So I go an interesting PM from a certain someone who will not be named, but I do want to address the fact of H44 being overpowered. It's quite simple actually why he is.
The Kriegsmarine just designed the ship that way. The war was already going south and the German Navy was already all but destroyed, so when Hitler came to the navy and asked for a ship design, the designers took three shots of whiskey, then each of them downed a bottle of Grey Goose, took some LSD, and boom: H44's design. So he's overpowered. But the H44 was never deployed, so in the saying of one of my favorite characters:
Oh well, what the hell.
Kure Naval Yards
H44 looked left, then he looked right, then he looked up, then left again. He was determined not to be ambushed by the...the...Russo-Japanese hybrid thing. What was her name?
Hibiki.
He shivered in horror when he heard that name. H44 dreaded it so very much. So now, he always went and did his business with paranoia in his veins and his armor on his body. He felt he was under watch everyday. They were going to kill him, everyone was out to get him. He couldn't live his life like this! He had run for three days it seemed. He ducked, he rolled, and hid his way whenever he went somewhere. How? No one really knows. Regardless, he had to get out of there, he couldn't stand another minute of this-
"H44, why are you the docks? And monologuing no less?"
Ah yes, the ever so vigilant looker, Yamato. The heaviest-
"I'm right here, you know."
Second heaviest ship in the Kure Naval Yards. Unless Kongou was right about the Admiral packing 'serious heat', he was sure he was the heaviest.
"You're still not answering my questions." Yamato continued.
H44 turned to face her, his body still submerged with only his head above water. "I am hiding." He responded, "And the monologue is necessary."
"Why?"
"You ever read story with no exposition?"
"No."
"Exactly."
Yamato sighed, "Still, you really shouldn't be in there, you'll catch a cold."
"I can't leave, the russian hasn't found me yet while I've been here, so I will stay."
"To be fair, H44, the meeting was only an hour ago."
He turned away from Yamato. H44 knew it was three days, why would he be cold otherwise?
"You're monologuing again, why in third person? Nevermind, just get out."
H44 turned to Yamato once more. "About that…"
Later…
H44 walked into the Fifth Carrier Group's room, still soaking wet from Yamato pulling him out of the dock waters. How was he supposed to know that he would sink? Stupid water and it's stupid properties. As H44 was walking into the room, he was hit with an unidentified projectile at mach spit that caused him to fly out of the room and for the Admiral to raise the number of combat missions to fifty.
(Wait a minute…)
H44 looked down to see it was Kongou who had hit him, and she was blubbering about him being gone for three days and how he should've come back and that she was sorry for making fun of him about the Russian thing.
He also swore he heard Yamato shout something about the meeting being the same day as today.
"Where were you?!" Kongou shouted/asked the now on the floor battleship.
"The harbor." H44 answered.
"Where?"
"In it."
"Why?"
"Russian."
"You know she's japanese, right?"
"But she spoke-"
"When I speak english-"
"You call that english?"
"Does that make me an english person?" She asked him.
"...No." H44 answered softly.
"Thought so, now get off the floor. We're having a team meeting." She said, getting off him. H44 stood up, dusted himself off, and followed Kongou back into the room. The whole carrier group was there, sitting on pillows in the middle of the room. Haruna was serving tea while Kaga and Akagi were looking over some papers. Fubuki and Yudachi were talking in some hushed tones while Kongou dragged H44 to his seat that was in between her and Shimakaze. He sighed, and sat down.
"Alrighty, now that we're all here, we can address the purpose of this meeting." Akagi started, "We were going to have the Admiral tell us, but he's busy doing something that has taken up all his time for the next week."
At the same time, in the Admiral's office…
"General Nagato, shall we commence the simulation?" The Admiral asked his esteemed aide.
"Yes, Field Marshall Admiral." Said aide responded.
"Alright, here goes nothing." The Admiral said as he clicked his mouse, thus beginning his session of his favorite video game.
"I love Heart's of Iron." Was all he said.
Back at the dorms…
"In a few weeks, the main fleets of the other three Kanmusu commands will be meeting here to discuss a grand strategy to push the Abyssals back into a controllable territory." Kaga announced, getting reactions of surprise from the whole group.
H44 raised his hand. "Question?"
"Yes, H44?"
"Does that mean the British and American Kanmusu are coming?" H44 asked.
"Yes, it does mean that." Akagi answered. H44's face went slack, fainting and falling back onto the floor. Akagi continued, "As H44 has asked, the Kanmusu of America and Britain are coming, but this does include the Kanmusu of the Germany as well.
With that, H44 shot back up immediately. "The Kriegsmarine is coming?!"
"Yes."
"Now I'm listening."
Kongou snickered beside him, "You got a girlfriend there or something?"
"No, I have never actually have seen any of the ships from the Kriegsmarine. I wonder what was built? I was never built, but I know Bismarck was started and finished before I was even thought of, along with Prinz Eugen and some destroyers. Wonder if she or any others made it?"
Kaga repressed a shudder, and was happy H44 didn't turn out like the Kriegsmarine ships she knew of. "I wouldn't worry about that now. But while I'll understand the British ships make you uneasy, your navy never really fought the American one."
H44 thought back on it. "The US ships I saw were ones commissioned in the 1910s, so I don't know too much about the US actually helping us."
The temp in the room dropped a lot, and H44 slightly shivered, what did he say?
"H44, which ships do you remember from the USN?" Kaga asked, her voice straight, as if asking a question but already knew what he was going to say.
"I remember Nevada and Texas, but that's it." He answered, "The only ones who could help-"
"H44, the majority of the USN's new ships were deployed to the Pacific. The German navy would've been no match for them." Haruna answered, her voice hiding fear. "You ever hear about Midway? Or Leyte Gulf?"
"No, wrong theater for me…"
"The USN absolutely destroyed the Japanese, naval wise, in these battles. We lost 4 carriers at Midway and essentially the rest of the Navy was destroyed in Leyte. The USN unleashed it's newest carriers and the newest battleships on us. The names you might hear a lot at the meeting are Enterprise, Iowa, Missouri, and Indianapolis to name a few." Haruna continued, though the carrier group seem to fear the first name a lot more instead of the rest. "They deal a lot of damage, and have the numbers to back it up. The names are just the famous ones. The rest usually stay back."
"So the USN threw the crap at us because we didn't have a navy?" H44 asked. And when the whole group nodded, H44 paled. Then fell back to the floor. "Screw this, I want a combat mission instead."
"Not happening." Kongou said, "We need you to translate for the Kriegsmarine since absolutely none of us speak it."
"Is this the first time this type of meeting has happened?"
"Yes." They all answered at once.
"Oh, I can see this going perfectly well."
Yes, that is going to happen. And yes, I will butcher everyone's characteristics. If you don't want that, I would recommend someone sending me a PM on what the other Kanmusu are like. It'll be fun.
And while this entire seems like on big omake, here's one based from one of my favorite books. If you want to see one, PM me an idea.
Omake- H4mmond
And suddenly it all made sense.
Why not every night, indeed? It made sense to cry out in pain every night. It made more sense than Fubuki, who was a stickler for regulations and had ordered Kisaragi to order H44 to take his Atabrine tablets on the flight overseas after H44 and Fubuki stopped talking to each other. Mutsuki made more sense than Kisaragi, too, who was dead, dumped unceremoniously into doom over W Island after H44 took his planes in for a second time over the target. His group had missed the bridge at W Island again for the seventh straight day with the bombsight that could put bombs into a pickle barrel at forty thousand feet. Kisaragi was a skinny, harmless kid from (Redacted) who only wanted to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading an ambition. Instead of being liked, she was dead. She had died on the seventh day, when God rested, when Shimakaze guided H44 over the target because Haruna got confused on where they were and H44 had been unable to drop his bombs the first time.
"I guess we have to go back again, don't we?" Shimakaze asked over the intercomm.
"I guess we do," Said H44.
"Do we?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, well," sang Shimakaze, "what the hell."
And back they went.
Colonel Taiho had courage and never hesitated to volunteer her group for any target. No target was too difficult for them, just like no shot was too difficult for Fubuki to handle at the ping pong table. Twenty one serves was all it took for Fubuki to finish anyone.
Except when it came to Yudachi, who had gotten tipsy on sake and juice and smashed Fubuki's head open after she had beaten back each of Yudachi's five serves. Pandemonium broke loose. It took almost a full minute for Fubuki to disentangle herself from Yudachi's flailing limbs, and at that moment H44 stepped forward and took Yudachi away from Fubuki. It was a night full of surprises for Fubuki, who was smaller than H44 and weaker, but she took a swing at H44 as hard as she could which flooded Chief White Hiei with such joyous excitement that she busted Kongou in the nose which filled the Admiral with such mellow gratification that he threw Yamato out of the officer's club and moved Chief White Hiei into Doc Shokaku's tent so that she could be under her care 24/7 so Chief White Hiei could bust Kongou's nose whenever the Admiral, Nagato, and Kongou came down from HQ, sometimes the trio would make special trips just for that specific reason. When H44 talked to Shimakaze and Yudachi about, they both made no comment. But when H44 talked to Doc Shokaku about, she was up in arms about.
"Of course Mutsuki has nightmares, but what about her? What about me? I was making 50k a month until this stupid war started, had no taxes since everyone paid in cash, a good life of mine till they weaponized fascism. And don't get me started about Hiei, she keeps going on about how she's gonna die of pneumonia in the winter. Does that make sense?"
"Of course it doesn't make sense." said Akagi after H44 related what Doc Shokaku, "But she owns a share of the syndicate, so I don't care. Do you understand?"
But H44 couldn't understand how Akagi bought eggs for seven cents apiece in Malta and then sell them for four cents apiece here and still make a profit.
(Credit goes to Catch-22)