I don't normally do this, but be warned: this chapter contains an uncharacteristically huge amount of gore and language.
Second Mutsuki-Class Destroyer, Kisaragi.
A green and white sailor uniform that seems to be quite popular as a baseline costume for many of the other ship girls with a black string ribbon that keeps the folds of her sailor uniform together. Black thighhighs, tough terrain boots, and long, richly brown hair that sweeps down to her waist. A sort of hair button with three ribbon flaps is pinned to her scalp, along the left side of her head, and soft, gentle purple eyes.
"Kisaragi...huh?" Damon reads the name as his small holographic screen of his knife handle shows, withdrawing his nanoknife once the hack force-activates Kisaragi into active duty. "Murakumo, cover the entrance to this thing, I've got another ship girl here!"
"Comin', keep your head down!" Murakumo responds through his headset, having loaded whatever small amount of supplies found inside the shipping container into the Huey. Promptly, Kisaragi wakes, but right away she yelps, sounding as though something is seriously hurting her.
"O-Owwww - !" Kisaragi chokes, pulling her hand over her mouth. Damon, alarmed, thinking at first that perhaps his hack sequence had gone terribly, reaches over quickly and holds her shoulders, keeping her body upright.
"What's wro - " Damon cuts himself short as Kisaragi pulls her hand away from her mouth and reveals a large blotch of blood on her palm and some more blood trickling out of the corners of her mouth. "Oh fuck, what the hell happened?"
"It...it hurts..." Kisaragi whimpers, much like a small puppy would after having its paw stepped on. Damon notices that she is clutching her side with her other hand, so he takes her hand and tries to lift it to examine that part of her body, but Kisaragi holds her hand firm. "It...no, don't...don't look...it's...it's ugly..."
"Wha - hey, look, you're bleeding outta your goddamn mouth, why the hell're you worryin' 'bout whether it looks ugly or not?!" Damon practically yells with disbelief. "Lemme look at this!"
Ripping her hand away from her side and pulling her sailor uniform up, Damon sees a very large and quite ugly-looking black bruise that has invaded not only her right side but also all the way up to the middle of her ribcage. As Damon realizes the deepness of the wound, he notices that all throughout Kisaragi's body, there are marks and signs of physical abuse - punches, biting, and other such marks. Her skin, hair, and clothes are dirty with dirt and grime from inside the shipping container.
"...what the fuck happened to you?" Damon asks in a horrified tone. "C'mon, get up, we gotta get'cha outta here! You, kid, you're comin' with us, there ain't anyone else left here ta look after ya here anyway!"
Damon urges Kisaragi to get up to her feet, but when Kisaragi tries, she screams out with pain, stumbles forward, and smacks her head against the other wall of the narrow shipping container. Coughing and crying from the pain simultaneously, she wails as tears clean the grime off her face in streaks. Murakumo pops her head inside the shipping container.
"Damon, the area's mostly secured by now! If we wanna leave, now's gonna be our chance!" Murakumo calls, but she watches Damon help Kisaragi back up to her feet and kneels down in front of her to carry her on her back. "Wait, what the crap are you doing? And it's Kisaragi...?"
"Kisaragi's really badly hurt right now," Damon shakes his head as Tenryuu and Tatsuta also regroup with them. "I gotta carry her - she can't walk without hurtin' real bad."
"Oh my..." Tatsuta narrows her eyes sharply and grips her glaive even harder. "...Kisaragi-chan? And she is gravely hurt?"
"I don't know how either. What's the status on the resources 'n whatnot? Anyone found more?"
"Ashigara found some more in another shippin' container on the other side," Tenryuu explains. "Might be some in each 'a these containers, we could search for 'em."
"Then Murakumo, grab the kid and we're gonna take him 'n Kisaragi back to the Huey," Damon quickly orders. "We're gonna dump 'em in there - Tenryuu, Tatsuta, cover us while we do that. Afterwards, I'll stay in the Huey and talk to Kisaragi a bit and find out what's happened to her and what's goin' on with her injuries. While I'm doin' that, the rest 'a you look around and locate those resources. Do whatever you need ta to find 'em. Got it?" Damon hands Tenryuu his marksman rifle. "Use this for now 'til we get to the chopper 'cause I ain't got any hands right now. Let's go!"
Murakumo picks up the small boy, and with Tenryuu and Tatsuta taking point, the small group rush back to the Huey as their ally KA-60K support helicopter hovers close by overhead and provides aerial support cover. As the carriers greet them, Tatsuta throws open the passenger bay door, and Sazanami peeks out with her M4-A3 assault rifle pointed straight at Tatsuta.
"Oh, it's just you, Tatsuta," Sazanami says, lowering her rifle and leaning out of the door. "Oh? Is that Kisaragi-chan?"
"Yeah, move, move," Damon says, and Sazanami helps Kisaragi into the back of the Huey on the second row of passenger seats. "Sazanami, sit over here so that Kisaragi's in between you 'n Ushio."
"Oh no...Kisaragi-chan, Kisaragi-chan!" Ushio cries, deploring the condition that Kisaragi is in. "Wh-What on Earth happened to her, Admiral...?!"
"That's what I wanna find out!" Damon pulls open the cockpit door to the pilot's seat. "The rest 'a you, you know what to do! Find whatever ya can so we can get the hell outta here quick! That includes you three's well!"
"Huh? Wait, what're we doing?" Zuikaku asks, confused.
"Just follow us, we're gonna go and find the rest of those resources that're here!" Murakumo barks after closing the door to the co-pilot's seat, where she has placed the small boy they have rescued. "We don't have much time, move!"
Murakumo, Tenryuu, Tatsuta, Kaga, Shoukaku, and Zuikaku head off to investigate the containers, and Damon starts up the engine to the Huey just in case he needs to take off any at moment. He turns around in his seat to look back at Kisaragi, who is being tended to as much as possible by a very concerned Ushio and a worried Sazanami. The small boy up in the co-pilot's seat is rubbing his eyes and sniffing loudly, unsure of what to make of his new situation.
"Kisaragi, can you talk?" Damon asks, and Kisaragi opens her tired eyes and nods slowly.
"Y-Yes...yes, I can...Ad...mir...ow...!" Kisaragi winces and clutches her heavily bruised side.
"She's so hurt, Master!" Sazanami says. "It's like someone just beat the heck out of her or something..."
"Yeah...it's pretty clear someone just pummeled her real bad. That huge bruise on her side - somethin' tells me that someone just kicked her over 'n over there without stoppin', it's pretty fuckin' bad," Damon clenches his teeth a bit, analyzing the wounds that he can see on Kisaragi. "She got abused, straight up. That's how I found her. Outside her crate 'n all."
"Eh!? She was - you found her already outside of her shipping crate...!?" Ushio asks, horrified. "And...and what about...what about her ship weapons, Admiral? I didn't see..."
Damon shakes his head. "We didn't find 'em; they aren't even there. All we found was her, the shipping crate that she came with that someone already broke her out of, and this kid over here," Damon points to the boy in the co-pilot's seat, who looks back at him, too tired to cry any more. "C'mon, talk to me, Kisaragi. You're a ship girl; how'd you get hurt this badly? How the hell can normal punches just hurt you like this? Is it even possible?"
Kisaragi, breathing heavily and struggling not to cough up more blood, closes her eyes laboriously.
"...my..." she whispers, "...my...ship mode...is...inactive..."
Damon's eyes snap open with horrified amazement.
"In...active?"
Kisaragi nods.
"I...for some reason, I...my logs are...telling me that...I...I never activated my...my ship mode..."
"Never activated? What the hell? How's that possible!?"
Kisaragi painfully shakes her head. "...I...I don't know...Admiral...I really...don't...it hurts...it really hurts..."
Nearly at tears herself, Ushio embraces Kisaragi, pressing her cheek against Kisaragi's. "It's...it's going to be okay, Kisaragi-chan! Please, just - just hang in there, we're going to go to a place where you can be repaired soon! Please hang in there, Kisaragi-chan...! We - we need to find everyone first, so...so please - !"
"U-Ushio-chan..." Kisaragi whispers. "That...that hurts too...a bit..."
Damon's thoughts are racing as bullets can be heard being fired numerously and without stoppage in the ambience. Kisaragi was never activated, yet her ship mode was inactive and someone had managed to break open her crate and abuse her somehow and give her those ugly wounds. Two questions are floating about in Damon's head, begging to be answered.
"Kisaragi," Damon calls to the weak destroyer, "can you reactivate your ship mode? That possible right now?"
"I...I can, but...but I have no strength to do so..." Kisaragi breathes heavily.
"Okay, well, the important part is, you can still turn on your ship mode, right? That's what I wanna know."
"Yes...yes, I can..."
The second question still lingers in Damon's head, although there is no way he can simply ask it outright to Kisaragi. Biting his lips, he glances at Sazanami.
"Sazanami, what I'm gonna ask you is gonna sound really, really wrong, but I want you to do this for me anyway," Damon warns Sazanami.
"Huh? What do you want me to do, Master?" Sazanami asks, a bit confused herself.
"Pull up her skirt for me."
Both Ushio and Sazanami stare at Damon with open mouths.
"A-A-Admiral! ! !" Ushio cries out, her face blushing at the thought. "H-How could you! When K-Kisaragi-chan's like this - !"
"So Master does have his sick fantasies of his own after all," Sazanami scowls at Damon. "Girls like us who get beat up and abused turns you on, huh? You sick freak."
Damon rolls his eyes, seeing that the reaction was just as he had expected. "Do it anyway, and that's a fucking order," Damon orders sternly, and Sazanami, sighing, pulls up Kisaragi's skirt.
There are streaks of dried blood on the insides of her thighs.
And if Kisaragi was wearing any underwear at any point, she certainly didn't have them on now.
Damon turns around in his seat and pulls down the microphone of his headset. His eyes are incredibly livid.
"All ship girls, this's Damon," Damon growls deeply. "Find one 'a these assholes and bring him to the Huey alive. Two if you can manage it."
"Huh? Why?!" Tenryuu yells amidst loud reports of rifles going off near her.
"I want to interrogate the fuck outta one 'a these shitbags."
Ushio and Sazanami, both realizing what has happened to Kisaragi, slowly look at each other in horror.
"...oh no...oh no..." Ushio puts her hand over her own mouth. "...it...it can't be..."
Sazanami says nothing. Instead, she simply bites down on her lower lip and hugs Kisaragi.
"I'm sorry, Kisaragi-chan..." Sazanami says quietly, closing her eyes.
"Wha...? What is...going on?" Kisaragi asks in a light voice. "What...happened...? Is there...something...wrong with me...?"
But neither Ushio nor Sazanami have the heart to tell her what has happened.
It doesn't take much longer for the ship girls running rampant on the ground to secure the site and check the rest of the shipping containers. As it turns out, most of the containers held a stash of a small amount of resources, so together, they made up a considerable amount of fuel, ammo, steel, and bauxite. As the KA-60K helicopter lands to load some of the cargo, Ashigara and Tatsuta drag two men whom they have captured upon Damon's order and throw them in front of Damon, who stands at the side of the Huey, flanked by the other ship girls from his chopper. One man is a young unkempt-looking man with a goatee and a bandana, while the other has a heavily ripped letterman jacket on.
"So you're the ringleader 'a these whores, huh?" the man with the bandana sneers with a bit of the stereotypical Jersey accent, flipping the bird at Damon. "Must be real nice bein' able ta fuck a different pussy each day 'a the week!"
Tatsuta raises her glaive to aim the blade at the back of the bandana man's head, but Damon raises a hand at her to get her to stop.
"A'ight, smartass, if you think you can give me that kinda shit, I'ma let you answer some questions I got, 'cause I love askin' fucking cunts like you questions!" Damon roars over the beating of two pairs of helicopter blades. "Answer these, and maybe I'll let'cha go back ta jerkin' yerself off!"
"Hey, fuck you!" the other man in the letterman jacket snarls. "You fuckin' Feds, thinkin' you can just run any place you want! You didn't give us jack shit for food 'n medicine back at our CCPL post, and you're slaughterin' us just 'cause we're protesting to get what we want? Burn in fucking hell, motherfucking bitch!"
Damon quickly draws his Glock 37 sidearm and points it at the man with the letterman jacket.
"Wanna talk more shit, huh? Huh?! No? I didn't fucking think so!" Damon screams, unable to keep his anger over what happened to Kisaragi in check.
"Yeah, go ahead 'n shoot, you pussy! You ain't got the balls! Think you can just roll up to a Costco's and find the sack 'a balls you want for the day? No, you jus' send in these sluts ta grab those balls for you so they can suck you off at night once you're done bein' fucking Feds for the day!" the man with the bandana yells. "C'mon! Shoot! Bet'cha never killed another guy in your life, kid! C'mon! Do i - "
Damon, without waiting for the guy to finish, swiftly pulls his pistol at the bandana man's stomach and pulls the trigger. The shot rips through the man's gut, and he doubles over, screaming and writhing in pain as his blood begins to gush freely like a torrent all over his hands and wrists.
"Since this guy was a fuckin' idiot, I guess I'll jus' ask you some questions and hope you're not as fucking retarded!" Damon hollers over both the screaming of pain and the helicopter rotors at the man with the letterman jacket, who is now visibly shaken by the sight of watching his comrade begin to die slowly. Ushio, watching everything happen from inside the Huey through the window of the passenger door, winces and turns away, unable to watch the man suffer.
"A-Alright, alright, I fucking get it, I'll talk!" the man with the letterman jacket says, raising his hands in the surrender position. "What do you want?"
Damon turns around and yanks the Huey passenger door open. "Sazanami, get out so he can see," Damon orders strictly, and Sazanami quickly hops out to reveal Kisaragi sitting in the middle seat. Pointing at Kisaragi, Damon yells at the man with the letterman jacket, "See that girl? Where'd you find her? How'd you get your hands on her?"
The man looks surprised. "That girl? Shit, she - how'd you even find her, what the hell!"
"I ASKED YOU A MOTHERFUCKING QUESTION AND YOU SAID YOU'D ANSWER IT, NOW HURRY UP, FUCKING TWAT!"
"Okay, okay, calm down, calm down!" the man shrieks as Damon snaps his Glock 37 back at the man's head, threatening to pull the trigger on the spot. "We - we found her in one of the factories! We thought it was with the rest of the stuff we found there, so we opened it up and we found that girl inside! I was one of the ones who opened up that weird crate she was in - it was really tough, you know!"
"Were there anyone else in the factories when you found her? Other Feds or workers who weren't part of you guys?"
"Yeah, but - but we killed them all! They're all dead inside!"
"And when'd you kill 'em?"
"Right when we captured the factories yesterday morning! We just - we just stormed in and killed everyone inside to take those supplies!"
"And how'd you know about the factories? How'd you know this's Fed property?"
"We just - we just knew! We've all seen smoke comin' from those smokestacks and shit, so we just assumed this was Fed property, so obviously we wanted to take control of this place since it's relatively close by to our CCPL!"
"Was there anyone else like this girl? You find any other crates like this?"
"No, dude, she's the only one like that we found! Everything else we checked was just random shit, like six-packs of cans that hold oil of some kind, these weird steel patch things, bars made out of some weird shit, and...and what was the last one...? Like, ammo for shit that we don't even recognize! I'm serious, dude!"
"Okay, okay then!" Damon lowers his gun slightly, "then I got only one more question ta ask. That girl," Damon points back inside the passenger bay of the Huey at Kisaragi, "you know why that girl was so fuckin' beat up when I found her? What'd you do to her, huh?"
The man hesitates, looking at Kisaragi. "Er - well - "
Damon lunges on this glaringly obvious hint. He takes a huge step forward, raising his sidearm again, even shaking it a bit in front of the man's face and screams,
"YOU KNOW SOMETHING, DON'T'CHA? SPIT IT OUT, FUCKER! SPIT IT OUT! I KNOW YOU KNOW SOMETHIN', I CAN FEEL IT, MOTHERFUCKER! ! ! ! !"
"O-Okay, I fucking will, don't shoot!" the man with the letterman jacket screams, facing away from Damon's gun as it looms within reaching distance. "She - some of the guys took her from the place we were keeping her inside the south factory and brought her out to one 'a these containers here and - and - "
At this, all the ship girls who are watching the interrogation freeze.
"SAY IT!" Damon screams even louder. "SAY IT, YOU GODDAMN PUSSY! YOU'RE GONNA TELL ME TA BURN IN HELL, YET YOU CAN'T EVEN SAY WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GIRL? SAY IT! HURRY THE FUCK UP!"
"Dude, holy fuck, you already know! Why do you have to get me to tell you?!" the man with the letterman jacket shrieks back.
"'CAUSE IF YA DON'T, YOU'RE GONNA END UP LIKE THAT RETARDED FUCK RIGHT OVER HERE!" Damon threatens.
"THEY FUCKING RAPED HER!" the man roars back. "THEY TOOK HER OUT, THEY LAID HER OUT, AND THEY BEAT THE SHIT OUTTA HER! WHAT THE FUCK ELSE DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY, HUH?"
Only the helicopter rotors can be heard for a few very long seconds after the man confesses. Damon's lips twist like mad, and his hand on his gun is trembling so hard that it appears to be almost vibrating.
"And why - " Damon asks in a deadly voice, " - why didn't you stop 'em?"
The man glares back up at Damon. "Why the fuck do you care so goddamn much? What's that girl to you? Don't act like you Feds care about anyone else other than yourselves!"
Damon raises his gun quickly up in the air and squeezes off another round, causing the man in the letterman jacket to flinch terribly and cower before pointing his smoking gun back down at him again.
"Answer," Damon hisses through his teeth, "the, fucking, question. Why didn't you stop 'em? You don't seem like a full asshole. Why didn't'cha stop 'em? Why?"
The man refuses to answer. Damon leans in closer to the man, narrowing his eyes.
"Is it maybe 'cause...YOU were one 'a those guys too, by chance?"
"Look, we didn't know anything 'bout that girl, that guy over there did it too - " the man begins, but Damon doesn't let him go anywhere with his thought. He simply lowers his gun at the man's right lung and fires. Rage pumps into Damon's veins and arteries as he quickly holsters his pistol, yanks the man with the letterman jacket whom he has just shot through the lung and is now choking and having difficulty breathing up to his feet and throws him against the side of the Huey, behind the passenger bay door. Lifting him back up off the ground, Damon repeatedly smashes the man's head into the metal side of the Huey's hull until blood begins to appear on the hull.
"Hey, faggot, before ya die on me, I'll have ya know one thing! ! !" Damon screams as loudly as he can into the jacket man's ear. "I've worked at hospitals treating people who got raped! I've put a bullet into the head of a good kid who saw the body 'a his girlfriend who just got gangbanged and murdered and didn't wanna live anymore after that! You think jus' 'cause you're rebels, jus' 'cause you're fightin' against the fucking Feds, jus' 'cause you're in a post-apocalyptic world where no one gives a shit about you or anyone else you care about, you fucking think that you can do fucked up shit and use 'but I can do whatever I fucking want' as a goddamn excuse?! 'Cause I'm about to fucking rip your brain out 'n shove it up your fucking asshole and let YOU know how it feels to get your shithole fucked by a two-inch Cracker-Jack dick!"
With this, Damon tightens his hold on the man's hair on the back of his head, smashes his head into the side of the Huey's hull one more time, pulls out his knife handle and flips down his karambit knife blade, pulls the man away from the helicopter to where he had been kneeling initially, lets go of his hair, and shoves the tip of the karambit through the back of his head. The curved karambit penetrates the man's skull with the force of Damon's thrust and carves a massive lesion up through the man's brain. As the man's eyeballs begin to roll up into the depths of his head, Damon once again pulls out his Glock 37 and empties the rest of the magazine into the man's neck, effectively causing the man's body to push itself out of Damon's karambit and nearly decapitating the body with the amount of bullets he puts into the corpse.
Dropping the mag of his sidearm and closing the slide without loading another magazine, Damon continues his vengeful rampage and turns his attention to the man with the bandana, who is nearing death from unstoppable blood loss.
"I think your friend over there basically told me ta send you with 'im to hell," Damon declares, cracking his knuckles, "maybe you two should try 'n find other girls to rape down in hell! Misery loves company, sonuvabitch!"
Damon, without a single shred of human decency, begins to repeatedly kick the man in the gut where he had shot him, and when the man tries to resist weakly by putting his hands in front of Damon's boot, Damon simply stabs his karambit knife through each of the man's wrists and saws his hands off, pulling them off physically to save some time and tossing them aside like pieces of trash before continuing to kick the man in his gunshot wound over and over. After some thirty-odd kicks, Damon drags the man up by the collar, his eyes dead and hanging from the unregisterable amount pain overloading his nerves, and drags him to the rear of the Huey, where the tail rotors are still spinning. The ship girls briefly hear grotesque sounds of something being hacked and whacked apart with very loud thumps and thuds, and Tatsuta snickers with amusement as she sees a piece of what used to be a human arm flail into view and flop on the ground in a bloody heap.
Damon finally returns, stopping himself in front of all his ship girls who have witnessed him execute two men in some of the most gruesome ways imaginable. He is splattered from head to toe in the blood of two of Kisaragi's tormentors, still holding his karambit knife. The new Fade paintjob that he had put on his knife is smeared and dripping with blood. He looks as though he were a field surgeon straight out of the American Civil War.
"All the shit loaded?" he asks the girls simply, and they do nothing but nod slowly. "Good, then let's fucking go. Damon to all ship girls, we've secured the resource stockpile and we're comin' on over with an extra hand."
Damon climbs into the pilot seat of the Huey, and the ship girls slowly return to their respective choppers. Soon, the UH-1H Huey and the KA-60K choppers lift off with the secured resources and their new ship girl and take off for the laboratories in Trenton, leaving behind only pieces of the tragedy that Damon had found.
Thrusting her boot into the locked door of Room 149, Kongou breaches the door by simply kicking it right off its hinges, and Hibiki is the first to sweep in, her AKS-74U carbine ready to dispense justice in the form of thirty 5.56x39mm rounds.
"Clear!" she calls, lowering her weapon, and her two other sisters slink into their objective, Room 149. This room appears to be a computer lab of sorts, located at the bottom of the west wing of the hospital. Electrical wires and equipment are everywhere - surprisingly, even the expensive equipment are all still there, unmolested and collecting dust. One would imagine that in a world devastated by nuclear warfare and teeming with bandits and looters, even in the north where the American Federal government still holds power and enforces laws against banditry and looting, a room like this would eventually be found, broken into, and looted after some two decades.
"Fusou-san, we have reached our objective!" Haruna calls, looking around the room as Shiranui tries flicking on the lights but to no avail.
"Understood, Haruna-san, please wait a moment!" Fusou responds right away, and Haruna waits a few seconds before Fusou speaks again. "Sanford-sensei wants you to look for a...a kind of secret shaft underneath one of the computer desks! That particular desk should be easier to move aside than the rest!"
"Everyone, please look for a shaft underneath one of these desks!" Haruna relays the order.
"Girls, Wakamiya and I shall stand guard outside!" Ise calls into the room. "Hurry up and find that shaft!"
The girls work quickly, shuffling around the desks and peering at what is underneath each one. Only a minute passes when Ikazuchi calls out,
"Hey, I think I found it!"
The other girls stop what they are doing and investigate the desk that Ikazuchi has pushed aside. Even in the relative dark of the enclosed room, the girls can see a faint outline of a large square tile that is able to fit the size of a man on the floor.
"Fusou-san, we've found it!" Haruna reports quickly as Kongou works on getting the shaft open. "What are our orders?"
"Sanford-sensei says to send a few of you to climb down that shaft and investigate the laboratories!" Fusou calls. "Life support systems may be shut down after years of inactivity, so you must restore them before we can move in!"
"Well then, who wants in on this one?" Kongou smirks at the girls. "I know I'm in."
"I-If Kongou-onee-sama is going, then I shall too!" Haruna volunteers.
"I've got a big ol' shotgun, so I'm going, ou!" Shimakaze lets out her little battle cry.
"Then I guess I don't have much of a choice..." Amatsukaze sighs.
"That's enough, right?" Akatsuki asks. "It's unladylike for me to climb down something like that if I don't have to, so..."
"It is okay. Please stay here and help everyone else guard this room for us," Haruna smiles at the Akatsuki-Class destroyers.
"Haruna-san, please don't get hurt, okay?" Akatsuki tugs lightly on Haruna's detached sleeve. "As a fellow lady, I'm going to get mad at you if you get hurt!"
The other girls all burst into a fit of giggles, including Haruna, upon hearing Akatsuki say this. Akatsuki, realizing that she is probably being made fun of, feels her face flush and stamps her foot.
"W-W-What's so funny!?" she cries as Haruna pats her naval cap. "I'm - I'm trying to give Haruna-san some advice as a lady!"
"Haruna...Haruna will be alright," Haruna says, kneeling down next to Akatsuki. "Thank you for your concern, Akatsuki-chan. Haruna deeply appreciates it, as a fellow lady."
Akatsuki, upon being called a lady, suddenly forgets her embarrassment and beams, nodding pridefully. With Kongou having ripped the door to the shaft open with her bare hands, Shimakaze simply cries "Ou!" and jumps straight down the shaft.
"Sh-Shimakaze! ! !" Amatsukaze tries to stop her, but Shimakaze is already gone, and the girls can hear her voice echo back up to them as she plunges down the vertical shaft. Shaking her head, Amatsukaze groans and quickly grabs hold of the ladder and slides down. Kongou and Haruna follow close by, regrouping with Shimakaze and Amatsukaze at the bottom, where Amatsukaze is scolding her younger ship sister for her reckless behavior.
"You don't even know what's down here! Why the hell did you just jump down like that? Seriously!" Amatsukaze hisses loudly, but Shimakaze simply whistles while facing the other way and tapping the muzzle of her AA-12 automatic shotgun against the floor.'
"Oh dear...it is quite dark, it seems," Haruna notes out loud. "Perhaps it would have been preferable if we had at least one of the submarine girls with us..."
"Here, I got it." Amatsukaze ceases her ranting and clenches her Ignition Glove, which bursts into a large, vivid red flame. The Ignition Glove lights the way for the girls, and the four of them, two destroyers and two battleships, make their way into the perpendicular paths of the labs cautiously with their weapons ready to be raised and their sensors on maximum scanning power.
"Sure is spooky down here," Shimakaze remarks, turning a corner by poking out her shotgun first.
"And this place's huge, too," Kongou notes. "Why the bloody hell is there a laboratory of this size underneath a hospital in the first place?"
"Onee-sama," Haruna calls out, pointing at some signs on the walls, "we ought to pay attention to the directions on the wall. This one points that way for an 'emergency panel'."
"Emergency panel? Sounds like what we're looking for," Kongou grins. "Let's burn some rubber, girls!"
"Burn rubber? What's that mean?" Shimakaze asks as they start heading in the direction of the emergency panel.
"What? Burn rubber?" Kongou turns to Shimakaze, slightly miffed. "It's what it sounds like, isn't it? Burning rubber."
Shimakaze stares dumbly back at Kongou.
"Ummm...Shimakaze-san," Haruna awkwardly intervenes, "Haruna thinks...Haruna thinks it is a British phrase that means 'let's go' or something along those lines."
"Ooooohhh!" Shimakaze's eyes widen in understanding. "Okay, I get it!"
"Will you guys freakin' pay attention?" Amatsukaze groans again, pointing to the left as the directions on the wall instruct. They head down the corridor in silence until they find the room with a musty door labeled "EMERGENCY PANEL".
"We should double-check with Sanford-sensei in case we have discovered the wrong place," Haruna says as she tries to contact Fusou. "Fusou-san? Fusou-san, do you copy?"
Not even static responds to her calls. Haruna hears absolutely nothing - her attempts to connect to other ship girls outside of the underground labs fail utterly and completely.
"...calls are not working," Haruna whispers urgently. "We cannot contact our comrades above."
"Shit!" Kongou swears as she tries doing the same. "Haruna's right, we're cut off somehow."
"There might be something that has to do with the labs' architecture that's preventing all communications from leaving or entering the labs," Amatsukaze theorizes. "We're going to have to gamble on this one."
Shimakaze is already an extra step ahead as she simply grabs the doorknob and twists it open, pushing the door open.
"Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Shimakaze laughs as she simply strolls right in. Amatsukaze, Kongou, and Haruna look at each other, slightly dumbfounded, and shrug as they, too, walk into the emergency panel room. Inside, they find a few panels mounted on the walls, and a curious large switch is mounted in between two of those panels.
"This looks like a handle or something needed to have been here," Amatsukaze ponders, peering at the large switch.
"Well, duh, I mean, there's a big ol' sign right up there that says 'EMERGENCY POWER' right above it, so..." Kongou points out the sign right above the large switch. "So where's the switch?"
Amatsukaze sweeps her flaming glove around the room, trying to see if there is something that looks like it could fit into the switch panel. "What's that?" Amatsukaze points at something underneath one of the tables shoved up against the wall. "That looks like it could work."
Shimakaze ducks underneath the table and pulls out an odd-looking switch from a grimy cardboard box full of old electrical wires and random electronic gadgets and equipment.
"This one?"
"Yeah..."
"It doesn't look like it'll fit, though."
"If you can find anything else that might, be my guest."
Shimakaze shrugs as she walks over to the switch and tries to fit it into place, and she yelps out in surprise as it clicks securely in place.
"Well! That wasn't so bad," Kongou smiles.
Shimakaze then pulls the switch up, but nothing happens at first.
"...errrrr..." Shimakaze looks confused, staring at the switch. "...did I do it wrong?"
"...I'm not sure..." Amatsukaze hesitates as well. "Wait...do all of you feel that?"
The four girls freeze and focus on their sensors. They are reading a minute amount of electrical reactions occurring nearby.
"We should wait," Haruna advises. "Perhaps this is something that we must wait for."
As soon as Haruna is done saying this, a very loud female voice speaking over the public announcement system causes the girls to all jump in fright.
"EMERGENCY POWER ACTIVATED. LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS ONLINE. ELEVATORS HAVE NOW BEEN GRANTED ACCESS."
Not only do the panels on the walls begin to light up, but the rest of the laboratories becomes illuminated by bright lights. Computer monitors above the panels on the walls flicker on, providing direct live security feeds into every single room of the laboratories.
"...um...mission complete, I guess?" Kongou chuckles, shrugging at the surprising ease of their objective. "Let's go tell the others, eh?"
"A'ight, they've taken control 'a the labs, let's get over there!" Sanford hollers. "Grab everyone, go, go!"
Shigure, already sitting next to Yuudachi's limp body, slings her rifle and heaves Yuudachi onto her back. Furutaka helps the ailing Kagerou onto her own back, handing off her weapon to Fusou to carry for her. Samidare hands her sidearm to Inazuma to hold with her one arm while Suzukaze hands Mr. Araki her own USP .45.
"Just in case anything happens," Samidare mutters, and Inazuma, though not wiling to hold a gun again, nods fervently. Sanford locks up the Venom and beckons to the girls. They hurry off the rooftop of the multi-story public parking facility, but before they do, Sanford motions to the nearby Little Bird keeping overwatch on their position, and the pilot whom they recruited responds back with a confirmation hand gesture, nodding. As Sanford and the girls descend to ground level, the MH-6E Little Bird swoops away, making sure that the path is clear from the skies.
Suzukaze shoulder-rams the emergency exit door open, scanning for potential attackers with her own AA-12 automatic shotgun.
"It's clear!" Suzukaze calls as Samidare joins her ship sister with her semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. The other girls, Mr. Araki, and Sanford pour through, and they hurry down the sidewalk of the street towards the hospital grounds.
"Detecting multiple threats in our immediate vicinity!" Fusou alerts. "We will soon be crossing into their lines of fire!"
"Take out all immediate threats and tell the girls inside the hospital to come out 'n help cover our asses!" Sanford orders. "Keep Mr. Araki in the middle and move as a unit! Keep goin'!"
As soon as they reach an alley where the ship girls detect a few unknown signatures, Samidare raises a hand to stop the rest of the group as she and Kitakami post themselves up to attack. Taking a deep breath, Samidare pivots on her foot, leans out from the wall, and assesses her targets sneaking along the alley, away from the hospital. As soon as she confirms that they are carrying firearms, she holds her breath as she and Kitakami open fire together, dropping all three of those men.
"They know we're here now if they didn't know already!" Kitakami calls as the smoke from the tip of her M4-A3 barrel rises up into the air. "What's that American movie where we run like hell? Mr. Forrest Gump? Fo-re-su-to Gu-mu-pu-san? C'mon, we gotta channel our inner Forrest Gumps!"
The group break into a controlled run, keeping their cohesive unit as they hurry down the sidewalk. Every ship girl's sensors are picking up a seriously uncomfortable amount of unknown signatures now converging on their position, presumably after hearing shots being fired at ground level.
"Enemy squad about to pop out from our right, twenty degrees, our twelve!" Furutaka calls out. "Four hostiles, someone shoot 'em!"
Fusou snaps her attention towards the coordinates indicated by Furutaka, waiting for the men to pop out. When they do, she immediately bursts her M4-A4 rifle at them, hitting three of them with her first burst while running. The last man, however, manages to roll behind a dilapidated blue USPS public street mailbox for cover and fires a couple bullets at them with his semi-automatic sporting rifle before Fusou can shoot him through the mailbox and take him out. Those bullets ping about the girls, and two of the bullets hit Shigure in the right cheek and Inazuma in the side of her right knee. While Shigure simply takes the shot and shakes off the pain, Inazuma yelps out in pain and stumbles and crashes to the ground, rolling to a bumpy stop.
"Shit!" Sanford doubles back to help Inazuma back up. "Get up, Inazuma, we can't stop here, keep running!"
Inazuma nods as hard as she can, doing her best to ignore the throbbing pain in her knee, and Sanford covers for her by squeezing off rounds from his .308 PWS rifle at a few more assailants trying to flank them from an alley they had just passed. Chuck's Little Bird swoops in, Miniguns blazing, to clear out the alleyway and neutralize the potential flank.
"There's the hospital!" Suzukaze yells, pointing at the run-down hospital facilities. "Hey, everyone over at the hospital, where y'all at!? We need some damn cover, like, right the hell now!"
"We're coming out right now, hold on, Suzukaze-chan!" Ikazuchi responds, much to the relief of the girls escorting the wounded ship girls and the men to the hospital. "But be careful, we're detecting a LOT of bad guys coming over to the hospital!"
"Ikazuchi-chan, how many? Can you give us a number?" Samidare asks.
"At least...um...um...at least forty more!"
"Oh shit..." Suzukaze groans. "Everyone, we have to get there as fast as we can, those guys might cut us off!"
"Everyone, can you read me?" Shiranui calls suddenly.
"Yes, Shiranui-san!" Fusou copies, "we are all ears, go ahead!"
"From the direction you're coming, you can actually take a shortcut into the south side of the hospital and reach Room 149 immediately! Transmitting coordinates now - I will meet you there!"
The girls receive coordinates uploaded to their databases by Shiranui.
"Shiranui-san, but wait, what about Ikazuchi-chan and the others?!" Samidare hollers.
"Ise-san and Wakamiya-san are assisting the Akatsuki sisters in distracting the enemies from the place we infiltrated the hospital!" Shiranui responds, and a sudden outburst of gun volleys confirms Shiranui's report.
The two Little Birds propel up Brunswick Avenue with their guns blazing yet again to cover Ikazuchi and the other ship girls taking fire from another wave of rebels. Seizing the opportunity to cross the street while the enemies are distracted, Sanford orders his squad to cross the street, and they make it across safely, though a few bullets were shot at them and missed. Inazuma fires off a couple bullets from her USP .45 to cover them, and once they reach the coordinates sent by Shiranui, they reach a portion of ordinary wall along the southern end of the hospital facility.
"Shiranui-san, we have arrived at the coordinates!" Fusou calls. "What shall we - "
As if to answer her, someone on the other side of the wall can be heard laughing, "BURNING LOOOOOOVE!" and a portion of the wall gets blasted off, creating a messy hole in the wall as a new entrance. Kongou emerges from the hole she has just punched out, her knuckles sizzling and her lips grinning madly.
"C'mon, chaps!" she says cheerily, "I've got enough burning love to heal every single one 'a ya, so just come right on in!"
Sanford ushers in the girls before heading in himself. "Kongou, can you try callin' one 'a the girls with Damon right now to see where he's at?" Sanford asks, and Kongou nods before attempting a connection.
"Got it~!" Kongou confirms cheerfully. "Helloooooo, Orion! Where are you ladies right now? The Professor's calling!"
"We are almost at the hospital site!" Orion reports back, and Kongou can hear the helicopter rotors of the KA-60K beating in the background. "ETA forty-five seconds!"
"Forty-five seconds to arrival, Professor," Kongou repeats, and Sanford nods.
"Tell the girls to tell Damon that he should land along this street right out here," Sanford points out of the hole that Kongou has blasted out of the wall with her Burning Love. "Along...what street is this...Fuld Street. Wonder why there aren't any hostiles on the south side of the hospital...strange..."
"Er, well, as you mention it, Professor," Kongou interrupts after relaying the instructions, "but...I'm pickin' up even more blokes headed our way from the south."
"Fuck!" Sanford yells indignantly as Kongou bursts into a giggle. "I fucking jinxed it! And you, shut up! What, you havin' a giggle, mate?"
"Quite a hearty giggle, might I add!" Kongou laughs. "But what will you do, Professor? Will you wait here? Doesn't Professor Araki need help down in the labs?"
"He knows what to do, I've already asked him," Sanford mutters, checking the amount of ammo in his current magazine for his rifle. "I'ma stay here 'n make sure those resources come in safe. Without those, we can't do jack shit. Here's to hopin' that rat bastard doesn't crash his fucking helo on landing."
As instructed, both the KA-60K and the UH-1H Huey land on Fuld Street as the Little Birds disengage from assisting Ikazuchi's squad to help cover the landings of the new helicopters as they descend while taking a heavy amount of incoming fire.
"Get this kid and Kisaragi inside the hospital first, right now!" Damon screams as snaps of bullets ring all around. "Murakumo, you carry the kid! Sazanami, Ushio, help Kisaragi inside! Go, go!"
As Murakumo grabs the small boy who rode with them up in the front co-pilot's seat and Sazanami and Ushio gently carry Kisaragi together and help her onto Sazanami's back to be carried inside, the other ship girls disembark and begin carrying the resources loaded in the helis, box by box, crate by crate, into the hole in the wall that Kongou made. Some of the girls do not assist with the cargo but instead guard the helicopters and cover the others. Thunderer and Erin, with their L86-A2 LSW machine guns, gallantly stand beside their respective choppers and shoot anything that does not look friendly and moves.
Damon, having made it to the interior of the hospital by sandwiching himself between Tenryuu and Tatsuta, greets Sanford and Kongou waiting for him inside.
"Good, ya didn't crash the damn helo with all the goodies inside," Sanford smirks.
"Do I look fucking retarded to you?" Damon sneers back.
"No, but you do look like you fucking took a blood oath and bathed in that shit; what the fuck happened to you?"
Damon looks at the blood that is beginning to dry all over his clothes, arms, hands, face, and hair.
"I'll explain it in a little bit," Damon mutters. "When you start treating Kisaragi...I'll explain."
Sanford shrugs. "A'ight, then. C'mon, this way."
Sanford nods at Kongou, who nods back and rushes outside to help the ship girls with the rest of the cargo, and he leads Damon to Room 149 while the girls bringing in the cargo head the opposite way.
"Where're those girls goin'?" Damon asks, pointing his thumb at the other girls carrying in the crates. "Where'd you tell 'em ta go?"
"They're gonna take the elevators down to the labs," Sanford explains. "Normally those floors on the elevator would be accessible only by development team staff, but since we're the only ones, Araki overrode the controls on them so that we can just use 'em freely."
They stop in front of the shaft.
"And what the fuck's this supposed to be?" Damon asks, looking at the shaft.
"The length of my penis."
Damon shoves Sanford into the shaft first, and groaning at the terrible joke, he jumps down and slides down the ladder.
"Jesus Christ, can't take a joke? Seriously, kid, didn't Kitakami tell ya ta loosen up some more? You're gonna die real young 'cause you've been stressin' yourself out if you can't even take a joke," Sanford laughs, rubbing his shoulder as Damon lands next to him. Damon simply gives him the stinkeye.
"Lead the way, fuckface," Damon says, shaking his head. "Don't wanna have to deal with any sex jokes right now, not in the mood."
"Why, somethin' happen?"
"You'll see, now fucking lead the way, asshole."
Sanford takes Damon through the perpendicular corridors and arrives at one of the big rooms with two rows of four operating tables each. Four rooms like this are built in a square formation adjacent to one another, separated by thick, bulletproof and semi-explosion-proof glass walls. Mr. Araki is already inside one of the rooms, sitting down at the large computer terminal in the corner and typing away at the gargantuan keyboard at the terminal. Shigure tidies up Yuudachi's hair, which she had taken care to wash clean of blood during the night they stayed at Chicago as Yuudachi's body lays face-up on one of the tables. The ship girls are steadily leaving boxes and crates of supplies all along the floor, and a couple ship girls are organizing the supplies by category and piling them up. Inazuma is sitting on the table next to Yuudachi, Kagerou is being helped onto the next table by Shiranui, and now Ushio and Sazanami are helping Kisaragi walk to the last table.
"So what's gonna happen now that we're here?" Damon asks, looking at the four ship girls on the tables who require surgery.
"Okay, so here's the deal. Once Araki gets the operating tables up 'n runnin' again, these black pillars are gonna come down from the ceiling," Sanford explains, pointing up at the outlined rectangular panels on the ceiling above each respective operating table. "They're gonna come down and close 'em off. Dependin' on how bad the injuries are, we're gonna shut the girls down so they can get operated on more efficiently, and you'll be able to see what's happening inside on screens that're on the sides. You'll understand it better once we get the surgeries started."
"A'ight, then what're we gonna do while the surgeries're goin' on? We gotta worry 'bout those rebels outside, right?"
"I'd suggest you call them in and just defend all entrances into the labs. The shaft in Room 149, the elevators, and that hole in the wall that Kongou blasted open for you. Lock down those places, make sure the girls posted up in those places have lots'a ammo, and just wait."
"Oh God...I hate waiting, I wanna do shit."
"Well, unless you wanna fuck up the surgeries for all 'a us, sit tight there, hotshot."
Damon shrugs, annoyed by Sanford's tone, and flips down his headset mic.
"I want all the girls with machine guns and lots'a ammo for their guns to post up at every entrance into the labs!" Damon orders, but when nothing is called back to him, he taps his mic, confused.
"Oh, by the way, forgot ta tell ya - this place's built with a reverse Faraday cage," Sanford snickers, glancing at Damon raise his mic. "We can receive signals from the outside - only certain kinds of communication, and yours doesn't count - but nothing can get out. Once you're in here, the only people you're gonna be talking to are the people who're in the labs with ya."
"Shoulda told me that sooner, fucker."
Sanford smirks. "Always best ta learn shit by yourself," Damon's godfather retorts. "Isn't that like your life motto or somethin'? Or so you say."
Damon sticks his middle finger out at Sanford as Amagi carries in the last few crates of bauxite.
"Admiral!" Orion salutes formally in front of Damon. "All cargo has been delivered. Our orders, sir?"
"Find Erin and Thunderer and tell them to guard the hole in the wall. Get the battleships and carriers to defend all entry points into the labs - don't let any hostile come near these labs, we gotta buy enough time to finish these surgeries and get the hell outta here alive."
Orion snaps her salute once more.
"Understood, sir. Requesting permission to join my sisters in the defense."
"Granted, now go, we're completely in the dark down here 'cause my headset ain't working. Send the destroyers down here with any news and stuff that they need to tell me."
Orion nods and leads Monarch and Conqueror out of the operating room, and the battleships, battlecruisers, and carriers inside the labs head out to carry out their orders. Furutaka is reporting to Mr. Araki at the computer terminal the amount of resources that are at their disposal, and Mr. Araki nods with understanding.
"Sanford-san!" Mr. Araki calls out, grabbing Damon's and Sanford's attention. "Please, we need to talk!"
Mr. Araki waits for Sanford and Damon to approach him before explaining the situation.
"We, uh...we have enough resources to do surgery for all four," Mr. Araki slowly explains in his stumbling English. "And, um...we have enough to upgrade."
"How many can we upgrade?" Damon asks.
"Only one," Mr. Araki says. "You pick, shounen."
"Huh? Me?"
"Yes, you are Teikoku."
"...uh, sorry?"
"Teikoku. Japanese for 'Admiral'."
Damon rolls his eyes.
"Who's the easiest to do the upgrade on?" Damon asks, looking back at the four girls lying down on their tables. "I dunno who to upgrade, this isn't like some sorta goddamn RPG."
"I'd advise upgrading Yuudachi," Sanford says. "Her surgery's gonna take the longest, and the cooldown period that she's gonna hafta go through before she can be activated again's gonna take a lot longer than the others, so we may as well do the upgrade on her while she's out cold before activation."
Damon shrugs, not really knowing if there is a better choice than that. "A'ight, okay, we'll jus' go with upgrading Yuudachi, then," he says.
"Then whenever you say so," Mr. Araki informs Damon, "we start surgery."
"Admiral?"
Damon feels someone tug on the back of his short-sleeved shirt, and turning around, Damon finds Sazanami and Ushio facing him.
"Admiral...Kisaragi-chan wants to talk to you," Ushio says sadly. Damon, having an idea of what's about to happen, sighs quietly and heads over to Kisaragi.
"Mr. Araki, Sanford, come with me," Damon says without turning around to face them. "You'll wanna hear this..."
The three men and the ship girls, sensing that something is wrong, approach the last table at the end of the row of operating tables, where the bruised and coughing Kisaragi lies. When Damon walks up next to Kisaragi, she turns her head towards him.
"Admiral..." she asks weakly, "...what...did they do to me...? I...I tried asking...Ushio-chan...and...and Sazanami-chan, but...but they wouldn't say..."
Damon turns to the two destroyers on Kisaragi's tongue. "Why didn't you tell her?" Damon mutters, but Ushio simply turns away and shakes her head, unable to get herself to say anything.
"...b-because...because..." Sazanami stammers, "...we...we couldn't...sorry, Master..."
Damon is unable to feel angry towards them and turns back to Kisaragi.
"...Admiral...you...you have so much blood on you...are...are you hurt, too?" Kisaragi asks in her hoarse voice, trying to reach her delicate and frail-looking hand up at Damon's blood-soaked shirt. But before she can touch his shirt, Damon says,
"Kisaragi, we found you in a shipping container nearby some factories that were used to make the resources that you ship girls use. Some bad guys got to you first before we could, took you out of your crate, and raped you and beat the crap outta you."
The ship girls who were not with Damon's task force and the two other men beside Damon are stunned by the news.
Kisaragi's eyes widen in escalating shock.
"...what...I..." Damon's newest destroyer gasps the quietest gasp that Damon has heard in his life. "I...I was...?!"
Damon points at the blood splattered all over his front.
"You asked what this blood was doin' on me, right? The other girls found two 'a the guys who did that to you, and I massacred them with the most amount of brutality I could muster up at the time. You remember any shots bein' fired and lots of screaming?"
Kisaragi's lip is trembling.
"Y-Y-Yes...?" she says, fearful of what Damon is going to say next.
"That was me. All that commotion you heard when you were sitting inside the helicopter was me sending those guys to hell. But as it stands...I'm sorry they did this to you. I'm just trying to do what I can for everyone."
Denial and shock begins to creep up Kisaragi's spine to slowly paralyze her as she slowly reaches her hand down into her skirt. She discovers for herself that the underwear that should be there is missing, and she winces as the skin in between her legs is raw and throbbing. Withdrawing her hand, she looks at her fingers, and on the tip of her index finger, there is a tiny smear of blood.
Kisaragi suddenly breaks down into tears. Whatever composure she has desperately been trying to retain to keep her sanity from completely disappearing to the harsh truth of her rape is shattered by her first of many shrill wails. Her wails escalate very quickly into screams of suffering, and the rest of the ship girls present in the lab feel themselves either trembling or on the verge of tears themselves. Ushio is already silently weeping into Sazanami's chest as Sazanami hugs her. Murakumo's hands are shuddering on the shoulders of the boy whose parents she may have shot, and the small boy, not fully aware of the situation but hearing the shrill crying, begins to cry himself.
"...uso...deshou?," Mr. Araki whispers. "They...they violated Kisaragi...? How dare they...!"
Sanford puts his hand on Damon's shoulder.
"Man...kid, sorry for the shit I gave ya," Sanford apologizes in a low voice. "Even for me, this shit's real depressing, man. Where'd you find her, the factories down there? Why the hell was she even there, man..."
Damon shrugs weakly as visions of Chad kneeling next to the body of Kassia flash before Damon's eyes. As Kisaragi's screams plunge into the deepest recesses of his brain, Damon's mind automatically recalls the sequence of events in which Chad gave him his final words before Damon put a .45 GAP round into his head.
Turning around, Damon looks at Mr. Araki and Sanford.
"You two, get started on these surgeries. Everyone else, help them if they need help and guard this room. I'll take care of Kisaragi until she calms down," Damon orders strictly. The men and ship girls slowly leave him alone with Kisaragi at her operating table, and Damon turns to her again while she is still crying her heart out. Looking hesitantly at his hand, which is still a bit wet from the blood splattered all over it, Damon is about to take Kisaragi's right hand in his left when Sanford taps him with one of the feet of a plastic folding chair.
"Might wanna grab this," Sanford says in a low voice. Damon nods and unfolds the chair to sit down in it. After seating himself, Damon slowly holds Kisaragi's hand, disgusted at the fact that the blood of her tormentors is now smearing against her skin...a second time.
He'd worked at a ward of a hospital that specifically treated rape victims.
He'd shot a kid, a comrade, who found his girlfriend raped and murdered.
He'd heard so many accounts of survivors, even entire towns being ransacked and raped by wandering bandits while growing up.
He'd lived in a world all his life where death, killing, rape, and every horribly imaginable thing that humans are capable of doing under the sun was done on a daily basis all over the world.
So why does knowing that one of his ship girls had fallen victim to rape piss him off so goddamn much?
Why does it feel like he's a massive failure?
He'd seen and heard people cry all the time. The people he's met on the streets, in the CCPL posts, in the ghettos, and the people he'd killed.
So why does listening to Kisaragi cry right now bother him so much?
