Rule 2077. Submarines are not allowed to shout "I'm a torpedo!" when attacking.
"I'm not the only one who's creeped out by her, right?" I-8 Hachi whispered to her fellow submarine.
"No, she creeps me out, too," Iku replied, frowning at their charge.
I-48, taking the name Shiya, had been a very unexpected gain. No one had expected that beating a submarine Abyssal would net them a submarine shipgirl. The eggheads back at base were tearing their hair out trying to figure out what this meant for future summonings. As for Shiya herself, after getting her Kaitens disarmed and a refit to get her back into a conventional submarine, Iku and Hachi had been assigned to her training.
Naturally, there were ulterior motives behind the move. Hachi was simply a good teacher of submarine tactics, and though Iku was a very good submarine herself Admiral Goto mostly wanted her off base for a while. And then there was Shiya herself.
As Iku watched, Shiya giggled again from behind the curtain of black hair that was always draped over her face. Their new comrade was creepy, a little too close in behavior and appearance to the Abyssal submarines she'd apparently spawned from. And then there'd been that longing look when they'd taken away her Kaiten torpedoes...
No, Iku didn't trust this new submarine. As such, when they spotted a passing Abyssal transport, she threw her hand out to stop Hachi from going up to assist Shiya in making the attack. "Wait."
Hachi immediately slapped away the hand that Iku had totally accidentally, for realzies! placed on her breast, shooting a disgusted look at her fellow sub. "Hey, watch the hands!" she snapped.
"I want to see what she does," Iku explained.
"Yeah, I'm sure."
The approach was textbook, the fat, happy transport completely unaware of the underwater doom approaching. Then Shiya got into torpedo range, and things got weird.
The giggling, Sadako-esque figure the two subs had become familiar with disappeared, instead a burning... something with bushy eyebrows that they could feel even from where they were sitting deeper underwater. "I'm a torpedo!" the sub promptly declared, jumping up into the water and letting out a credible dolphin impression.
"Did she just-" Hachi demanded.
"3... 2... 1..." Iku counted down. After the "1", several explosions sounded out on the surface, followed shortly by a body floating down into the depths. Sighing, Iku swam up to grab Shiya as she fell, the submarine dazed, scorched, and sporting a few shell holes.
"Torpedo..."