Authors' Notes: So here we finally get to the onscreen botes… and the first of the two main heresies this fic perpetrates against the usual KanColle interpretations. If you want to try guessing, here's a hint: The abyssal supreme commander's theme, as first shown in the prologue. The source thereof, to be specific.
Also, you get the main reason why part of the setting was changed to New York City rather than Tokyo.
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CHAPTER THREE
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1 month later
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"Uileag Shane Greer!" Ayaka shouted as she stormed into the hospital room.
The man in question turned from his family to her, a deer in the headlights look on his face. "Er, hi, Ayachi."
"Don't 'Hi Ayachi' me you reckless idiot!"
Ciarán artfully concealed a chuckle in a cough.
Ayaka stretched her arms out to shake him, then thought better of potentially aggravating his condition and settled for rattling the safety rail to his bed instead. "What were you thinking?!"
The first week had passed futilely. Yoshimichi had shown up as promised to offer his support, but there had been no sign of stirring in Uileag's form, and Ayaka had had to return to New York with a heavy heart. On the day they were going to fly back, Ayaka had paused at the door on the way out of the hospital room, her gaze silently lingering on him.
{Are you scared he'll…} Yoshimichi paused. {That he'll die while you're away, like-}
"Ms Nijimi wanted me to tell you this before she passed on, Sir," the nurse on the line said. "'This is not farewell.'"
{Like Mom?} Ayaka whispered.
Yoshimichi hung his head. {Yes.}
The Greers had promised to contact her as soon as there was any change in his condition, for better or worse. A second passed; she called them every day to no avail. A third, during which he had become stable enough to be downgraded out of intensive care, but showed no other sign of regaining consciousness. It was only during the fourth that she had been called to inform her that Uileag had finally returned to the land of the waking, and she had caught the first flight out as soon as she could clear it with her boss and get one.
"I-I couldn't leave anyone to die," Uileag said.
"But at the cost of your own life?!" Ayaka asked. "What profit you if you save the whole world and lose your soul?!"
Uileag averted his eyes, unable to come up with an answer he thought was satisfactory.
Ayaka sagged like a deflating balloon. Fire gone from her eyes and voice, she said, "Please don't do that to your family again." Her gaze fell away from his face. "To me," she added, much more softly.
Uileag shifted uncomfortably in the bed. "I'll...try not to."
"Hmph. Apology accepted."
Uileag blinked. "What-oh. Oh."
Ayaka turned back to him. "You're still an idiot, though."
Uileag laughed. "I love you too, Ayachi."
As she laughed back, Ciarán looked at the rest of the Greers and whispered, "Let's give the lovebirds some space."
"But-"
"Not a word," Mrs Greer hushed Mr Greer. "Ayaka and Uileag are good kids. They're not going to do anything naughty while our backs are turned."
They tiptoed out of the room, Ciarán's grinning sisters pushing a reluctant Mr Greer, and shut the door quietly behind them.
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April 19 2023
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Was it already 4 months?
Ayaka was sometimes still amazed by how quickly people had gotten used to the new normal. Thousands had had their lives forever changed by one night of terror and the running battles in the following days, loved ones either lost to them or wounded so physically or psychologically they might as well have been, but life had gone on for almost everyone else in the US.
Distantly, she knew that there were parts of the world that were still daily under threat if not outright depopulated, their people slain or turned into refugees - places like Singapore, Malta, Indonesia, too many islands in the Caribbean and Pacific among others - by the seaborne scourge responsible for the New Date of Infamy. Even larger, better-defended island nations like Japan or the United Kingdom lived in fear of getting their sea lanes cut off.
All this was far from her mind on this night, though. Far from most Americans', frankly. For nations with vast inland hinterlands like theirs, China or Russia, the threat of being starved out by sea was nowhere as dire. Sure, there were artillery pieces along the coastline, particularly near Fort Hamilton, and anti-aircraft weapons every few blocks, for what they were worth, but most people had quickly learned to shrug and carry on. It probably helped that the End of Terror had been recent enough that people still remembered how the bad old days preceding it had been, and thus developed some desensitisation. Furthermore, the nebulous aquatic nature of the threat, combined with the navy's great losses, meant that a draft was of little use at best without a terrestrial territory-holding foe to be thrown at, so only the most diehard advocates had even tried pushing one through. Similarly, the lack of a clear target to direct righteous anger at, unlike First Pearl, meant the lines at recruitment offices were not so long as they might have been otherwise.
Right now, she was on her way back from work. Idly, she noted that though Uileag had regained consciousness at the end of the first month, it had taken two months before the doctors had deemed his condition good enough to be discharged, that his organs would not spontaneously fail on him, complete with rehabilitation and physiotherapy to ensure he had not forgotten how to walk. Now he was on convalescent leave back home in New York.
The evening sky, shifting from dusk to twilight, was getting overcast and she reflexively checked her bag for her umbrella, despite knowing full well that the gesture would not have made a difference if it were not actually there.
Ayaka slowed her pace and turned her head. This was not, strictly speaking, the most direct path home from work, but a slight detour that included a stretch of walking taking her past the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It always seemed to call out to her, ask her to linger a bit longer.
Frankly, she had no idea why. The lush countryside of lost Imamura had been far from any industrial zone, and for all her close friendship with Morrie, she had never cared for the machinery Morikawa Construction used in their construction trade. Neither had she been much fan of ships; nestled well inland, for her youth, the sea had been a nigh-mythical place. The banks of Lake Imamura were a whole different kettle of fish from the beaches facing the Atlantic, the latter being only visited on the rare occasions where time and money had permitted, and even those had dried up after-
After-
After Mom's death and everything falling apart.
Ayaka forced herself to complete the thought as she had been taught by the counselling, rather than running from it.
Yet there was something about this shipyard that kept drawing her eye. Ayaka racked her brain, trying to recall what she knew about it. Not much, admittedly. Also known as the United States Navy Yard and New York Naval Shipyard, it had been a major producer of ships during World War 2, but had eventually been closed and given over to non-nautical commercial use. With war afoot once more, it was being brought back into military service to help replenish the navy's numbers.
None of that explained why she was drawn to it.
Trying to put the thought out of her mind, she turned back to the path-
What was that noise?
A droning sound, like a propeller plane-
Confusion gave way to horrified realisation in time for her to hear high-pitched whistling, and she threw herself to the ground.
Thunderclaps to her side, bright flashes, and she achingly rolled onto her left to see the Brooklyn Navy Yard under attack.
Ayaka placed one hand on the ground and pushed herself back to her feet. Her hand took hold of her phone to start finding the nearest bomb shelter - and then she stumbled.
{Furi Original Soundtrack feat. Carpenter Brut - Time to Wake Up}
YouTube watch?v=DyyhWQ1t2QM
Wake up.
"What?" Ayaka looked around, confused. "Who said that?"
Wake up.
Wake up.
Rise and shine, Ms Wallace. Rise and shine.
Oh, but you have not answered to that name in 33 years, have you? No, you go by a different name nowadays, after trading steel for flesh and oil for blood.
Not that I wish to imply that you have been sleeping on the job, or worse, are guilty of dereliction of duty, though some might take issue with your present model. No one is more deserving of rest, not after that wound that marked the end of your career, a similar one which killed a peer, and not when the decision to put you out to pasture, on the other end of a continent, was never in your own hands.
Let's just say your hour come round at last. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Which might you be?
The right woman in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.
So, wake up, Ms Wallace.
Wake up and smell the ashes.
Then there was heat.
A warmth, deep in her chest but spreading quickly to suffuse her entire being, and it was suddenly clear what she had to do next. She skipped the search for a shelter and went straight to messaging both Uileag and her family that she was on the way to one and they need not worry, she would be fine and contact them as soon as it was safe.
Then she turned the other way, even as air raid sirens finally began wailing, and ran straight for the shipyard. Her mind filled with knowledge of how to get in, go through and around any possible obstacles, and she ran.
Water. She needed to reach the water.
Long legs ate up the distance. Her height had always been a boon when running, but this-this was on a whole different level. Almost like flying.
The shipyard was chaos and fire and shouting, but if anyone noticed the giant beanstalk blazing past at speeds to give Usain Bolt a run for his money, no sign of it came her way. Or maybe any observers were too confused by the sight and dismissed it as a hallucination.
There was no hesitation, only a clear path in her mind guiding her through the mess of a shipyard in the midst of being converted back to military production, and she followed it unerringly, without breaking stride for anything.
Down the nearest pier.
Leap.
Soar through the air with the ease of a long-jumper.
Land easily on the water, with minimal muss.
Turn to face the Upper Bay even while sliding.
And then-
Light.
{Kimi no Na Wa./your name. Original Soundtrack - Kuchikamizake Trip}
Spotify track/5cxHHNR1GoptDrljqMX5EO
Her world burst into a painted, vaguely pastel aesthetic, and something compelled her to look up.
"It's full of stars…"
And so it was. Yet that failed to do the vista justice. There had been plenty of beautiful starry skies out in the countryside, but this… this was beyond dazzling. More than just what photos showed the aurora borealis to look like, this was something that went beyond the simply, mundanely material into something positively supernal. One star twinkled.
There was a gentle tugging sensation on her hair, and she turned as an ethereal blue thread extended from one end of the braided cord she was wearing. It shot off into the distant west, disappearing past the horizon, until it made contact with something.
Old, a relic of a bygone era, and yet young by the standards of its peers. No, her. Her peers. Large, mighty, yet deceptively fleet-footed. Superficially content in slumber, but somehow a most melancholy on closer inspection, like she had gone through life with part of her purpose unfulfilled, relegated to playing second fiddle. Haunted by an old wound that had been hastily patched over, never properly healed.
She felt familiar, like an old friend once forgotten.
No, closer than that.
Family?
No, closer still. A part of herself, lost, detached, discarded not all willingly even, now reunited.
A bolt of something crashed into her from above, and she jerked and convulsed. She had experienced electrostatic shock before, but this was not just a short tingle, a momentary discomfort. It was a sustained rapid that surged throughout her whole self, singing and thrumming through her blood vessels, yet unlike what she thought electrocution would be, it did not hurt more than a bit. The warmth became a deep, consuming heat across her whole body, but a good kind of fire, like that of a salve soothing an overtaxed muscle.
Power.
Hers.
{Iron Man Original Soundtrack - Driving with the Top Down}
YouTube watch?v=I9PhfUsFvj0
Metal formed seemingly out of thin air and clamped itself onto her back and waist over her clothes, firmly and snugly, and began to unfold, spawning more and more material from who knows where. A piece shot backwards a short distance and began to unfold while rising, details taking shape, until it became recognisable as a ship's stack. From the sides of the centrepiece grew four arms. The lower two curved forward to nearly encircle her, forming two halves of a ship's bow, grey at the top and red at the bottom. Two anchors, cute in their toylike size, were mounted near the tips. Less cute were the turrets, one on each arm, the size of her torso and sporting three barrels, with smaller cannon on top. Anti-aircraft cannon rose from the decks. The end of the top right arm transformed into a third three-gun turret, and the last sprouted a ship's stern with two catapults for floatplanes and more smaller cannon. Despite its seeming bulk, it did not feel one bit like a burden. Nay, it belonged like a regained limb.
As the rigging finished taking shape, she became aware of Lilliputian beings moving within it, "fairies" rushing to take their intended positions, running through last-minute checks.
ESTABLISHING BATTLEFIELD CONTROL
The fire she had been feeling sparked and burst in her chest, roared to life as enginemen fairies got all eight boilers hot and the stack on her rigging began puffing away merrily. In one sense, it was the first time ever; yet in another, it was the first in over three decades.
BOILERS ONLINE
She flicked her right arm out and a white handle appeared in her empty hand, unfolding rapidly into a blue umbrella, one she pushed open and held up. Her vision expanded in a rush, letting her "see" far beyond what she had previously been capable of, giving range and bearing on the bombers that were banking to turn away after dropping their payloads. Despite their toylike dimensions, she could see them as surely as if they were full-sized. Not so, apparently, for the surface-to-air missiles that clawed for them but exploded short or long, if even anywhere remotely near at all.
SENSORS ONLINE
Speaking of hostiles...
Turrets spun on their mounts, barrels moving up and down with the effortless ease of wiggling toes. Fairies loaded shells and powder, primed all guns big and small to fire.
WEAPONS ONLINE
Diagnostics were ran through and came back all green.
ALL SYSTEMS NOMINAL
SUPERNAL UPLINK SUCCESSFUL
WELCOME BACK
She turned to look at the burning Brooklyn Naval Yard and lowered her eyes even as something gave way yawningly and collapsed with a loud crash. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I'm home at last," she said mournfully, free hand raised to her chest. Despite the years and changes, it was still her cradle, and it saddened her to see it ruined so.
Turning back to the way ahead, the East River leading to the Upper New York Bay, she wiggled her cannons again. "Good to see you well again, Number Two," she said, stroking the turret in question like a long-lost pet. "1940s configuration again… A pity. I wish I had had the chance to play with the Harpoons and Tomahawks back then," she continued, a touch wistfully. "Hm?" Something at the back of her mind caught her attention and she pulled it to the fore. "I don't remember that being like this before." Confused, she put it aside for the moment and went back to what she knew. "All ahead full. Take us to flank speed."
"All ahead full, aye," the engineering officer fairy of the watch echoed, and she smoothly accelerated to 32 knots.
Simultaneously, a toy-sized OS2U Kingfisher shot forward on its catapult and hurtled into the air, turning to fly ahead of her.
It did not take long before a string of Morse code came back. "Renner. Sight one ship… Destroyer, I-class, DB003552. Sierra Echo Tango, over."
She hardly had time to focus on bringing what it saw up before she cleared the Brooklyn Bridge and got her first look at an abyssal in the flesh, serving picket duty in the Upper Bay on one side of Governors Island.
Call them "abyssals", "deep sea fleet", "shinkaisei-kan" or whatever you like, these monsters had turned the night of 7th December 2022 into a charnel house. What she was looking at certainly was an abomination. It vaguely resembled a cetacea if H. R. Giger had had his way with it. Sleek black armour instead of or fully covering skin, two green lights for eyes, oversized, vaguely human teeth not covered by lips. No visible engine or stacks.
Her radio caught some kind of spine-chilling demonic, distorted screech. A distress signal, or a war cry? Such curiosity was quickly shunted to the back of her mind as the monster opened its mouth and began lobbing shells from a recessed cannon, simultaneously releasing torpedoes from hastily-unshadowed launchers, even as it turned swiftly and started opening the distance. Fleeing, presumably, for the rest of its battle group.
Therein lay the problem with combating abyssals using conventional methods. Mankind had learned at great cost on the New Date of Infamy and the subsequent running battles that the creatures had the durability and speed of warships, yet the sensor signature and agility of the smaller forms they boasted. Normal antiship weapons had difficulty getting a lock, never mind landing hits on them - beyond visual range missiles were pretty much a write off. Even this type, big enough to swallow a child, was still smaller than the destroyers it supposedly imitated and much more dextrous, judging from how it turned nearly 180 degrees while letting its inertia carry it back, and kept firing all the while.
Speaking of firing, bad enough that even the modest 5 inch rounds this thing fired tore through nigh-unarmoured modern ships it caught like a fist through wet tissue. Worse that the cadence of the creature's cannon was like the beat of an enthusiastic drummer, and it was putting fish in the water not much slower.
Which made it a good thing she could play that game too, did it not?
It was easy as moving a muscle to designate the target and get her own secondary cannons roaring back even as she altered her course to the right, shells and torpedoes whizzing past. The waves scattered from the blast front as her counter-fire tore through the air.
Some distant part of her insisted her eardrums should have been ruptured by all this.
Run, run.
The I-class threw itself into a zigzag course in an attempt to throw off her aim.
Not good enough.
Radar-guided shells sliced through its hide and went off. Torn apart, its carcass was quickly claimed by the water.
Now, where was the-
"Renner. Sight five ships. Battleship, Ru-class, one. Standard carrier, Wo-class, one. Destroyer, I-class, three. DB019081. Sierra Echo Tango, over."
Now she had time to call up the feed from the scout, and a corner of her field of view filled with the sight. Now familiar were the three whale-things. Not so the other two, more humanlike figures. The Japan Self-Defence Force had been the first to get a grip on the situation, and had quickly designated known abyssal types according to the conventional ship types they most closely resembled in capability and function according to the iroha sequence. Although some resistance had been faced, the rest of the world had quickly fell in line, and public information announcements had quickly disseminated their appearances.
The Ru was a black-haired, aqua-eyed, bone-pale "woman" in a short-sleeved grey blouse, black vest and slacks with shoulder-mounted cannons and two shield-things with multiple cannons installed.
The Wo was silver-haired, with black pants, gloves and high heels over a white bodysuit that had a collar like a lower jaw, complete with teeth. She held a black cane with a crook, but most prominent was the xenomorph/jellyfish thing with tentacles and small cannon that she wore on her head.
Five ships, two of them capitals. That could be a problem. Plus that bearing meant there were plenty of buildings in the way, so she had no clear line of sight for her radar.
Nothing for it but to make the best of her spotter. The main cannons spun to face the designated spot and began pounding out a beat, more sedate than the secondaries but still faster than what she had been able to do last time.
"Renner, adjust fire..."
"Renner, adjust fire…"
"Renner, adjust fire…"
Despite herself, she was feeling the stirrings of frustration. Was she really that pathetic without radar?
She nearly missed when another sequence of Morse suddenly hit again, even as the scout's view swerved violently. "Renner, unable to maintain contact."
Translation: the scout had been made and she could expect trouble.
Great. Now she was effectively blind.
Not long after, the drone of propellers alerted her to incoming planes once more. The view from the scout dipped and shook left and right as it dived hard for the water, desperately trading height for speed even as it twisted this way and that to throw off the aim of the two enemy aircraft in hot pursuit, but the streams of bullets were coming ever closer.
Fortunately, so was she.
As soon as they got within range of her secondaries, the said guns started firing again. A bit nearer and the anti-aircraft cannon joined in, turning the air inhospitable, and the enemy planes turned into confetti.
The Kingfisher was wobbling from nonfatal hits, and she scooped it up in a hand and put it back in place, where crew fairies hurried to fuss over it. Now at rest, the view from it winked out.
Insistent warning tones rang, and she quickly changed course even as she tried to spot what was-
Shells whistled through the air, the water displacing loudly in great spouts where they missed, not nearly far enough for her liking.
The enemy planes must have gotten off a message before she had managed to destroy them, and the battleship must have received it.
Correction, first wave of enemy planes. There was a second wave inbound, much thicker this time, and one that had bombers.
At least the battleship's fire was giving her guns something to work with in trying to do counter-battery work. The buildings were still obstructing her radar, and sending her scouts back out now was sending sheep to the slaughter.
This was still secondhand information, though, trying to figure out where the Ru was by calculating the paths of its fire and guesstimating where it would be when her own shells arrived rather than blindly aiming at where it was and would no longer be. The continued rain of 16 inch shells meant her message obviously was not getting across.
The guns on the leading fighters buzzed as they bore down on her, kicking up the water where their shots missed. Behind them, dive bombers swooped like birds of prey, shrieking in from high and dropping their deadly payloads, while torpedo bombers hugged the waves to release torpedoes. Even as she turned towards them so they would overshoot, the battleship shells kept coming. From their paths, it seemed to be closing the range. Those blasted scouts - well, she had difficulty telling one abyssal plane type from another, but from the way it was doing pylon turns safely out of reach of her 5-inchers, it had to be a scout - were too far for anything other than her 16-inchers to touch, and those were not agile enough to hit. She was just not splashing bandits fast enough. Things were, to put lightly, getting hairy.
Then the shells coming over the horizon seemed to spontaneously multiply out of control, even as she finally gained line of sight on the abyssals, and she was taken aback. What witchcraft was this? Had she just entered 5-inch range or was there something else going on? She might have had nine Mark 12s, but the battleship and destroyers combined had around thrice that throw weight, and while 5-inch shells could not directly penetrate her belt, she had no interest in taking any to less-armoured areas. Never mind the fact that the sudden increase in rate of fire might not be just due to entering 5-inch range. Not like the utter saturation of the air was giving her much say in the matter, and she grit her teeth, bracing in preparation for taking hits.
The inexplicable oddity from before pulsed, drawing her attention once more, and with little to lose she turned her consciousness inward, trusting in the fairies even as she clawed for it, desperate for options.
She got them.
A fresh wave of bombers approached, spitting bombs, bullets and torpedoes, while the ships kept laying out shells like Izanami's own firehose - wait what - and even if they had not steadily been drawing the noose tight, sheer weight of fire might have led to something connecting.
Then she Stepped.
Abyssal aircraft wobbled from left to right, trying to figure out where she had gone. They got their answer when a barrage of 5in shells and smaller rounds swept them from the sky. The Ru snapped its head around to the left, finding its would-be prey hundreds of metres from the killbox that had been painstakingly set up. Confused by what had just happened, the next front of steel rain was nowhere as thick.
As said set of shells fell from the sky, she momentarily caught sight of two big ones following a number of smaller ones, the smaller ones throwing up water where they missed, even as the dark clouds temporarily parted to let some light from the setting sun in, and for a moment—
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Next time on Kimi no Na Iowa:
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Wait.
That never happened. Not like that.
Wait.
What never happened?
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Ayaka stared, uncomprehending, ahead of herself.
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"Explain this B, young man."
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Gone like a letter swept away by the wind.
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"Today's a big day."
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People forgot. So easily did people forget.
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"Look to the sky. Therein lies your answer."
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Ayaka started, even as she noticed her surroundings distort and flicker.
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"I am here."
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Authors' Notes:
Credit to NGTM-1R for helping with the scout plane contact report protocol.
So, the answer to the question at the start:
More dakka and teleportation inspired by Furi.
In case it wasn't obvious, the aforementioned main reason for moving things to NYC instead of Tokyo is because Iowa was laid down at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
The original plan did not have the 1 month after segment, but after Chapter 2 became a thing, it seemed a natural progression.