"Holy, are you seeing this, Shia?" Kyousuke asked as the two of them sat behind the desk in his office.
"Of course I'm seeing it, you idiot! I'm sitting right beside you. I'm just not sure I want to believe what I'm seeing. This much information and data, how did Yin compile all of it?"
"I don't think he did."
"What do you mean?"
"Look here." Kyousuke said as he pointed to a section of text on the screen, a paragraph about the crystal of evolution and what it might be made of. "This entire section of data, it's not written how Yin would write. I think, I think a substantial portion of these notes, especially the one that talk directly about the crystal itself, might be his father or Kurokami's writings."
"Hmmmm, you might be right, but if that's the case, most of this information could be up to thirty years old easily. Why would it have been kept hidden?"
"That's a good question, but the information that is added onto it, which is clearly Yin's, confirms all of the potential the prior notes speak of. To think, if Kurokami and Yin's father had kept their research going after the second wave, hybrid ships could've been taking back the ocean twenty years ago!"
"More like fifteen from the timestamp on these documents, but I get your point. I wonder where Yin found these?"
"Probably in the old lab at Kala Island. Yin told me about it a while back," Kyousuke said as he continued to scroll down the document until he got to the very end, and saw a single sentence. "And now I know why Yin gave us this data."
"You do?"
Kyousuke nodded and leaned forward in his seat as he began copying the document onto five different spots on his computer. "Yeah, I do. We need to disseminate this information to the rest of the navy!"
Shia looked at Kyousuke and sighed while pushing her chair away a few feet and leaning back in it with her hands behind her head. "And how to you plan to do that without getting caught? No one else noticed that we have copy of the data, and we don't even know if the data Yin tossed to Kento was the same or not. Why do you want to give it out anyway?"
"Because, I think that's what Yin intended. If the information gets publicized and is impossible to get rid of, some other admirals are bound to test it out, and all it should take is a couple admirals getting hybrids and their sortie's suddenly going better to make everyone begin to see the potential."
"True, but it could also cause those admirals to be summarily discharged." Shia stated simply as she dropped her hands onto her lap. "Not to mention that the ship girls in question would be dismantled in all likelihood."
"That did not escape my thoughts." Kyousuke admitted with a sigh. "Honestly I think a few admirals will take a look into it, especially those that are, close to their ship girls. The only problem would be those who don't consider them people."
"No, the main problem is how do you intend to get this information out without it being directly connected back to you? It isn't exactly a secret we know Yin well after all.
"True . . . that would be, something difficult to hide."
"Exactly. We wouldn't be able to just mail it to people, especially with the way the bases mail systems are set up. There really isn't any way besides giving people paper copies and that is simply out of the question!"
"No, it isn't." Kyousuke said after a moment, "I'll upload it onto the internet. Then anyone will be able to access it!"
"Including civilians and the navies of other countries? That'll go well."
"Okay, so I'll look into some security. If nothing else other navies will be sure to find out eventually."
"What makes you so sure about that?"
"Because, it's been almost a week since we left the forward base and found Kala Island to be a desolate abandoned island with not even a hint of dust in it."
"So that just means he's gone and hidden himself to not get caught."
Kyousuke shook his head and twisted the screen of his computer to Shia, "No, it means he's working out of somewhere in the northern Pacific."
"What?!" Shia exclaimed as she moved her chair closer to get a good look at the screen. The image it showed was one of a wide battlefield among a chain of small Islands. Numerous abyssals were all over in no particular pattern and between them, very clearly tearing into them with gun and fist, was Yin's Yuudachi, Wo, and his mother, Ashigara. The abyssals in it were not doing well, and strewn on the small island were what appeared to be pieces of abyssal armour, and very dead abyssal bodies. "Where, where did you get this image?"
"A guy I met on a joint exercise last year up north by the Russian coast sent it to me. He's an admiral of their navy, and said he'd be sending this image to his superiors in a few days."
"So you're saying the Russian navy will know about this in a matter of days?"
"No I'm saying they will have pictures of it, and that will make them curious. The board will only be able to hide it for so long, and eventually they will have to admit that hybrids exist."
"I suppose. As long as you make sure it doesn't come back to us it'll be fine." Shia said with a sigh as she slumped back into her chair, and then peeked at Kyousuke's computer. "You're giving me a copy of that file, right?"
"Yeah, of course." Kyousuke said as he disconnected a formerly empty USB and tossed it to his sister who caught it without even looking at it.
"Thanks. I'm not sure how quickly I'll delve into this stuff, or when, but it will be good to have, and I'm sure all this data can be good for other things as well."
"Such as weapons?"
"Such as weapons."
"Okay, that's . . . . you really want to outfit your fleet better, huh?"
"Yes, it's always been a big deal that the one with the more accurate and bigger gun, will last longer." Shia claimed as she neatly swung out of her seat and began walking toward the door, slipping the drive into her jacket pocket.
"You heading back to your base then?" Kyousuke asked as Shia opened the door wide.
"Yes, I'm still in the middle of reorganizing everyone," Shia said as she suddenly pulled out her phone, scowled and put it back in her pocket. "And apparently my carriers are preparing to go on strike if I don't send out an expedition or three."
"Why would they-,"
"We're almost out of food apparently."
"Ah, good luck then. Talk to you later." Kyousuke said with a wave.
"Yeah, talk to you later." Shia called back as she left, thinking of all the ways things could change in the coming months.
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Admiral Kento Yaramisa sat at his desk and scowled at his computer. It had been ten days since the events at the forward base that had now been dubbed Sentinel Isle. The base would now always be staffed by three different fleets as their base of operations, but that wasn't important. What was important was what had happened that day.
The mass routing of the abyssal forces, the destruction of the abyssal presence in that area, and possibly of their base of operations, Yin's actions and his hybrid's. These were what were important.
Kento had hoped to return to the headquarters sooner, but reorganizing the front, staffing fleets on patrol in the waters near the battle site, and sending out groups to hunt for the defector were more important, and as such, now was the first chance he had to look at the data that was on the drive that Yin had left behind as a farewell.
The data itself was, interesting to say the least. It was a combination of decades old research documents, case files, and experiment rosters, complete with reports of effects, incubation times, and other such information. A surprising amount of the information, over half of it, was the original technical research files and papers that appeared to be the basis for second remodels, construction and the growth of ship girls, as well as the information that had allowed the admiralty boards of years before to build additional equipment to modify or specialize their fleet's. They were written and compiled by a total of six people. The three original Admirals that fielded ship girls, Ryu Kurokami, Tachiro Akimoto, and Shin Tachibana, wrote the majority of the papers, with their secretaries, Kirishima, Ashigara and Fubuki, the first three ship girls, often being the subjects of study and having added notes to the papers.
These notes, for the most part, appeared specialized and highly professional, as did the notes on effects. What was strange was that about halfway through some notes began talking about avoiding specific tests, without getting into what they were, and the fact that no information about Shin Tachubana or Fubuki appeared after these points. Thinking it odd, Kento checked the name in the database of past admirals, but found it completely empty, with no name in the database.
"Strange. Names are never deleted from the database no matter the reason. . . . hmmm. I'll have to look into that when I have a chance." Kento muttered to himself as he scrolled down the compiled file, entering the more recent areas of it, written by Yin Akimoto, the now . . . . . . . defected Admiral of the Hybrids, as they were now officially being called.
This section was written differently. While the older files were precise and to the point while being extremely intelligently written and documented, this section was random, to the point and all, but a chaotic jumble of test theorem, test reactions, and information. The testing that was described was simple, working off of the theory of the old works of Tachiro, Ryu and Shin, and while some of the tests appeared to be dead ends, the ones that did not were very informative, though their intent was, morally shaky.
Hybridization. All of Yin's tests and theory were under this one very specific idea. All of them pointed to three important points as well.
A ship girl could become a Hybrid after becoming an Abyssal. If this happens the hybrid form retains much, if not all of the looks and abilities of their abyssal self, and the hybridization is a temporary thing that can be done and undone at will.
A ship girl can become a hybrid through sheer will and determination if she understands this, is at the absolute maximum of her own abilities, and trains for it. Direct contact to the Crystal of Evolution acts as a primer for the change to speed it up, but is NOT required.
A hybrids capabilities and looks are specific to each person and not ship class or name and are effected by the ship girl's desires, both while training to become a hybrid and when they transform. If a ship girl is enraged or vengeful while they transform some connection to that emotion will be built into their new looks and equipment. Their looks and equipment are also related in part to their historic achievement.
There were also notes about how to stall hybridization as well, but nothing specific about stopping it outright, meaning once it was done, it was done. The information was interesting, and the statistics that Yin described for the before and after on transformations of his own fleet in the documents clearly stated their abilities were many times greater than before.
This led to an unfortunate problem, however. The morality that some admirals would take against hybridization. The act was essentially mixing an amount, sometimes smaller or larger, of abyssal energy and technology into the ship girl that set off hybridization, and that would make many admirals leery, if not scared of such a thing. They would worry the ship girls would not be themselves, or would change and go out of control. The research of Yin stated that some small emotional shifts could occur, but that they stabilized after a time and as the ship girl learned to harness and command their new equipment.
This was a problem, not because other admirals could be against it as a matter of morality or preference, but because Kento would have to be leery of it by association. As the head of the Admiralty Board he had to push all dealing of serious business to the board itself, which decided as a group while obeying the board's rules to the letter.
To put it bluntly, Kento was not against hybridization in the least if the ship girls going through it would still be themselves and it made them stronger. Anything to help defeat the Abyss was a good thing in his mind, but as the Admiralty Board Head, he was limited and controlled in what he could do simply because of his rank.
"So, I'm guessing from your expression that reading the data is making you all annoyed at how you had to act back at Sentinel Isle?"
Kento looked up from his desk to find Sendai sitting in the chair on the desks opposite side. She was in her hybrid gear, with the mouth cover down, and had her legs crossed as she leaned back in the chair, twiddling what appeared to be a shuriken in her fingers amusingly with a smile on her face.
"Sendai? When did you-?"
"Just now actually, so I'm glad I didn't have to sit here waiting for you to notice me. You did look quite into your reading."
Kento looked at Sendai for a moment and sighed. "Have you looked at this information? Do you know what it explains here?"
"Everything. What Yin's father and the first admirals discovered, what Yin knows about hybridization and its abilities and how to do it. It basically has all the information to make it commonplace."
"Yin knows this. He intended to give up all this information?" Kento asked in an unsure tone.
"Yeah, Kirishima and I helped compile all the information to give it the best touch for the people who read it, while he was designing the plan, of course." Sendai explained.
"That plan, at Sentinel Isle, I mean. How much of what he did was actually planned, and how much of it was by the seat of his pants?"
Sendai looked up the ceiling for a few second as her expression changed constantly, attempting to figure out the answer. "Well, he had the whole plan figured out, and there were about three alternatives if things went wrong, but with how fast you reacted to everything and with his mother and Rena popping up. . . . I'd say it ended up being fifty-fifty?"
". . . You don't sound too sure about that."
"It was a big plan and I honestly forgot the ending bits of it in mid act." Sendia admitted with a shrug as she pulled a folder of paper out from somewhere, and handed it to Kento.
"What's this?" Kento asked as he opened the folder to find nautical maps of island chains and ocean currents with pen and marker marks all over them.
"It's a mapping of our new base, the ocean currents around it that the abyss would have previously used to travel, as well as planned patrol routes and expedition maps."
"I take it this is why we haven't been able to find head nor tails of you all?"
"Yes."
"How long was Yin planning this?" Kento asked with a sigh as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"For a while we were compiling the information on that drive and planning the operation. We were also slowly moving all of our supplies and machinery from Kala Island to the abandoned allied submarine base up north that the Abyss had taken over but never really used. The defecting Abyssals that have joined our fleet also were siphoning equipment there as well and-.."
"Defecting abyssals?! How many, which ones? How long was. . . . . Ugh, never mind."
"There are six, and they contacted us actually. They truly did not like the. . . .Um, leaders of the Abyss. And they have proven quiet capable in the last few days."
"In what facet?"
"They've single handedly taken on abyssal remnants that tried to come to the base. Submarine Hime even took out three battleships in a matter of seconds. They all are skilled, and we're glad to have them."
Kento sighed again and placed both hands on his desk. "Okay, fine, I'll drop that point for now. You said they gave you information, right? Is it information you can share?"
"That is actually why I'm here. Yin believes that while our fleet may be . . . unassociated now, that we should still communicate with the navy, at least unofficially, so I'll be popping by to give reports now and then. Mainly because I convinced him that you were not acting as you truly wanted to at Sentinel Isle.
"That's an understatement. But what information did you come to give me?"
"Well, the defecting abyssal told us something. The identity of the, thing that leads the abyss; or perhaps, contains the abyss. It's, well-..."
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Airfield Hime and Battleship Symbiotic Hime limped through the shattered and broken halls of what remained of Iron Bottom Sound. The blasts that the taboo's had created had detonated their stores of ammunition and fuel, and the destruction from it was widespread, limiting their movement through Iron Bottom, likening it to a maze.
It had taken days to remove the debris in the current tunnel to allow them back into the facility, something that was made more difficult by the fact that the majority of their remaining forces ended up scattered and broken after the battle.
Their own injuries had made things difficult as well. Their equipment was either destroyed completely or simply unable to be of assistance and neither of them could initially move on their own, having only regained their own mobility a few hours prior. Moving was painful and slow but at least they could.
The halls of Iron Bottom, those that still existed or were not full of rubble and water, were covered in cracks, and water dripped and seeped down the walls, pooling in cracks and craters in the floor.
They went deep into Iron Bottom Sound, past broken machinery, the ancient scars of past combat, and further down ramps and stairways through chains of heavy iron doorways, each sealed shut by a keypad with a different combination. Once they had descended down the fourteenth flight of stairs and the seventh ramp, they came to a single door, a door made of stone and age. On either side of the door sat two automatic turrets created from the husks of human technology and Abyssal armour, turrets that would fire armour piercing incendiary rounds at terrifying speed and volume at anyone but the two of them if they approached. These turrets were powered by one thing and one thing only, the entire worlds hate for the abyss, and they would never run out of power.
Working together the two of them used all of their strength and pushed on the massive doors. Their crippled bodies screamed at the strain, and some of their wounds burst open, pouring sickly thick bile onto the floor at their feet, but after what felt like an eternity, they opened the door enough to step inside, and then forced their bodies into even more pain closing the great doors behind them.
The hall they now stood in was completely dark, and it took many minutes for even their well-developed eyes to make out shapes in the darkness. Stepping through the labyrinth of potholes filled with murky water the two of them finally stopped in what could only be described as a pit so dark it sealed off all light and sound, an abyss darker than even their names and meanings.
"It still exists." Battleship Symbiotic Hime stated after a few moments of complete and utter silence.
"Yes, but. . . . . . is it as beat and bruised as we are?"
"We cannot tell that, not unless we-,."
"We do not allow visuals of it, otherwise our ability to make our own choices becomes . . . difficult, you know that." Airfield commented back sounding greatly irate.
"Yet without it we will not exist, we must know how badly it is damaged!"
" . . . . . Only a few seconds, understand?"" Airfield Hime asked, getting a pat on the shoulder from Symbiotic as a reply.
In a single motion they both threw their arms to their sides, and in an instant, a series of bright torches lit up the darkness, showering the cavern with pale blue light. The cavern was a dome in shape like the taboo's cell, but it was many times greater, and it held no taboo.
Floating in the centre of the dome, with the endless abyss of darkness sinking below it, was a mass of blackness worse than the abyss below. It was as large as a battleship and seemed to swirl and ebb inward on itself, as if consuming and replenishing the very existence of its own being. As soon as the flames lit the mass seemed to pulse and ebb, sending out blind signals into the air around it that caused Airfield and Symbiotic to cringe and groan as they began to loose control of their bodies. Pain and the singular desire to kill anything available suddenly blotting out their thoughts and desires.
In that single second both of them pulled their arms back, causing every torch to become extinguished, removing all light from the room and returning it to darkness. As the darkness settled in, the command to their bodies began to lessen, and finally the two of them were able to stand back up, breathing heavily as a pain unlike anything physical coursed through their bodies.
"That, that was bad. We barely,.. it almost took us completely in that single moment. It hasn't become weaker at all." Airfield gasped in horror as she felt blood begin to seep out of one of her eyes, clouding her vision a bit as the two of them turned back and began to leave the room.
"I agree. It is as if it has become, stronger somehow. It does not make sense, however. It created us, but many of us were killed in the battles. How has it not weakened then?"
"I don't know, but we need to keep it down here. Or no one will survive." Airfield agreed as she and Battleship Symbiotic Hime left the room through the massive doors, not noticing a tiny fracture in the door, that a tiny amount of darkness seemed to be seeping out of.
Authors finale.
And that's it, the end of "Coalition Fleet – Fall of Darkness", though quite obviously not the end of the series as I've left it quite open. I hope everyone has enjoyed "Fall of Darkness" and looks forward to the next one, but on that point . . . .
Quite a while back I realised that I could not effectively write more than two primary fics without all of my work bogging down, which is why I put many fics of mine on hiatus so I could focus. As it is though, I have a lot of stories that I have started, but have not yet completed. Because of this, I will not be starting any new stories until I finish a few of the ones I have already started. With the completion of "Fall of Darkness" I'm starting back up my dog days fic, but this does not mean I'm not going to continue the Coalition story, I just won't be doing it immediately.
On that point, I've put a poll on my profile page that is going to stay up for quite a while. This will give anyone a say in what fic I write next once I'm done finishing started yet unfinished stories. Everyone will get three votes, and I actually have two (2) Coalition ideas on this poll as well.
One story picks up just after "Fall of Darkness", roughly a half year after, and the other, is a prequel, focusing on Yins father, Ryu Kurokami, and the beginning of the war. I also have other kancolle ideas on the poll as well, but they are not Coalition related.
That's how it's going to be for the moment basically/unfortunately. So I hope to see you all in the future, maybe on other fics of mine, and if not I'll see you when Coalition continues. So until then, thank you greatly for reading and enjoying "Coalition Fleet-Fall of Darkness".
You guys are all awesome XD