressful landing and receiving planes, but once they were airborne, everything was so wonderful. She could admire the clouds, the sea, Ar 196's fulfilling their dreams of being the first monoplanes in space…

Wait, hold up, that last comment didn't seem right.

"SHIT!"

She nearly lost bowel control as an unpowered seaplane barreled past her fighters like a shooting star.

Did that really just happen now?

"Is something the matter?" Z1 hmmed.

"No," Graf groaned, clawing at her red eyes, "I think I just need more sleep."

"SCHIEßE!" Someone had shouted that exhilarating word over her radio as the Ar 196 made contact with some planes. She wanted to shout it right back in greeting, but the fighters were already out of sight.

Plosh.

And it seemed that her latest attempt to fly planes had also ended in failure.

But the exclamation brought new life to her crawl. The planes were headed "North," she was headed "North." She had a plan, and a very solid one.

"Schie~ße, Schieße, Schie~~ße," she hummed, cradling her lone surviving Ar 196 like a baby. Like her seaplanes, she was confident that this adventure would take her to new heights.

"-so scratch one minelayer, two torpedo boats, and an abyssal transport," the fairy pilot finished, gesturing wildly at Ark Royal.

"Decent pickings I suppose," the carrier mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully as she tallied up her remaining aircraft. "Honestly I was hoping we'd catch more abyssals unaware."

"I heard the Jerries bagged a light cruiser," the fairy whispered conspiratorially, "but it was an old one. Great War vintage. Bet that was the best those pilots could do."

"You and I both know you're giving Graf Zeppelin little credit," the red-haired woman tutted. "Come on, the War ended more than seventy years now!"

"Not everyone dreams of being snugly in bed with the entire, ah, 'redeemed' Kriegsmarine. Some of us dream of waking up to a hearty English tea and breakfast in civilized England."

An embarrassed Ark Royal was about to reply when the bickering of two fairies interrupted her.

"-fat chance that was a battleship! She was too small!"

"-says you! I bet Dreadnought's a midget compared to her!"

"Dreadnought's a leprechaun compared to most things! My argument stands!"

"Gentlemen, is there a problem?" she sighed, keeping her rigging level as she prepared to mediate their dispute.

"No."

"Yes! Arthur and I saw ship girl-"

"We think we saw a ship girl," the pilot corrected.

"No, that was definitely a ship girl, a German ship girl at that."

"A German ship girl?" the pilot snorted. "What's next, we saw cats shatting rainbows in space? If she was a ship girl, she was absolutely Norwegian."

"No Arthur, you're dead wrong!" Percival wagged a heated finger. "Her coat was absolutely Prussian Blue, I'd wager an entire month's pay on it! And you absolutely can't deny that she was angrily telling us to shit ourselves. Schiesse or however the hell that word is is definitely German. Even better, when we told her that she could bugger right off with her bathroom obsession, she told us to shit off. " He sighed nostalgically.

"We interacted with her for less than 5 minutes and I already took a little fancy to her. Reminded me of legends about how we could tell Poles from Germans during the Battle of Britain. Downed Polish fighters were the only ones to tell lynch mobs to fuck off."

"Tell me more about this 'German,'" Ark Royal suggested with faked disinterest.

"She was a very hairy German, and a messy one at that," Arthur scowled at Percival. "It was already hard spotting her in the dusklight, which was made even worse by that wavy brown mop of a head that she has for hair. It reminded me of that Japanese 'Hungry Wolf' from Warspite's satirical cartoon on Sasebo."

"How tall was she?"

"As tall as a German fir tree can be in the Black Forest."

"Not that tall, we're not talking about Teutonic-sized Bismarck here. Something a little bigger than Iron Duke but shorter than Duke of York I'd reckon."

Ark Royal suddenly looked very interested.

"Does she seem to be about my age?"

"Yes. Why does that information even matter?" Arthur demanded.

"Oh you know," she said innocently, "reasons."

"And it is for those reasons that we're also interested in her," two voices interrupted.

"AH! Uh…oh, hi there Admiral Hipper, Prinz Eugen," Ark Royal waved meekly. The two heavy cruisers ignored her.

"Herr Arthur, Herr Percival, you said you saw a ship girl of German design during your sortie," Admiral Hipper repeated slowly.

"That is correct."

"Was she a battleship or a cruiser?"

"Battleship."

"Cruiser."

"Percival's out of his bloody mind. She had three turrets, and the barrels were absolutely not battleship caliber."

"She had four," Percival corrected. "She had a smaller one behind her forwardmost turret."

"Let's assume that she had four," Hipper cut in before the two fairies could argue further. "Would you say that her guns were bigger or smaller than Scharnhorst's?"

"The battleship or the cruiser?"

"The battleship."

"Oh. Definitely smaller."

"So then she has to be a cruiser," Prinz Eugen concluded.

"It could be her," Hipper murmured to her sister uncertainly. "Was she about our size, Herr Arthur, Herr Percival?"

"No, definitely not. She's taller."

"Taller?"

"If you stretched her out from stem to stern she's got maybe a few inches above you two."

"That's impossible, Herr Arthur. My four sisters and I were the last class of cruisers the Kriegsmarine put out (or alas in Lützow's and Seydlitz's case, intended to put out) to sea. If a larger cruiser entered service, I would have known."

"Then it's a mighty good thing we didn't try and stop and chat with whatever that thing was," Arthur chuckled.

"On the contrary, I think it warrants an investigation."

"AHH! Bismarck…" Ark Royal was extremely fortunate that the Hipper sisters blocked her view of the battleship's dynamic entry, for it gave the numerous fairy shipwrights latched onto Bismarck just enough time to cover the incompletely-repaired German with a bath towel.

Of course, this didn't change the fact that the carrier nearly had a nosebleed at the profile presented to her.

"What a wonderful outfit you're wearing! You should try this style more often."

The three Germans stared at her blankly. Ark Royal cowered slightly as the several dozen shipwrights working on Bismarck's superstructure sent her Grave German™ glares.

"Uh, I mean Bismarck, how dare you be so scandalously dressed in our presence! Who do you think you are, a barbarian? Put some pants on!"

"Duly noted. Forgive my intrusion, but your pilots spotted a bizarre being steaming northward, did they not?"

"They did." Percival made a strange gesture at Ark Royal. "'Perfectly North,' he said."

"Fascinating. It seems Ark Royal that you and Graf are in agreement on this one point: there's a German shipgirl wandering aimlessly somewhere in the Baltic. Graf said something chucked an Arado Ar 196 at her aircraft earlier this afternoon. She insists that she imagined the whole thing in her sleep deprived state, but personally I find that hard to believe."

"If there is a German ship girl," Admiral Hipper warned, "she could be anywhere by now."

"Normally I would agree, but I think we have a promising lead. How many times did your pilots spot the ship girl?"

"Twice, by their count. Once at midday and again at dusk. Again headed northwards."

"Not just northwards, Ark Royal, perfectly northwards. Imagine for a moment that your flight deck rigging is the narrow corridor of the Baltic from Copenhagen to Oslo. If we spotted her here en route to Skaggerak, and she was going directly north…"

"Then she's headed straight into abyssal waters!" Prinz gasped.

Ark covered her mouth in horror.

"The poor thing…she's probably sunk by now."

"No, I think there's a chance she's still alive. If she's disorientated enough to be chucking planes instead of catapulting them, then there's no way she would rush into danger at full speed."

"But will Joint Command approve of the rescue mission?" Hipper insisted.

"I'll share my opinions with Admiral Bille and request accommodations for her. Knowing him, he'll say yes (and then ask forgiveness from his Anglo-German counterparts). You'll have to work quickly though, Ark Royal. Graf is all bowled out, so you're the only carrier in any condition to provide air cover."

"Me?" The Royal Navy carrier looked crestfallen. "So are you not coming then?"

"Look at me," Bismarck pointed up and down. "Without surface radar, I've been so careless that I nearly stomped on Z1 and Z3 getting here. Tirpitz will go in my place; I'll also contact Hood and Scharnhorst and tell their patrols to be on standby."

"Do you really think it's a good idea to send Tirpitz of all ships to make first contact?" Prinz Eugen sweated. "She's not exactly the most charismatic negotiator in the fleet."

"She's better at diplomacy than I am," the battleship shrugged. "Remember that Tirpitz's debut didn't involve getting the entire Royal Navy to hunt her down and sink her."

"Still," Admiral Hipper hmmed in disagreement. "But what if we are wrong?"

"Then this might be the perfect time to bring this abyssal to the negotiating table."

"Schieße!"

Poke. Poke.

"Hey," she poked at a dark, blackened carcass floating ominously alongside her. "Schieße!"

The carcass didn't reply. Hours earlier it had once belonged to an injured elite abyssal light cruiser that had met its untimely end at the hands of Graf Zeppelin, but now it was nothing more than an inanimate biological hazard.

Not that the delirious woman knew what "abyssals" were. All she saw was an entertaining diversion from her journey, which had ended abruptly when the horizon grew dark and gave way to rough seas.

"Do something!" she demanded, poking the body midships.

As a corpse, the abyssal naturally gave no reply.

"Hmmm...SCHIEßE!" the brunette screamed in glee, and promptly flipped the corpse over. There was a strange tinkling noise as cone-like bits of metal came out of the abyssal's jacket. They were small enough to fit in her hand.

How fascinating! If only there was light for her to properly admire her findings.

Blimp.

She immediately recoiled as she felt a bright white light shone straight into her face, belonging to an equally white-haired woman.

"Don't move!" the woman barked. "Make one move to aim your batteries in my direction and it'll be your last!"

On second thought, maybe she should return to her northbound voyage.

"Schieße!" she waved in parting, and turned around to continue her journey.

Just to come face-to-face with a capelet-clad blond giantess with a very amused expression on her face.

"Hello there," the blonde gave a small wave in greeting. "It's a splendid night for a stroll. Fancy if we join you?"

"Eeeh, eeeehh….Eeeehhh… Schieße?"

"It's not polite to talk about defecation in introducing yourself, y'know?" the blonde smirked. "What's your name?"

"Eeeh, eeeehh….Eeeehhh…" Tirpitz and Hood covered their ears as the mysterious brown-haired woman broke down into a confused screeching sound. It sounded like the unholy lovechild of freight train braking and a meatgrinder.

"What's that noise?" Ark Royal shouted over the radio.

"I have no idea," Hood shouted back.

And then the brunette made a strange gesture. She put her hands in their air, high over her head. The posture amplified the bloodcurdling scream she was making.

"What's that noise?" Ark Royal shouted over the radio.

"I have no idea!" Tirpitz shouted back.

"Is she posing a threat?"

"I am afraid our negotiations with Mystery Woman may have, ah, erm, hit a snag, shall we call it?" Hood euphemized.

"So shall I give her 'the drop'?"

"Denied. If you launch an aerial strike on her, Ark Royal, then there's absolutely no way we can reconcile with her."

"But then why is she causing such a ruckus, Hood? If any abyssals are patrolling this part of Skagerrak they've bound to have detected it by now."

"I don't know, but we must keep diplomacy on the-"

Thonk.

The screaming abruptly stopped as the brunette slumped to the ocean surface, knocked out cold by a sudden 380mm turret to the head.

"So uncivilized," Hood sighed as Tirpitz apologetically glanced from the brunette to her own dislocated turret.

"My apologies, I've certainly done an injustice to my talented tactfulness. However in this case, I uh, believed Ark Royal's 'it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission' mantra applied here."

"We shall not speak of her Bismarck-hunting doctrine again . It is unbecoming of the Royal Navy. As is bearing witness to a barbaric act," Hood added reproachfully.

"If she's not out kill us I'll apologize to her later, okay? For now, let's carry her back to Copenhagen, yes?"

"Carry her? Us? Fine. Which way should I hold her?"

"Legs. I knocked her out, so I should make sure that her head's okay."

"So uncivilized," Hood shook her head again as the duo steamed back to Ark Royal and the others, carrying the unconscious woman like a deer between them.