"So why the hell did you get sent in front of the wave 'a soldiers who tried attackin' us at the football field?" Damon mutters quietly to Shimakaze. The Admiral and his small fleet of five ship girls, one of whom is riding piggyback on him. Having spent the last hour and a half well into the mid-afternoon closely following the Ronald Reagan Parkway along the cover of the hidden alley streets to then travel down near Lawrenceville Highway to enter Atlanta City limits. The five girls and Damon have managed to find themselves on Mount Olive Drive, nearby the North Dekalb Mall, and have eyes over the nearby highway checkpoint where Stone Mountain Freeway and Lawrenceville Highway meet, since parts of the shopping mall that would've blocked their line of sight have been demolished.
"When I attacked you, I was under orders to move in first to deal as much damage as possible before sending in the rest of the soldiers," Shimakaze explains. "They didn't want to lose more men than necessary. And they certainly didn't anticipate that you'd have something to completely hack my command protocol to obey you."
"Understandable..."
Damon sighs lightly as he surveys the city around him. Atlanta City...home to the most notorious and cruel of bandits you could find across the south. In the early aftermath of World War III, a few native residents in the state of Georgia made their infamous reputation as merciless, cutthroat rogues who deeply mistrusted anyone they did not see as one of their own. This meant that if you weren't white or otherwise Caucasian, you were shot on sight. Blacks, Asians, Latinos - they were known for screaming "get the fuck outta our lands, Negroes, chinks, beaners, we takin' back our lands now!" while emptying their hunting rifles into the bodies of their victims. If anything, at the very least they were not discriminate in their targets, other than their fellow Caucasians, of course. As the years went on, more and more survivors sided with them when it became clear that despite their harsh and cruel outlook on other non-white survivors, the Atlantans certainly knew how to run a close-knit and cohesive community that helped them sustain themselves. Eventually, they gained enough of a population to found Atlanta City, and they quickly built up their reputation as the biggest and baddest faction in the deep South.
Their leader is quite the iconic figure: Malcolm O'Reilly, the president of a former mining company that had prospered before the nuclear war. He was the main reason why this former band of carefree do-what-we-want rogues went from amateur anarchists to some kind of contemporary rendition of a National Socialist entity, doing everything from bribing Federal agents to overlook their less-than-idealistic deeds to acquiring as much of what was left of the world's advanced military arsenal. On top of which, a few years ago, he re-founded the infamous southern organization of the Ku Klux Klan, proclaiming that his home faction, Atlanta City, would be home to this new-age KKK. If anyone didn't have enough of a reason to think that this 70-something year old senile lump of skin and bones was an asshole, they probably do now.
Needless to say, this effectively turned Atlanta into something of Stalin's wet dream. Nothing is private; everything is public. Citizens of the city and the surrounding suburbs were constantly under city surveillance. The city knew everything, and O'Reilly and his council of city elders and advisors could do whatever they wanted. After all, they had the money, and thus, the technology.
Money also meant that the city could hire mercenaries and professional soldiers from around the world - men and women who took advantage of the ensuing anarchy and chaos that the Third World War inevitably brought on immediately after its occurrence. The former employees of Whitewater Mercenaries Co., a particularly well-known and reputable private military company, were themselves hired out by O'Reilly, and many of them had stayed with O'Reilly over the years. After all, the only things a mercenary gives two shits about are shootin' bitches and gettin' money. Morals...eh, who the fuck needs those, right?
Because the mercenaries that O'Reilly had hired to fight Atlanta's wars against the other factions of the deep South were able to recommend other mercenaries to more of Atlanta City's military posts, which by far paid much better than any other mercenary posting in the continental United States, currently a full half of Atlanta City's standing forces were comprised of professional mercenaries from across the country, even a few from abroad as well. They would be frequently seen patrolling through the streets of the faction of Atlanta, maintaining order and beating people back in line whenever trouble arose. But at least they only beat people up when their job required them to - they're professionals, after all. The other half of the Atlantan military would do much more than knock a nightstick over a couple of skulls...they were much less soldiers as they were ruffians disguised as soldiers, not hesitating to crack open a couple heads whenever the chance showed itself. Oftentimes part of an Atlantan mercenary's job was to keep the other soldiers in check, something the mercenaries resented doing, since they did not wish to have their professional conduct marred because of their comradeship with whom they saw as a bunch of drunk, disorderly assholes, some of whom even held higher positions over any mercenary in Atlanta. It didn't really make much sense that some fatass, degenerate forty year old virgin who constantly raved about nothing else but raping black women and bombing their homes with tannerite and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken by the dozen was assigned to be Head Commander of Atlantan defense forces. Fuckin' idiot doesn't even know how to field-strip a rifle, even to this day, and never saw a real gunfight either, to boot, so he probably doesn't even know how to rip the clothes off a woman anyway.
Damon kneels down behind a dense clump of bushes, making sure that the end of the barrel of his .338 Lapua AR-15 sniper rifle doesn't poke through and give away their position unexpectedly, and his four other ship girls follow up and the rear, led by Shimakaze.
"Tell me what's goin' on over there jus' up ahead," Damon murmurs to Shimakaze.
"That's one of the military checkpoints all around the city," Shimakaze replies quickly. "They've got eight total, one in each direction of the city's inner limits. Well, technically the city has a dozen total, one north, south, east, and west along the city's outer limits, and the eight inside, but we passed the ones outside already."
Damon peers at the checkpoint intensely. It was more or less just like the Federal checkpoints at the CCPL's that he lived in before, except much more militarized and a hell of a lot more organized. Just as you'd expect out of mercenaries who pride themselves upon having their work organized and executed efficiently and conducting themselves professionally. Damon feels a vague sense of pride for those guys...it's a pity he and his ship girls would most likely end up having to kill some of them in order to get into the city.
There aren't a whole lot of vehicles at the checkpoint, however. Only a few civilian sedans, SUV's, surprisingly even an RV along with the two large shipping trucks waiting for inspection and clearance by the mercs guarding the checkpoint. Two heavily fortified guard towers stand in between reinforced metal gates that deny entry to unauthorized vehicles further into the city, and when Damon peers through the scope of his high-powered rifle to take a better look at the towers, he spots two men in their soiled and rugged military olive-camo fatigues, balaclavas, and helmets leaning back in their chairs along the top of the towers, and both of them have D.T.A. S.R.S. bullpup sniper rifles at their sides. Looking down at the rest of the checkpoint area, Damon notes the roofless Humvee with a front-passenger M-240 mounted machine gun and a Mark 19 mounted grenade launcher on the back, a small two-seater UAZ with a modified fifty caliber machine gun turret, and most alarming of all, another AH-6 Little Bird, this time armed with two Hydra 70 rockets. Fortunately, no one seems to be anywhere near the Little Bird.
"Hmmm..." Damon mumbles to himself, trying to figure out the optimal way to tackle this obstacle. "Shimakaze, is there any way around this, or do we have to barge in 'n rip everythin' to shreds?"
Shimakaze frowns. "I meaaaaan...we could risk just goin' around, but if I'm not wrong, there's a lot of patrols that they have all over the city. Chances are, we'll run into one of them, and they're going to let the whole place know. I guess in the end, it doesn't really matter, so like they say, pick your poison...maybe going around is a better idea after all..."
Damon shakes his head. "Then I'll take this poison right here in front of us," he concludes. "We know there's a couple vehicles at that checkpoint that can be driven. If we can grab one 'a those, maybe that Humvee with the MG and the nade launcher, we'd be golden."
"So hypothetically, once we do get that car, what're we gonna do?"
"You'll tell me where the prison ward is where that guy who activated you and Kaga are," Damon smiles. "And all of you, make sure to make as much of a ruckus as y'all can. Our goal here ain't necessarily stealth, not that stealth was really my forte anyway. We want 'em to throw Kaga at us, much like they threw Shimakaze at us. They shoulda already realized that Shimakaze's gone, but I betcha they ain't got an exact reason as to why. I'm thinkin' I can get Kaga the same way - beat 'er down, and then hack 'er."
"Brutal as always," Murakumo smirks.
"Brutal, maybe, but if it worked once, it can work again," Damon returns. "Though, when we have to fight Kaga, if we do, that is, I don't really want someone else endin' up like Amatsukaze, a'ight? I can only carry one girl at a time." He turns to Amatsukaze, whom he is still carrying, even while kneeling. "Hangin' in there, Amy?"
"...yeah...it's...it's that...all of my circuits are focusing on trying to...get this injury patched up...as best...ow..." Amatsukaze winces. Rensouhou-kun, who is still strapped to Amatsukaze's side, clicks robotically in concern. Damon looks down at the robot.
"Oh shit, I forgot he's still taggin' along," Damon says. "Cool, that means I have somethin' else other than my pistol to defend us with. Will he fire if I'm the one tellin' him to shoot, Amy?"
"Rensouhou-kun, do as he says, okay...?" Amatsukaze murmurs, and Rensouhou-kun clicks, his 12.7cm cannon barrels waving tro and fro like the antennae of a grasshopper. "He...he says he's okay with it..."
"Sweeeet. A'ight, girlies, just to recap. See that mall up ahead of us? We're gonna head down this road right here 'n sneak our way into the mall and try 'n get a good line 'a sight over the entire place. When we get there, be prepared to shoot any bitch who's there who's got a gun - we dunno if there's more soldiers inside the mall 'r somethin', unless Shimakaze wants to clarify." Shimakaze shakes her head, and Damon continues. "If we do find people there, we gotta do it stealth. Iku, you'll be our main attacker for this. When we get close to the mall, Cloak 'n see if you can find anyone. If you do, kill 'em if they're by themselves or in pairs. Don't risk engagin' big groups by yourself, we gotta kill 'em all together at once. Everyone got it so far?"
All the ship girls nod.
"Once we're clear and inside the mall, Mutsu and I'll be up on the upper floors - either that, or on the rooftops. I'm thinkin' the top floors, not the roofs though, since there're a couple sniper dudes on those towers down there. The rest of you, except Amatsukaze, 'course, will head down and prepare to assault the base head-on. I'll give further instructions once we get that far. Oh, and, girls remember: we're basically guerrillas here. Make sure to pick up a gun if you're outta ammo, and once we start lightin' the checkpoint up, fuck everything up. Like I said, we want 'em to throw Kaga at us, but if she doesn't show up, we're doin' everythin' else efficient and quick. Once we torch the base, we're gonna take that Humvee and drive it to wherever that prison is so that we can nab that dude who activated Shimakaze 'n Kaga. Don't hurt him or whatever once we manage ta identify him. Oh, and obviously, don't damage the Humvee. Let's move."
They move as quietly as possible further west along Mt. Olive Drive and cross the wooded suburb block onto North Druid Hills Road, the last road separating them from the shopping mall. Damon peeks out from the alley of an acupuncturist and a State Farm insurance office to look both ways down the street.
"It's clear," he whispers. "Iku, Cloak and take point. We're countin' on ya."
"Okay, nano!" Iku cheerfully takes up the call and disappears into thin air as she moves forward ahead of the group. Damon nods to the others and cross with his remaining ship girls in tow until they reach a jewelers store.
"Wait here," Damon orders. "Wait for Iku to come back with some recon, then we'll move in, dependin' on what she sees..."
A few minutes pass tensely as Damon waits for Iku to radio in with a reconnaissance report.
"Admiral, the whole front of the mall's clear, nano. I don't see anyone," Iku's quiet voice sprouts in Damon's ears. Damon's lips bend downwards at the corners in concern.
"Somehow, I don't think that's good for us..." he mutters under his breath.
"How's that not good? We have a free ticket straight into the mall. Isn't that what you want?" Shimakaze asks.
"It is, but...I'm gettin' that feelin' that we're 'bout ta get a nasty surprise..." Damon says. "Guess we ain't gonna know 'til we get inside, though. See that side of the mall? Get inside as fast as you can. Shimakaze, you'll be the first one there, I'm assumin', so be careful in case there're people inside that Iku hasn't seen just yet."
Shimakaze nods. At Damon's signal, they rush across the road leading out from the jewelers' store and the front parking lot of the north side of the North Dekalb Mall. Shimakaze, as expected, reaches the north side of the mall first, flattening herself against the wall just outside the front entrance, which would've been covered with glass panes but that have long since been smashed out due to looters and bandits.
"Shimakaze-chan, I'm right next to you, so don't freak out, okay, nano?" Iku warns as she Decloaks to reveal her position to Shimakaze, who nods. "I already looked inside a bit, but I didn't see anyone, nano. It should be safe..."
"But didn't Admiral mention 'bout how he wasn't so sure?" Shimakaze wonders.
"Like I said, it should, nano..."
Shimakaze grinds her teeth lightly. "I really don't like having things so uncertain," she says a tad bitterly.
"Me neither, nano..."
They wait for the others to catch up, Damon being the last of them due to Amatsukaze's and Rensouhou-kun's combined weight.
"Anything inside?" Damon asks in a low voice, and Shimakaze and Iku shake their heads simultaneously. "Okay. Guns up if ya got 'em, everyone. No runnin', no shootin' 'til I say so, no makin' loud noises, no nothin'. We ain't got a clue what or who's inside, so follow me, alright? Iku, take point."
"Nano!" Iku Cloaks again and slips inside the mall through the broken front entrance. Damon nods, and Murakumo and Mutsu enter the mall, with Damon and Shimakaze closing the rear. Their guns point at every possible angle, trying to pick out anything suspicious. Only the usual scene of chaos greets them: piles of trash and debris strewn everywhere, rusted railings and poles, broken elevators and escalators, and the small dove statue that stood in the front lobby of the mall is smashed to pieces, with bigger chunks of it still lying, broken and forsaken, on the floor of the mall.
"The top of the escalators is clear too, nano," Iku radios in.
"Up the escalators, girls," Damon commands, and they briskly jog up the escalators with their guns still at the ready.
"...what a scene," Mutsu comments sadly, looking around at the hurried mess. "Was it like this everywhere when World War III happened, Admiral? I mean, I know I might've asked this question before, but...I just...I just find it a bit too unbelievable still that the world's changed so much since our initial activation..."
"Like I said, I personally wasn't even alive at the time the nukes got dropped," Damon says. "I can't tell you personally what exactly happened back then. But I've heard stories from the older survivors...how they had to put up with the shit that happened during all that fuckin' chaos. One day you have a perfectly normal, functionin' society, the next day you got a world fulla people fightin' each other over limited resources, lootin' everythin' they can jus' so that they can make sure their families got enough to live off of for at least a week, maybe a month if you were lucky enough to gather up that much shit. Friends turned against one another, people killin' each other over simple shit like a can 'a beans, crap like that. People bandin' together ta make these rogue groups, drivin' around doin' whatever the fuck they wanted, goin' to places like this shoppin' mall 'n lootin' places up, shootin' people, rapin' people - I mean, if you can imagine what anarchy looks like, I guess that's what the world was back then. Anarchy at its finest."
Damon feels something warm dripping through onto his back, and he peers behind him. He realizes that the blood from Amatsukaze' open stomach wound has been slowly seeping through the back of his shirt.
"S-Sorry..." Amatsukaze mutters. "...the...the blood..."
"It's fine, I just felt it go through my shirt is all," Damon says quickly. His foot kicks something, and Damon looks down at it to see a small dinosaur doll with its stuffing ripped out. Narrowing his eyes at it, he notices that there are a few specks of dried blood smeared on the dinosaur's head. "...assholes..."
They make their way silently deep into the heart the shopping mall, on the second floor overlooking the former food court. As they slowly approach the escalators leading up to the third floor, Murakumo suddenly stops and points her Steyr AUG-A1 assault rifle to the right, looking up.
"I think I'm picking up an unknown signature," Murakumo warns in a small voice. "Transferring estimated coordinates..."
"Iku, check it out," Damon mutters. Barely ten seconds pass before Iku returns a reply.
"Contact spotted, nano...one soldier, by himself. No other targets in sight...Murakumo-chan, he's got the same gun as you, you ought to pick up his ammunition if we take him out."
"If he's by himself, take him down silently, Iku," Damon orders.
"I got it, nano...!"
They soon hear the sharp slick of a throat being slit, and soon, Damon and his ship girls arrive at the third floor to secure the area and approach the now dead soldier.
"Nicely done," Damon nods as Iku Decloaks momentarily to show herself. "Good job to you, too, Murakumo, for catchin' the guy before we ran straight into him..."
Murakumo beams a bit before kneeling down to take the dead soldier's ammo for her assault rifle, and Iku smiles brightly at her good work.
"Murakumo, take that guy's ammo vest, you can hold more mags if you wear it. Iku, gimme my knife back, and take that guy's knife," Damon instructs, and as Iku pulls out the soldier's woodland-patterned huntsman knife and marvels at its design, Damon helps Murakumo put on the vest and fill the pockets with 5.56x45mm STANAG ammo.
"How many more floors are there...?" Shimakaze wonders aloud, looking up at the rest of the floors to go. "Two more...?"
"Yo, Shimakaze." Damon hands the super-destroyer the AUG-A1 rifle that belonged to the soldier and a couple of STANAG magazines. "You're usin' this until you find another rifle that you like better, mkay? Let's move."
"But...I haven't even shot a gun before..."
"You should've received ballistics information from one of the other ship girls, so you oughta know how to shoot a gun now."
"Even still..."
Damon grabs the soldier's walkie-talkie before they slowly make their way to the next set of broken-down escalators, lowering the volume to a minimum before hooking it onto his jeans. They barely get to the third floor when the walkie-talkie, even at lowest volume, screeches out in static, causing the ship girls to jump in fright.
"Uhhhh...Echo Two to Echo Three 'n Four...ya copy..."
"Yea-haw, Echo Two. What's a-crackin'?"
"We got a problem over at the weapons cache...'
"Ah, yeah, those bastards? Yeah, we already got notified of 'em."
"Yeah, well, they tell ya that one of our ship girls hasn't come back?"
"Whoo, shit, that one's new. So what the hell happened? Why hasn't that slut come back?"
The word "slut" makes Shimakaze tighten her grip on her assault rifle.
"Dunno man, she's just gone. I dunno where she mighta went off to...I mean, that dev guy said she'd basically follow any order we'd give her..."
"Tch. I shoulda given her a good dickin' before this shit went down..."
"Pipe down, will ya, so do half the fucking milfags here in the damn city. We're not like those damned rednecks that make up half the city's fucking population, thinkin' 'bout who we'll bang tonight. You're a goddamned merc, now act like one."
"Ooooh, I'm sorry, I wasn't aware you preferred dicks in your own ass, I apologize, really - "
"Shut the fuck up, Echo Four, before I shove a couple bullets up yours."
"Geez man, can't even take a joke...or maybe you really are ga - "
"A'ight, maybe no dinner for you sounds better, jackass."
"Aw, c'mon man, you fuckin' serious - "
The walkie-talkie makes a clattering static noise, indicating that one of the correspondents have hung up.
"That...was way louder than I thought it'd be..." Damon hisses quietly through clenched teeth, having been alarmed by the walkie-talkie's volume. "The bitch..."
"Admiral, I just picked up some radio waves that matched the ones coming from your walkie-talkie," Mutsu reports. "Follow me...transmitting estimated coordinates..."
"Let Iku scout it out..." Damon says. "Can't give away our position if we don't need to..."
They don't even need Iku's scouting as they hear the muffled banter of a few soldiers down the corridor just as they reach the next floor. Damon signals the others to wait as he peeks over the top of the escalator to figure out where they are.
"Four soldiers this time, Admiral, nano. They're all sitting together inside that square of benches just up ahead, maybe around thirty meters or so, nano."
From his angle, Damon can only see the tops of the soldiers' heads, two of whom are sporting helmets and the other two without.
"Don't have a great angle from here, Iku," Damon says quietly. "Tell me what they've got."
"Ummmm...let's see, two rifles, anddd...uhhh, I don't know what the others have..."
"Transfer feed to me, Iku?" Murakumo requests, also in a whisper, and Murakumo receives a direct feed from Iku's perspective. "Admiral, they've got two assault rifles, a shotgun, and a submachine gun."
"Shit, then this might be a bit rough on you guys..." Damon murmurs, but just as he is about to give another order, the walkie-talkie on his waist screeches again.
"So like, ya think...wait a minute, the fuck?"
"Cripes, what's Echo Two doin' sneakin' up on us like that, that asshole..."
"Wait, why the hell would Echo Two sneak up on anybody like a retard? Guns up!"
Damon rolls his eyes. Fuck this walkie-talkie...
"Admiral...!" Mutsu hisses. All the ship girls are alarmed, now that it is painfully obvious that their awkward position on the escalator is compromised. Damon takes the walkie-talkie and primes it in his hand like it is a makeshift fragmentation grenade.
"Iku, get the two in the back if you can," Damon says fiercely but quietly. "But on my mark."
"Roger, nano...!"
Damon waits a brief moment for the soldiers to come close. "Now!"
Tossing the walkie-talkie up and over the escalator onto the fourth floor, the soldiers, seeing a small black metal blur, yell out in surprise and try to cover their eyes and ears, mistaking it for a flashbang. Iku slips in, invisible, and with one full twist of her body, runs her new huntsman knife through the skulls of the two soldiers in the back and jumps away silently before their bodies even drop to the ground. Damon then peeks over the top of the escalator as the two remaining soldiers hear the death screams of their comrades and turn to them to see what is going on.
"Shimakaze!" he calls, "get up there 'n take the other two out! Iku, support her if you can! Don't shoot your guns if you don't hafta!"
"Ou!" Shimakaze jumps in and speeds towards the two surviving soldiers. One of them hears her approach and tries to fumble for his own walkie-talkie, but Shimakaze is too fast to let him use it properly and slams the butt of her AUG-A1 into his nose, breaking it with a loud crunch. The last soldier watches his comrade get knocked down to the ground and turns to raise his Keltec KSG-12 shotgun, but Iku gives him a swift kick to the nuts from behind, and Shimakaze gives him a quick axe kick on the back of the head as he falls to his knees and reels over in pain, keeping her foot on his head so that he cannot move.
"Don't kill 'em," Damon orders as the he and the others approach. "I could ask 'em some questions here. Take away their walkie-talkies and guns, make sure they can't do anything. Do it quick."
The ship girls disarm the soldiers and strip away whatever gear they think would be a detriment to them, and because the soldier whose nose got broken by Shimakaze was knocked unconscious with Shimakaze's blow, Damon pulls out his karambit blade and holds it up to the last soldier's neck and pushes him against the wall.
"Answer a few questions, and I'll only knock ya out and you can live," Damon threatens. "Ya got it?"
The soldier, who still inhales sharply from the pain of getting his family jewels kicked by the foot of a ship girl, glares back at Damon. "Fuck you..."
"I'll take that as a yes. Who activated the ship girls? Where is he, or her?"
"Hell...hell if I know, dude...they don't tell us that kinda info to us mercs...better off findin' another guy who actually knows that kinda stuff..."
"Mkay, then do you know someone we can...'talk'...to so that we know?"
"I ain't got a clue who you bunch are, but...I mean, if y'all got this far, which I dunno how on Earth y'all did, but...you can figure that one out on your own, right...?"
Damon clicks his tongue. "Ain't makin' this easy on us, are ya? Well...maybe I can persuade you." Damon forces open the man's jaw and points the end of his karambit right onto the middle of the soldier's tongue. "If ya don't feel like hissin' like a snake for the rest of yer life, better cough up some answers, motherfucker."
"Aaaaa, aaahhhh!" The soldier struggles, and Damon backs his karambit away. "Fine, fine, you...you've made your fuckin' point! But seriously, I don't know who activated the ship girls that were runnin' around earlier, much less where they are."
"Then where's Baxter Harrison?"
The soldier's eyes grow wide. "The fuck...how do ya know about Harrison...?!"
"You don't need to know that. Where the fuck is he? I got some stuff I wanna talk to him about...some urgent stuff..."
The soldier lowers his gaze. "He's...he's in the Georgia Congress Center...or he should be, last time we got word 'bout him. Dunno where else he'd be if he ain't in there. But if y'all wanna be crazy 'nuff to try gettin' all the way into the heart of the city, then that's your choice, I guess..."
Damon smirks. "We were crazy enough to get this far...you said yourself that we'd have to figure out the rest of the way from here, right? That's what we planned to do from the very beginning. Sweet dreams, fuckface."
Damon grabs the soldier by the shoulders and slams him against the wall that Damon had pinned him against, rendering the man unconscious as well.
"Everyone grab a tactical vest if you haven't already," Damon orders. "Lets you carry more ammo. Here, both of the guys with AR's have some STANAG ammo..."
After looting the soldiers, they move on without further incident to the fifth and final floor. Damon picks out a good spot that overlooks the checkpoint and eases Amatsukaze down on the ground behind a chipped and scarred support beam.
"Alrighty. Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Iku, get back down to the first floor and sneak up on that checkpoint. It's only about..." Damon peers out the broken glass windows over to the checkpoint, "...maybe around a hundred and fifty meters or so. When you get there, stay outta sight from the snipers up in the towers. Use the trees for cover and make sure not to get seen. Stop when you're within about fifty meters or somethin' like that, and wait for me 'n Mutsu to pick off the guys up in the towers first. Once we do that, y'all're free to wipe everything out...except for that Humvee, of course. Get goin', we probably don't have a lotta time."
Before Shimakaze follows the other ship girls back, she approaches the Admiral. "Don't let anything happen to Amatsu-nee-chan, okay!?" Shimakaze demands. "Promise me!"
"I won't promise anything," Damon retorts. "But I already said that you got my word that I'll try my damnedest not to let anything further happen to her. A'ight?"
Shimakaze gives him one last long glare before following the others back down to the first floor of the mall. Damon lays prone on the dirty and trashed tiling of the fifth floor and props up his .338 Lapua rifle as best he can, setting his scope on the guard of the second tower, further away from them.
"Do the same as me, Mutsu," Damon says. "Lay prone, stand your rifle up, and put your scope over your intended target. Use the scope to sweep the area to scan for other viable targets if you have to. Don't put your finger on the trigger until you're ready for a shot, prevents accidental discharge. When you shoot, hold your breath for the most accurate shot. And since you've got a bolt-action, remember to chamber the next bullet."
Mutsu complies with Damon's instructions.
"Aim for the guy on the first tower, closer to us," Damon says. Mutsu puts her crosshairs on her designated target, and her targeting module further highlights him in a faint red circle around his image.
"What are these tick marks for, Admiral?" Mutsu asks. "The ticks that are on each of the four crosshairs..."
"Range indicators," Damon answers. "I'd have to look at the scope to know exactly what kind it is, but basically the idea of those ticks is to give you an indicator of where to shoot depending on how far away the guy you wanna shoot is."
"Then...then which tick should I use...?"
"You shouldn't have to use any. We're close enough that bullet drop won't be a factor...only a slight delay, since we are shootin' people over a hundred meters away. But it shouldn't matter too much, s'long as they don't make any sudden movements..."
"And..." Mutsu continues, looking around. "What should we do once they realize we're here...? Is there, like, a quick way to get away?"
"Honestly, I haven't thought that far, but we'll just go back down the way we came," Damon sighs. "If anything, I'll just jump straight out if I gotta."
"J-Jump!? Admiral, it's five floors up!"
"Remember, I'm not a normal human..."
"Even still...!"
"And you're a ship girl..."
"Geez, now you're not being relevant anymore..."
Damon and Mutsu wait for the other ship girls to get into position.
"Admiral, we're about fifty meters away from the checkpoint boundary marked by some orange street cones. We should be in the grove of trees just front of the back side of the mall," Murakumo reports. "I have a feeling that if we move up any further, we'll be seen."
"Okay. Mutsu, we're up," Damon says. "On my mark, we shoot both snipers at once so they can't attack anyone. Ready?"
Mutsu gulps. "I...I think..."
"Have some confidence, alright? In case you miss, I'll finish him for ya. Just take a deep breath and focus on the task at hand."
"Oh, and by the way, girls, try not to kill any civvies, a'ight? It's kinda a dick move to shoot people who aren't even armed."
"Says the asshole who shot that kid the first day he activated me!" Murakumo retorts.
"Goddamn it, Murakumo. Standby, everyone."
Damon holds his rifle as steadily as possible.
"On three, Mutsu. One...two...three."
They both inhale deeply but quietly, and their scopes momentarily freeze onto their respective targets. Both triggers are pulled simultaneously, and two loud booms erupt from the fifth floor of the mall, punching through whatever fragile glass is in their way to reach their intended victims. Damon's target suffers the effect of having his brains splattered all over the wall of the tower behind him and slumps in his chair, very much so dead, and Mutsu's target loses his head entirely in a fanfare-ish display of flying blood, brain, and bits of skull fragments.
"Oh man, this thing kicks like a...!" Mutsu exclaims, surprised by the strong kick of the M82-A1 even while shooting it prone.
"Move in, all of you! Mutsu, stay sharp, focus on more targets!" Damon orders. The soldiers posted in the checkpoint, alarmed by the gunshots, pick up their weapons and look around, shouting to each other, trying to figure out what just happened and where those shots came from.
"I don't know what happens when I try to use a sea-to-sea torpedo on land," Iku says excitedly as she pulls out a compact torpedo from her rear waist where her stock of seventeen compact torpedoes are held, "but we'll see what happens now, nano!" A 6x533mm torpedo expands quickly to full size, and Iku hurls it like an Olympic javelin thrower straight at the small UAZ, which a couple of the soldiers on the ground are running towards. Apparently Iku has thrown it so hard that the torpedo breaches right into the side of the vehicle, beeps once while wedged into the side of the UAZ, and explodes, tossing the UAZ high up into the air, along with the bodies of the soldiers who were already inside the car and have been torn apart by the explosion. Murakumo and Shimakaze emerge from the grove and open fire, with Iku giving them covering fire with her FN FS-2000 rifle.
"Oh, no ya don't, fucker," Damon hisses, scoring another direct headshot onto a mercenary trying to spool up the main rotors of the Little Bird as Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Iku mow down any mercenary they see. "We already dealt with enough birds for a month..."
The three ship girls at the checkpoint hurry across the freeway and take cover behind the large container truck as the surviving mercenaries bunker down behind their own cover and suppress them with rifle and submachine gun fire.
"Admiral, remember, my battery's out, so I can't use my shield!" Murakumo yells over the snaps and cracks of whistling bullets. "We need some more covering fire!"
"Workin' on it fast as we can, yo," Damon replies, calmly shooting another pair of mercenaries in the upper body and neck, respectively. "Watch out, I got eyes on a couple 'a mercs moving around the south side of the checkpoint, they're gonna try 'n flank!"
"Everyone, wait here, I'll take care of them!" Iku Cloaks immediately, slinging her rifle onto her back and gripping her knife properly, which she had to hold with her right hand against the handle of her rifle as she shot. As Iku slaughters the flanking mercenaries, Damon is about to slap another .338 Lapua magazine of twenty rounds into his sniper rifle when he hears a very loud snap near his head, causing Mutsu to yelp with pain.
"I-I'm hit!" Mutsu cries out. "My left shoulder...!"
"Shit, our position's compromised!" Damon quickly puts his head down, lifts his rifle, and rolls to his left behind the nearby section of the wall of the fifth floor. "Mutsu, get away from the windows! We gotta get off this floor, asap!"
Rensouhou-kun clicks and beeps loudly, calling for Damon once a steady flow of bullets ping and snap into the fifth floor of the shopping mall into Damon's and Mutsu's sniper nest. Damon hurries over, and Mutsu helps Amatsukaze back onto Damon's back. But before they can make their way back to the escalators that led them up to the fifth floor, something bright punches a hole right through the weak and unmaintained wall of the fifth floor ahead of them and detonates onto the ceiling above, causing a small avalanche of broken debris and glass to collapse onto the escalators, blocking off the escalators and effectively trapping them onto the fifth floor.
"Fuck!" Damon yells. "We're cut off!"
"W-What do we d - " Mutsu is about to yell back when another rocket smashes into the floor where they were just lying prone to snipe the mercenaries at the checkpoint, causing that portion of the floor to cave in and threatening to collapse the rest of the floor where Damon and Mutsu are standing.
"We've gotta jump out!" Damon shakes his head. "Only way out now!"
"But that's ridiculous! It's so high up from here! Maybe I'd be fine, but you two - !" Mutsu protests. "There's gotta be another way out!"
"Admiral, just leave me here, don't go risking your life for me like this!" Amatsukaze pleads. "We're all eventually going to become outdated and dumped anyway! Losing just one ship girl isn't going to kill you!"
Another rocket zooms in again, this time striking the support beam close to them. The explosion forces Mutsu to stumble backwards shakily and knocks Damon off his feet, causing him to flatten himself against Amatsukaze, who screams with pain as her open wound skids across the breaking floor, which audibly groans and creaks, threatening to disintegrate completely.
"Admiral! ! !" Mutsu shrieks as Damon unsteadily gets back up to his feet, hanging on tight to the ship girl on his back. "We're running out of time! We - "
"Shut up and follow me!" Damon roars, and Mutsu, catching a glimpse of Damon's eyes, blinks in surprise. A look that she has never seen Damon have before, a facade of toughness and sheer determination, as if he were preparing himself to fight against a horde of a million zombies with only a dinky pistol. "Out the hole in front of us! Amy, hang oooonnnnnn! ! ! ! ! ! !"
Before Mutsu can even try to dissuade him, Damon abandons his .338 Lapua AR-15 sniper rifle into the imminent grave of the shopping mall, surges forward, and jumps out of the fifth floor of the shopping mall, and Mutsu, having no choice, quickly rescues Damon's dropped rifle and jumps with a sniper rifle in each hand, following the Admiral out just as another M-72 L.A.W. rocket sails into the fifth floor of the mall and finally destroys what is left of it. They drop straight down into the parking lot on the south side of the shopping mall, and there is nothing to break their fall. Damon prepares himself to take the brunt of the shock upon impact, and Amatsukaze, holding her breath, hugs Damon's back tightly.
"AGGGGHHHHHH! ! !"
Damon slams the ground on both feet, but the sheer shock of the landing is so great that Damon is forced to transfer some of his falling momentum throughout the rest of his body to prevent his ankles from taking too much strain and either breaking or dislocating and thus flattens himself eagle-sprawled onto the hot asphalt, smashing his nose and forehead against the rough bit of gravel on the lot. Amatsukaze further exacerbates the situation by smashing her weight into Damon, who acts as a cushion for her, against the ground before being flung further and painfully rolling to a stop. Mutsu lands hard onto the lot as well, but because of her ship construct, she suffers no damage upon her fall, and instead, her feet make indents and punch lacerations into the parking lot.
"Admiral! ! ! !" Mutsu screams louder than ever as Damon struggles to get up. Amatsukaze, coughing up blood and wiping it away, her shins and knees scraped and bloody, also looks up in horror as Damon flops onto the ground, choking with pain. Mutsu turns him over and holds his head up, putting his sniper rifle next to him. "I-I told you it was going to be a bad idea jumping out all recklessly like this! Where are you hurt? Please tell me!"
Damon coughs uncontrollably, fighting to even breathe properly, and soon he starts to hack up some blood. "Sh...shit...!" Damon clenches his teeth, trying to endure the pain. "Feet...lungs...part of my spine, probably..." He coughs violently again.
"Admiral, Admiral, what the hell just happened!?" Murakumo's shrill voice calls through Damon's headset, the mic somehow surviving Damon's fall. "We saw lots of explosions where you and Mutsu-san were! What's going on!?"
Struggling to even speak, Damon coughs loudly, "Our posi...position was c...compromised! We...we h...had to ditch the pl...place! We're gonna re...regroup with you, c...c...clear out the ch...checkpoint...!"
"Admiral, are you hit!? You don't sound good! You didn't get shot, did you!?"
"Mutsu to all ship signatures, please be advised, due to the compromise of our sniping position, Admiral and I had to emergency-evacuate, and now, Admiral is in critical condition!" Mutsu radios.
"Those guys hurt my Admiral!?" Iku shouts, now aggravated. "They won't get away with this, nano! ! !"
Damon shakes his head, his coughing fit finally showing some signs of subsiding, and tears Mutsu's hand off his head. "Let's move!" Damon gasps, struggling to his feet. "Mutsu, cover me as we move up! Murakumo, secure that fucking Humvee! Shimakaze, check all perimeters for any stragglers! Iku, kill every bitch you see that ain't one of us!"
"Gladly, nano!"
"Admiral, the Humvee's basically clear, we've taken out most of the guys here! Shimakaze, you better take care of anyone else who's left!"
"Okay, just leave it to me! Admiral, you still have Amatsu-nee-chan, right!?"
"Yes, I fuckin' have her, y'all got'cher orders!" Damon bellows, lifting up Amatsukaze and her pet robot with much difficulty. Blood now drips in thin lines down from Damon's forehead and left nostril, where he crushed his face against the lot upon his fall.
"Y-You're h-hurt, Admiral...!" Amatsukaze coughs, not doing too well herself. "You...stop forcing yourself on like this...!"
But Damon pays no heed and, scraping the bottom of the barrel of whatever strength he has left in him, sprints across the lot, across the grove of trees where Murakumo, Shimakaze, and Iku launched their attack onto the checkpoint, and finally to the heavily armed Humvee. To Damon, he feels like he just ran a marathon carrying a giant fifty-gallon barrel that steadily filled up with water. He helps Amatsukaze into the back seat.
"Everyone get in the Humvee!" Damon roars, practically throwing himself into the driver's seat. As soon as he sits down, his vision blacks out momentarily from the sheer strain and exhaustion that his body is suffering, and he struggles just to keep himself conscious. "Fuck...no key..." he mumbles, fiddling around the front of the armed Humvee. "Mutsu...look...look around for a key!"
"Well, what does the key look like?"
"I don't know..."
"Then how am I supposed to find it when I don't even know what it looks like!?"
Murakumo quickly kneels next to the body of a dead mercenary, who has multiple gunshot wounds to his chest through his vest and legs, and produces a key. "Here, Admiral!" Murakumo calls. "I saw this when I passed this guy, maybe this is it! Catch!"
Damon turns and barely catches the key. Coughing up a bit more blood, he slams his forehead against the wheel to shock himself back awake from the pain, causing the Humvee to honk its horn.
"We're coming, Admiral, nano!" Iku calls hurriedly, and Shimakaze returns to the Humvee and hops into the back with her sister, and Iku also joins the destroyer sisters in the back of the vehicle. Mutsu climbs onto the Mark-19 Grenade Launcher turret and hangs on as Damon revs up the engine.
"We're gonna drive straight into the heart 'a the city!" Damon yells, backing the Humvee out of the ruined freeway. "Murakumo, blast any motherfucker who gets in our way with that MG! Mutsu, there's a safety switch along the bottom left side of that turret! How many nades does it have?"
"Ummmm, standby...!" Mutsu quickly takes a count of the 40mm explosive rounds strung on a long belt feeding into the turret. "There's a good fifty or so, Admiral! Plus, there's another belt of it at my feet!"
"Then you light up every motherfucker you see too! We're blastin' our fuckin' way past these bitches, a'ight!? We either get what I want, or we goin' out Michael Bay-style!" Damon pulls out his Glock swiftly with his left hand and shoots a mercenary who followed Shimakaze to the Humvee and was about to shoot at Mutsu with his TAR-21 assault rifle. Even with several crushed spine vertebrae, badly sore ankles, and a bleeding nose, Damon apparently has not lost his touch with his marksmanship.
"Oughta be careful who ya bring with ya next time!" Damon yells, tucking his smoking pistol away as the mercenary drops his gun, clutching at his neck and slowly choking to death with his trachea pierced by a .45 GAP bullet. "Hang the fuck on!"
The Humvee roars and hurtles through the checkpoint gate, which is only a flimsy striped bar that is lifted up and down to allow cleared vehicles through, and smashes the bar right off in a small shower of wooden splinters.
"Shimakaze, you know the way to the Congress Center, right!?" Damon calls.
"Yeah, I've been there before! Do you want directions?" she calls back.
"Please! We're basically gonna drive in circles 'til we either find it or get blown the fuck up!"
"Well, for starters, just keep following the 29 until it merges into the 23!"
The Humvee speeds down the highway into the heart of the city.
Three hundred seventy two 7.62x51mm NATO rounds and thirty-seven 40mm grenades later, the Humvee, now riddled with bullet holes, screeches down Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard. Iku squeezes off a couple more STANAG rounds from her FS-2000 assault rifle to the rear of the Humvee, firing at the group of soldiers that they just passed and took some fire from.
"Is this what battles are like on land!?" Iku screams in delight. "It's so exciting, nano~! ! !"
"Admiral, Admiral! ! !" Shimakaze screams, lifting her head after ducking from the fire they took, "the Congress Center is on our left! You took a wrong turn! ! !"
"You mean that building right there!?" Damon points to their left. "The one with all those military vehicles around it!?"
"Yeah! You need to - "
"No need! Everyone, brace! ! !"
Before any of the ship girls can say anything further, Damon swings the Humvee all the way to the right, and once it rolls over onto the bridge on the intersection of the boulevard and the underlying railroads, Damon swerves the Humvee right off the bridge.
"Ah - " Murakumo tries to scream, but because the drop is not too far, the Humvee bounces roughly onto its wheels before any of them can scream, and Damon drives it over the railroad tracks to pull up right next to the west side of the Congress Center.
"What the hell was that for, Admiral!?" Shimakaze yells shrilly, rubbing her head. "That wasn't even the right way to go!"
"But this's the building you pointed out, and this's an alley no one's in just yet!" Damon returns, kicking open his door. "Everyone out! Amatsukaze, I've gotta leave you here. Renny, whatever the fuck yer name is, make sure no one we don't know comes near this car, you hear me?" Rensouhou-kun's cannon barrels swipe up and down with determination.
"Just let me stay here!" Shimakaze pleads. "Please!"
"No, you're too valuable just to leave you to a simple guarding assignment! C'mon, the faster we get in there and grab Mr. Harrison, the faster we return, think of it that way!" Damon grabs his Lapua rifle that Mutsu grabbed for him when they had jumped from the crumbling shopping mall. "I gotta ditch this for somethin' else, and quick...c'mon."
Leaving Amatsukaze and her Rensouhou-kun to watch over the Humvee, Damon and the rest of the ship girls approach a rear utility service door. "Mutsu, kick open the door. I'd do it myself, but my feet are fuckin' killin' me," he commands, and Mutsu breathes in sharply as she heaves her right foot onto the door, and she successfully kicks it down. Shimakaze enters first, motivated to get the job over with as quickly as possible, and Murakumo and Iku enter after, followed by Damon and Mutsu, who bring up the rear. They make their way across the dark and narrow service hall until they reach the next door that leads into one of the main atriums of the center.
"Lots of people inside, Admiral," Shimakaze reports. "Probably lots of soldiers. I recall there being a lot of people stationed here since this's where a lot of important people like to be in the city."
"No surprise," Damon mutters, wiping some blood off his brow. "We gotta move quickly, they've gotta know this's where we were headed, and we don't know if they'll find our ride and Amy back there, either. All of you should know what Mr. Harrison looks like, right? If you see him, grab 'im and secure 'im. Once that's done, we drag his ass back to the Humvee and get the hell out. Got it?"
All the ship girls nod gravely.
"Go!"
Shimakaze knocks down the door and immediately faces a squad of six soldiers led by an important-looking officer with a green beret.
"You're the - " the green beret soldier starts to exclaim, but Shimakaze cuts him short with a short burst from her AUG-A1. Murakumo and Iku both slide next to Shimakaze and spray their weapons at the six soldiers who are about to return fire, but they are all cut down before they can even fire a single bullet. Hearing the gunfire, three more soldiers run into view to see who is shooting at their comrades, Damon half-aims his sniper rifle and cuts down two of them, and Mutsu annihilates the last man with an M82-A1 shot, blasting his body across the lobby. Damon tosses aside his .338 Lapua AR-15 and snatches up one of the dead soldiers' Carbon-15 9mm carbine and his ammunition.
"We're splittin' up! Shimakaze, Murakumo, on me! Iku, go with Mutsu in that direction! Report when you have a positive ID on Baxter Harrison!" Damon orders, and the group divides itself into two: Damon, Shimakaze, and Murakumo hurry north, and Mutsu, who swaps her anti-materiel rifle out for a Bushmaster ACR assault rifle, and Iku head east. Damon's group heads up a flight of stairs, and Shimakaze calls out in alarm:
"More human signatures coming in on us! Probably more soldiers!"
"Go in first, Shimakaze!"
"Ou!"
Once they climb up the stairs, Shimakaze bursts through the door leading into the second floor and raises her AUG A-1 right at a group of soldiers, who are dressed in normal civilian clothes instead of the sleek uniforms of the mercenaries.
"Hey, it's the whore!" One of them, swinging around a bottle of Jameson whiskey, calls out, laughing his ass off. "When're ya gonna fu - "
Shimakaze puts a bullet in his head before he can finish his sentence, and she and Damon mow everyone down. Apparently all of them had been too busy drinking and being drunk to put up much of a fight.
"If there's anyone I'd like to kill, it's you fucking pervs!" Shimakaze screams as her AUG-A1 assault rifle clicks empty, requesting a reload. "It's not my fucking fault I have such a skimpy outfit!"
"Let's be real, though, it does seem skimpy," Damon remarks.
"You're not helping, Admiral!"
"But why didn't any one of those guys bother trying to shoot back?" Murakumo wonders aloud as they run past the pile of dead bodies. "Surely they heard our gunshots?"
"Alcohol, girl," Damon says grimly. "That shit's scary. That's why I smoke fruit cigarettes 'cause I don't want my liver to look like a piece 'a shit after thirty years."
More soldiers converge onto their position as they progress through the second floor, trying to find their intended target. As they battle through groups of mercenaries and bandit soldiers, Damon, while taking cover behind a thick wall, looks up at the third floor and spots several suited men being escorted by a posse of mercenaries down a flight of stairs across the center from them.
"All ship girls, be advised, I have a visual on our target!" Damon yells, pointing to Mr. Harrison, whom he barely recognizes. "Murakumo, do you see 'im? Over there, look!"
"Yeah, I see him! Transmitting location of primary target now!" Murakumo says, and all of Damon's ship girls have their memory files updated with Murakumo's transmitted information in the form of localized coordinates.
"Everyone, hunt him down! Do not harm our target! Kill everyone else!"
"I'll get him, ouuuu! ! !" Shimakaze roars, and using her immense speed, she simply gets out of the cover she, Damon, and Murakumo were hiding behind and dashes straight past every single soldier in her way, dropping her rifle behind her so she can run as fast as she possibly can.
"Admiral, we're near the target, we're about to flank them!" Mutsu reports. "If Shimakaze gets rid of the guards, Iku and I can move in and secure the target!"
"Go, go!" Damon urges, blindfiring his Carbon 15 over his cover, and Murakumo carefully picks off two headshots with well-placed AUG-A1 shots.
Just before the escort can go down the last flight of stairs to reach the first floor, Shimakaze tackles one of the mercenary guards down the flight of stairs and slams him hard enough against the ground to knock him out. The guards open fire on her, and Shimakaze gets hit by a couple of bullets before she dashes back up the stairs with breakneck speed and punches another mercenary in the jaw, breaking it. Iku, already Cloaked, runs her huntsman knife through a soldier's throat, and Mutsu, finally catching up, puts a short burst of ACR bullets into the remainder of the soldiers. Other soldiers in the vicinity, realizing that their VIPs are under attack, start to divert attention towards them and away from Damon and Murakumo, and Mutsu is caught by a wave of lead and stumbles backwards.
"She - she's also one of 'em ship gals!" one of the soldiers exclaim. "Capture her! I'm sure ol' man O'Reilly'll give us all a big fat fuckin' pay raise if we bring 'im another of 'em ship gals!"
Shimakaze, after knocking out the rest of the guards, roughly grabs Baxter Harrison by the collar and drags him down the flight of stairs, with Iku close behind her. Mutsu fires back at the attacking soldiers, buying Shimakaze and Iku enough time to get away from the danger of the second floor before retreating herself.
"Wh-Who are you all?!" Mr. Harrison demands, terrified of his current situation.
"We were ordered by our Admiral to take you in!" Shimakaze quickly yells back. "Don't ask questions or be annoying, just follow us!"
"Admiral, we have secured the target, what next!?" Mutsu calls urgently.
"Head back to the Humvee with Mr. Harrison, we'll follow it up! Murakumo, follow me, I think I saw a shortcut outta here!" Damon and Murakumo slip away from their cover and dive into a dark corridor leading to several offices and small conference rooms. Shimakaze, annoyed by Mr. Harrison's inability to keep up, simply lifts him up and dashes across the lobby as Iku escorts her and Mutsu gives them suppressing fire as she, too, follows after them. The soldiers, as much as they shoot the ship girls running back to the Humvee, cannot stop them, as they are under orders not to harm Mr. Harrison. The three ship girls and Mr. Harrison reach the Humvee after a mad dash.
"Get in the car!" Shimakaze practically screams, and Mr. Harrison, virtually at gunpoint by this point, has no choice but to get into the rear seats of the Humvee, and Mutsu and Iku both climb onto the MK-19 Grenade Launcher turret, with Iku sitting on the back of the Humvee, scanning around for threats.
"There's a lot more people headed this way, nano!" Iku reports hurriedly. "Where's Admiral?!"
Just on cue, a piercingly loud shatter of glass shrieks just above the Humvee, and the ship girls in the Humvee look up to see Murakumo put her foot through a conference room's outer window and bash out the glass to make a space for her and Damon to jump on through. She barges out first, making it easier for Damon to slip out the broken hole in the glass windows, grab onto the edge of the window, and drop as softly as he can onto the ground and roll to break his fall and make the strain minimal on his already injured body.
"Y-You - " Mr. Harrison, startled to see Damon as the latter hops back into the driver's seat and revs the engine back up again, "how did you manage to fight your way all the way here, son?!"
Damon turns around and gives Mr. Harrison the meanest stinkeye he's ever given anybody. "Listen, Mr. Harrison," Damon growls, "if there's ever gonna be somebody who's gonna be the question asker, that's this hard-ass motherfucker sittin' in the driver's seat right the fuck now. Now answer me: where's the guy who activated Shimakaze and Kaga? And where is Kaga?"
"Shima...oh, you m-mean the two ship girls that belong to O'Reilly?" Mr. Harrison stammers. "Why...the person who activated them...yes, he...he ought to be at Grady Memorial Hospital right now, in Ward 5, and I do not know where Kaga is, but what in the world are you doin' here, son? You ain't got no business in a place like this - "
Damon points at all the girls in the Humvee. "Do you see these girls, Mr. Harrison? What makes ya think I ain't got no business with a place that has girls like these?"
Mr. Harrison starts, the realization just starting to dawn upon him. "Wait...w-wait, son, all...all of these young gals are...?"
"That's fuckin' right, ol' geezer, now shut the fuck up like the good upstandin' citizen that'cha are 'n keep yer head down, buster." Damon guns the engine and pulls out back onto the streets again, driving past a group of soldiers sent to cut off their possible retreat path, but Murakumo simply mows them down with the onboard M-240 mounted machine gun as Damon keeps his head down in case of flying bullets, getting onto Northwest Marietta Street with Shimakaze shouting directions to the Grady Memorial Hospital.
"How heavily guarded is that hospital?" Damon calls, driving at a breakneck speed of over eighty miles an hour.
"It - it is quite heavily guarded, last time I toured the place!" Mr. Harrison has to yell over the intense whipping of the wind. "But how on earth - "
"How ain't the question, Mr. Harrison! How fast is the damn question!" After barely a minute of speeding and outstripping any patrol of soldiers sent to try to block their advance, Damon brakes hard and drifts the Humvee onto Southeast Jesse Hill Jr. Drive, and the hospital swerves dizzyingly into view. Many soldiers, who are guarding the hospital, are alarmed by the sight of a screeching Humvee headed straight for their position and raise their guns to shoot it, but Mutsu pumps 40mm grenades all around the front of the hospital, sending bodies of mercenaries and soldiers flying about into the air like toy soldiers being flung around by a small child.
"Renny!" Damon shouts to Amatsukaze's robot sidekick, "shoot any bitch you see! Mutsu, keep at it! Murakumo, Iku, on me! Shimakaze, protect everyone in the car!"
Rensouhou-kun immediately lets rip a pair of 12.7cm cannon rounds, destroying a technical across the street from the Humvee that has now screeched to a full stop. Leaving the engine idling, Damon hops out and barges into the main lobby of the hospital with Iku and Murakumo close behind him as Shimakaze shoves Mr. Harrison's head underneath the bulletproof sides of the Humvee and hopping into the M-240 machine gun turret to mow down any soldier she sees. Damon and his two escorting ship girls awkwardly face a mass of huddled, cowering people, frightened terribly by the chaos that is going on outside.
"Where is Ward 5?!" Damon yells. "We aren't gonna hurt anyone here, but we need to know where Ward 5's at!"
"I-I-It's down to the left!" one of the women in the back of the main lobby stammers, terrified. Damon, Murakumo, and Iku rush down the left-hand corridor, following the signs that lead them straight to the double doors of Ward 5. Murakumo and Iku blink a couple times in alarm, confirming the reports being compiled by their sensors.
"Admiral, there's another ship signature inside!" Murakumo reports, pointing at the doors of Ward 5. "It's gotta be Kaga!"
"Anyone else?"
"No...!"
Without a further word, Damon swiftly kicks open the doors.
Kaga, Kaga-class aircraft carrier.
Finally a more modest outfit for a change out of this one, is Damon's initial thought upon seeing Kaga within the first frame of kicking open the doors. A taller, older girl, looking around the age of maybe twenty or twenty-one, possibly eighteen or nineteen if you were to stretch it. A muddy white short-sleeved thick shirt that is reminiscent of a light sweater, a deep blue short-sleeved undershirt, a thick black breastplate (muneate), and a deep blue skirt that reaches down to just above her knees. Black thighhighs, specialized blue combat boots, darker brown hair tied up in a distinctive side ponytail to the left of her head, and dark brown eyes to match her hair.
The instant Damon kicks open the doors, Kaga, who was standing behind the doors just out of the way so that she would not be hit, raises a P-99 handgun at Damon and squeezes the trigger. The 9mm bullet pierces him in the upper breast, just barely missing his left lung.
Damon reels back, the pain of the bullet wound being registered throughout his body, and Murakumo and Iku simultaneously scream out and open fire with their assault rifles, littering Kaga at point blank range with rifle cartridges and knocking Kaga backwards and punching holes into her skirt and lower shirts. Kaga, having never experienced the dull but oddly painful sensation of getting shot before, is forced to drop her handgun as she raises her arms to cover her face and chest in an effort to protect herself as best she can. Burning through their ammo, Iku and Murakumo both drop their guns and charge in, Iku with her huntsman knife and Murakumo with her main mast, but Kaga recovers enough to block Iku's knife thrust at her head with the back of her right wrist, and the blade fails to penetrate much past the initial layer of skin. Murakumo succeeds in slamming her main mast as hard as she can into Kaga's left side, but Kaga simply winces a bit and buries her left fist into Murakumo's forehead, sending her airborne for a brief moment before Murakumo gets pounded off the wall outside the ward and crumples to the heap near Damon, who twirls out his knife handle and rushes in. Kaga fails to block Iku's back kick, but she grabs Iku's foot instead as Iku tries to pull it back away and hurls her the opposite direction, and Iku yelps as she tumbles across the floor of the ward.
"Oi, bitch!" Damon lunges at Kaga, his hacking nanoblade itching for Kaga's forehead, but Kaga sidesteps Damon's attack and hooks her left fist again into his stomach, grabs the back of his head with the same hand, pushes it down, and smashes her left knee into his chin. Damon falls backwards onto his back but still hangs on to his nanoknife, so Kaga brings her boot down on his right hand and forces him to relinquish the weapon before lifting him back up off the floor and, dashing back outside the ward into the hospital corridor, crushes him against the wall of the hall.
"Agggh...!"
Murakumo, getting back up, jumps onto Kaga's back and tries her best to get Kaga to let go of her Admiral, and eventually she becomes annoying enough to succeed, so Kaga lets go of Damon, who slides down the wall in another coughing fit, tears Murakumo's hands off herself, and exerting some effort, hurls her again across the ward like she did to Iku. Iku, meanwhile, manages to recover Damon's nanoknife and pulls Murakumo back onto her feet.
"Thanks," Murakumo mutters, facing the subtly threatening image of Kaga. "As expected of an aircraft carrier...she's built to be too strong for just a destroyer and a submarine like us. Maybe at sea we'd face a better chance, but here..."
Then, a pistol shot rings out, and Kaga suddenly stumbles forward from being struck in the back of the head by a P-99 shot. Damon, having picked up Kaga's dropped handgun, shoots it once to close the distance between him and Kaga, and as soon as Kaga turns to him to face him, he is already within melee distance, and Damon packs as much focus into his right fist as he can and simply socks Kaga in the face as hard as he can. Kaga gets knocked down hard, not expecting Damon to pack such a hard punch like that, and Damon calls to Iku,
"Iku, toss it!"
Iku underhands the nanoknife over to Damon, and snatching it out of the air, he buries his left knee into Kaga's stomach just below her breastplate and plunges his knife into Kaga's forehead, but Kaga manages to barely block it from reaching her head with her hands.
"Sorry, Kaga," Damon grins sadistically, "but this ain't anywhere near the amount of energy you need to stop this."
Putting both hands on his knife, Damon finishes the job, and the nanoblade sinks into Kaga's forehead and pierces her brain, and the knife's hacking system goes to work hacking into Kaga's command console. Kaga's arms flop to the sides as her body becomes unresponsive to herself.
"What...what are you doing to me..." Kaga asks in a low, serious tone that only betrays a small amount of worry.
"Hacking you," Damon says coolly. "After this shit's done, you'll be takin' yer orders from me now. Got it?"
Kaga narrows her eyes, a minute trail of blood oozing down the left side of her head, the same direction as her side ponytail.
"I was not aware that such a feat was possible..." Kaga mutters. "Perhaps you are telling the truth..."
Then, a slow clapping grabs everyone's attention except for Kaga. Damon, Murakumo, and Iku turn to look up at a middle-aged man in a ragged lab coat and even more ragged orange and black prisoner uniform clothes underneath it.
"Impressive," the older man in the lab coat says. "You were not only able to take down Kaga, the aircraft carrier ship girl, but you are now also hacking her to join you. That's some high-level shit you've got goin' on there, kid."
Damon starts to stand up as he gets a good look at the man. A tall man with a lot of wrinkles across his forehead, a distinctive tiger-stripe scar just over his right eye, gaunt facial expressions that are the result of weeks, maybe even months of malnutrition. But one thing catches his eye in particular: just underneath the lab coat's left breast pocket are the letters: SANFORD.
Something snaps inside Damon's mind.
"You..." Damon hisses with as much anger as he can muster. "YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !"
Damon leaves the nanoknife stuck inside Kaga's head to finish the hacking sequence and approaches the man in the lab coat slowly. Not knowing why Damon is suddenly acting so differently and so hostile, the lab coat man takes a cautionary step backwards, towards the row of computers hooked up to one another along the wall.
"...what's wrong? Do I remind ya of someone, kid?" he asks slowly, but Damon raises the P-99 that he took from Kaga and points it at the man's head.
"Yeah, ya shit-suckin' redneck monkey-dick, you kinda remind me 'a someone that I never wished I'd meet," Damon is practically spitting fire. "You can't possibly be Sanford, eh? Eh?"
"Hm, that's what's written here on my shitty lab coat," Sanford smirks. "What about it?"
"Oh, Sanford. Nice ta meet'cha, buddy. Or, should I say, 'Godfather'?"
Sanford's eyes nearly pop out of his head.
"No...no fucking way...you...you aren't...?!" he stammers, his calm facade immediately wiped away with the power of a single word.
"Yeah, it's me, 'Godfather'. Damon. Damon Polchow. The kid of the man you abandoned when the nukes dropped, you fucking faggot."
Damon shoves the P-99 pistol right up in the man's face.
"So gimme a reason why I shouldn't just end ya right the fuck now! Huh!? You coulda went in ta save my ol' man 'n his boys, but what'd you do, motherfucker? Huh?! What the fuckin' fuck didja do!? Ya blew it, fucker! Ya blew it! Ya jus' ran away! Left 'im there ta rot in the radiation! So why! Shouldn't! I! Just! Shoot! Your! Bitch! Ass! ? ! ? !"
Damon's face is bright red with unholy fury. Murakumo and Iku dare not to interrupt their Admiral, and even Kaga is silent, taken back by such a display of emotion from a human being. Damon spits out a bit of blood off to the side, not even caring about the fact that the yelling just made him cough up some more blood.
"...look, Damon," the man named Sanford says slowly, "You ain't gonna believe me, but it wasn't my call. There wasn't anythin' I coulda done then ta save yer ol' man. I can't say much else than that."
Damon glares at Sanford so angrily that if looks could kill, Damon's look could probably be filed in court for cruel and unusual punishment. Then, a radio call jerks Damon back to reality:
"Admiral, where the hell are you!? We're gonna get overrun! They've got reinforcements 'bout to surround us! ! !" Shimakaze's frantic voice screams into Damon's ears, the deep thumping of the M-240 machine gun beating in the background. Damon turns and yanks his nanoknife out of Kaga's forehead, the hacking sequences completed by this point, and violently pulls Kaga up to her feet.
"Welcome to the fleet, Kaga," Damon growls dangerously quietly, stabbing his piercing eyes into Kaga's. "Don't you ever fuckin' fight me again, you bitch, otherwise I'ma twist your fuckin' neck off when I ain't coughin' blood. And I'm damn serious." He turns to everyone else. "We're gunnin' our way back to the chopper. And you - " Damon points the P-99 at Sanford. "You're followin' me. You're better alive than dead to me...for now."
They return to the Humvee and pile into the already crowded vehicle.
"I'm running low on ammo!" Mutsu calls to Damon as he pulls the Humvee down the street.
"You might as well waste it all! We're headin' back to our heli!"
"But - isn't that place overrun by enemies!?"
"And so what if it is? By the way, someone pass Kaga memory files! Mutsu, once we approach the helicopter, get your 41cm guns ready! We're gonna blast our way through!"
Damon drives the Humvee as best he can through more and more groups of soldiers coming out of the woodworks to stop them, the ship girls on board firing back to defend the Humvee as it gets onto the 154 Freeway.
"So, uh, Damon - " Sanford starts to speak as the Humvee enjoys a brief respite from all the action once on the freeway, but Damon pulls up the P-99 pistol to aim it at Sanford's head.
"Shut your fuckin' mouth until we reach the heli," Damon orders. "You of all people have no right to talk to me. I'd rather shake the hand of the asshat that runs this damn faction than let you talk to me right now."
Sanford shuts up immediately, and Mr. Harrison, his brow brimming with sweat from all the gunfire, speaks up. "Er...son, do you, erm...do you have some sort of problem with Mr. Sanford? What's goin' on here, sonny?"
"None 'a your business either, Mr. Harrison," Damon replies right away. "Don't push the issue."
The ship girls, getting the hint, know better than to inquire about the situation between Damon and the man named Sanford. Kaga finishes her download of Mutsu's memory files, and the Humvee surprisingly manages to travel all the way back to the football field of South Gwinnett High School without further incident. Once the Humvee drives past the hulking wrecks of the helicopters that Mutsu had destroyed earlier in the day, Damon barks his orders.
"Mutsu, guns up! Everyone else, get ready to light bitches up! Do not shoot our Merlin, that has all our shit in it! And you two - " Damon points to Mr. Harrison and Sanford, "you think about runnin' anywhere else, I'm puttin' bullets in both your asses."
Damon guns the engine, and the Humvee barges onto Skyland Drive, then onto the football field grounds. The mercenaries who are stationed to watch over the wreck begin to fire back at the incoming Humvee, but Damon keeps his head down, and Mutsu unleashes her volley of 41cm fury, and two giant explosions blasts apart any formation that the mercenaries ever had on the field. Murakumo, Iku, and Shimakaze shoot all the mercenaries guarding their Merlin, and the Humvee skids to a stop next to the helicopter.
"EVERYONE OUT AND INTO THE HELI!" Damon yells at the top of his lungs, and pulling out the helicopter keys, Damon tosses them to Sanford. "You were a former military op like my dad. Fly this bitch for us, or there's gonna be a bullet in your brain, motherfucker!"
"Not as if I had any other plans, kiddo," Sanford smirks, getting out of the Humvee and getting into the pilot's seat. Mutsu, fully packing away her 41cm cannons, jumps into the passenger hold that Murakumo throws the door open to, and as everyone climbs into the chopper, Damon takes Rensouhou-kun, whom Amatsukaze had taken off so that the robot could better protect the Humvee when Damon and co. were raiding the Congress Center, and tosses him to Shimakaze inside the passenger hold. He is about to open the door to reach Amatsukaze, but suddenly cracks of gunfire ring out. Amatsukaze watches in horror as Damon collapses backwards onto the ground, disappearing beneath the Humvee.
"Ad - ADMIRAL! ! ! !" Amatsukaze screams, but a bullet hits her in the head too, and she is knocked down into the seats beneath the doors of the Humvee, ironically protecting her from further gunshots. Damon, shot three times in the upper and middle chest, immediately pulls out his Glock 37, still lying on the ground and bleeding profusely, and does his best to stabilize his rapidly increasing breath and his aim, and just as he hopes, a mercenary soldier rounds the Humvee to finish him off, but Damon spams his Glock 37 as fast as he possibly can and fills the mercenary with .45 GAP lead, and the soldier cries out and falls backwards, dead from fatal shots to the body and head. His M16-A4 ACOG clatters to the ground, and the Merlin's rotor blades begin to spool up.
Expending the entire rest of whatever energy he has left, Damon reaches up and grabs the handle of the Humvee passenger door to pull it open. By this point, the pain and adrenaline combination is so great that Damon's body feels entirely numb and extremely heavy to himself, like he is now dragging Boeing 747 jets tied to his back. He gets to his knees, blood liberally pouring from his mouth and bullet wounds, pulls Amatsukaze out from the Humvee's backseat, shuts the door, and as Shimakaze peers out of the passenger hold door to see what is taking Damon so long to bring in Amatsukaze, Damon heaves Amatsukaze into Shimakaze's arms and throws himself into the passenger hold, and Mutsu slides the door shut.
"We're takin' off! Everybody's onboard, right?!" Sanford yells into the passenger hold. As the main rotor assembly reaches its minimum spool requirement to take off, Iku screams in shock once she realizes the condition Damon is in.
"Admiral! ! ! You're - you're hurt! ! !" Iku practically falls onto the ground next to him and lifts him up. Blood is covering his mouth down to his neck, and his shirt is half-drenched with his own blood. The fleshy entry wounds inflicted by the high-velocity 5.56x45mm rounds luckily did not leave unreasonably nasty exit wounds, but his right lung has collapsed, the top part of his left lung is damaged, and his liver is obviously heavily damaged. The other ship girls rush over, but Mr. Harrison, catching a glimpse of Damon's wounds, gets out of the co-pilot's seat and urgently pushes his way to reach the young man.
"Give him air to breathe, gals," Mr. Harrison strictly says. "If you wanna help him survive this, that is."
The Merlin lifts off and flies away, out of the city, amidst constant gunfire that ping off the Merlin's heavy armor designed to make small arms fire have the same amount of damage as children throwing handfuls of sand at a car. Mutsu, at Mr. Harrison's request, brings him the medical first aid kit in the passenger hold, and Mr. Harrison begins treating Damon as best he can. Iku is crying into Damon's stomach, and Amatsukaze is close to tears herself.
"Why wasn't there anyone out there to defend him while he brought in Amatsukaze!?" Murakumo demands to her fellow ship girls, filled with indignance and frustration at their failure to protect their Admiral. "Why did we all just pile into the helicopter when he clearly was in danger and could've gotten shot at any time!?"
"Well, his orders were to get into this vehicle..." Kaga mumbles.
"Y-Yeah, but...but even still...!"
The helicopter flies through Georgian skies in silence for a while.
"...he carried an extra hundred and seventy or eighty pounds or however much Amatsukaze weighs with her little Rensouhou-kun for a good hour or so, jumped five stories to the ground, and got shot three or four times just to make sure Amatsukaze is still with us," Mutsu mutters miserably. "Is it just me, or does it kind of feel like it's not us protecting our own Admiral anymore, but our own Admiral protecting us?"
No one says a word. Mutsu shakes her head slowly to herself.
"...Admiral called himself an asshole before. If that's what it means to be an 'asshole', then I guess...I guess we're not really qualified to call ourselves ship girls."
Damon's eyes are hazy. He is still conscious, but just barely, afraid that if he is to lose consciousness now, he would never be able to regain it. He hears nothing but muffled sounds, no matter how loud, and everything is just a blur. But his strength is quickly giving out as the wounds he has taken, no matter how well treated at the moment, takes their toll, and Damon manages to put his rough and bloody hand on Iku's head before passing out.