Neural Net

Nagato regarded the strange man in front of her who had been assigned to be the Naval District's Admiral. He was broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, said muscles straining against a uniform that was clearly one size too small, square-jawed, crew-cut and wearing a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses.

"Um, Admiral? I am battleship Nagato, welcome to the Naval District. I look forward to working with you… um, you are…?" Nagano saluted at first but faltered somewhat when all the Admiral did was turn to look at her.

"I am a Terminator," he said mechanically.

"You… what?" said Nagato, clearly confused. In addition to everything else, for some reason this Admiral had a very thick Austrian accent.

"I'm a Terminator, Cyberdyne Systems T-800 model 101."

"I… don't understand," said Nagato, feeling more and more that there was some kind of prank being played on her.

"I'm a cybernetic organism. Living human tissue over a metal combat endoskeleton, controlled by a neural net CPU, a learning computer. My mission," he said, as he got to his feet and Nagato had to admit that she was fairly impressed by the Admiral's height and build, "is to protect this Naval District and Terminate the Abyssal Fleet."

"Right. What are your orders, Admiral?" replied Nagato. At least this part of the conversation was something she understood. The Admiral pulled a sawed off shotgun from behind his desk, cocked it with a twirl and began to walk out of the office.

"Wait, Admiral! We need to determine the fleet composition!"

"I have already determined it," he looked back at her with that mechanical grace of his, "I have detailed files."


Later, Nagato and a fleet of five other ship girls were accompanying the Admiral on a sortie, the Admiral sailing in a motorboat.

"Abyssals detected to the north-west! There's twelve of them! We're outnumbered Admiral!" cried Akagi, who had been doing the scouting.

"They have not noticed us yet. We still have the advantage if you and Unryuu launch an aerial assault NOW," called back the Admiral, his voice strangely amplified, although maybe not so strangely, thought Nagato, given the Admiral's… unique nature.

The battle did go well at first, with the Admiral having an excellent sense of tactics. It was nice to not have to "break in" this new Admiral but Nagato supposed that made sense, although this whole cyborg thing still weirded her out just a bit. She had to wonder, just what exactly had he meant by living tissue over a metal skeleton? Was that literal?

"Admiral!" cried Unryuu. Nagato cursed herself for having lost concentration for a moment. An enemy I-class destroyer and Ri-class heavy cruiser had broken through their formation and where headed for the Admiral's boat. She began to aim her cannons but even before she fired, she knew that Abyssals would get off their shots before her. But then she saw the Admiral stand up, pulling a massive mini-gun up from the deck. He opened fire and the two poor Abyssals never knew what hit them. With the ship girls gazing at him in wide-eyed surprised, the Admiral raised the gun's barrel to his lips and blew away the smoke.

"Hasta la Vista, baby," he said.