Kanagawa was being attacked again. Three kilometers off the coast, Unknowns soared out of the heavens and bee-lined toward the city. Civilians were being herded onto the subway systems to retreat to safety. In the plaza, Maihime Tenkawa was rallying her forces.
"As you all know," the charismatic leader passionately exclaimed, "I am one for giving emotionally loaded rallying cries, but I'm sure you're all tired of them. Go get them!"
Maihime leaped a huge distance, bounding off buildings, to confront the Unknowns threatening her home. Spears bristled in the hundreds-strong audience, spear butts pounding into ground in appreciation for their leader. All looked energized beyond belief, ready to defend their home.
All except for one. A disinterested brown-haired young man named Kenji, lazily leaning his spear against his body while playing on his phone. He leaned over to his friend, Reina.
"Hey Reina, what are we actually supposed to be doing with these spears? The enemies are airborne."
Reina calmed down from her euphoria and pointedly looked back, "We just do what we always do, we just wait for Maihime to win the fight for us. Just keep polishing your spear."
Kenji glanced at his spear. It was already buffed with many years' worth of the finest black polish, unblemished due to never having actually been used. He decided it didn't need another layer of polish.
At that point Maihime had reached the enemy, and several colorful waves of force exploded out from the battle site a few kilometers away. The spear army cheered, and another bout of spear thumping and chanting for their leader was had.
The fight, as always was going well. Kenji wasn't exactly sure what he was doing, and went back to his phone game. Reina joined the cheering along with the rest of them. The colorful flashes, almost like fireworks, continued lighting up the dim evening, until suddenly they stopped. The crowd went quiet and murmurs spread throughout. A sound, almost like that of a streaking firework could be heard from an incoming projectile.
Kenji quickly noticed that the burning projectile was headed near him, and got out of its way. Those near him had the same idea, the crowd parting for the arcing ball of flame. It touched the ground, the flames dissipating as the body within the flame rolled several times, crashing into a wall. When the light evening wind fanned the smoke away, it was clear to everyone that the person who had just crash-landed was none other than their "Invincible" Leader, Maihime.
Rindou Hotaru almost literally sliced through the crowd to get to her beloved Hime-chin. The girl seemed to be conscious, and was quietly speaking to Hotaru. Kenji took his eyes off them and looked toward the skies, rapidly being more packed with Unknowns, albeit kilometers away. He nudged Reina.
"So, it looks like we'll need to help for once," Kenji nonchalantly said, putting away his phone.
Reina looked concerned. "Uhh, I guess we'll use take these spears and go stab them?"
"Well, I see a problem with that plan." Kenji, putting to display his ten years of strict, Kanagawa-style spear training, grabbed his spear and thrust it in one motion, deliberately aiming just to the left of Reina's head. "That was a very good thrust, it would definitely kill any of the Unknowns. But you see, that spearpoint can't be more than three meters in front of me. Those Unknowns are hundreds of meters above the ground. How the hell are we supposed to do anything with these pointy sticks, no matter how much training we have?"
Reina nervously glanced to the spear hovering an inch from her ear, which was promptly retracted into Kenji's hand. Reina looked pensive for a few moments, then nervously said, "I have an idea. We could fi-"
Kenji put a hand on Reina's shoulder. "Don't bother explaining it to me alone, Reina. Your ideas are always good. I'll get everyone's attention." He glanced around at the crowd slowly falling into despair or mania from the sight of their leader burnt and beat up, carried away by Hotaru to the hospital.
Kenji loudly thumped his spear onto the ground. Eyes slowly turned to him. He started to speak, loud and clear, "Are we really so worthless that when our leader isn't there for us, we crumble like aging plaster? I'd like to remind you all that we still have a city to defend! Her final orders to us were to 'Go get them,' and I'd like to follow those orders. So should you!"
The crowd still looked anxious but stood straight, ready to fight. That was until one particularly nervous, quivering man shouted, "But how are we supposed to reach them with our spears? Who even thought it was a good idea to train the army as spearmen when all the Unknown are airborne?"
Kenji knew he had to shut the man down before his perfectly valid, but morale-lowering complaint settled in with the rest of the crowd. "The second question, I'd love to know the answer to as well, but as for the first question!" He pointed at Reina, who was nervous enough to start biting his fingernails. "Reina has an answer to how we are supposed to reach them with our spears, that she will share with us now!"
Everybody's gaze, including Kenji's, turned, expecting, toward Reina. Kenji's eyes softened in empathy, and Reina finally mustered up the courage to talk, not as loudly nor as clearly as Kenji, so people farther away were struggling to hear.
"Our leader, Maihime, uses a sword to fight off the invaders. It has even less reach than our spears, but she can use it due to her ridiculous jump height. We who cannot jump that high must find other ways. We have no airplanes, we have no helicopters, but we have fighting spirit, and we have that navy!" She pointed to the dozens of various ships sitting by the harbor.
The crowd was confused, looking to one another. Kenji voiced his concerns, "Reina, how does a ship help? The Unknowns will just soar hundreds of metres above us and lay waste to the city."
The plan that Reina described in response to that was so absurd that Kenji and the rest of the group were seriously doubting her sanity, but they had no choice to go along with it, as they had no better plan. The two-hundred-or-so students made their way to the docks, specifically towards their aircraft carrier, the Sarissa.
Under Reina's instruction, all the students were assigned to take whatever ballast that they could find and fasten it to the rail on the sides of the ship. The students got to their tasks, and were quite brisk with it. The Sarissa was a long aircraft carrier, and many students were able to attach ballast at once.
Hotaru, freshly returned from taking Maihime to the hospital, protected the defenseless working students. It was quite a trivial task. The students did not take long, meaning only very small and agile Unknowns could make it in time to bother them. Hotaru sliced out of the air with minimal effort.
With each pound of ballast attached, the boat sank lower and lower, When it was barely sailing above the waves, Reina directed all the students to come on board and into the ship. A giant concrete-filled metal drum rolled onto the carrier by the final students to get on was the tipping point. The ship's buoyancy lost its fight against gravity and it sunk beneath the waves. Hatches were tightened as the aircraft carrier became an impromptu submarine. The propellers that drove the carrier forth now struggled with the additional drag of the whole ship underwater, but they made do.
"In three minutes, we will be directly under the main Unknown fleet. There we will release the ballast, and this ship will skyrocket, and we will be in the midst of the invaders. We will finally be able to use our spears, ladies and gentlemen." Reina looked positively giddy. The crowd, gathered in the largest room in the carrier, the canteen, looked appalled. They were all extremely tired from collectively hauling enough mass to sink an aircraft carrier. They seemed too tired to raise any complaints or comments about Reina's insane plan and just sat down wherever they could.
Kenji approached Reina, just as tired as everyone else. "You seem happy. Does this always happen when people actually listen to your plans?"
"It's just so many people listening to me, so many people trusting me, this never happens you know. And the plan is coming together spectacularly. Ohh, I just feel so excited!" Reina was almost jumping with joy.
Kenji smiled, and glanced at the clock. Two minutes. If he was going to be thrown into the air by thousands of tonnes of steel in two minutes, he figured that spending it next to a giddy Reina, who always looked so shy and reclusive, was a good use of that two minutes.
"Brace yourselves!
Three!
Two!
One!"
Kenji's next call of "Liftoff!" was cut short by him narrowly avoiding biting his own tongue as the carrier shot upwards as he detached the rails to which all the ballast was held. Everywhere around him, students were already holding on to whatever handhold they could find, but it wasn't enough. Some fell, knocking over others, and in a domino effect, everyone ended up on the floor in all sorts of ways. After the initial jerk, the ship's upwards acceleration evened out and everyone quickly stood up and grabbed their spears.
Another jerk almost brought everyone down again, and the monstrous splashing sounds that could be heard even through the hundred-millimeter-thick steel armor plating alerted everyone that the carrier had just surfaced.
Reina ran to the hatches, successively opening each one, Kenji corralling the students out. They all made their way out to the soaking runway, spears bristling.
All around them, Unknowns were rushing past them, slower and slower as the carrier lost momentum to gravity. They were about fifty meters into the air when the first brave soul leaped with a battle-cry and jumped onto an unknown, savagely skewering it on his spear before jumping to the next one. Everyone else was suddenly eager to follow his example, and jumped out after him. Soon it was just Kenji and Reina on board.
Reina looked terrified at her own plan, and refused to jump. Meanwhile, the carrier peaked at around one hundred meters above sea level, and started to fall. Kenji urged her.
"The carrier's falling now! It'll get worse with every second! Let's go, Reina!" When she simply shook her head again. Kenji roughly grabbed her waist and pulled her to him, jumping with her in tow. Her almost-ghastly screams could not be heard past the rushing wind.
They landed on an unknown about the size and shape of a large horse. Instead of killing it, he sat Reina behind him as if they were actually riding a horse together. The unknown shook and maneuvered to try and buck the two off of its back, but Kenji would have none of it. He clamped both arms around what could be called the creature's neck, and Reina hugged her arms around him. The Unknown was getting quite tired and stopped struggling so hard, and the two watched the carrier fall, very quickly, down onto the water, making monstrous splashes for the second time today.
Kenji could feel Reina's heart beat so rapidly it could burst. His own was not so lethargic either. As they both settled down, they took in the situation around them. The students were all truly airborne. They jumped from creature to creature, impaling them on their spears before jumping onto the next one. It didn't seem like anyone had fallen to their deaths, miraculously. It was probably due to the fact that the sky was packed with monsters, so any who fell could quickly find their grip on another creature to stop their fall.
Reina loosened her grasp, not quite okay yet. "Is this a terrible, terrible time to tell you that I'm terrified of heights?"
Kenji huffed, "You thought of this insane plan yourself." An Unknown in front of them wheeled around and turned toward the both of them. Kenji freed one arm from wrapping around his ride's neck and removed his spear from his back, brandishing it toward the unknown currently eyeing them, who promptly charged.
Kenji couched his spear under his arm, bracing it against the inevitable impact. The unknown charged right into the point of his spear and disintegrated into dust. The two and their ride jerked back from the impact. Kenji still had a tight arm wrapped around his ride's neck, but Reina's loosened grip meant she had to put a hand behind her, on her ride's rump, to stabilize herself.
Their ride jerked, starting to move forward. When she removed her hand in surprise, it was as if their equestrian-like unknown ride slammed on the brakes.
Kenji laughed nervously, and speculated, "Did you just find its gas pedal?"
Reina looked too shocked to answer, simply laying her hand on and taking it off a few more times. Each time the unknown responded appropriately. She finally turned to him, and with a smile, she answered, "I think I have!"
It was not long after that that the two figured out how to drive their "sky horse," as Reina jokingly called it. Kenji could steer left and right by nudging the creature's head one way or the other, and different positions of her hand would pitch the creature up or down. The others slowly realized what the two were up to, and, an hour after the carrier's dramatic takeoff, all students were mounted in pairs, one hundred lancers in the skies. They steered to the fringes of the main horde, turned a one-eighty and, with Kenji's proud spear, with its now-damaged polish, leading the formation, they charged directly into the fray.
Maihime Tenkawa was not the most easily surprised person. During the first unknown invasion, when so many in Japan were killed, she and Hotaru made a promise to find each other again before they were put into cold sleep. When Maihime woke, Hotaru wasn't there. But she knew she would come back. For ten years she waited, but when they finally reunited, she wasn't the least bit surprised.
The other children bereaved her for clinging to false hopes. The adults looked down on a pitiful child with a tragic past that couldn't let go.
But for her, it was not a false hope, it was just a given fact that they would be reunited. On the tenth anniversary of her waking from her cold sleep, Hotaru swung her blade and almost bisected Maihime.
The sight of her long-lost friend didn't surprise her. The fact that she was trying to kill her did not surprise her. The precise, mesmerizing movements of a deadly, blood-soaked katana in the hands of a girl that had always been kind and supportive, did not surprise her. And the next day, when she nonchalantly exclaimed to her army that her friend had finally come back, well, it could only be said that she was a very difficult to surprise person.
The sight in front of her sent her into a stupor though.
A battered, abandoned aircraft carrier, rising and falling with the gentle waves.
The dust of hundreds of perished Unknowns glittered as the breeze guided it down to the ocean where it settled and dissolved.
One hundred lances were caked with monster dust for the first time.
Her historically useless army was currently decimating the huge Unknown horde, zipping across the skies like heat-seeking missiles, turning and maneuvering like they had been doing this their whole lives.
It's not to say she disliked them for not helping, she simply wanted them to be safe, so she took on every Unknown attack herself. But noticing the wide smiles on their faces, their confident poses, and the absolutely gleeful atmosphere, she couldn't help but feel that her inferiors were as safe as they could be.
Flying dozens of metres above the ocean's surface, a lethal height. Zipping around at speeds certainly illegal on a highway. Unharness, unstrapped, able to be knocked off their mounts with a single strong hit.
The army had never felt safer, flying above the waves, contributing like they never had before.
Maihime had jumped to the battlefront from the docks, and was intercepted by Hotaru's sky horse. Hime found her way on behind Hotaru and
"Hime-chin! You were just in the hospital! Why are you back here!" Hotaru half-yelled, half-asked. She dissected another unknown with her katana, passing it at train speed.
"Well, I never expected the army to be able to attack the unknowns, and even you can't hold off that many at once, so I thought I had to get back to save the city. It looks like Kanagawa's spears have found a way though."
Maihime had fainted on the way to the hospital, and had barely recovered from being shot out of the sky. The kilometers-long jump had taken its toll. Her voice got weaker and weaker until her grip on Hotaru went slack. Hotaru twisted in place and grabbed a hold on a Maihime to stop her from plummeting to her death. In her awkward position, she couldn't bring around her sword to defend them from a charging Unknown.
Kenji and Reina, nearly missed the scene in their bliss of flying, but out of the corner of her eye, Reina spotted their head and sub-head's plight.
She jerked her hold on Kenji to get his attention. "Over there!" she said, pointing to the Unknown about to savage their leaders. He couched the lance and steered the horse, Reina urging the steed to go as fast as it could.
Hotaru struggled with Maihime, grasping fruitlessly at her flashy cape and epaulets, unable to swing her katana for fear of dropping she who meant the world to her. She faced her back toward the unknown, ready for it to be ripped open, as she had no other choice.
Kenji brought his lance to bear in the nick of time. They were going so fast that the unknown's pierced body smacked Kenji head-on before it had the courtesy to turn into dust. He looked dazed for a second but quickly wheeled around to go talk to their leaders. Reina sighed in relief behind him, for the two girls that were safe and sound now.
Kenji and Reina hovered in front of the two girls. Maihime was pulled in front of Hotaru, who could keep an arm around her at all times now.
"Get to the ground, you two! Us spearmen will take care of it for once!" Kenji proudly exclaimed. Hotaru simply smiled in gratitude, and guided her steed to the coast, careful not to disturb Maihime.
"We're pretty far from the rest of them now," Reina noticed.
"The battle's winding down anyways, let's just take a breather," Kenji tucked his spear under his arm and stretched his limbs as best he could, before lying face-first on his steed's neck.
Reina playfully gave him a slap on the back, "Oh, you lazy little slacker." Kenji was already snoring.
The final Unknowns were mopped up, and soon the skies were clear of Unknown except for the hundred that were being ridden. They all landed on the rather beat-up aircraft carrier.
The decision was made to end the lives of their rides, which was not taken well, but it had to be done. The danger of bringing a hundred Unknowns into the city was too great.
Kenji tightly grabbed his spear and brought it down into the Unknown he and Reina had been riding for the past three hours or so. The creature turned into dust under their legs. They landed on their feet, unstable after riding for so long, and straining in combat. All around them, others were doing the same thing. Some were crying, having grown very attached to their mounts.
"I liked that lil' horse," said Reina, sadly.
"I think that we can take what we did today and modify it so we don't need to commandeer hardly reliable Unknowns as steeds." Kenji said, deep in thought.
"You mean like a mechanical sky horse? A flying motorcycle or something?"
"Yeah, that sounds about right. We could launch it off the aircraft carrier. The Municipal Spear Navy might stop being a joke, we could make a difference every battle just like we did today."
"Are you trying to rise up the ranks and become admiral? You seem quite bent on the navy's improvement today."
"Nah, it's just the wind blowing past my face, the satisfaction when my spear tears through an enemy, you know? I want to feel like that more often. Today might have been the most exciting day of my life, and I'd like to see us re-experience it without losing tonnes of ballast under the ocean or riding unknowns that are actively trying to buck us off."
The carrier sailed toward the docks. There, Maihime stood with a cast on her arm and several bandages visible under her flashy officer's cape. She was practically bouncing with excitement, grabbing every last member of the Navy and congratulating them.
Kenji and Reina beamed when their leaders got to them.
"Amazing work out there you two! Reina, I heard that you thought of the whole idea. Brilliant! You saved the whole city!" Maihime reached up to pat the girl on her shoulder.
"And Kenji," Hotaru coolly started, "thank you for the save. If it hadn't been for you, well, we wouldn't be here right now. We owe you."
"Reina spotted you two. If it weren't for her, I'd have blow right past in blindness. "Kenji smiled, "and about that favour, we have a plan for the future. See if you two can get the government to fund it."
The four huddled together in deep discussion.
It was more physical exertion than any of the Navy's member's had ever had to do during a raid. They all collapsed into their beds and slept in. Kenji and Reina bid farewell to each other and went to their separate apartments.
The next day, morning muster was cancelled, everyone sleeping in instead. Reina was sitting alone in the plaza, reflecting upon the events of the day before. Kenji soon approached, yawning while playing on his phone, spear loosely attached to his back.
"Morning," Reina greeted.
"Mornin'," Kenji's voice was still slurred from sleepiness, and his eyes never left his phone game. "What'll we do today now that training's cancelled?"
"Well, I think that you should polish your spear." They both glanced at dirty, damaged spear that was haphazardly thrown onto his floor as he went to bed the previous night.
"You know, I think I will polish it." He put away his phone and took a washrag that Reina offered.
.
.
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Author's Note:
Wow this dumb idea turned into almost four thousand words in one evening. I just thought it was so stupid when, in the anime, they weighed an entire aircraft carrier down to sink it, and released the ballast, just to pop out of the ocean to spear the enemy unknowns. Spears are like 10000BC weapons, so all this fancy maneuvering just to spear them was a topic of much hilarity with the friend I was watching this with.
So, the plot in this fanfic is just as stupid as the events in the show. I consider this writing practice in lieu of other useful things I could've done with this evening.