Three hundred and ten quadrillion cubic meters.
She took a step back, nearly tripping over a rock half buried in sand. Kneeling, she wiped it clean and sat down. A little uncomfortable, but it would do. Watching the waves crash against the shore time and time again, she could almost forget where she was. Closing her eyes, feeling the sun beating down on her shoulders and threatening sunburn, it was easy to imagine she was on a beach in Chile, vacationing with her parents.
After a certain point, large numbers ceased to have any meaning. Instead, one could only try to comprehend it and fail, settling on being impressed – or horrified.
Feeling hot breath on her ear, Shiranui shivered.
"What exactly are you doing out here?" a voice whispered, not hiding its annoyance.
Sand had muffled the approaching footsteps. Shiranui immediately pulled away and stood up to face her dream's intruder.
"Oh," she said, taking sight of the girl who had snuck up on her. She let out a conflicted breath. The goosebumps on her arm, caused from the suddenness of someone whispering in her ear, hadn't yet gone away. "It's you."
The girl took the response in stride, lifting her head up high and crossing her arms.
Kagerou might have been Kantai Academy's model student. The professors loved her, she had plenty of friends and family, and she got good grades. Her looks weren't preposterous either; her brown hair was cut shoulder length and had modest yellow ribbons affixed, adding a touch of cuteness to her sharp face – well, maybe it was only so intimidating when her attention was focused on Shiranui, but the point remained.
"Class started half an hour ago," Kagerou said, as though expecting surprise on Shiranui's part.
"Then you'd better get going, you're late."
Kagerou's confidence faltered. "That's – you're the one that's late."
"And we're in the same class," Shiranui said, returning her attention to the sea.
Kagerou didn't take the hint. "You know," she began, "when I was first accepted into Kantai Academy, I thought it would be a place of higher learning, where the students were responsible and respected each other-"
There was no respect at the academy. Those wanting a safe and respectful learning environment would have been better off attending a university.
"-and everyone strived to be the best person they could be. And I believed it, for the first few days. We had no discrimination, no slackers, no disrespectful students-"
Everyone saw the world differently. Was a king bothered by the rats in the maid's quarters? No, because he never abased himself so much as to recognize the problem. He only knew what his advisors wanted him to know. He was, by his very nature, too good to know of it. Ignorance was bliss, no matter the situation.
"-but then I heard whisperings that shattered my belief, and threatened the reputation of our academy."
Even the words she used, 'respect', 'reputation', and 'responsible' – they bothered Shiranui on a fundamental level. There were more important things in the world, and getting caught up on the small would only make everything harder. She turned her head to see Kagerou getting herself worked up. It was a little cute, but at the same time, she was naive and much too uptight.
"And then I find you out here, skipping class again, not handing in your essay, and causing the student body to start whispering about the failure who's still walking the halls, and I decided I had enough. I'm putting a stop to this. No more trying to emulate a gang leader, delinquent, rebel, or whatever you think you're doing. You're coming to class. Now. And I will not allow you to skip any more."
She stepped forward in the sand, grabbing Shiranui's arm.
There was no one around. No witnesses. It was a terrible idea, but Shiranui was frustrated. She had been enjoying the day up until now.
"You're a little too confident everything's going to work out in your favour, miss."
With her free hand, Shiranui grabbed Kagerou's outstretched arm.
Kagerou let go of her immediately, and tried to pull away. "What – what do you think you're doing?"
"How's it go? The hunter becomes the hunted?"
She was stronger, but the sand would offer too much resistance if Kagerou had the chance to dig her feet in, so Shiranui acted quickly. She broke out in a run, tugging a stumbling Kagerou behind her. It took a moment before the realization occurred – that they were heading straight for the water – before the struggles turned frantic.
"Let – me – go," Kagerou said, repeatedly hitting Shiranui's arm.
"We're going for a swim."
"You're late! You can't! It's going to look weird if I'm in the bathroom so long, someone might go looking for me."
Shiranui laughed as the waves lapped up to her knees. "Then you shouldn't have lied and taken it upon yourself to bring me in."
Either Kagerou realized it was hopeless, or she didn't want to trip and fall into the water with further struggles, but she calmed down as they passed the waterline and the hem of her skirt got wet.
"Are you seriously doing this to me?" she asked, quieter.
Shiranui hesitated, but only for a moment.
Wading deeper into the water, she nodded. "If it keeps you off of me, then I don't see why not."
"It won't!"
The water was warm, and they were waist deep now. The feeling of her water logged skirt weighing her down as the waves receded was discomforting. Her panties were wet, now, and she would need to walk through campus and back to their dorm for a new pair before afternoon class – if she decided to go at all. The alternative was spending the afternoon suntanning on the beach, which was, admittedly, an appealing substitute to attending lectures.
Kagerou suddenly tried to twist her arm free, but the action failed, and Shiranui pulled her in closer, until their faces were inches apart.
Hazel brown eyes stared at her, but they weren't afraid or surprised. It was an almost unreadable expression, with a hint of anger. Kagerou was trying to keep her breathing calm, but her breaths were heavy from resisting, and, being so close to the girl, Shiranui noticed the faintest smell of sawdust. Perfume? No, it must have been her shampoo. In either case, while it was a refreshing aroma, it also served as a reminder that Kagerou was a Filles. By circumstance, there would always be a void between them.
Shiranui no longer felt angry. If this girl wanted to interrupt her, then it was fine, because revenge was always enjoyable.
"What do you mean it won't?" she said with a grin, a new thought occurring to her. "You don't mean, maybe you like this?"
"No," Kagerou said, looking away while trying to pull back towards the beach.
It might have just been Shiranui's desire, but the 'no' sounded awfully unconvincing, and Kagerou was a little flustered.
"No, I didn't think so. Well, let's keep going."
They continued wading deeper into the water, and while Kagerou was still giving half hearted resistance, she hadn't distanced herself after Shiranui had drawn her in close. It was a little too quick for Stockholm syndrome to take effect, but the girl stuck close, as though Shiranui would protect her from the water.
When the waves were at their chests, their uniform's almost completely submerged, it became too much effort to pull her victim any farther. The waters were familiar, however. Feeling out with her foot, she found the drop-off point, where the sand stopped and the depths descended several meters all at once. A perfect place for swimming.
"Water's warm, isn't it?"
Kagerou nodded, biting her lower lip nervously in a way that Shiranui realized she really enjoyed seeing, especially up close.
"On three, then. One. Two-"
She pulled, exploiting the element of surprise and letting the momentum drag them into the deeper water. Kagerou, obviously not familiar with the area, tried to regain her footing, only to find nothing beneath her feet.
Shiranui laughed as Kagerou flailed for a moment before beginning to tread water.
"I – I can't believe you," she sputtered.
Positioning herself between Kagerou and the shore, Shiranui grinned. It was a nonchalant move, but Kagerou seemed to take note of her retreat being blocked off. They stared at each other for a moment before Kagerou sighed.
"It's tiring, swimming with my clothe weighing me down. I might drown."
Though she said so, it was an obvious lie. The thought of a student of Kantai Academy drowning was laughable. The ocean was to be their career; if they weren't entirely confident in their swimming abilities, they wouldn't have been anywhere near the academy.
"That's unfortunate," Shiranui said, pausing as a large wave lifted them up and then they descended into a valley between the waves, where they could no longer see the shore. "You can drown, or, there's another alternative."
Feeling out with her fingers, she began to undo the buttons on her uniform. Once done, she struggled a moment to free her arms and shed her shirt. The skirt was marginally easier. She balled up the articles of clothing and threw them as far as she could towards the shore. They only made it halfway, but she trusted the waves to finish the job.
Naked but for her black sports bra and panties, she turned to Kagerou, who stared at her wide eyed.
"I know, I'm pretty jaw-dropping. So, if you don't want to drown, feel free to follow suit. It's really liberating."
She settled into a back float, closing her eyes but listening closely in case Kagerou tried to sneak around her and back to shore.
"You're unbelievable."
Shiranui popped open an eye. "Not going to strip? A shame. You know, I feel like I should set the record straight, here. I'm not a bad person."
"No, just a bad student, I suspect."
"At the very least, I did do my essay. I just handed it in yesterday."
"Premeditated skipping," Kagerou translated.
"Sure. Something like that."
"Look away."
"What?"
Kagerou splashed her. "You heard me. Look away. I can't undress with you watching me."
"Aha. Welcome to the dark side," Shiranui said, obediently looking away. "We'll start a gang, like you said earlier. Kantai Academy's first real gang. We can recruit members and the initiation can be dragging them out into the ocean and making them swim in their bra and panties."
"That's perverted," Kagerou said, huffing with exertion.
"I mean, we could do worse. Force them to skip class and spend the day at the beach, enjoying the nice weather."
"Very funny. Alright, I'm done. Race you to the buoy."
Even before Shiranui had the chance to turn around, she saw a wet pile of cloth sailing over her head, and then the sound of Kagerou's feet kicking up the water.
Shiranui wasn't the fastest of swimmers, but she did pride herself on her endurance. It, unfortunately, wasn't enough. Even though she was closing distance towards the end, she still lost by five seconds.
"I think," she said, reaching out to grab the buoy, "if we take into account your head start, that was a tie."
Kagerou turned to give her a doubtful look.
"Polka dotted." It took Shiranui a second to realize she had been duped. "Cheater!"
Kagerou wasn't wearing a bra. She wore a white bikini, polka dotted black. It fit nicely, showing a modest chest that was previously hidden by the academy's standard issue uniform.
Kagerou, blushing, covered herself with her arms. "Can you please refrain from making such unnecessary comments?"
"But why-" Even as she said so, it wasn't altogether surprising. There had to have been a few students who loved water so much they always wore their swimsuits underneath their uniforms.
"I was thinking of going for a swim after school today." Her eyes darted back towards the shore and the roof of one of the new school buildings that was just barely visible. "Are you satisfied, now? Can we return to class like proper students now?"
Shiranui sighed. "Go ahead. I had my fun."
Despite the offered freedom, Kagerou didn't move. She shook the buoy until Shiranui lost her grip and was forced to begin treading water again.
"What's your problem?" she demanded. "Don't you recognize the opportunity you have? How many people are relying on us – how many resources are being given to us, for a chance to save the world? Is this not important enough for you?"
"Don't say that," Shiranui said.
All at once, she was reminded of who the girl was, in front of her.
Karegou, the type of student that the Kantai Project was searching for and adored. The type of person who loved swimming so much that she always wore her swim suit, and was so intent on obtaining the title of 'Miss Perfect' that she thought she had to turn the class delinquent into an obedient student. She was the type who was necessary, for the project was to be successful.
If cloning technology hadn't been lost, they might have just cloned her a couple hundred times and skipped the first phase of the project. Instead, Kagerou was one of kind. Out in the water, floating next to her, shouting at her, Kagerou was the valuable one. She was alluring, like a siren, yet her anger reminded Shiranui how different they were. She was optimistic and full of hope, but had she ever questioned why she needed hope? Why the world had gone to hell, in the first place?
"Fine. I won't. Maybe I won't say anything to you."
Kagerou turned away and began swimming towards shore. Shiranui made no move to follow. Instead, she turned the opposite direction, and began to swim. There was no land ahead, and the waves relentlessly fought her progress, but she didn't care. Eventually, her muscles began to feel sore. She looked back towards shore. Two kilometers, maybe more, she estimated.
Three hundred and ten million cubic kilometers.
Expressing the amount in kilometers made it smaller by a factor of a billion, yet at the same time, her brain tried and failed to imagine even a single cubic kilometer of water. In high school, her favorite topic was physics. It wasn't her curious nature that spawned her obsession, but rather her appreciation of everything working under one, logical system. Predictable, understandable. There was always a reason behind actions, the 'why' that drained it of secrets.
When the world began to die, people were asking why. How? When the invaders arrived, the public stopped asking the questions. It was easier to blame the extraterrestrial beings. It didn't matter, that there wasn't enough hydrogen or oxygen on the planet to explain the 'how'. It didn't matter, because everyone was focused on fighting the invaders – focused on short term survival.
And even that was a losing battle, but humans were stubborn.
Shiranui began hyperventilating. Taking deep breaths and exhaling as much as possible, she repeated the exercise for a minute, clearing her lungs. Then, with a single, large breath, she descended under the water.
She kicked a few times to get deeper and away from the waves which would unsteady her.
Shiranui opened her eyes.
It was a good day. The sunlight penetrated farther than she could ever remember. She stared at the world hidden beneath the waters, and she didn't feel anger. She felt nothing, staring at the deserted city.
There was a large motel sign, directly underneath her. Squinting, she could see a parking lot beneath it. Abandoned cars were scattered haphazardly across the pavement, ignoring the painted lines and parking spaces. The vehicles were rusted from the salty water, and electrical poles were skewed into the ground at an angle, their wires broken and drifting uselessly in the currents. A school of fish passed by, making a wide detour around a truck whose glass windows were missing. Shiranui spotted something inside the truck's cabin which was moving among the shadows. One of the ocean's many predators, who were thriving in the new world.
Her eyes began to sting, but she persisted. By coincidence, she told herself, she had chosen a familiar location. She began to swim and, within minutes, a submerged field came into sight. The grass grew long, somehow flourishing in its newfound habitat. Seaweed was mixed in, here and there, creating a lush, green area that might have been appropriate for the bottom of an aquarium. It was a place where she had played nearly every day with her friends.
Her lungs began to ache, but she didn't ascend. Not yet.
Her middle school was a sad sight to behold, and she wondered, idly, whether she might have began to cry if she weren't underwater.
Sandbags were stacked against the doors, as though everyone waited for the final day before retreating – but that wasn't the truth. Some people couldn't run. They had been running for years, and ran out of places to go. The water hadn't shown any signs of stopping, and either they gave up, were too tired and injured, or couldn't afford to keep moving, so they choose the school as their final resting place.
Many people welcomed death, after losing everything they had.
Windows were broken. Every single one of them was shattered to some degree, though Shiranui couldn't imagine it had been from water pressure. Someone had broken them intentionally, for an unknown purpose. That someone was probably long dead, but no bodies were visible.
Just beyond the school parking lot and before the road, she could see the faded sign post. Some characters were still in place within the glass shielding, but others had fallen to the bottom, creating the look of a failed marionette party.
Instinct told her to return to the surface, but she fought it. There was just one more thing to see.
She kicked her legs, striving to make it around the school's corner. Her lungs protested the effort, but she ignored her body's warnings.
Slowly, it came into sight.
The back wall of the school, white painted brick, had been covered, bottom to top, with graffiti.
It's your chance to leave your mark, for future generations to see.
When the school had been shut down, the children were scared. The teachers had brought out markers and gave one to each kid, telling them to write a message on the wall to someone they missed, or a note for their future self. She could remember the afternoon. It was winter of four years ago. She was struggling in class, learning English and Japanese while trying to get good grades in the sciences, which her parents always praised her for, and she had been angry, because her parents left the country, again, for work.
The individual writing was too far away, too deep in the water for her to read, but she quickly located her own, written four years ago in messy, middle schooler writing. It was a promise. A week after the school was abandoned, a courier had visited their house, delivering the news of her parents' deaths. She had been lost and confused, and had latched onto the promise she'd made. That had been her motivation for years. It had become her life's goal, without her realizing it until it was too late. An obsession and an obligation.
The secret she must unravel.
I will find the source of the water, and stop it.
Though it had mostly stopped by itself, in the past couple years, it would still be catastrophic if it continued at even one meter a year. Kantai Academy was, in her eyes, a stepping stone for achieve her goals. She had made her promise at thirteen years old, and she was now seventeen years old.
Seventeen years ago, an anomaly in the world's' oceans occurred, and the water level began to rise. It was not due to global warming, or at least not entirely. The icebergs of the arctic did not begin to melt, nor did the global average temperature change by any significant amount. Yet the oceans continued to rise, and, at an alarmingly fast rate, farms and cities began to submerge. The first things lost were the harbours all around the world. The United States and China, two of the world's largest exporters of goods, suddenly found their economies grinding to a halt, as their major cities could no longer export or import goods.
Thirty five meters a year, for fifteen years. During the last two years, it had slowed and everyone thought they were safe. They decided the Flooding was over, and they were in the aftermath, which would stop in the next year or so. There was no reason to believe it, but people somehow remained optimistic.
Since 1922, more than half the world had submerged, the water level had risen nearly six hundred meters, and billions of people had died. Starvation, dehydration, disease, murder. The world had descended into complete chaos, and it was then when the aliens arrived. Three years ago, when everyone was busy watching the waters, the extraterrestrials arrived from space to add to the growing list of problems which humanity faced.
The arrival of the aliens, however, did not concern Shiranui. Kantai Academy was a stepping stone for her, to achieve her goals and, if at all possible, reverse the Flooding. She did not want to kill Abyssals, nor did she want to fight in a war. Others would focus on the current battle, against the extraterrestrials, but even if they won, their world wouldn't be habitable after they finished licking its wounds.
What concerned Shiranui was, from seemingly nowhere, three hundred and ten million cubic kilometers of water appeared on Earth, overflowing the oceans without warning or explanation.
She would explain it, and she would stop it, before the entire world was consumed.
A/N: I'll primarily use the A/N to note interesting things I find in my research, but we'll start slow. Also, I no longer play the game and haven't watched the anime, so I apologize for any inconsistencies or OOC.