A great many Americans thought the Abyssals were a far off threat. The problem of the Japanese and eastern Asia who had been the only region hit by them as of now. Some thought differently. Lieutenant James Bernard was glad that the Captain in charge of the 32nd street San Diego Naval Base was among that small number. Captain Shepherd was his former teacher back when she had been a commander in the Seals. When she had approached him and asked him to try and get the method to make Shipgirls he had agreed easily. That particular task actually hadn't been hard, a quick phone call to Japan and an email later he had all the information they needed on how to summon, maintain, and provide for shipgirls. It helped that it wasnt something the foreign government was trying to keep secret and had offered to America multiple times. Acquiring the resources hadn't been to difficult either with the Captains help. Currently he was standing off to the side of the summoning circle, the four materials piled in their required locations. How the captain had managed to get him the several tones of high quality steel and fuel he had asked for was something he wasn't sure he wanted to know. He had personally acquired the "bauxite" although why it needed to be complicated as such he didn't know, glancing at the ball of roughly two hundred rolls of aluminum foil compressed together. The ammo, we'll, that had been easy, everyone had simply fudged some numbers on some paperwork about the amount of ammo expended at gun ranges. No one missed a few crates here or there, and a few gun ranges where they rented out the place then only shot guns rented from the range had helped. Not to mention the donations that had been provided from personal armories and the like. All told, they had a lot of ammo piled up.
He was holed up in an old warehouse on the far side of base near Pier 13. Other than the material and circle it was pretty much empty. This would be the temporary summoning facility with the main one being built later, currently constructing a docks for the girls was taking precedence. Setting down the speaker he had brought James flicked through his music playlist and selected Anchors Away. As the Navy's anthem began to play he checked to make sure the national anthem would play next, just in case. The summoning did indeed take longer than Anchors Away lasted, however what played next wasn't the national anthem. Looking in panic at his phone he saw he had accidentally left it on shuffle, he quickly began to flip through, trying to find the appropriate song just as 'Rules of Nature' roared out over the speaker in earnest and the circle shone brightly. With a flash and a bang the room was filled with some kind of vapor. There were several cries of shock and surprise from outside and the door was dragged open. He could hear the worried calls of his subordinates as he tried to wave the vapor in the air out of his face, fortunately it was more like fog than smoke. It didn't take long for the fans to clear the room enough to see not one, but five silhouette. Three small and two large. After a little more time had passed they were able to clearly see the girls before them. One of the tall women was a busty blond in a much to short mini skirt and her breasts nearly spilling out of her top. Her stockings were the only part of her outfit not some form of grey, their mismatched colors a sharp contrast that drew the eye with the right one being red and white striped and the left one having blue instead of red and much thicker stripes. Her eyes were a shining gold and slightly unsettling due to her pupils being stars. She was obviously a battleship from the massive cannons she had attached to her waist and from the number 61 on her right side he easily guessed which one.
The next girl was just slightly shorter with somewhat poofy red hair and almost as big a bust size. She was also dressed far more modestly as her outfit was a sleeveless full length off white dress with a red belt, scarf, and socks of some kind. Her waist equipment was much smaller, consisting of a flat deck that wrapped around her hips and had two small dual mounted guns on the right side. In her left hand though was what looked like a machine gun with a flight deck strapped to it that extended back over her left shoulder. The flight deck was a bit of a giveaway that she was a carrier.
The first and tallest of the small girls had long black hair that fell down to her waist and wore what looked like a child sized version of the female dress blue uniform with the skirt instead of the pants. She was fidgeting restlessly and kept shooting nervous looks at the battleship beside her, innocent brown eyes looking worried. She appeared to be a destroyer and had a set of torpedo tubes and cannons on her rigging. All in all she looked quite cute. The next girl was a blond with a fiery smirk on her face, her hair was short and looked like the poster example of female regs. She was wearing a high cut union jack top that revealed her belly and a brown duster. Her pants were white and went into the top of her brown knee high boots. She had spare depth charges on her hips and a knife sheathed on either ankle. Her rigging held three small guns, she had a triple torpedo tube strapped to her left arm like a shield and in her right she held some kind of mortar looking cannon. The final girl had blue hair and silver eyes. She was smiling cheerfully as she looked around. Her outfit was a white sailor outfit with a much too short skirt that immediately reminded the LT of Sailor Mercury if only the blue parts were a little darker. Sticking out of her left pocket was what looked like a stuffed whale. She had what looked like a miniature five inch gun turret on an SMG body in her right hand a torpedo tube in her left. Her rigging had spare torpedoes on it as well as AA guns and a second five inch turret. All the girls wore high heels but hers had large propellers sticking off of them. On her left hip was some kind of box.
"Are you our admiral?" The battleship asked, her voice cheerful and relaxed.
"No, I am Lieutenant James Bernard, United States Navy Seals. I was put in charge of your summoning by Captain Shepherd who is in charge of the San Diego base but I don't know who she plans to put in charge of you. What are your names?"
"Hi! I am the Iowa-class battleship, Iowa. Take care of us too!" The battleship exclaimed enthusiastically, his statement apparently going in one ear and out the other.
"Hello! I am Saratoga, an aircraft carrier. Please call me Sara. Pleased to meet you," The aircraft carrier said, her voice calm and polite.
"I-I'm William D. Porter… one of the Fletcher class destroyers...Please call me Willy D… I… I promise I'll try not to screw up!" The nervous girl said, fidgeting and looking anywhere but at James as she spoke.
"Hi there! I'm England, a Buckley class destroyer escort! I hope we run into some subs! It's been a while since I got to play with them!" The blond destroyer said enthusiastically.
"I am the John C. Butler-class Destroyer Escort Samuel B. Roberts! Remember it~ Ah, it's long? Sam. is fine too! Nice to meet you!" The blue haired girl replied with a gentle smile.
"Alright, we'll I had better give the captain-" James started to say, making a note on his phone of who they had acquired. A sailor burst into the warehouse though, one of the newer kids that had been assigned to his squad.
"Sir! Ships are approaching from Hawaii!"
"WHAT!" The Lieutenant cried as he turned and bolted for the door. He heard several set of feet following him. He barely stopped to jump into his corvette, a gift from his dad, a family tradition of sorts. It started from world war II. Every time a family member graduated from either college or boot camp they were gifted a corvette. He was shocked when the little DE, England, slid across the hood of his freshly waxed baby and ran to the rear side passenger door. He heard several thunks and saw that the three girls were squeezed into the back seat along with Saratoga. Then he heard his passenger door open to see Iowa climbing into that seat. All of their rigging had mysteriously vanished.
"What are you five doing?"
"Well, we have some questions about what's going on," Iowa replied as Saratoga was busy trying to get the little girls to sit still.
"Plus this sounds interesting," Sammy B cried out as her head appeared in the gap between their seats.
"Fine, everyone sit down and I will try and answer any questions you have," He said with a resigned sigh.
The car quickly started and he peeled out, being careful to slow down for all the speed bumps on this side of the base.
"Why are ships from Hawaii something to be worried about?" Sara asked, he glanced into the rear-view mirror to see her patting Willie D's head for being a good girl and grabbing England by the back of her jacket to pull her back as the little DE had been leaning her head over the side of the car.
"Hawaii went silent two and a half weeks ago. A destroyer was sent to check and see if something happened but they went quiet about a hundred nautical miles from the islands. A carrier strike force heading out to fifth fleet was leaving today. They are supposed to stop at Hawaii on their way over. It's the largest fleet deployed in a while, Desrons 9 and 23, two LHA's, two supercarriers and a hospital ship for good measure. If ships have arrived from Hawaii that can mean either nothing's wrong, or the Abyssals are in hot pursuit."
"The Abyssals… Those are what you summoned us to fight, correct?" Iowa asked, her eyes scanning the horizon as she held one hand up to her ear, cupped like she was listening for something.
"That's right, most of the naval high command and America in general think it's not our problem, something confined to the western pacific. Myself and the Captain disagree and we are gonna be damn sure to be ready for them when they arrive."
They pulled out the front gate of the base and moved rather quickly through the light traffic that typically meant the work day was in full swing. Once they made it to the Coronado Bridge they could see a line of ships, civilian, and military moving towards the mouth of the bay.
"Go faster, those military ships are all sporting damage from cannon fire and some of the civilian ships look like they're on the verge of sinking." Iowa said, her voice serious and crisp, the playfulness gone. He glanced to the side to see her with a hand held like it was a telescope over her left eye, looking in his mirror he saw all four inhabitants of his back seat doing the same. But with both hands.
"My goodness, they even have some barges being towed by the bigger ships, they must have really been desperate," Sara said from the back seat. As they cleared the bridge and approached the front gate of Coronado Iowa stiffened in the seat beside him as the sound of faint roars was heard in the distance, "Hurry up, that fleet you talked about is transmitting on an open channel, they're calling for help! They are under fire from what they describe as… whales from hell with cannons in their mouths. And some kind of strange aerial drone. In the back of the enemy force are a group of girls standing on water just watching."
"Shit," James growled as he was waved forward by the gate guard and handed her his ID. The guard looked at the girls in the car questioningly.
"My Girlfriend and her sister were curious about my work place. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse," He lied through his teeth.
"And the kids, sir?"
"They're mine MA2," Sara said from the back seat, "I couldn't get a sitter for them and with school being out and all I thought it might be alright to bring them."
"Alright, but sir, don't let this one go," MA3 Tamm said as she shot Iowa an appreciative look and gave him back his ID, "she seems like quite the catch. Besides, not only will I win the pool that you're into blonds but you need some companionship in your life. We worry about you sir."
Her reply was a grunt as he proceeded to accelerate a little to fast through the gate quickly moving towards his office. He parked his car in his usual spot and they quickly got out, climbing to the top of the building to get a look at the water as he finally heard alarms begin to sound from the bases. He pulled out his phone and called the Captain.
"Ma'am, they're here," He said as soon as the phone was picked up.
The phone was silent for several seconds before the captain's voice spoke in a calm reply, "Then god help us."
With that the line went dead as he looked back at the horizon to see black shapes moving forward across it, both in the sky and on the sea, oily blackish blue smoke rising into the air and the roar of distant cannon fire even more present now. He grabbed a battered set of binoculars from inside his office and looked at the approaching force. They truly did look like whales from hell with their massive black forms, unnatural angles, and huge green eyes. behind them were women either connected to monsters or carrying massive armaments. From the information sent to him they were looking at around seventy to eighty I class destroyers, at least fifteen cruisers of various type, two battleships, a carrier, and one who wasn't like any of the classes of abyssal he had seen in the information provided.
"One of them had better help us, cause I don't know how we're gonna survive this if they don't."
"Alright, time to get to work ladies. We have a crapload of them coming in including a carrier," James said as he turned to the girls, "Sara, we need air superiority if we have a prayer of winning this. Do what you need to to take out that carrier, even if its only to buy time for the other basses to scramble their jets. Iowa, they are well within range, open up a bombardment and guard the mouth of the bay, don't let a single one of the fuckers through. Willie D, England, split up, your job is to defend this base from anyone that comes our way."
"What about Sammy B?" Iowa asked as she summoned up her rigging.
"She ran off as soon as we got here, I'm sure you'll see her somewhere out there. All of you be careful, I think there might be what's called an installation type Abyssal out there. Everyone has their jobs, let's get to work!" With that the girls took off running, With the exception of Sara who simply aimed her machine gun up and began to launch plains into the sky. The massive roar of 16" naval guns firing and glass shattering all around them clearly showed Iowa was acting out her part with enthusiasm.
Sammy B was at the coast already, her eyes gleaming hungrily. She tapped the object on her left hip with glee as it shot out a handle. Grabbing the handle she pulled out the knife it contained. Her face was filled with feral delight as she prepared to meet the enemy. She didn't have long to wait as the destroyers appeared to be closing at flank speed. With a half crazed giggle she shot forward to meet them, her two 5" mounts swinging round and opening fire on the whale like opponents. They opened fire in return but none of them could hit the swiftly moving destroyer escort. Instead the enemy broke into three groups, with some splitting off to the right and others to the left. The remainder charged straight out to meet her. She heard gunfire from behind her and guessed the others would be joining the fray, but she would have first blood! She had been adjusting the aim on her turrets the entire time and now quickly drew a bead on the front destroyer. 5" AP and HE rounds began to rapidly sink into its hull, after the first three hits the monster roared fire from its mouth before exploding in black icore. Sammy B continued to close the fairies operating her turrets each picking their own targets and focusing their fire on them. By the time she had finally collided with the pack of destroyers she had no less than seven kills added on to her first one. Her knife roared with life as she shot forward, swinging the chain knife through its first victim and giggling with homicidal glee as it cried out in pain before the roar of a 5" round entering its flayed open armor silenced it. Then the DE was a tornado of motion as she sliced her way through enemy after enemy, her cannons roaring without pause.
Willie D was on the verge of tears. She had fallen over no less than a dozen times and gotten lost before finally reaching the beach. She had an internal compass for goodness sake's how did she end up getting lost! Once she reached the beach though she was even more upset. Charging at her was at least thirty Abyssal destroyers. Just her luck. With a pathetic whimper she aimed her 5, 5" guns at the enemy and opened fire. Each round slammed home causing the enemy ships to roar and explode. Then they opened fire on her. The back of one of the enemy destroyers heads exploded shooting shrapnel into the one behind it. Three of the monsters surged forward and shot each other. Most of them simply did not fire. Of the two who actually managed to shoot their guns one hit the water in front of the shocked destroyer the other flew wide and slammed into the shore about fifty feet away from her.
The wide eyed destroyer looked at her smoking guns, then at the frozen Abyssal's before her. She quickly leveled her torpedo tubes their direction and fired, not even bothering to aim at the advancing Abyssals, the monsters tried to dodge but ten explosions soon sounded as another ten of the beasts went down. With a cry of glee Willie opened fire on the monsters as she slid new torpedoes into her empty tubes, her shots sounding out as the monsters screamed in horror and rage at their seeming uselessness. Whenever they shot it went wide of its mark, whenever the little destroyer shot her rounds tore through them like paper. She wasn't even aiming right now, instead holding her hands over her eyes and firing before removing them to see if she hit anything. Just as suddenly as the massacre began though it stopped. Three of the cruisers had arrived, two light and one heavy.
[We shall send you to the bottom for this insolence!]
With that they surged forward, all their weapons leveled in her direction, and fired. Willie cowered in fear, expecting to feel agonizing pain. After several explosions however she took the chance to glance around herself. The beach behind her was a mess and as she looked she saw another shower of shells slam into the water all around her. Then she saw streaks of torpedoes shoot past her and collide with the beach as they exploded.
Looking back at the Abyssals she saw the three cruisers looking at her in slack jawed disbelief. Shooting them an awkward smile she pointed her torpedoes and fired.
England was growling viciously, by the time she had encountered the enemy they had made it to dry land. Granted the Abyssal destroyers were much more of a threat on the water but for a DE designed to fight subs not surface ships, they were a problem. Her 3" guns were hurting them but it was nowhere near as fast as she would like and while she could wipe them out with a torpedo barrage she only had the one launcher. With a small giggle though she leveled her Hedgehog Anti-Submarine mortar at one of the bastards and fired it. Explosives were explosives after all. The blast threw chunks of destroyer every direction and she could see the looks of disbelief she was getting from the fleeing Navy personnel. Moving forward she reloaded her mortar, this would be a trying fight.
From where she stood Sara watched the three little girls fight. Sammy B and Willie D were doing fine on their own, the former having entered some kind of psychotic killing rage while the latter seemed to be under a cloud of good luck… or her enemies were simply suffering from terrible luck. England was having a considerably more difficult time and had gone into what could best be described as guerrilla warfare with the destroyers that had made landfall, taking them out one by one in the tight streets of the base.
Looking beyond the base she jumped through the eyes of her fighters, the Wildcat's roaring as they fought viciously through the skies. She heard the roar of jets as some F15's joined the fray but they didn't last long as the Abyssal fighters opened up with there machine guns and the supersonic jets practically flew into them, moving to fast to turn out of the way of the enemy attack. The battle for air superiority was getting vicious as Sara decided to launch a group of bombers to try and disable the carrier. She grabbed one of the L-type drum magazines from the inside of her dress and squeezed the trigger. No less than a dozen squads of fighters flew out and formed up around almost as many dive and torpedo bombers. The dogfight was expanding as the planes spread out, tearing each other apart with machine gun fire as both sides planes tried to tear the others from the sky while avoiding the bombardments being swapped by the american battleship and abyssal heavy warships. The look on the carriers face was almost priceless as the bombers escorts cut through the dogfight and the bombers launched off their payloads. The explosions tore through the enemy fleet, the carrier crashing to its knees, the massive structure on its head bleeding and it appeared to be unable to launch more planes. Over half of the Abyssals were sinking or appeared unable to move as yet another salvo from Iowa slammed into them, causing even more damage as eight of the rounds slammed into a battleship, causing it to disappear in a flash of fire and death. The ninth round flew towards what appeared to be the flagship of the fleet, who absently backhanded it to the side like it was nothing. Her cannons moved and belched fire as she fired at the offending battleship. Then with a roar her secondary guns opened fire and Sara's feed to her fighter planes was severed in short order. As she readied another magazine she shuddered, what power.
Iowa roared in rage as three of the cannon rounds slammed into the water behind her. That bitch wasn't really aiming at her. Spinning she saw the other nine rounds slam into the city they were protecting, followed shortly by a dozen rounds raking the naval base inside the bay and another dozen hitting the one right next to her.
"YOU BITCH!" The American battleship roared as her guns spat fire and death at the enemy capital ships. Her secondary 5" armaments roared at anything that dared to approach the bay as her 16" guns sent hot death at the bitch shooting at the city. Suddenly she got a radio message from Sara
*All ships, the enemy destroyers have been eliminated. I repeat the destroyers are eliminated. The enemy carrier has been crippled as has much of their surface fleet. However I cannot take air superiority. My planes are being shredded by that flagship they have. She's moving in closer to the mouth of the bay. All ships meet up at the mouth of the bay to mount a combined offensive against the enemy flagship, Iowa will act as a rendezvous point.*
Iowa sent a quick affirmative before returning to the task of lobbing hot death at the enemy flagship. With her secondary guns were freed up the 5" mounts turned and opened fire at the flagship as well. Now that her guns were all aimed at the bitch it looked like she was actually having some kind of effect as the enemy had turned towards her. It still continued to fire at the land instead of at her but now it was quickly moving in her direction. She surged forwards, her 212,000 horsepower pushing her to flank speed as she prepared to clash with the enemy.
Sara and James arrived at Bravo pier just in time to see Iowa get thrown onto the beach, her rigging broken and one of her 16" mounts ripped clean out of its barbet. Her left arm and both legs were at unnatural angles and she was coughing up blood. Her outfit was in tatters as she tried to crawl away from her opponent. The Abyssal flagship, who looked like Iowa save for her hair being pure white, wore an entirely black outfit consisted of thigh high boots, a short skirt and skin tight high cut top that left nothing to the imagination. She also had a sword strapped to each side of her waist. The Abyssal probably would have been smirking savagely if it weren't growling in rage as it shot ineffective at Willie D, its shots missing as the Fletcher launched another salvo of torpedoes at it, scoring ten hits which caused the flagship to shriek in pain and surge forwards. Its hand collided with the small destroyer and all the luck in the world couldn't have changed the outcome as the little girl was thrown bodily into Bravo Piers cement structure where she remained embedded. The Abyssal was panting from exertion and appeared to be in a good deal of pain as she winced and grabbed her ribs, a dark bruise was quickly appearing on her pale skin. Her reprieve was broken though as Sammy slammed into her back, chain dagger roaring as it pierced her shoulder, the props on her heels digging into the battleships sides as she wrapped her legs around her waist, causing her to cry out in agonized rage and grab the little destroyer escorts head. She threw the blood covered brat at the shore to join her companion before turning to see Sara and James on the beach. She stood straight and pulled a sword from her waist and moved forward. Sara aimed her gun but the sharp roar of the flagships secondary cannons sent her crashing back into the beach, her outfit ripped and torn. She landed on the beach and her black, bio organic rigging fell from her to crash heavily into the sand. She tossed the sword so that it landed in front of James before drawing the other one, being careful to not strain her bad shoulder.
James picked up the sword, It was wide, almost as wide as his hand was and looked like a cross between a modified katana and straight saber, its blade glowed a vicious blood red. Noting its weight and balance as he pulled a combat knife from the back of his belt and went into a fighting stance. The knife held in his left had reversed and brought up in front of him, the sword held behind him. In position he waited. He didn't have to wait long as the injured and enraged abyssal made her move, swinging wildly she charged at him, her attacks fast and enraged, just as he expected. He made sure not to actually clash with her blade, instead using all of his skill to deflect or parry the sword away from him, even still every blow that he deflected felt like someone was swinging a hammer at his weapons. This thing hit like a truck! Taking his chance he slashed up with the sword at the same time, dodging a massive downward strike. He was rewarded as she shrieked in agony, her bad hand cupping at the slash across the left side of her face. Her roar of fury quickly made him reconsider that as a success. She began to attack even more viciously, although thankfully her swings were far more wild and untrained now. It didn't take him long to see the perfect opening to end this. As she throw another vicious overhead swing he deflected the blade into the dirt, releasing his knife as he did so, and grabbed her wrist in a lock. Unfortunately this wasn't a human he was fighting, her bio armor far to strong for human muscle to overcome, the Abyssal twisted her wrist and yanked him forward, driving her knee into his chest. As he crashed to his knees grabbing his gut he knew it was over. The abyssal lifted his head, forcing him to look her in the eyes, before ramming her sword through his chest.
[You fought we'll human. This is an honorable death. To recognize your courage, I will leave here now. Your city shall be spared for the time. I hope, that all my foes fight and command like you, that I may enjoy crushing them thoroughly.]