Author's Note: If you were wondering why everything else got deleted and rearranged in the span of maybe an hour or so, this is why:

It has been pointed out to me by some friends in Sushi, Swordomatic and DougTBX (thanks for the guest review!) that I lack a concise introduction to the state of botes in what should be a Kancolle fic, and...well, they are indeed correct. Hence, this. Once meant to be side-lore, now upgraded to the status of actual mini-chapter.

For the uninitiated, there is another version of this on Sufficient Velocity by a fellow called 'XenaC'. We are one and the same man - the latter nickname just happened, tragically, to have been taken. So I decided that a cute Okami avatar and a punny name would serve.

So, I hope you enjoy you stay! And as always, leave any and all comments as you wish. I'd like to think I can take some crap - feel free to put me to the test.

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The Far Side of Glory

Prologue: The Last Flight

So it was that the death knell of a god was not any great bell's toll, but a whirr and a click - the last of many that came before.

The tiny bombs lining the heart of the cavernous reactor room did not look like they might slay the divine. But they knew it well, for in a time before the stars were any more than a dream they had themselves been the tools of divinity gone mad - of men who had thought themselves gods, masters of the lives of so many others.

As then, so now, and far too often for it.

But this time would be different. She would make sure of it. Had made sure of it.

With her own two hands, the purple ghost-fire at their fingertips trembling from the exhaustion of flesh and soul alike though they were, she had summoned each -hundreds in all- forth. It was fine work. Perhaps even her best yet, and she was not one who lacked for practice.

Her little ones had aided her much in that regard. Barely the size of a finger, they would not even have passed for the tiniest of children, but even many little hands made light work. Each clung to their place on the walls, working to adjust the placement of each deadly payload.

Almost done now.

The scroll in her hands she closed with one of the last few ounces of grace her body still possessed, before tucking it into the hip holster she wore only when she was like this.

Then she tapped her transceiver.

"Emerald Dream, this is Sparhawk-1. Package has been successfully delivered."

It was not a lie. After a fashion, at least. But when all the works of man's fashioning failed, the work of inhuman hands would have to suffice.

"Sparhawk-1, acknowledged. Return to the ship. We need to get out soon, they're almost onto us."

She did her best not to allow the relief to get the better of her.

For what ship ever failed to take comfort in her Admiral's voice? And what more for one so composed, even while staring down what might be certain death?

But now was not the time for relief. Now was the time to repay that calm, that trust that they -no, she- would complete her mission.

The last of her tiny fairies gave her a satisfied thumbs up before leaping off his perch and onto her shoulder, dissolving into motes of light.

Crew re-assembled. Time to go.

"Acknowledged."

The first left foot forward on the road back was bone-deep pain itself, but she took it all the same. Then she stretched out with her right. One step by agonized step, she dragged each foot before the other. Down the halls she had memorized, every turn, every nook and cranny transfigured by twisted alien metals emanating the same maleficent heartbeat, pulsing with a dim crimson corona of light.

Hatred.

Anger.

Each throbbing spasm bore down on her like so much dead weight, causing each foot to tarry a little longer, causing her back to bend a little more. It robbed, stole, hollowed her out where there was already scant little left.

What have you done?

Why do you fight us?

Why do you defile your own flesh?

She did not grace such questions with replies, but merely girded herself with the answer she knew. The only answer she could know - the one she could feel in her bones, in her soul, that this creature, this monster was no fellow of hers. Not with a million lives that lay between them in blood grudges, and more besides were she to let it go free now.

Simple fatigue proved her greatest foe, a graceless grind of willing spirit against weakened flesh in which the latter must come out the unenvied victor. For even anger's armor could grow heavy, the act of using its warmth to fight off the growing, gnawing cold become the very burden it was meant to lift. To complete a journey required ten thousand steps. To fall, but a single stumble. And there so many ways to stumble. Each footfall could not but be heavier than the next, each demanding more care, more strength.

The growing silence only made it worse. Her work in the reactor room had been accompanied by a symphony of death in which the thunder of guns of all sizes were the least terrifying instrument. Screams of terror and agony had followed the sounds of gnashing teeth and metal being rent asunder, and every so often a spasmodic shudder ran through her as she felt something unspeakable tunneling through the ground. Yet they had been her guide in the encroaching darkness.

A sign that somewhere in this madness her allies fought still, holding off this ancient goliath and the inhuman spawn that crawled forth from its depths. That she was getting ever closer to that somewhere. That even now it was within reach.

Now those tiny sparks were fading fast, the din of distant combat give way to a gnawing cold and the ever-oppressive voice that rang off the walls above and the ground palpitating under her feet, growing ever louder and ever closer…

...until the last of them was gone.

"Emerald Dream, I might have a problem."

"What's happening down there?"

"Hostiles are barring the path to the hangar. Friendly defensive defensive lines are-" she checked once more, hoping against hope. "-nonresponsive."

"Make that two of us. We're taking heavy fire. It's getting hard to stay within kissing distance of this beast!"

It did not require saying. She could see it, with eyes that were and were not hers all at once: the shattered remains of the once-mighty fleet under cover of which they had boarded this behemoth. Its remains strewn were across space like a cosmic playground ruin, toys of something at once far greater and unimaginably malevolent. And though the enemy was wounded -even now mortally so, though none but her could know that- they were closing in on the Emerald Dream, hemming it in on every side.

Just as they were closing in on her.

You will not escape.

We are many.

We will find you.

Found you.

Only instinct saw her diving out of the way as the ground opened up, the fissures vomiting up shards of flooring that missed her by inches as they ran jagged-legged through the earth. But there was no evading the ravenous roar that erupted from every new orifice in the steel facade, echoed moments later by a fell chorus of the same.

Then one by one, they came forth. Their eyes -far, far too many eyes- danced like ethereal flames in the gloom, conspiring with ambient light to illuminate only tiny sections of their twisted forms at a time. But it was enough. She would even consider it fitting. For Abyssals were one and all creatures of blood, fire and shadow.

And there were far, far too many of them.

"I correct myself. I have...problems."

Reaching behind her, she unclipped both her scroll and its seal. With a flourish she unfurled and held it out in front of herself as a bulwark against the coming storm.

She was stretched thin, but far from defenseless. If they wanted her corpse, they would have to pay for the privilege.

"You had best hurry. If we're going to blow this thing, it's going to have to be soon!"

"Soon..." she muttered, the words almost a whisper.

For a moment she considered it. That somehow, some way, she could break through the leaguer that was being set on her. She could fight her way to the landing craft, and from there back to the Dream and freedom - all in the timeframe of soon. Before the ravenous horde devoured that ship -her ship, her crewmates, her Admiral- alive.

And then one of them stepped out of the shadows, parting the small sea of eerie miscolor not so much with its size as with its presence, and the thought fled.

"Belay that. Emerald Dream, prep for exit jump."

"Sparhawk-1." There was confusion in that voice. Hurt. Pain. She hated that, and hated that she had been the one to cause it. Hated that it had to be done. "What are you talking about? You-"

"-would rather none of you be around when this thing goes off."

Even at a distance, she knew that this must be the commander of their fleet. That might before which the others could not but be cowed, that sheer force of will that radiated off the being was unmistakable. As was the leisurely manner in which she tossed what was once the ruined upper half of a soldier's body to a side as she approached.

A single flick of her wrists launched a wave of human-shaped photon scattershot that coalesced mid-air into a dozen sleek, single propellered airframes. In one time they were called shikigami, and in another the Type 97 Torpedo Bomber. In her hands they were both, and she had nicknamed them Warflight Hawk on that very first day when she had discovered them all those years ago. They had served her well since then, in both many a secret battlefield she found herself in and in the callsign that was her veil. Now she summoned them forth for one more flight, one more attack run.

At this distance, they could not miss - nor did they, each one of their torpedoes making the point blank one way trip right into the creature's face.

The impact washed over her. She leaned into it, allowed it to push her back - and her backpedaling became an outright leap the instant a snaking mass of chitinous flesh scythed through the smoke, catching nearly half the flight she had sent out in its wake.

"Sparhawk-1, status report! We lost you for a moment!"

"I'm alive." Tearing the next words from the lump in her throat was nothing short of herculean. "But I will be plain - only one of us can leave this place. And it won't be me."

Of that much she was certain. Because of course it could not be so easy - of course that monster would walk through the wrack and ruin that had taken its fellows by collateral alone as if drinking in the first rays of summer, the smile on its face was faint but vile, its eyes contemptuous.

Weak.

Did you think that would be enough?

She found it in herself to crack a wry smirk.

Oh, they had no idea.

"...Is there anything more we can do for you?"

"Live, all of you." A damp wetness spread up her left shoulder. She did not look down, clutching the scroll in death's own grip with her corresponding hand. " Live on, and tell them that the 1st Arcadian Gaunts once fought here. Tell them that we did so bravely, and that because we did, Leviathan Alpharius will never again take another life."

Only her narrowing eyes stopped her voice from cracking, and then again barely.

"Send my regards to my sister. To your wife, too; I hear she is expecting?"

"Yes. A girl."

"Wonderful. You...will tell her our story, no?"

The dark tide surged forward, compelled by a single commanding scream of pure rage. In response, she brought the AA guns at her waist to bear, their muzzle flashes stark amidst the darkness as they mowed the foe down.

"Aye, that I will." The chuckle was bitter, and the pause that followed may as well have been a physical wound. "It was an honor serving with you, Sparhawk-1-, no, Izma."

"And to you, Admiral Imamura. Sparhawk-1, out."

She had always wanted to do that at least once, she thought.

Grabbing her helmet with her good right hand, she unlatched and tossed it away, freeing at last a head of long, raven-black hair. Might as well. They were almost onto her now, despite the best efforts of her gunnery teams, and there was little that mundane headgear she did not even need would do against them.

Not that it mattered.

"20th June, 1944," she began, reciting a date none but her remembered. "The last flight of the Izumo Maru. Here she lies - but do not mourn her. For she lived full, died brave…"

The trigger words curled on cracked lips. Purple flames whipped all about her and the scroll in her hands, the remainder of her air wing taking shape in its embrace as the bloodsoaked platform strained to breaking to hold them all at once.

Top this one, sister.

"...and she was true to herself to the end."

Then she let them fly.