Forgive me for this chapter as it will appear slow and kind of weak, mainly because I didn't know what to write at first. And also sorry for bad summary.
A kaleidoscope of blue and white seared across Nagato's vision, then she found herself in a darkened void, fresh water filling up her lungs in an instance and she soon found herself gasping for air. Every moment she was in the water, memories flashed across her mind, recalling the events before she was in the water.
The once dormant ocean had become a battlefield- The ocean's perfect blue, stained with the blood of many of her own comrades. Multitudes of guns discharged, spilling fire and smoke into the darkened sky; shells whistled through the air, erupting into tall, white pillars of water kilometres away or bursting into an explosion as the shells made contact with many of the abyssal fleet. Stray limbs and limp bodies floated around the remaining twenty or so ship girls- bodies of sailors that were once young boys that would chase each other in a game of tag with sticks and toys and laughed at everything that seemed silly to their bright eyes, they would soon join with their ship that had just sunken minutes ago. Nagato remembered the towering abyssal suddenly appearing in front of her, a smirk on her face, a smirk of which Nagato wanted to erase. A flash of different contrasts of orange and red was the last thing she could recall before the abyssal immediately aimed at her.
And fired.
Maybe she was sinking, falling further and further into the eclipsed abyss until it threatened to consume her whole as she felt her consciousness fading, and her body growing dead and motionless. Nagato reached out for the surface, yearning to see the light of day once more. She was unfortunate she couldn't swim, well more accurately she couldn't even float at all, just like the other kanmusus. She reverted back her extended arm, knowing full well that the tiny piece of hope she'd been clinging onto for many years wasn't going to help anymore.
Nagato had once hoped for a world far much better than the hell she once called 'home', a world where no one would live each tireless days cowering in fear, dreading that their lives would be soon taken away from them. A world where the kanmusus wouldn't be regarded as 'weapons' and used as 'tools for war', and instead live cooperatively with humans. That kind of world existed only in Nagato's dreams, but just like her hope, it was torn apart in front of her.
Nagato chuckled. 'Yeah...if only...it really did exist...'
She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to rest. It was time, this was her fate and she accepted it; dying/sinking knowing that her 'sacrifice' may have helped somehow.
Or maybe not. Whatever the answer would be, Nagato would never know.
Suddenly, she felt her back coming into contact with a smooth, thick surface, different from what she had expected the ocean's floor would feel like. She opened her eyes and was surprised to see that the moon had appeared and was abnormally bigger, and the surface seemed much closer. Glancing to the side, Nagato saw marble walls enclosing her in, shutting all around except for above.
Nagato reached out for the surface once more, baffled to learn that her arm had broken through the surface, and into the freezing air.
Nagato struggles for balance as she attempted to stand up. She pulled her arms back and managed to bring her head out of the water. She immediately brought her feet down to the floor as she felt herself sinking back into the water. With that, her entire body- save for her legs- were removed from the water.
Strangely, Nagato's clothes weren't ripped or torn and were still holding on to her body. Her riggings were still fully intact; there were no traces of any damages, no turrets bent into strange angles and no scratches or dents on the metal- it was as if some powerful entity took pity on her and 'magically' fixed her up. But yet still, the blood and the wounds in her flesh was still there and she could still feel the pain- so maybe that 'entity' didn't really fix her up.
Night had fallen quickly, Nagato remembered moments ago that the sky was all a jubilant mixture red, orange and pink, but all the colour had dimmed away, leaving behind a black canvas with tiny specks of white that shone and lit up the very canvas. The darkness was quite dense, but thank god the moon was there to provide her with some light that allowed her to see most of her surroundings.
Nagato stood in a shallow body of water, confined in by the walls like an opened box. A strange, intoxicating smell that she couldn't recognize overwhelmed her nostrils, making her cover her nose as she belched in disgust. The body of water was settled in an area where the ground was all bricks, the only vegetation she could see were the couple of palm trees that were somehow planted on the ground. Nearby was a newish-looking structure constructed out of wood- perhaps a settlement? The structure was long and narrow, stretched for maybe about thirty feet across. It was two stories high, and along with it was a one story extension that had a black door that would lead inside the structure. Tall, white wooden fences bordered around the perimeter; they looked easy to take down.
Nagato waddled through the water and managed to jump out from the water. She sighed in relaxation, feeling satisfied to be able to stand on solid ground once more. That moment didn't quite last as much as Nagato had expected as she was disrupted by a flashing light that was aimed directly at her face. She quickly enshrouded her eyes as the light blinded her.
"W-who's there!?" Hearing the distraught voice, Nagato abruptly took a peek. Standing in the doorway was dark, broad figure; from the masculine voice, Nagato could imply that the figure might have been a male.
Hearing something click, only did Nagato realized that the assailant may have had a gun.
She quickly spun around towards the row of fences behind her and aimed her guns towards it. They boomed, and moments later, a fiery ball of orange flames billowed outwards towards the night sky. Thousands of pieces of wood belonging to the fences showered down upon them like a deadly rainfall. A massive hole had appeared on the charred fences, rendering Nagato a simple escape route.
She looked back at the assailant and noticed that they had adopted a feral position, in an attempt to shield their ears and organs from the falling debris. She later noticed a tiny glint on the ground and realized that the figure had dropped their gun.
Without a second thought, Nagato quickly sped out of the area through the hole.
She kept on running, ignoring the numerous noises that she could discern. Dogs barking, people shouting, the engines of cars roaring; everything seemed foreign to Nagato, the view, the noises, the smell- she did not like one bit of it. She wanted to go back, back to the people she grew to love, back to the base; her only home, and back to the loving arms of her younger sister, Mutsu.
Nagato came to a sudden halt as she felt the fatigue catching up to her. Despite having her large riggings dragging her down, she managed to cover a great distance from the area. Now she found herself standing in the middle of a sleek tarmac street, lined with an incredibly long border of concrete that was joined to a sidewalk. At every interval was a streetlight that happened to be painted in a light grey colour; they were the only thing that kept the entire street all well-lit. Though, regardless of the light, she still couldn't see quite clearly of her surroundings, having to still adjust to the darkness.
A shuffling noise of someone dragging their feet across the concrete sidewalk suddenly caught her attention.
"Damn, can't believe the old man forgot to buy the groceries today..." A voice grumbled from behind Nagato. "I'm gonna...hey wait, what's a person doing in the middle of the freaking road?"
Nagato twisted around quickly and soon met eyes with the voice's owner.
A short, slender girl stood under the nearest streetlight, hands behind her back; from the size alone, Nagato could guess that the girl was in her pre-teens. Her head leaned down to one shoulder, messy black hair draping over a faded plain white t-shirt that appeared to be way too large for her; it drooped so low that her black skirt and netball shorts only managed to just peek below the shirt's hem. The girl's curious eyes were like the color of the sky in the middle of the day, except maybe slightly darker. The black jacket wrapped around her waist and hanging loosely close her knees looked quite old and weather-worn, so did the light blue scarf that reached down and made contact with the ground.
"Hey, um...you ok there, lady?" The girl asked as she slowly advanced towards Nagato.
Most would say that the day was perfect, some would say it was okay, but for Allison 'Ally' Straker, it was probably the worst day that she had ever experienced- and it was a Saturday.
Firstly, she had to wake up her troubled father from his deep sleep, which took forever as the poor man was a heavy sleeper- but with the help of two saucepans and a song she randomly picked off Youtube, she accomplished to wake her father up. Secondly, Ally remembered that she had to help a fellow friend with a science experiment early in the morning, which led her to miss breakfast and having an empty stomach until lunch. Thirdly, she had to rescue another friend getting ridiculed by Beatrix Swan and her annoying, wannabe drones ; she later got in deep water with their 'multi-millionaire' parents again. Fourthly, her father had forgotten to buy the groceries- again- and now had to go out in the middle of the night to fetch the groceries and to get KFC for dinner.
And now lastly, there was this bizarre-looking woman standing in the middle of the empty road who was completely, utterly, soaking wet. The metal equipment that resembled guns of a WW2 warship and was strapped onto the woman's back like an extension was somewhat peculiar to Ally; she wondered if it could actually fire real shells, seeing as the guns looked remarkably authentic; But not only that but the metallic headgear resting on top of the mop of black hair was quite interesting as well. Getting a closer inspection, Ally realized that the woman was wearing strange clothes- maybe the woman was a cosplayer?
"Hey, um...you okay there, lady?" Ally asked, dropping the plastic bags containing dinner and groceries before cautiously approaching the confused woman.
"Who are you?" The woman demanded in a dangerous tone, the turrets on the equipment gave a low whirring noise before rotating around to aim directly at her.
Ally gulped, those things were most definitely real alright. She stared straight at the woman's glaring crimson eyes and could almost feel her knees about to give way and collapse; the woman was terrifying. Ally quickly diverted her eyes towards a single pebble laying on the ground; it was a nice pebble, a smooth pebble, a stunning pebble, the opposite of what Ally would become if the woman decided to fire. What's probably worst was that the woman was speaking in a whole new language, which would provide Ally a hard time to understand the woman.
"I said, who are you?" The woman demanded once again.
Ally couldn't move. She couldn't breathe as if something was blocking her windpipe. Her heart was racing, pounding, wanting to be let out of her chest as adrenaline pulsed through her nervous system, rushing like a rapid river. Her mind was screaming for her to run, but then suddenly, Ally felt like she had disconnected from everything, her senses, her thoughts- everything but the drumming of her beating heart. Ally recognized the impulse immediately- it was her good ol' instinct, telling her to fight or flight. One wrong choice, she would end up dead, but if she didn't do anything about the position she was in currently as well, she would most likely end up dead also.
"Look, woman, I'm not here to fight or hurt you" Ally slowly said as she held her hands in front of her. "I don't know if you understand me or not, but please do not shoot me as I still want to live"
Ally enclosed around the woman at a leisurely pace, careful to not do anything that might upset the woman; as soon as she reached the other footpath, she would make a break for it- forget about the KFC and the groceries, her life was on the line. Glowering eyes followed her movements, and she stared back at them, unwilling to look away for just a second in case the expected would happen.
'She sounds Japanese, if only I had Naiyumi here, that know-it-all would probably understand...hey wait' Ally noticed something particularly odd about the woman. A puddle of fresh blood had formed beneath the woman, dripping down her arms and legs and came from visible wounds; and also, a pained expression had settled onto the woman's features.
"If you don't answer me in three seconds, I will-" Before the woman could finish her sentence, she immediately clutched her stomach and gave out a distressed cry. "Fuck!"
The woman reeled away, coughing out more blood that splattered against the ground. The guns creaked and clanked as the woman moved about, the sounds that it generated could have woke up a part of the neighbourhood by now.
"Yeah you're definitely aren't alright" Ally commented before proceeding towards the woman to aid her. "I need to get you to-"
The woman suddenly fell in a heap to the frigid ground, her head hitting the surface first, followed by the rest of her body. The equipment gave a deafening bang as they crashed into the ground; the noise reverberated throughout the neighbourhood, and before Ally knew it, there were dogs howling and people exiting their homes to investigate the source of the noise.
"Oh, shit..." Ally grasped the woman's arm and struggled to drag her across the road, but only to realize that she barely managed to cover a metre.
Suddenly, she heard the familiar sirens of a police car. Ally froze, she felt the urge to run, but she couldn't just leave someone who was bleeding profusely, lying in the middle of the road. And what's more, the would proably arrest the woman because of the guns, which were probably illegal even though they weren't really hand-held guns.
"Al, is that you?" Ally spun around as he heard the masculine voice coming from behind her. A powerfully built, teenage male with brown, windswept locks that looked matted and dull and tanned skin stood there with their arms crossed. "Hey, it is you!"
"Dino!" Ally could hear the joyous bells of heaven ringing in her ears. "Listen, I need your help, are you able to carry this woman to Naiyumi's house? From what I can remember, her mom works as a doctor..."
Dino seemed puzzled. "Why would you need a doctor now?"
Ally sighed as she remembered Dino could be feeble-minded at sometimes. She pointed to the woman's body and to the pool of blood which was growing bigger at every second.
"Ohhh, ok" Dino approached the woman and proceeded to pick her up and place her on his shoulders, along with the equipment.
Ally was dumb-struck, seeing as Dino had managed to pick the woman up easily, and with the added weight, it probably made Dino some kind of superhero in front of the young girl's eyes.
"Well, come on then, this woman's gon' die if we don't hurry up" Dino stated as he looked back at Ally.
(MY FUCKIN BRAIN-)