"Uhhh...operation chambers locked down...surgical arms on test run..." Sanford calls aloud as he checks the dark pillars that have descended from the ceiling over the first three operating tables. By this point, Kisaragi has ceased her sobbing, but she refuses to let go of Damon's bloody hand.

The operation chambers rumble and creak with robotic noises as the girls gather around the chambers and watch through the see-through observation windows that are located on three sides of the chambers as the surgical arms hook up medical sensors onto each ship girl's head. For Inazuma, because she will not have to be forced to shut down for her own surgery to replace her missing arm, the surgical arms only attach a couple sensor buttons onto her forehead and one on the top of her head, on her hair.

"Hey, Kagerou, Inazuma, can you hear me? You should be able ta hear me," Sanford calls, glancing through their observation windows.

"Y-Yes, I can hear you, Sensei!" Inazuma says, very nervous at what is about to happen.

"We're gonna have to take off your shirts in order to operate! Really sorry 'bout this, I know it might make ya uncomfortable, but it's gotta be done!"

"H-Hawawawawawa!?" Inazuma cries, blushing immediately. "M-M-My sh-shirt!? H-Hawaaaaa..."

"We're gonna put a surgical blanket over you so we can't see, don't worry 'bout it," Sanford says with a flick of his hand, indicating that this should be no big deal. "Just giving everyone fair warning, in case some 'a you have to end up in here as well!"

Shigure watches intently as the surgical arms in Yuudachi's operation chamber gingerly cut apart Yuudachi's ripped and bloodied uniform and place them in a chute, into which the neat folds of the cut-up uniform slip into and disappear. This is done as well for Kagerou and Inazuma, but for the two of them, only their tops are removed and their skirts are left intact. Inazuma fidgets quite uncomfortably as she lies on the operating table, half naked and covering her chest with her intact arm.

"A'ight, Kagerou, we're gonna deactivate you so we can get started!" Sanford calls into Kagerou's chamber. "See ya on the other side, a'ight?"

Kagerou nods weakly. Shiranui presses her face against the thick glass of the observation window.

"You'll be alright, Kagerou!" Shiranui calls too. "I promise!"

Grinning a bit, Kagerou finds the strength to give her younger ship sister a small thumbs up of her gloved hand as three surgical arms descend once more. One of the arms, with a strange two-pronged claw with blunt edges topped with soft, fuzzy pads, lowers itself over Kagerou's eyes and presses the ends of the claw against the sides of Kagerou's eyes gently as the other arms stand by.

"Okay, we have sign!" Mr. Araki calls. "Shutting down Kagerou!"

Sanford glances at the large screen above the computer terminal, which now displays Kagerou's vital signs. Gradually, the vital signs fade until all brain activity shuts down and the heart stops beating. Shiranui glances back at Kagerou, and Kagerou is lying motionless on the operating table, deactivated.

"Right now, in this state, Kagerou's basically the same as Yuudachi," Sanford says to Shiranui. "The only difference here's that we can reactivate Kagerou as she is now and she'll be alive, at least."

Shiranui says nothing back.

Meanwhile, over in Inazuma's operation chamber, the arms have applied a few more medical sensor buttons over Inazuma's heart and around the stump of her left arm after removing the bandages that were wrapped around the stump. Sanford turns to Inazuma's chamber.

"Hey, Inazuma, what's gonna happen's that there's gonna be one 'a those arm thingies that's gonna come down with a special laser and reopen that stump," Sanford explains. "For you, it's gonna feel really hot, and once it hits your nerves, it's gonna hurt a bit."

"...h-how long will it take, sensei...?" Inazuma asks fearfully.

"At least twenty to thirty minutes, just to reopen that stump."

Inazuma groans with fright.

Over in Yuudachi's chamber, after removing her uniform, the arms have snapped photos of Yuudachi's fatal injuries for Mr. Araki to examine in high detail on the computer screen. Now, many more surgical arms, about seven of them, are hanging over Yuudachi's body, awaiting instruction from Mr. Araki. Sanford, noticing Mr. Araki analyze the photos up on the screen, heads over to him.

"How long's Yuudachi's surgery gonna take?" Sanford asks.

"...eto-ne...I say...maybe half hour," Mr. Araki concludes tentatively. "This is..." Mr. Araki inhales sharply through his teeth, "this is very hard surgery. It will take time."

"Are the others ready to go, then?"

"Yes."

"Then go ahead and start Kagerou's and Inazuma's."

"Okay. But...what about...Kisaragi-san?"

"I'll go talk to Damon real quick..."

Sanford turns around and walks over to Damon, looking down at Kisaragi.

"Listen, kid," Sanford says after a bit of a pause, "I know this'll sound wrong, but we can do a reconstructive surgery on Kisaragi here. We can make it so that physically, she never got raped."

Damon snorts without glancing at Sanford.

"Yeah, mighty fucking convenient, ain't it."

"Don't get fucking pissy with me, kid, I'm just here tellin' you that this's on option that you can decide for her. As their Admiral, you have final jurisdiction on matters like this, no matter what anyone else says. I just want you to consider it, because maybe that's something you might want for Kisaragi here."

Damon sighs quietly.

"You think it's that simple?" Damon murmurs, and Sanford can easily hear the anger in his voice. "You fucking cocksuckin' piece 'a shit, you think it's really that simple? Oh, Kisaragi's a ship girl, so we can do this wonderfully magical surgery on her that fixes up her pussy? Oh, shit, thanks, God, I wish my life were that simple, I really do!"

"Kid, shut the - "

"No, you shut the fuck up!"

Damon lets go of Kisaragi's hand suddenly and jumps out of his seat so fast that he knocks his plastic folding chair over, causing everyone in the room to look over in their direction to see what's going on. Damon pushes his body up in front of Sanford in a hyper-aggressive stance.

"You think that a surgery like that's gonna make shit better? You think a surgery like that's gonna make Kisaragi feel better? Sure, it might fix her vag, but is it gonna fix her mind? You heard those screams! You fucking heard 'em! Is a surgery like that gonna wipe away those tears? Make her calm down after that? Tell me, you goddamn son of a bitch! Tell me!"

Damon's roars are amplified by the thick walls of the operating room. Sanford, unfazed, stares icily back at Damon.

"A'ight, kid, fine. I'll tell ya that they can't. I'll admit, that surgery's not gonna fix the mental and psychological damage that's been done. It's impossible, obviously. But you know what else I'll tell ya?" Sanford takes his index finger and jabs it into Damon's chest, on his bloody shirt. "I'll tell ya that instead 'a being a sentimental jackass cryin' over what's already been done, you ought'a think 'bout what the best thing you can do for Kisaragi is! Instead 'a broodin' over how the world's a piece 'a shit and how terrible excuses 'a human beings roam the earth and go around raping people, how about you start focusin' on the shit you can do, not on what you can't do!"

The operating room is once more deadly silent as the two men glare at each other.

"Just who the fuck do you think you are, kid?" Sanford hisses just as dangerously. If there was anything that would have suggested that the two men were related, it would be their identical tones of voice when both of them are pissed off. "The second comin' 'a Christ? Since when did you start caring for these girls so much? Or is there somethin' you wanna tell the rest of us?"

"I'm the fucking guy who tells these girls what to do," Damon hisses back, "and you're just here along for the motherfucking ride."

Sanford sarcastically feigns enlightenment. "Oooooooh, is thaaaaaat riiiiight? You're the guy who tells the girls I helped build what to do, huh? Then why don't'cha tell one 'a these girls to come on over 'n suck your fucking dick, kid?"

Damon punches Sanford in the face.

"Sensei!?" Amatsukaze screams out, and quite a few of the onlooking ship girls rush over to help Sanford back up. Whipping around to Damon, Amatsukaze shrieks, "Damon, what the fuck! You didn't have to do that!"

Damon is delirious with rage. "THIS FUCKING SAD EXCUSE OF A HUMAN BEING WHO BUILT YOU JUST TOLD YOU TO COME SUCK MY DICK, AND YOU'RE STANDIN' THERE HELPING HIM? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" Damon roars. "AND YOU, ASSHOLE!" Damon points at Sanford, who is wiping the blood that got smeared onto his face with Damon's punch from his bloodstained knuckles, "WHY THE FUCK WOULD I ASK THAT TO THEM? HUH? DO I LOOK LIKE A RAPIST TO YOU? I NEVER SAID I WAS MOTHERFUCKING JESUS BLOODY FREAKIN' CHRIST, YEAH, BUT I NEVER SAID I WAS AN ASSHOLE LIKE YOU EITHER, LET ALONE A SHIT-GUZZLING RAPIST! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THIS SURGERY SHIT OVER WITH!"

Damon, groaning loudly, picks up his overturned chair, sets it upright, and slouches down on it again, staring down at the floor and not sure what to feel or think at the moment.

"Admiral..."

Damon looks up at the soft, frail sound of Kisaragi's voice. Kisaragi is still facing up at the ceiling, her eyes closed. She wipes her right eye, but a stray tear escapes and rolls down the side of her head.

"...please...don't fight over me...I feel terrible enough as it is, and...and I don't want to feel even worse for making Admiral argue with anyone over me..." she says lightly.

Damon lowers his head again. "...yeah...sorry about that. I...I get angry really easily. And it doesn't help that I don't like that bastard either..." Damon notices the blood on Kisaragi's hand, smeared onto it by his own hand when Kisaragi was holding onto him. "Er...sorry about...that...yeah. You don't wanna know what I did to the guys who...yeah."

In the background, Mr. Araki is instructing some of the girls to load each operation chamber's side canisters with the respective amounts of fuel, steel, and bauxite required for the surgeries.

"Listen, Kisaragi..." Damon says heavily, "Sanford - he's one of the guys who worked on the whole F.L.E.E.T. Project thing, so he knows all about you girls. He's tellin' me that...that they can operate on you so that...so that it's like you never got raped. They'll fix up your body or something like that, I don't know the exact details about it. That's...that's kind of why he and I got into that argument. I...I know that I'm the one who technically can make that decision for you, whether you'll get that kind of surgery or not, but personally, I...I don't know. That surgery seems like total bullshit to me. But that's just what I think...and now that I've, uh...taken a minute to think about it, I...I want you to make that decision for yourself. Issues like this, I think it's a lot better for you to make that decision yourself. I don't wanna feel like I can control what you do with your own body - it, it just doesn't feel right to me. So, uh...so what do you think about it?"

Kisaragi sniffs loudly.

"...I...I just want this pain to go away..." she mumbles. "...I don't want to feel helpless, and that I cannot do anything..."

She weakly turns her head to Damon.

"...please help me..." she begs with a small whimper.

Damon gazes back into her purple eyes. Looking down at his palms, he wipes the blood off on the lap of his jeans as best he can before standing back up.

"We'll do our best," Damon says in a low voice. He puts his hand over Kisaragi's, not really sure what else to do- but when he lets go, Kisaragi's hand reaches up and manages to catch his pinky finger.

"Is...is that a promise, Admiral...?" Kisaragi asks.

Damon finds himself twisting his lips rather wistfully.

"I don't make promises, Kisaragi," Damon says, "I make stuff happen. I'll make sure you get better."

Damon holds Kisaragi's small hand one more time before setting it back down on the table next to her nastily bruised side. Sanford, still rubbing his cheek where Damon ended up punching him, greets him, much to Damon's disgust.

"I need an answer, kid," Sanford says. "What'd she say?"

Damon simply glances at Sanford.

"Forget it," Damon snarls, "fuck that surgery. Just activate her ship mode and get rid of those bruises she's got. They don't belong there."

"You sure, kid?"

"I fucking doubt that giving Kisaragi her virginity back's gonna help at all with the fact that she still got raped when she didn't even know, so stop fucking asking me and do your fucking job."

Sanford stares at him with a hard look, eventually shrugging. "Whatever, kid - your call."

Soon, over Kisaragi's table, the black pillar descends and locks into place.

"Wait, why didn't you start the others?" Damon asks. "What the fuck, we ain't got a lot a time."

"More efficient if we operate on all of them at the same time," Sanford says, "especially now that we're runnin' off emergency backup generators for power. Girls, get some 'a the steel and stuff into those canisters."

As Shimakaze and Amatsukaze pour in steel patches, bauxite bars, and fuel into each canister, the surgical arms inside Kisaragi's operation chamber prepare Kisaragi for her surgery, snipping up her clothes neatly and sliding them down the chute. Damon morosely gazes at Kisaragi's body, fully seeing the amount of bruises covering Kisaragi's body. The robot arms repeat the deactivation process for Kisaragi.

"A'ight, we're startin' 'em up!" Sanford calls from the computer terminal as a robot arm in Inazuma's operation chamber lowers itself down and secures an oxygen mask over Inazuma's mouth. "Araki, pump the air."

Suddenly, the four operation chambers siphon all the air out of the chambers and pump them outside into the operating room with loud screeches of air, creating vacuums inside the chambers. This causes some of the girls to jump in fright, because of the loud noise that this makes. The robotic arms in all four operation chambers commence their work, and the ship girls watch on in fascination and great interest as the arms deftly work on the ship girls. Damon, pulling himself away from Kisaragi's chamber, heads over to Sanford and Mr. Araki, who are heavily focused on facilitating the surgery process.

"So how does this work, exactly?" Damon mutters, glancing about at the computer screen and the large keyboard. The user interface is foreign and strange to Damon, who's never seen a UI like that before.

"Basically, Araki's handling the actual surgery process," Sanford says, pointing at one of the four quadrants of the computer screen. "These panels right here indicate the specifics of the girls' Smartsteel integrity - basically tells us if their bodies are able to handle the strain of the surgeries so we know whether to abort the surgery and whether we're frying too many circuits or something. These screens - " Sanford gestures at the four computer panels that seem like they've flipped out from inside the wall beneath the computer terminal, "provide live feeds from one 'a those robot arms so Araki can see what's goin' on."

Damon watches Mr. Araki work for a minute. "Jesus, he's working on all four of them at once?" Damon mutters. "That's fucking insane."

"At least you can appreciate it. Some people never realize he's pullin' that off."

"But how's he doing it? That's what I wanna know."

"Look at what he's typing."

Damon peers up at where Sanford is pointing, at one of the lower panels of the large computer screen. Lines of code are being typed extremely quickly - so fast that each line barely lingers on-screen for longer than ten seconds or so. Damon tilts his head, confused at first, but when he figures out the general gist of the code's nature, Damon shakes his head slightly.

"Holy fuck," he marvels, "he's coding those robot arms to do exactly what he wants."

"Each individual arm, too," Sanford grins. "Araki here's a monster, a big fat coding monster. That's why I said that I wasn't too great at this, because people like Araki are the ones you need to do these kinds of surgeries."

"But there's gotta be an easier way to do these surgeries, right? What if Mr. Araki wasn't here?"

"Then you'll just have to deal with me," Sanford smirks instead. "And yeah, technically there's an easier way, but it's an automatic sequence, and we didn't manage to finish the automatic surgery sequence programs for these yet, thanks to those nukes, so we can't rely on them yet, gotta finish 'em first. It would make our lives a lot easier, 'cause it'll mean we don't necessarily need Araki in case more of the girls end up having to need surgery, but we gotta make do without it until either one of us manage to scrape up the original code and finish it up."

"Then what're you supposed to be doing?"

"Keepin' an eye on the peripherals and reviewing the code so that Araki isn't making any careless mistakes and fucks up the surgeries, but honestly, I don't need to. You can tell just by looking at how someone codes to know if someone's just a normal coder or a flawless one."

"No fuckin' kiddin'..." Damon stares at the quadrant that is constantly scrolling with seemingly endless lines of code that make the screen look as though the Matrix code is pouring up instead of down.

The robot arms in Yuudachi's, Kagerou's, and Kisaragi's chambers, equipped with a medley of medical tools, one for each arm, perform the reconstructive surgeries that each of the girls require. Yuudachi's neck and chest are opened up, and the robot arms inject a thick, dark paste into her damaged neck and chest.

"What's that paste thing?" Damon points at one of the camera feeds.

"It's liquid Smartsteel," Sanford says. "Araki had the girls load up steel, bauxite, 'n fuel into separate canisters of each of those chambers. What happens is the chambers pump those down into special reactors underneath each of the tables, and they convert the stuff into Smartsteel and anything else we need to operate on the girls."

"So how's it work? Just pour it in and let it fix itself up?"

"Not that simple. Smartsteel in liquid form is highly malleable, but not in the conventional sense. We found out when we first discovered Smartsteel that you can directly inject code into liquid Smartsteel and have it turn into anything you want once it dries. Well, as long as it's gonna become some sorta body part. That paste in Yuudachi's neck and chest?" Sanford points back at the camera feed. "Araki's already coded it to seek out that specific area of her spine and chest, and that paste'll copy the cellular information from cells around the damaged parts using cellular memory and reform whatever's missing. The rest of the liquid Smartsteel'll turn into other tissue once the spine and trachea are fully repaired, and if there's still a bit left over, it'll turn into blood cells and whatever else extra that can be made."

Damon watches Kisaragi's feed as a robotic arm is seen carefully lowering itself beside Kisaragi's heavily bruised right side with a razor-sharp injection needle and pokes it into her side, slowly pushing liquid Smartsteel into the bruised area. Inazuma winces and whimpers in her oxygen mask as the robot arm with the incision laser precisely reopens her stump.

"And how's Inazuma gonna get her left arm back?" Damon asks.

"For her, we decided it's easier just to make her a new left arm," Sanford explains. "The reactor underneath her table's constructing her left arm as we speak."

Damon crosses his arms. "So we just it back like this? Wait for it to finish?"

Sanford shrugs. "Yeah, basically. Yuudachi's surgery's basically more or less complete, we just need to wait for the Smartsteel paste to dry up and reconstruct the spine and trachea, then close up the wounds and reactivate her. Inazuma's is simple too, once her stump's completely open, her new arm should be done, and we'll attach it, reconnect the nerves, bones, tendons, muscles, all that good shit, and she'll be done too. Same with Kisaragi. But Kagerou's is gonna take the longest."

"Huh? Why?"

"Her wounds - they're super messy. That 35.6cm shot that Kongou hit her with is fucking brutal, kid. At least for Yuudachi, while she technically died, her wounds are clean and easy to deal with. Kagerou's gonna be a bitch for Mr. Araki to operate on."

"What about everyone's guns? The ship guns? Where're they at?"

"There's a separate repairing lab down the corridor; Araki already had the girls load up their guns in there, the machines in there'll take care 'a that; should finish before these surgeries do."

Sighing, Damon heads back to the plastic folding chair next to Kisaragi's operating chamber and is about to sit down when suddenly, the door of the operating room opens suddenly, revealing an extremely harried and frightened Haruna.

"Admiral! ! !" Haruna screams, "this - this is an emergency! We have hundreds of hostiles approaching the hospital grounds!"

Damon does not react at first, but he scratches his head and gets back up. Silently pulling his MK-14 Rogue Chassis off his back and pulling back the charging handle, Damon looks around the room.

"Kitakami, Fusou, and Furutaka, stay here. You know what to do," Damon orders, and the three ship girls nod solemnly. "Everyone else, on me." When he sees Shiranui inch closer to Kagerou's operating chamber, Damon glares at her with narrowed eyes. "That means you too, Shiranui."

"I refuse," Shiranui says simply.

"I won't take that as an answer; grab your gun and let's go."

"I refuse to leave."

"SHIRANUI!"

Damon explodes his voice again, causing Shiranui to take a tiny step back.

"Can you not, right now?" Damon asks quietly. "Can you just do as I say for fucking once? Kagerou isn't the only one who needs to be defended. There are others, too. Stop being so fucking selfish."

Shiranui glares back at Damon. "Screw you; you have no idea what I would do to ensure Kagerou's safety."

"Yeah? Then let's see you prove it." Damon turns to Mr. Araki. "Mr. Araki, stop Kagerou's surgery right now."

Shiranui freezes. Mr. Araki turns his head, asking, "Stop...? But...why?"

"I'm tryin'a see if what Shiranui's saying is true," Damon sneers at Shiranui, "'cause she's sayin' that she'll do anything to keep Kagerou safe. So if that's true, she'll follow us to head out and fend off those assholes comin' to get us. So stop her surgery."

Shiranui bounds forward and roughly grabs Damon by the collar, lifting him up off his feet.

"Sh-Shiranui-san!" Fusou and Haruna shout out simultaneously, but Damon is too pissed off to be fazed by this.

"Don't you dare threaten me, you fucking shit," Shiranui growls.

"Yet you're threatening your Admiral. Double standards, eh?" Damon smirks with an evil streak back down at Shiranui.

"But you're the one who's using my sister's life as a bargaining chip, so fuck you!"

"And if that's what I have to do to get you to do anything that I say, then so be it. What's it gonna be, Shiranui? Your sister, or your cooperation?"

Shiranui hisses through clenched teeth. "If you don't keep the surgery going, I'll just kill you right here," Shiranui threatens. "If I don't have Kagerou, there's no point in doing anything else anymore."

"Oh, is that right?" Damon drops his smirk as his hand slowly reaches for his knife handle in its holster. "Then that's a damn sha - "

Amatsukaze saves Damon the trouble as she suddenly buries her Ignition Glove into the side of Shiranui's head, causing her to let go of Damon. Shiranui is knocked down to the ground but gets back up quickly, hissing with anger but grimacing as Shimakaze, Murakumo, and Amatsukaze all confront her.

"Stop being such a damn drama queen, Shiranui," Murakumo says, her headgears pulsing red. "Do what you're told. You're a fucking ship girl; start acting like one!"

"We can't waste time like this, Shiranui!" Amatsukaze also adds. "Haruna-san just transmitted the enemy information; they're going to be here in less than five mikes! We need as many people up there as we can! Now's not the time to argue with Damon! He's your Admiral for God's sake; if he wants you up there with us, just go!"

Damon gets to his feet after being dropped.

"We're wasting time - leave her alone. I'll let her make her own decision: if I don't see her up there fightin' with the rest 'a us, then I'll just do something like send Shiranui over to England so that it won't make a damn difference if Kagerou got fixed up or not. C'mon, all of you."

Damon heads out the door, and the ship girls slowly file out after him, leaving Shiranui with Sanford, Mr. Araki, and the three ship girls Mr. Araki had fostered.

"Damn it, Shiranui," Sanford mutters, "you better be glad that Damon's a good kid. If he was actually an American Admiral, he'd've sent you to get scrapped along with Kagerou."

But Shiranui does not respond.


Damon, flanked by Murakumo, Ushio, and Sazanami, burst out into the rooftops on the southern end of the hospital, where the carriers and Amagi are already waiting.

"It's about damn time you all showed up!" Zuikaku calls, glancing at the four of them coming to reinforce their position and waiting for them to post up with them along the edges of the roof. "They're coming in three big groups: one from the south, one from the north, and one from the west, all along the big streets," Zuikaku points out the directions along Brunswick Avenue and East Miller Street. "It would've been nice if the rooftops over on then north end weren't caved in; a couple of us could've posted up over there to snipe some of those guys coming from the north."

Damon glances at the north end of the rooftops, which are indeed collapsed and inaccessible. Only the southern end of the hospital facilities still have their rooftops intact.

"Back to shittin' myself on rooftops, huh," Damon mumbles as he toggles his safety off. "What's with me and rooftops this past week? Anyway, where's everyone at right now? And where're the Little Birds and that KA-60K?"

"They have flown back to the air base to refuel," Shoukaku reports quickly. "They said that they will return in thirty mikes."

"Mkay...we saw the Venom on top of another building somewhere further south, and the Huey's right here..." Damon broods. "Well, let's just hope they don't shoot the shit outta the Huey, too late to move it now..."

"Damon," Murakumo interrupts, tapping his shoulder, "we have a squad led by Akatsuki and her sisters positioned in front of the west lobby entrance further up north, we should be able to see them from here..." Damon and Murakumo lean out over the edge to get a better look, and Damon catches a glimpse of Ikazuchi patting Hibiki's back off in the distance. "Yeah, there they are. In addition, we've got another squad defending the south entrance - the one Kongou blasted in the wall. They're protecting your helicopter, so they're a bit spread out around the street and on the floors below us."

Damon nods, satisfied with the information. "That means all entrances into the labs are covered, and they won't get inside the hospital without any of you knowing, basically."

"But we still have a great responsibility to provide suppression fire for the rest of the girls," Shoukaku points out. "Especially Akatsuki-chan's squad, they have a very limited line of sight on the group of enemies coming down from the north. It is our task to alert them to their positions."

Damon glances at the weapons of each of ship girl on the roofs with him and scans their surroundings, trying to decide the best positions for them.

"Sazanami, Ushio, and Murakumo, get on that side, you're gonna deal with the guys coming in from the south," Damon orders. "Kaga, Shoukaku, and Zuikaku, cover Akatsuki's squad as best you can and pick off those guys from the north. Amagi and...Wakamiya? Yeah, you're with me, we'll handle the guys on that street in front of us comin' in from the west."

The girls shift positions in accordance with Damon's wishes as Monarch's voice scratchily bleeds into Damon's ears:

"Hostiles spotted! Sir, our orders?"

"Wait until everyone can get a shot!" Damon yells. "Once everyone's got a clean shot, open fire! If they see you and they start shooting, that's weapons free too! I ain't no Brit, I ain't about ta tell ya ta shoot only if you can see the whites 'a their eyes!"

"Oi, Admiral, don't you go on about that, I'll knock your bloody teeth out!" Kongou, somewhere, cries indignantly at this historical sucker punch.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, learn to take a joke!" Damon smirks, knowing that his words are waterlogged with irony. "Fend 'em off until those surgeries get done or we kill everyone! Whichever comes first! If the surgeries get finished before we kill all these bastards, we're bailin' the fuck out!"

"Enemy formation to the north sighted as well," Kaga reports. The carriers are not too far away from Damon and Amagi, so Damon can hear them clearly without having to rely on his headset. "They may spot us up here, too. Recommend a pre-emptive strike against enemy squadron."

"Line them up. Try 'n take down two or three people at once," Damon instructs. "Literally all three of you have anti-materiel rifles; those bullets'll rip through humans like nobody's business."

"I've got three lined up!" Zuikaku calls. "They're not gonna stay like that for much longer! Should I shoot?"

"Do it!"

Zuikaku's DSR-50 bullpup sniper rifle pounds the air, followed in quick succession by Kaga's Desert Tactical H.T.I. and Shoukaku's McMillan TAC-50. As calculated, Zuikaku's bullet knocks down three targets simultaneously like dominoes, while Kaga's and Shoukaku's score double kills each. The rebels, realizing that there is a sniper team equipped with anti-materiel rifles on an elevated position somewhere in the direction of the hospital, scatter and abandon their fallen comrades out in the street to melt away into the alleys and side streets, completely breaking their formation.

"Ah, crap!" Zuikaku groans, "they've scattered! We gotta track them coming in from all angles now!"

Shots begin ringing out from beneath them as the girls posted in the windows of the second and third floors begin opening fire on what enemies they can see.

"They're out in the open!" Murakumo calls, raising her AK-47. "Sazanami, Ushio, light 'em up!"

The three destroyers lay down elevated fire onto the incoming wave of rebels closing in from the south. Damon waits for the first sign of the group of enemies to reveal themselves from the west, and as soon as the first rebel runs into view at the intersection of East Miller Street and Nassau Street, Damon headshots him immediately. The designated marksman rifles of Amagi and Damon cut down the invaders from the west with frightening accuracy and lethality as the rebels trying to get a clear shot on Damon and Amagi are shot as soon as they crouch or stand still to aim properly. Amagi, especially, snaps her aim back and forth like a machine, brutally efficient as she only pulls once per victim - one bullet for one essential body part to end their lives.

By this point, Akatsuki's squad has eyes on attackers coming down from the north and begin opening fire themselves. The carriers continue to pummel whatever small squads of enemies they can spot with unrelenting sniper fire.

"Reloadin'!" Damon calls as he flattens himself beneath the wall on the edge of the rooftop to throw out his emptied magazine and insert a fresh DMR magazine of twenty 7.62x51mm bullets.

"I also require a change!" Amagi calls, and Damon nods, synchronizing with Amagi's duck under cover to pop out and resume fire.

Roughly ten minutes of gunfighting elapses before Shoukaku calls out,

"The enemy is retreating!"

And sure enough, gradually, the constant chatter of gunshots subsides until the hospital grounds are silent once more. The streets are littered with bodies and blood and bullet casings.

"D-Did we...did we do it...?" Ushio asks hesitantly. "I hope...I hope we did..."

Damon wipes the sweat off his brow, and in doing so wipes off the blood splattered on his forehead with it.

"Everyone, keep an eye out," Damon says wearily and warily, "they might come back for round two. You never know..."

"Hey, Master, are you all right?" Sazanami calls. "You haven't been shot, have you?"

Damon shakes his head. "Not quite yet this time. And please, for the love 'a God, stop calling me 'Master'."

Sazanami pouts. "Why do you hate that so much? Most people like being called Master, and I like calling you Master, so what's the big deal?"

Damon throws his hands up a bit into the air and lets them plop back down onto his lap as he leans his back against the short wall. "What the fuck ever, then...I guess the way we think don't quite line up..."

"What's that supposed to mean, Master?"

"Nothing...nothin' at all..." Damon sighs. "Shimakaze, can you head down to the labs and get an update on how far along those surgeries are?"

"Ou! I'm on it!" Shimakaze cheerfully replies, and Damon can briefly hear the enthusiastic stomping of her boots as she whisks herself away to complete his request.

"...man, if only Shiranui was like that," Damon groans. "What the fuck's with that girl..."

"Shiranui?" Zuikaku says, "oh, right, we heard from the others what happened down there...hey, don't give her so much shit, Damon, she just wants to make sure Kagerou's fine. I know I would do that for Shoukaku-nee."

"Oh God, please don't start me on this again..." Damon groans again.

Zuikaku looks offended. "What's your problem? I was just saying that because we have sisters we care about, we'll sometimes do drastic things! And it's only Shiranui who isn't up here, it's not like not having her's gonna make a huge difference!"

Damon scowls at Zuikaku.

"Yeah, because I so totally know what it's like to have a sister, let alone a sibling to know about that sort of care. And might I remind you that while we were in Britain, had Shiranui not popped out at the moment she did, Kongou woulda ripped my balls off and shoved them down my throat?"

Zuikaku scowls back. "Well, damn, that's your own problem, isn't it?"

"Zuikaku!" Shoukaku scolds, "please don't talk to Admiral like that! Behave, please!"

"Tch...yeah, whatever..." Zuikaku rolls her eyes and pitches her back to Damon again.

"Now is not the time to argue," Kaga says grimly, "we are about to be attacked once more."

The carriers' hearts sink as they scan their surroundings.

"Vehicles a-are accompanying the hostiles!" Wakamiya stammers, clutching her Arctic Warfare AW-F tightly. "Three of them, from the west, and two more from the south!"

"What kind of vehicles?" Damon demands.

"I-I do not know, sir!"

Damon whips around to the other carriers. "You there, get over here! I need to know what kinda vehicles they are! They could be anything! If they've brought shit like BTR's or tanks, we need to get the fuck off this roof!"

The carriers hurry over and plant themselves next to the destroyers before raising their sniper rifle scopes to peer down the streets in search of the vehicles, trying to estimate their locations in order to spot them once they can be seen from the hospital roof.

"There they are!" Shoukaku cries out, and Damon, quickly standing up to look, spies two military trucks gunning up Brunswick Avenue but taking a sharp right turn and disappearing out of view on Philips Avenue.

"Okay, if they're just supply trucks, we should be fine!" Damon says. "What about the - "

"Sighted! They're just trucks, too!" Zuikaku immediately responds as the trucks she spies rolls onto Dole Alley to the west. "These guys're learning - they aren't using the main roads anymore, they're sneaking around!"

"Jesus, did the entire CCPL post go up in arms?" Damon mutters. "How the fuck do they still have reinforcements...anyways, everyone, get ready for round fucking two!"

The girls wait, tracking enemy movement to see when they will reveal themselves and open fire. Amagi detects congregations of unknown human signatures gathering around the trucks, which have stopped and parked out of sight.

"They are taking quite some time to resupply," Amagi notes. "What could those vehicles contain?"

"Think we're 'bout to find out..." Damon replies with his MK-14 already raised and ready to fire.

Then, four men emerge from Dole Alley, where the three supply trucks have slipped into. As Damon is about to pull the trigger, his magnified reflex sight indicates that those men are all equipped with rocket launchers. As he fires a shot, Damon screams,

"RPG! GET DOWN!"

His first shot pierces the first rocketeer in the chest, and he goes down without being able to fire off his RPG-7. However, because Wakamiya and Amagi were busy keeping tabs on enemy movement around the vehicles, the three other men fire off their rockets uncontested, and three rockets screech as they sail towards the hospital roof. Damon lunges for Wakamiya and pins her down to the floor as one of the rockets sails straight over them and the other two swerve downwards and smash into the third floor and detonate. The girls on the roof scream as the explosions beneath them shake the roofs and cause large cracks to appear all throughout the roof over where the rockets exploded.

"Admiral!? We saw explosions up there on the roof, are you okay!?" Akatsuki's shrill scream of concern floods Damon's headphones as he shakes his head, his hearing temporarily deafened by the close-proximity explosions.

"EVERYONE, OFF THE ROOF! OFF THE FUCKING ROO - "

A fourth rocket, fired by one of the rocketeers who had picked up the fallen RPG tube of the man Damon had shot, hits directly where Damon, Wakamiya, and Amagi were originally posted up to fire down at the rebels coming in from the west. The explosion causes the concrete to shatter like shattered glass and showers Damon, Wakamiya, and Amagi along with thick, hot, and sharp pieces of rocket shrapnel.

"DAMON!" Murakumo screams, stumbling towards Damon, who is lying on the floor, hissing through his teeth. His arms, chest, and a bit of his face is peppered with tiny cuts from the flying shattered concrete pieces, and five sharp pieces of metal rocket shrapnel have lodged themselves in his arms, chest, and even one on his chin. Murakumo quickly pulls out all the shrapnel pieces as Damon yelps with each one.

"Thanks for that, now everyone get off, get back to the stairs!" Damon orders, and he and the girls begin to make a break for the roof access stairs, but then Ushio, the last ship girl to reach the stairs, suddenly stops and turns.

"M-My gun! I forgot - "

Ushio's Carbon 15 carbine lies in solitude on the roof floor next to the short wall on the edge of the rooftop, where she had accidentally dropped it in fright from the first series of rocket explosions. Damon, who is about to enter the roof access door climb down the stairs, realizes that Ushio is missing and turns around, seeing Ushio hurriedly stoop to grab her carbine.

"Ushio, hurry up!" Damon hollers, but as Ushio gets back up, Damon sees her suddenly get hit in the head by something, causing her to get driven straight down into the ground. "Fuck!"

Damon grinds his teeth and runs out onto the dangerous rooftops again, which are by now showing signs of imminent collapse if another rocket or two get fired at it. Sliding on his jeans to reach Ushio quickly without risking getting shot, Damon picks up Ushio's Carbon-15 for her and grabs her arm.

"C'mon, Ushio, we gotta go we gotta go!" Damon screams, but Ushio is sobbing terribly, unable to get up and clutching the side of her head. A bit of blood is leaking out from in between her fingers.

"I-It hurts - ! ! ! ! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! ! !"

"Goddamn it, Ushio, we don't have the time for this!" Damon yells, but the corner of his eye spots a bullet rolling to a stop next to the stubby wall. Damon, glancing at it, realizes that Ushio has just been shot in the side of the head with a fifty caliber cartridge.

Not bothering to tell Ushio what to do, instead, Damon simply shoves Ushio's Carbon 15 into her arms and scoops her up to carry her off the roof. But before he can take another step, a bullet strikes him on the back of the upper left chest, just underneath his shoulderblade, and the shot causes Damon to let go of Ushio in pain. The destroyer collapses once again onto the roof, releasing her weapon once again and sliding it a bit of ways away, and she lies curled up next to the stubby wall. Damon, too, is down on the floor, his left arm numb and losing sensation. He got lucky once again, because whatever had just hit him definitely wasn't from the same guy who shot Ushio.

"...fuck...!"

Damon reaches for Ushio's hand with his good arm, but another rocket hits the third floor and explodes. The damaged rooftop, having had enough, finally begins to break apart, and the corner of the roof where Ushio lies crumbles away. Damon lunges for Ushio, who is about to slip away from the roof caving in, suddenly realizes what is about to happen to her and screams as she begins to fall, but Damon catches her by the wrist with his good hand. With his nerves in his left shoulder screaming for mercy, Damon squeezes his eyes shut as he heaves Ushio back onto the roof with him while pushing against the end of the broken wall with his shot shoulder.

"FUCKING - RUN!" is all that Damon can bellow. Ushio, her head still throbbing mightily, inhales sharply and starts running towards the exit, picking her Carbon 15 back up. Damon and Ushio are about to enter the access door when they freeze at the doorwell - that last rocket has caused the stairs to collapse, removing their one lifeline to safety.

"W-We're cut off!" Ushio cries, her eyes shaking with desperation, staring down all the way to the bottom of the main floor.

"You can make the jump!" Damon yells back. "Go, I'll handle myself up here!"

Ushio bites her lip, glancing down at the stairwell that no longer has any stairs on it, but she shakes her head furiously.

"I - I WON'T LEAVE YOU, ADMIRAL!" Ushio screams. "I - I NEED TO - I NEED TO PROTECT YOU! RIGHT - RIGHT NOW, I - I - I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN!"

A great rumbling interrupts them, and Damon turns around to witness an even greater chunk of the roof fall away from view and exposing them to potential shots from East Miller Street. In no position to argue, Damon tugs on Ushio's hand.

"We can't stay here! We gotta try 'n find another way off!" Damon yells, so he and Ushio get the hell out of the door well and head to the other side of the roof, at the north end where they are out of sight of the snipers from the south and the west, but there is nothing like an emergency ladder or a safe place to jump down for Damon that allows them escape.

"Fuck this shit!" Damon screams with frustration. "What the fuck is it with me and rooftops!? Fuck rooftops, man!"

"Admiral, you're hurt!" Ushio cries, noticing the fresh blood coated on the back of his shirt. "That's your blood this time! When did you - "

"When I was fucking going over to pick you up!" Damon roars. "Don't fucking worry about it, I'll worry about it later!"

Ushio begins to cry again, even harder this time than she was when she got shot in the head by that fifty caliber round.

"I-I'm so sorry, Admiral - !" Ushio sobs, "it - this's all my f-fault - b-b-be-because of me - I'm really sorry - "

Damon slaps his face with his good hand's palm. He wants to yell at Ushio for doing something like apologizing and crying while they are still in combat, but he is focusing all of his strength into dealing with the throbbing pain in his shoulder and the numbness of his left arm.

"Damon! Damon, where the hell are you!?" Murakumo screams into Damon's ears via his headset. "You were right behind us, weren't you!? Don't tell me you're still on the fucking roof being a stupid hero!"

"Yeah, I am, and I'm a hero for a different reason!" Damon yells back. "Ushio and I're stuck up here, and we're fuckin' pinned with no way off! Find us another escape route if you've got the time to scream bloody murder at me!"

"There ISN'T, you goddamn idiot! You're basically stuck up there, and we saw that one of those rockets just blew up the stairs! How're you gonna head down!?"

"THAT'S WHAT I FUCKING ASKED YOU!" Damon screams back hysterically, as though he and Murakumo are having a contest to see who can scream louder. "But that's besides the point! Listen, everyone, be advised; hostiles've got bigger guns and they've got rockets, if you didn't notice by now! In other words, they're gonna hurt real bad if you get hit by 'em! Me 'n Ushio'll hang out on the roofs until we figure out a way down!"

"Then good fucking luck hanging on up there, they're trying to tear down the roof by the looks of things!"

"Yeah, why am I not surprised? Of course they - "

More crashes of explosions shake the roofs, and the cracks extend and widen all about the rooftops.

" - would," Damon groans. "I'm gonna fuckin' castrate the guy who invented rooftops when I meet 'im in hell..."

As Ushio stands crying next to Damon, Damon watches as more chunks of the rooftop fall into the third floor below it.

"Wait a minute," Damon suddenly realizes, "we can jump down there! The third floor's still intact!"

"I wouldn't recommend it, Damon, the third floor's heavily damaged, we could tell when we were comin' down!" Murakumo warns.

"Yeah? Well, the fuck am I supposed to do when the bad idea's the only idea we have?"

"Uh, not take it?"

Damon rolls his eyes and grabs Ushio's hand.

"Ushio, we're gettin' off this roof!" Damon yells.

"B-But how will we - ?!" Ushio starts to say, but Damon cuts her off.

"C'mon, we don't have time to talk!"

Damon and Ushio run towards the caving roof and jump down onto the third floor, into one of the patient rooms that is revealed from the roof caving in. They both land on their feet perfectly, but as soon as Damon lands, he hears a mighty crack. Without even looking down, he knows what this means.

"Fuck - "

The floor of the damaged room breaks away, and Ushio screams as they plunge into the second floor, crash through that floor too, and finally crash into the main floor, at the lobby where the hospital infiltration team had engaged the dozen rebel defenders. When Damon lands onto the floor of the lobby, he lands on his injured left shoulder, which buckles with his weight and rapid falling momentum, and Damon hears a very dull thwok - the sound of something popping.

"HOLY FUUUU - "

Damon squeezes his eyes shut and rolls a bit to get his weight off his left shoulder, clutching it with his right hand. He can't control his left arm at all anymore.

Ushio, who has tumbled down the three floors with him, whimpering with pain, brushes the debris out of her face and crawls over to Damon.

"Admiral, wh-what happened now?!" she asks tearfully, unsure of what to do.

Damon points at his left shoulder, his eyes still squeezed shut.

"...dis...dislocated..."

Ushio's pupils constrict as her eyes widen in horror. "D-D-Dis - dislocation - !? Oh - oh no..."

Damon can barely speak as the pain of his dislocated left shoulder overwhelms his ability to put together cohesive thoughts. Ushio, desperate to come up with something to help Damon but at a total loss of what to do, simply puts her hands on her face and continues to sob.

"W-Why is this happening!?" Ushio screams into her hands, her voice beginning to show signs of hoarseness. "Why - W-Why can't I do anything for anyone!? I - I just want t-to protect everyone as b-best as I can, and - and I can't even protect you, A-Admiral! How - How am I supposed to expect myself to protect anyone else!?"

Then, the second floor ceiling above them rumbles again with even more rocket explosions, and Ushio lifts her face out of her hands to look up, realizing that the ceiling above them, because of the hole they have made falling down, will soon cave in on top of them too. Ushio wipes her eyes one more time as she forces herself to her feet, determined make herself useful at least in some kind of way.

"Admiral! Admiral, we need to get out of here!" Ushio yells into Damon's face, urgently pushing him over onto his back as he groans with pain. "The ceiling - it's - it's going to come down!"

"Shit...!" Damon bites down on his teeth and shakes his head to clear his vision. "Help - help me up, Ushio - "

The destroyer pulls Damon back to his feet, his left arm flopping helplessly due to shoulder dislocation. Damon's eyes are watering up - this is some of the worst pain he's felt in a while - but he fights the tears and tries his best to make rational decisions.

"Head towards the others," Damon instructs Ushio. "Do you know where we are?"

"West Main Lobby, Admiral," Ushio says, wiping her eyes with the back of her arm one more time and picking up her Carbon 15, "we - we need to head south."

"Tell the others...where we are, and that - we might need help getting back to the others," Damon says, his head throbbing because he had bumped his head many times on the way down, including the fall that popped his shoulder out. "We're fucked if we can't make it to the others right away. Ushio..." Damon exhales deeply, his vision going fuzzy for a moment, "listen...I know...I know you said you couldn't do anything, but - right now, you don't have that choice. I'm relyin' on you right now."

Ushio nods emphatically, clutching her carbine.

"Understood, Admiral! Please, follow me!"

Pulling out his Glock 37 to defend himself, Damon hisses with his throbbing head and shoulder as he follows Ushio as they head down the dark halls of the hospital in an effort to regroup with the others.

"Everyone, this is Ushio, I am with Admiral and we are headed back to the laboratory area!" Ushio calls, communicating on the ship girl frequency that all the girls share. "Please - please, Admiral is terribly injured and he only has me for escort! We need some people to come to us and make sure that Admiral gets out safe!"

"Admiral!? How are you injured?!" Haruna's very worried voice sparks in Damon's headset, though her voice sounds a bit far away for some reason to Damon. Pulling down the microphone, Damon mutters in a harried breath,

"Shot, left shoulder, and...and dislocated left shoulder. Might have...might have some minor concussions to the head...shrapnel to upper chest, but that shit doesn't matter, Murakumo pulled 'em out already..."

"Admiral, please be advised, given Ushio's coordinates of your current position, you'll find that the west halls that lead down to the south end of the hospital grounds are blocked off!" Mutsu calls. "The rocket barrage from the enemies have more or less separated the very southern end off from the rest of the hospital!" As soon as Mutsu says this, Ushio, opening another door, finds the other side caved in by a huge amount of construction debris.

"If - if only I had my ship guns...!" Ushio groans, pushing against the debris with all her might. With her destroyer strength, Ushio is actually able to move some of the debris, but after about two minutes of trying, Ushio finds that by herself alone, it will take far too long to move everything out of the way to clear the path.

"Mutsu-san, where - where should we go!?" Ushio yells, finally giving up.

"Try going around! Or better yet, try regrouping with Akatsuki-chan's group up there at the west entrance! Goddamn it, why are there so many of these guys anyway?!"

Ushio pulls on Damon's shirt as he leans against the wall clutching his arm, and they begin to backtrack when suddenly, as they reenter the main lobby, they hear clicks of guns to their right.

"Oh, thank God!" Amatsukaze shouts out, relieved to see Damon still in one piece and lowering her AK-47. "Murakumo, everyone, we've located Admiral! We'll take him back to the labs!"

"Hey, one of you - one 'a you tell the squad outside at the west entrance to fall back!" Damon orders tiredly, holding onto his dislocated left arm. "I want everyone in one place!"

"But - but if you take them out, there won't be anyone covering the north flank!" Shimakaze points out, concerned. "Now that the roofs are gone, we don't have any eyes on the north except for them! And it's not like Akatsuki-chan and the others are doing particularly bad or anything!"

"Don't worry 'bout us, chaps!" Kongou calls cheerily as the reports of guns blare all around her. "We'll hold the castle down! Take Admiral back to the labs!"

"Okay, follow me, ou!" Shimakaze cries, and she leads everyone back the way she and Amatsukaze had come to find them using Ushio's location as a reference. "Sanford-sensei and Araki-sensei decided to reroute power from the elevators to pump them into the operation chambers to get the surgeries done more quickly! We have to use the secret shaft!"

"Those fucking idiots!" Damon roars. "My fucking arm's done! I can't climb down that thing unless I just jump down!"

Amatsukaze groans. "Oh crap..."

"Forget it, I'll just slide with one arm! Doesn't matter if I break a leg or two at this point!"

They reach the last hall, the southern hall, which they must run through to reach Room 149 on the other side. They can see Monarch and Erin leaning out of holes blasted in the southern wall of the hospital, chugging away with their firearms.

"We'll cover you! Keep running!" Erin yells, interrupting her machine gun fire only for a moment to yell at the others. Shimakaze boosts ahead, followed closely behind by Amatsukaze and then Ushio, but Damon is starting to lag behind because Shimakaze and Amatsukaze are starting to accelerate.

"We're almost there, Admiral!" Ushio calls, slowing down and turning around to see where he is at. Gunshots from the girls on the second floor directly above them are pounding away at the rebels just beyond Fuld Street.

Damon hears a distant thump from across the street somewhere, and the wall to his left explodes from a launched 40mm grenade, as though he hadn't been thoroughly washed in a shower of construction debris just yet. The force of the explosion, while the lethality of it is blocked by the wall, is enough to throw Damon against the other wall not too far away, in addition to the rain of debris that comes with it, and Damon shrieks again as his left arm slaps against the wall.

"ADMIRAL!"

Ushio is starting to feel her voice crack with hoarseness as she stops herself to go back, and Amatsukaze turns around to see what that explosion was about. Damon tries to get up, pushing the thick blocks of debris off him, but before he can drag his legs out of the pile, another bullet catches him on his side as bullets begin peppering the new hole that the grenade has created. Because Damon was facing his body towards the new hole blasted by the 40mm grenade, the 7.62x39mm round ends up sinking into his left side, just above his hip, and explodes out the other end, essentially cutting his left side open and throwing his blood onto the wall behind him. Damon stumbles from the shot and falls forward, having to break his fall with his hand that is carrying his sidearm, before collapsing onto his right shoulder and returning fire with his Glock.

"ADMIRAL!" Ushio screams the loudest she's ever screamed. She rushes to him and shields his upper body with her own body, ensuring that no other bullets to strike Damon with a fatal hit.

"SHIT! DAMON'S DOWN!" Amatsukaze relays as she, too, quickly gets over to Damon, kneels down right in the middle of the hole, and sprays wildly with her AK-47 for covering fire. "Ushio, get Damon to the labs! Just go, just - "

"We'll take care of this from here, poi!"

Ushio looks up in the direction from which they had been running. Damon, too, recognizes the unique verbal tic, and he lifts his head to see if she is really back.

Yuudachi, flanked by Shigure, Shiranui, Kagerou, Inazuma, and Kisaragi, gives Damon a big ol' toothy smile. All the girls have their gearboxes containing their ship armaments reequipped.

"Yuudachi Kai, reporting for duty, Admiral, poi!" Yuudachi says. "Sorry I've been out for so long, poi!"

Damon can't help but betray a relieved smile of his own.

"Get out there 'n fuck 'em up so we can all go home!" Damon orders, and Yuudachi cries "Poi!" and jumps out of the hole in the wall, followed quickly by Shigure, Inazuma, and Kisaragi. Kagerou and Shiranui approach Damon and help him back up.

"Hey, glad ta see me again, Commander?" Kagerou gives Damon a warm smile of her own, which strikes Damon as superfluously unfamiliar, for most times that he's talked to Kagerou, it was when she was heavily wounded by Kongou's attack. "This's gonna hurt a bit, but we heard that your shoulder was dislocated. We'll pop that back in for you."

Damon groans. "Oh God...make it quick..."

Shiranui and Kagerou grab hold of his arm, causing Damon to yelp again. "Aw, c'mon, Commander, you're a guy, something like this should be fine!" Kagerou laughs as Damon frowns at her.

"Bite me."

Shiranui shifts his arm up so that his left arm is slightly over his head, then quickly pulls down. Damon feels a thwup as his shoulder makes a popping noise again and his shoulder slides neatly back in place, but this causes Damon to cringe and slide down against the wall, unable to bear the pain of the bluntness of the relocation process.

Shiranui gives Damon the stinkeye. "How pathetic; can't even handle that?" Shiranui hisses. "Some Commander you are."

"Nui-chan!" Kagerou scolds, "don't say that, Admiral's been through hell and back! Look at him!"

Shiranui rolls her eyes in response. "He threatened to cut off your surgery. That is intolerable."

"Yeah, well, maybe you should've gone along to help him when he asked the first time so that he wouldn't end up looking like this!" Kagerou reprimands her younger ship sister as she kneels down next to Ushio, helping Damon sit up. "You're gonna have to sling that up, Sanford-sensei says."

"Tchhh...I fucking know..." Damon gasps. "I've got this goddamn gunshot wound to worry about..."

Kagerou bends down to inspect it. "Is it bad? It only hit your side, right?"

"Yeah, don't think it hit any organs or anything, but...still gotta patch it up asap, once we get back to that air base...not enough time to scavenge the hospital..."

Meanwhile, the Little Birds, having returned from refueling, lay waste once more to the streets. Compounded once more with the fact that there are now four destroyers unleashing their overkill destructive power against human targets, one of whom is now upgraded, the pressure from the rebels begins to subside, slowly but surely.

Sanford and Mr. Araki emerge from the shaft in Room 149, followed closely behind by Fusou, Kitakami, and Furutaka, all of whom have recovered their repaired ship armaments and have them equipped. The small boy they had rescued from the industrial sector is being carried by Fusou.

"Looks like ya took an ass-whoopin', kid!" Sanford smirks at Damon. "Chuck's gonna land 'get me 'n Araki over to the Venom! Once you see the Venom in the sky, tell all the girls to head down to the labs and pick up their gear! We're Audi 5000 after everyone gets their shit!"

"Hey, are the elevators working now, you sonuvabitch?" Damon calls weakly, and Sanford nods.

"Should be! Why, they didn't work for ya? That sucks, doesn't it?"

Damon flips Sanford off.

Sure enough, the AH-6X Overwatch touches down next to the Huey on Fuld Street, and Sanford beckons to Mr. Araki to move out once the gunfire has reached a safe enough level. The girls provide covering fire where they can as Sanford leads Mr. Araki over to the AH-6X, which they board, and Chuck promptly airlifts them out and takes them to where Sanford has parked the UH-1Y Venom.

Yuudachi is running up and down the street, liberally firing round after round of 12.7cm shots. Shigure is standing at the tail rotor of the Huey, which is very badly shot up by all the crossfire, blasting away with her own ship gun that she has just gotten online. Inazuma and Kisaragi alternate shots at the intersection of Brunswick Avenue and Fuld Street, ignoring the shots that they are taking and instead continuing to pummel any hostile they see with 12.7cm cannon shells.

Soon, the Venom can be seen lifting off the parking facility, swerving away from incoming RPG shots as it stabilizes and flies over to the hospital.

"Everyone, go get your guns from the labs!" Damon orders through his mic. "The elevators're workin' now! Get your shit, and load up! We're gettin' the fuck outta here!"

It takes the girls about five minutes of scrambling to head down to the labs as the gunfire ceases from the floors of the hospital. Retrieving their gearboxes and equipping them, they burst out from the shaft and the emergency elevators and pour out onto Fuld Street, where the helicopters land after the Little Birds check that there are no immediate threats in the vicinity. Sanford can be seen waving at them to come load up in his pilot window.

"Let's go, let's go!" Damon yells, though not as loudly as he usually would yell. The girls hop into the same helicopters that they had come in, and Murakumo carries the small boy, her Waterfall Shield active for a brief period of time just in case, and sits with him riding on her lap on the side of the Huey, next to Amagi and Kaga, as the Huey fills up to maximum capacity with the addition of Kisaragi. The Huey spools up, beat up but not destroyed, and Inazuma, Shigure, Yuudachi, and Kisaragi pack up their ship guns and jump into their respective helicopters.

"Kid, be advised, there's still a large group 'a rebs nearby retreatin' down to the south!" Sanford warns. "Watch out for stray shots, they might take a couple at the helis once we're liftin' off!"

"Got it!" Damon calls, working the controls as best he can with only one good arm, but eventually he manages to pull the Huey off the ground, though he is the last one to do so. Turning the Huey around in the direction of McGuire Air Base, Damon banks the Huey forward and ascends, and the helicopters are on their way back to the air base.

Murakumo heaves a sigh of relief as they begin to fly away from the hospital, deactivating her Waterfall Shield.

"...where's Mommy...?" the small boy on her lap asks. "Where's Daddy?"

Murakumo looks down to answer him, but a spattering of gunfire from ground level cuts her off. Bullets ping off the convoy of helicopters as they pass over -

- and one of them hits Murakumo in the chest.

"Ow!" Murakumo winces, looking down at her chest.

There's blood on her chest. Blood that isn't hers.

The small boy, with a gunshot wound straight through his chest, stares blankly at Murakumo before slumping into her chest.