Samurai Shipgirl Sea Stories Chapter 11: Vignette: Canada's First Shipgirl, a kantai collection fanfic

MUSICAL NOTE: Heart of Oak (1760), composed by William Boyce, lyrics by David Garrick.

NOTE: This short includes situations from Harry Potter, created by Joanna Rowling. This story is also influenced by the Harry Potter/Kantai Collection shorts written by Harry Leferts at the Sufficient Velocity forms. This short serves as a background story to all my writings concerning Canadian shipgirls.

Ottawa, Rideau Hall...

"I PROTEST THIS!"

"Protest this all you want, but you have no right anymore to direct our response to this current threat! Given the abject failure of your teams to deal with the Abyssals - to say anything of your paranoia concerning keeping your precious secrecy statute intact when it's become more than obvious to the world that magic exists! - we'll be handling this situation!" With that, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then pulled out a rolled sheet of parchment to show the flustered Minister of Magical Affairs, turning it to reveal the wax sigil keeping the ribbon held in place. The sigil bearing the image of the Great Seal of the Dominion of Canada, it bordered with magical runes that immediately told the flustered wizard before the son of one of the Dominion's greatest political leaders that Trudeau had gone straight to the Queen.

"That's against the Statute...!" he sputtered out.

Staring at the flustered native of Edmonton, Trudeau sighed. "Professor, you forget that the Separation Acts of 1692 and 1867 contain loyalty clauses to the Crown, which allowed those people in Parliament back in Britain aware of what your predecessors wanted to do with the Statute to better accept it being put into effect to protect both sides. And for the most part, the Statute has been honoured by your people. But these things that just wrecked the Navy and saw dozens of coastal villages destroyed are too powerful for your people to fight. We have to do this together without panicking about Statute violations or forcing too much work on the Obliviators. How many magicals could have been saved if Army snipers had been there to help kill those things while they were trying to kill innocent people? Believe me, the word is getting out...but thanks to what the Japanese have just discovered, there's a way out for all of us." He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Professor, but the current state of relations between magical and normal worldwide has changed. Most normal people have heard of the shipgirls and they're fully accepting of them given how much work they've done to open the sea lanes and protect coastal towns. Could you imagine how the public would react if they learned of how much your people, especially those in 'W' Division, have sacrificed for them?"

That made the minister gape before he felt the squeeze of his chief law enforcement officer's hand on his shoulder, then he reached for the parchment. Opening it, he gazed at the words written there that would have members of the Canadian Wizengamot in Québec City spitting in outrage at having their power to legislate over magical affairs ripped from them and handed to the Department of National Defence (on behalf of the Royal Canadian Navy), the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (for the Canadian Coast Guard) and the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police)...before his eyes and his magic focused on the four words that ended the long statement that would ensure no interference from Canadian magicals of all stripes when it came to the country's soon-to-be reborn warships...

La Reine le Veult.

The Queen wills it.

Thanks to the prefaces of the original Separation Act of 1682 and the follow-on Separation Act in Right of the Dominion of Canada of 1867, there was no denying the wishes of the Crown.

Nodding slowly, he rolled up the parchment...before a relieved smile crossed his face. "This actually makes my job a lot easier," he confessed. "Once they hear this..."

Trudeau nodded; he had been told by his predecessor how much Wizengamot interference in the way that the Ministry of Magical Affairs conducted its operations had hampered a lot before the appeal was made to Buckingham Palace to drop a Magical Royal Proclamation in Right of Canada and shut the Wizengamot up once and for all time about this. "Fine. We should have the first shipgirl summoned soon; the work on the chamber in Cornwallis is almost finished."

"Why Cornwallis?" the chief superintendent of "W" Division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - the only magical law enforcement agency that made their officers train alongside their normal counterparts at "Depot" Division in Regina; doing such had always had the leaders of the International Confederation of Wizards tearing their beards out at the potential Statute threats even if the people who had set that project into motion in 1920 had done it to prevent the type of insane arrogance developing among Canadian magicals as had developed over the years in Britain and other nations - then asked. "You had the base shut down in the 1990s..."

"It is the traditional training depot of the Navy," the Governor General cut in from his seat at the head of the reception room where medals and decorations were awarded by the Dominion's de facto head-of-state. "Many of those brave sailors who sailed in their corvettes to escort the convoys to Europe went through basic training there. Given that the Japanese focused on bringing their Imperial Navy back as shipgirls, we decided to follow suit."

The visiting magicals nodded...

Canadian Forces Base Cornwallis in Nova Scotia, a month later...

"So it's ready?"

"Yes, Admiral Harlan, it's ready," the Japanese scientist who had flown to Canada to help with the Dominion's own kanmusu project affirmed with a nod, though he was gazing at the devices built in the old base's massive drill hall with a touch of trepidation. "Still..."

Hearing that warning tone in the man's voice, Rear Admiral Francis Drake Harlan chuckled as he stood up from his chair to gaze upon the device that would be the Dominion's salvation from those dark sea spirits that had risen up years ago to ravage humanity at will both on the oceans and in countless shore villages, towns and cities all over the world. He had been the Commander of the Canadian Atlantic Fleet when said fleet had been wrecked to the last ship in the Battle of Sable Island two years ago; the few survivors of that battle had been saved when Royal Canadian Air Force CF-188 Hornets from 425e Escadron in Bagotville had dropped fuel air bombs upon the Abyssals to literally burn them to death, allowing CH-124 Sea Kings and CH-148 Cyclones from 423 Squadron in Shearwater, plus the Canadian Coast Guard, to rescue survivors. Ever since that time, the magical "W" Division of the Mounties had been pretty much holding the line in concert with the Air Force and whatever Army units could be spared for coastal defence.

"Professor, our native mysticism is a little different than yours," the native of Tadoussac in Québec stated. He was a twenty-five year veteran of the Royal Canadian Navy, a MARS officer by training who had commanded everything the senior service of the Canadian Forces had put to sea along with the normal shore and staff college assignments. He was now in a new position at Navy Headquarters in Ottawa which had been given a traditional title in light of what was now being planned: Flag Officer Shipgirl Forces. "Since the First Nations, the Métis and the Inuit have shed blood in dealing with the Abyssals, they wanted to help out. And with that Magical Royal Proclamation having shut up the stuffed shirts in the Wizengamot in Québec City, we can finally get our fighting forces back into the game and get those things away from us."

Hearing that, the other man nodded. "Well, I think it's time..."

With that, he walked over to the main monitoring station, put up on a raised platform at the starboard end of the drill hall. The summoning chamber here was built as an inclined ramp into the enchanted basin and not with ladders at one end to force the shipgirl to climb her way out of the pool to report. Milling about on the stands set off to both sides of the summoning pool were sailors, many of them survivors of the Battle of Sable Island who had been convalescing in Halifax before they were asked to help restore Cornwallis back as a training base. Also there were members of the Stadacona Band of the Royal Canadian Navy, who would play the music that would hopefully entice the ship spirits in That Place where they resided to come back as human beings. Of course, given the additional magical help needed to get this unit operational, native mystics were there from many of the First Nations as well as the Inuit. One of them was currently holding a beautiful eagle staff that had been prepared by all the eastern communities...and blessed in the blood of the survivors of Sabre Island; said staff would be gifted in perpetuity to Maritime Forces Atlantic for use by the soon-to-return shipgirls.

Blood magic...

The Europeans had shied from using that even now that they had been forced at gunpoint to back off from harassing the navies of NATO as they tried to summon shipgirls back to duty.

If it worked here...!

"Are we ready?!" Harlan then called out.

Everyone perked on hearing that command voice, then everyone stood. Harlan's old fleet chief petty officer and the first base coxswain for Cornwallis in twenty years, Chief Petty Officer 1st Class Paul Mason, took his place by the alarm klaxon, a master seaman ready to stand by as the boatswain's mate for the summoning. "You ready there, Chief?" Harlan asked.

"Begging the admiral's pardon, but this is seriously crazy, sir," CPO1 Mason muttered.

"We're in crazy times, Chief."

"Aye, sir!"

Glancing around the room once more, the man who had been asked to lead Canada's shipgirl project took a deep breath, then he looked at the director of the Stadacona Band. "The medley we chose at the start, Commander," he then bade, getting a nod from the music officer as he turned to raise his baton and his bandsmen readied their instruments. As the training chief petty officer barked for divisions to stand to, the boatswain's mate raised his call to his lips. With a quick nod to the Mi'kmaq elder who lead the native mystics there, Harlan then stood to attention. "SOUND ACTION STATIONS, CHIEF!" he barked out as he saluted the pool.

"AYE, SIR!" CPO1 Mason barked out as the boatswain's mate piped the still.

A loud klaxon thundered through the drill hall as the technicians powered up the machine...

Somewhere...

It was so quiet.

So peaceful.

A perfect environment for a warship that had long earned her eternal rest.

She was the last survivor of a class of 267 warships built on whaler-type hulls originally meant for coastal patrol work. But thanks to the desperate situation that had befallen the Allies courtesy of the Nazi blitzkrieg that had made France submit in 1940 and exposed the whole of the Atlantic to the U-Boat menace, the Flower-class corvettes had been forced into ocean convoy escort duty, sailing over the most dangerous piece of maritime real estate on Earth time and time again to get supplies and personnel across from North America to ensure Britain could remain alive and active against the forces of Adolf Hitler. Those who had green maple leaves painted on their smokestacks had done their duties by the skin of their teeth despite the systematic prejudice towards the sailors of the Dominion by American and British war planners who strove to get their ships upgraded and modified first to press the fight...

And they had won.

After thirty convoys escorted across the Atlantic, she had been paid off and placed in reserve...but had been reborn years later as a research vessel for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, granted a new pendant number as she was seen still as a naval auxiliary and manned by a civilian crew. For years, she worked on the Atlantic, helping her new masters perform their duties until she was finally retired, old and worn, in 1982, then laid up once more...

Until she was purchased by a memorial group and turned into a museum ship.

The last of her kind to still be afloat.

The last of her kind to exist...

Until...

What happened...?

She still didn't know...

One day, it had been peaceful...

Then...

ACTION STATIONS!

Her eyes, proper Navy blue, snapped open as the klaxon blared over her...

ACTION STATIONS!

She shuddered as she felt machinery come to life inside her...

ALL PERSONNEL, MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!

Machinery that was familiar...yet different...

She then gasped in horror as a cold feeling washed over her.

The klaxon roared again...

ACTION STATIONS!

She felt the screams of sailors who had died at their posts.

Heard the wails of her sister ship spirits, reborn as modern frigates, as they were torn from their mortal hulls and sent once more to This Place to await the call again...

ACTION STATIONS!

She felt the support of others born after the war as they gave her new equipment.

In This Place, she got an upgrade her designers could never imagine she could receive.

ALL PERSONNEL, MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!

She then nodded as she felt something cloak her spirit...

...just as a familiar march past echoed in the background.

Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer,
To add something more to this wonderful year;
To honour we call you, as freemen not slaves,
For who are so free as the sons of the waves?

...the drums of war being beaten by native musicians.