Zuikaku had just reached the ground floor again when her admiral grabbed her.
"Where do you think you're going?" said Admiral Goto amongst the clamor of people preparing to evacuate upwards.
"Down. Why?" said Zuikaku, trying to sound as casual as possible.
Admiral Goto's brow visibly twitched.
"I need every ship to help with the evacuation process. You're the one with the biggest horsepower. I need you at the front."
Zuikaku almost got angry, but she knew that acting like a petulant child would only hurt her cause. she needed to be reasonable.
"You're just going to lose two fleet carriers? The two you've sent there yourself?"
"They knew the risk. they volunteered."
"You're going to lose the Enterprise. You think the Americans would care if she volunteered?"
Goto's face turned sour.
"What do you even think you could do, then? In the end, we'll still need someone down there to keep the door open."
"Hm..." Zuikaku muttered a random noise from her throat, stalling, giving herself time to think. "With all the noise we're bound to make going upwards, we might attract attention away from Enterprise. I think the Abyssal forces in the basement should be manageable if we applied enough pressure."
"Pure speculation." barked Goto. "Most likely the Abyssal know that we need to hold the basement if we want to keep our escape route open. They'll pour in there like a flood."
"More the reason to reinforce the main control room. If they fell, we're all doomed."
Hearing Zuikaku's argument, the admiral grabbed her chin and moved into a deep thought, biting her lips.
"No matter what you say, we simply just don't have enough ships with any meaningful combat capability to spare. we need to stick together."
The curse of logistic and strategic resources had always been the bane of any navy, especially the Japanese. To have it haunting Zuikaku once more at a time like this was really irritating for the carrier. She immediately spun the gears in her mind, trying to think up of another tactically viable excuse to go and help Enterprise.
And then, just like it had happened many times before in Japanese history, Zuikaku's answer came from the sky.
The room went almost silent as the sound of Mitsubishi Kasei engine filled the room, and all eyes were suddenly directed at a single plane that just flew into the hall.
"Oh, a Jill?" said Texas from somewhere nearby.
"A Tenzan..." said Admiral Goto.
The single bomber circled the room for a while before suddenly burst into a floating ball of flame. Zuikaku watched as the ball of flame moved and morphed in mid-air in a very stable pattern as if possessing its own thoughts. Then, the ball of flame disappeared, leaving a hovering Peregrine Falcon in its place.
The falcon scanned the room, spotted what she was looking for, and dived towards a certain short-haired admiral.
"Rei?" Admiral Goto called to the short haired admiral, now with a bird of prey perching on her shoulder.
"A message." said Admiral Rei, approaching closer as she took out a roll of letter from the bird's claw. "Ah, it's from Taiyou."
"Taiyou?" asked Admiral Goto.
"An escort carrier that just got assigned to my base. Let's see..."
Admiral Rei opened the letter, and her eyes widened.
"They've breached the roof, and they've brought back-up."
Zuikaku saw the face of her own admiral lit up.
"How many?"
"Here." Admiral Rei gave the letter to Admiral Goto.
Admiral Goto looked at the paper once, and her face immediately turned serious.
"I need a pen and paper."
"Here." said the secretary Ooyodo with a notebook in hand, showing up out of nowhere like a good secretary she was.
Admiral Goto then scribbled on the notebook for a while, her face looked strained. Finally, she ripped a page she had just written on and gave it to Admiral Rei, which gave it one glance before abruptly walking away towards her own fleet. Admiral Goto then turned back to Zuikaku.
"Zuikaku. your request is granted. Take Iowa and Kongo with you. Focus on the restoration of the communication system. I'll see if I can get you an engineer from the conventional fleet. Gather your task force and report to me in five."
Zauikaku responded with a perhaps overly enthusiastic salute.
"Yes! Ma'am!"
"And Zuikaku?" Admiral Goto spoke again.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Get someone to fix you arm."
xxx
xxx
xxx
"I'd never thought that I will die the second time fighting with an American." said Kaga, lying on her back on a very luxurious bed.
"What about fighting with a friend?" said Enterprise, leaning on the wall.
Kaga lazily turned her head aside in a way that's really uncharacteristic of her prideful self. She looked really tired, sloppy, and untidy, with her considerable breasts almost popping out of her nearly undone kimono.
"Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass..."
"...and then you see the white shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise." finished Enterprise. "That's the movie version, right? I wasn't expecting you to follow this kind of thing."
Kaga turned her attention to the ceiling, supporting her head with her crossed arms behind her neck.
"New Zealand looked great. If I survived this entire mess, I think I'll travel south. This time not as a conqueror, but as an honored guest."
Enterprise smiled. "Would you like a company in this journey of yours?"
Kaga looked at Enterprise, smiling back.
"I think you'd have someone else that'd need your company."
Enterprise looked down, trying to hide her blush in the darkness. "I guess you're right."
"Uh...guys?" The somewhat somber conversation between the two carriers broke down when the cruiser Sendai suddenly called. "The monitor is showing many, many red dots running towards a green dot. I think the green dot is us."
"Are they..?" asked Kaga, rising from her near slumber.
"Yes." said the hotel owner in front of the console. "They're coming again for another try, but the vault door should..."
BLAAAM!
The entire room shook, and the console started giving a series of loud sirens and showing warning signs. The hotel owner's face was suddenly filled with horror.
"Impossible! The door's an entire three meters of solid..."
The owner's words stopped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The carrier Kaga had somehow approached her completely unnoticed.
"We've done our best. let the future judge if it was enough."
Hearing Kaga's words, the Chinese lady buckled, looked down to the floor, and started to mumble.
"Shit. should've followed mother's advice and made some heirs..."
The cruiser Sendai was the next to respond to their new situation.
"So, this is it, then?" said Sendai, looking dejected.
"Raise your head, cruiser." said Kaga with a booming voice. "For if we are to be damned, let us be damned for what we really are. Warriors..."
Kaga switched her gaze from Sendai to Enterprise.
"...soldiers..."
Kaga then once again wrapped her hand around the shoulder of the hotel owner.
"...comrades..."
BLAAM!
Once again the room shook, and the sirens were getting louder and louder. Enterprise nodded to herself.
"So many people are depending on us to hold this single room. The line must be drawn here, here and no further." whispered Enterprise. "Most of us had died once. At least this time it'd be easier."
"Ugh, speak for yourself." said the hotel owner, back to struggling with her console.
And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the sirens stopped.
The ships in that bunker, all well prepared for their second death, would be left disappointed if they're not too busy being confused as all the red dots on the monitor started disappearing one by one.
"Huh?" all in the room uttered in unison. The hotel owner, the only human there, was the first to recover.
"Uh...let's see if I could connect to the door's external camera..."
The screen lit up, and Enterprise's heart almost fell as it showed an image of a very familiar twin-tailed girl, clearly wounded heavily but still grinning to the camera. Behind her were two equally familiar and equally battered battleships, standing on top of a very large Abyssal that clearly had just died recently.
Zuikaku began to speak to the camera. Her voice was distorted by the camera mic, but Enterprise could've recognized that voice even through a meter of salt water.
"Hi, honey. missed me?"
