Rule 2169. If you went on a rampage that destroyed something or another or caused excessive bodily harm to anyone during said rampage, you have no right to complain about the amount of force used by the Coast Guard when they apprehend you.
"Chester!"
Ayase, formerly of the Abyss, came to a screeching halt. She'd been set to ignore the tremendous commotion going on near the piers in favor of continuing her walk, but the mention of her friend overrode any other thought. Switching tracks, she ran into and shoved through the crowd, quickly breaking through. There, lying on the concrete was Chester, being tended to by several medics and who looked like she'd gotten in a fight with a wood chipper and lost.
[What happened?] she asked, her voice strung with tension.
"We're not sure," one of the sailors examining Chester said. "Obviously, she was in a fight..." He brushed away some stray powder residue on her wrecked rigging to emphasize the point. "But against what, no one knows. We'll contact you when she's stable enough to visit, alright?"
Suddenly aware that she was clenching her fists hard enough to bend steel, Ayase gave a sharp nod and stalked off to go find something to hit. A tree, a decommed ship, anything sturdy enough to last for more than a few minutes. What she really wanted, though, was to express her displeasure to whoever had done that to Chester.
Sadly, the odds of said person just showing up in front of her were unfathomably low.
~o~
USS Canton slowly floated back towards San Diego, trusting in the cover of night and her stealth features active and passive to see her through the defenses. She sighed; really, this was just such a waste of time. They should have been looking for a way to get back home, but no, Miss Kohl insisted that they learn about the local powers.
"If she could just get off her fat ass, we wouldn't need to know, because they'd all be dead," Canton grumbled, ears twitching in aggravation.
Really, incarnations of WWII ships? It'd be funny, if it weren't so pathetic. Modern airships like her were so much superior. Her eyes fell on a scorch mark on her jacket, and she grimaced as the reason why she was so grumpy re-entered her mind. Really, that heavy cruiser should have known better than to pick a fight with her. A savage, joyless grin revealed pointed fangs, and she flexed her hands, the claws popping out. Oh, she'd paid for that, and for her contrarian stubbornness afterward.
Shaking her head, Canton pressed onward. Scouting first, then she could head back to base and spar with Artois to work out her frustrations.
As she continued over the city, Canton could only marvel at the fact that she hadn't been spotted. Yes, she was small and stealthed to hell and back, but seriously, she should have been seen by now!
[Hey!]
Never mind, then. Glancing down, Canton saw a very odd shipgirl. Limited though her observations may have been, shipgirls looked within human norms, just with odd hair colors and impossible beauty. This girl did not look to be in human norms; unnaturally pale skin aside, the glowing blue eyes were a dead giveaway.
"Yes?" she queried, floating down towards the ground.
[Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?] the shipgirl snapped.
"I don't need to answer someone as rude as you," Canton replied. A thought occurred to her and, without regard for consequences, she said, "Now I see where that heavy cruiser got her manners from."
Silence. Canton frowned. She'd been expecting some sort of-
[SO.]
Suddenly, Canton shivered, her ears pointing downward and a spike of fear the likes of which she hadn't felt since her first encounter with Russian Foxhounds nearly a decade prior shooting through her. The shipgirl below had suddenly... darkened, for lack of a better term. A black mist had sprung up around her, and her eyes, once best compared to a mountain lake, now more resembled a raging hurricane.
[THAT WAS YOU.]
Frantically gunning her engines, Canton clawed for altitude, crossing her arms in front of her.
And a good thing, too, for Ayase slammed into them barely a second later. Growling, Canton pushed back, sending the Abyssal skidding away on the air, and with the distance opened the airship cued up an octet of antiship missiles, firing them at once.
To her dismay, the Abyssal simply swept her hands through the missiles, the explosives not even scratching her skin. In response, Ayase materialized a frankly distressing amount of artillery that opened fire immediately.
Bracing, Canton's anti-artillery weapons opened up, swatting shells from the sky. It wasn't enough. The Abyssal was doing a creditable impression of a machine gun battalion, her cannon firing as fast as she could load them. And Canton's anti-artillery systems had never been designed for this volume of fire. Only frantic evasion saved her from serious damage, as Ayase's surface targeting systems were equally unable to cope with something as fast as an airship, leaving the anti-air guns to take up the slack.
More missiles were fired, this time twenty supersonics. Ayase's guns switched targets, but proved utterly ineffectual against the high-speed missiles, and for a moment, Canton could believe she could win this.
And then Ayase jumped forward, twisting through the missile salvo, the contact warheads not initiating. Canton frantically backpedalled for more distance, terror-stricken thoughts running through her mind.
'What is this!' she mentally wailed. 'What is this what is this what is this!' Suddenly, her mind made the connection. And if anything, it made her more afraid. 'This is an Abyssal?! How the hell is WWII technology stopping these things?! Kohl needs to know, so she can annihilate these monsters!'
Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice Ayase closing until the Abyssal slammed into her and knocked them both out of the sky and into a building below. The resulting crash-landing left Canton a shattered, bleeding mess, and Ayase none worse for the wear. All the airship could do as she struggled into a reclined position was watch as the Abyssal stomped over to her, her entire body radiating a promise of pain and murder.
[CHESTER IS MY BEST FRIEND,] she growled, Canton paling as she realized she was in even deeper shit than she'd thought. [AND YOU NEARLY KILLED HER. A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW, PARENTS WILL TELL STORIES OF YOUR DEATH TO SCARE THEIR CHILDREN TO SLEEP.] The Abyssal stopped in front of Canton, hand reared back for a knife thrust. She closed her eyes.
And then opened them seconds later when the expected pain didn't come.
Ayase, as it turned out, was being dogpiled by normal shipgirls, her head slammed into the concrete if the cracks were anything to go by. [POLICE BRUTALITY!] she wailed. [THIS IS POLICE BRUTALITY! I'M CALLING THE ACLU ON YOUR ASSES!]
"You destroyed the base ice cream parlor, asshole!" one of the newcomers snapped. "You don't get to complain anymore!"
Glancing around, Canton noted that it was indeed an ice cream parlor they had crash-landed in. She also noted that her attacker was now completely occupied, and it was probably time to exercise the better part of valor and all that. Floating up, she winced at the twinges of pain it sent through her body. Oh, Kohl was going to really let her have it as she recovered.
