Rule 139. The crochet club application is denied. The laugh Hosho gave when she saw it will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

"Your tea, Admiral."

"Thanks, Hosho," Admiral Goto absentmindedly replied, not looking up from his paperwork.

"If I may ask, Admiral," the carrier said. "What are you working on? And why can't you do it in your office?"

"Tama dragged in another Abyssal," Goto replied. "They're still cleaning up. As for what I'm working on-"

Shifting the paper to the completed stack, Goto pulled a fresh sheet off the uncompleted stack. "Well, right now I'm looking over an application for a crochet club. Looks like it's all in order, so-"

"A crochet club, huh? Heheheheheheheheheh."

Admiral Goto looked up with some concern as he heard Hosho break out into an uncharacteristic low chuckle. He began sweating when he noticed a malevolent, black-and-red aura manifesting over the motherly shipgirl.

"Heheheh. Hahahahahahahahahahaha! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The aura thickened into a full-on miasma blanketing the entire tea shop. A too-wide grin had spread over Hosho's face as she tilted her head back and curled her hands up into claws, laughing a laugh of madness that echoed throughout the building. Behind her, Goto could've sworn he could see the grinning face of an oni, its arms reaching out through some sort of dark portal to wrap themselves around Hosho's shoulders. And then she turned her face towards him, head lolling bonelessly on her neck.

Admiral Goto, a thirty-year veteran of the Naval Self-Defense Forces, who had fought Somali and Malay pirates and directed the JMSDF from the frontlines in the early days of the Abyssal War, had to fight to keep his bladder under control. Hosho's eyes, normally a warm brown, were now bright red all around, with no discernable pupils and leaking a flame-like energy. He tried to scoot back as Hosho gripped his cheeks and looked him dead in the eye, but even under normal circumstances the carrier's grip would've been too much.

"Let me tell you something, Admiral," Hosho said in a far too even voice. "If you approve that form - nay, if your pen even touches that paper - I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for that... activity, this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one."

Admiral Goto felt tears begin to flow from his eyes, his brain screaming for him to look away. The oni was fully out, its feet on the floor and its arms around Hosho's waist. And yet, he could not tear his eyes away.

"When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming - as if from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin."

"I will open one of my six mouths, and sing the song that ends the Earth."

"Do. You. Understand?"

"Yes!" Goto screamed as his voice returned to him. "Ohgodyes! Yes, Master!"

Suddenly, the miasma, the oni, all of it disappeared, leaving only a smiling Hosho standing over him, her eyes brown.

"Great!" she chirped, clapping her hands as she stood upright again. "I'm glad we had this talk."

As Hosho walked away, humming to herself, Goto simply sat there, wondering if it was all just a hallucination brought on by stress and overwork. He glanced at the crochet club application - and froze as he felt a piercing stare at his back. Slowly, he turned to see Hosho glaring at him, one eye red. The Admiral gulped audibly, before grabbing the application, crumpling it up, and throwing it into the nearest garbage can.

AN: Credit to Penny Arcade for Hosho's speech.