Authors' Notes: The montage got too long, so it was voted to be split up. Please visit us on SpaceBattles, Sufficient Velocity or Tumblr to participate in voting, discussion and other stuff you won't get through AO3 or FF dot Net!

Unless segment states or implies otherwise, exact dates are deliberately left loose. Similarly, if not stated otherwise, every scene break represents a timeskip.

Pay attention. Many, though not all, of the things covered here will be important. You are advised to reread earlier chapters as well.

Gentle reminder that it is possible to write a character whose attitudes and beliefs are not the author's.

I (Warp) have a Ko-Fi at Ko-Fi /2375DDLLGBXNI . If you like this story, would you kindly help defray the cost of the art?

===[===]===

CHAPTER 30

===[===]===

{Hotline Miami 2 Original Soundtrack feat. Vestron Vulture - New Wave Hookers}

YouTube watch?v=PC4G_8_Mkr0

"Politics, politics, politics." The sardonic flavour of Hindenburg's laughter sounded very out of place coming out of a face and voice that could have been mistaken for Ingrid Bergman if the actress' natural sweetness was marred by an intense Eastwoodian squint. "Why are we only now liberating North Africa when it's just across the Med? It's all politics. Always has been." The rhythmic flash of her main guns threw the Derfflinger-class battlecruiser's garb, a dark Kaiserliche Marine uniform, into stark relief. "I love the smell of fuel-air explosions in the morning. They're so beautiful." Her lips curled into something that might be charitably called a smirk.

In the glare of the Mediterranean sun, whether it reached her eyes was hard to tell.

Primarily European members of TFV were now conducting a counterinvasion of abyssal-taken North Africa centred on Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. More than a decade after the End of Terror, the countries of North Africa had yet to recover much from the consequences of their actions then, even if they hadn't had it quite as bad as Pakistan or the Middle East, and had made for easy pickings. British, French, German and Italian warships being in the same AO and not exchanging fire with each other was something that certain parties present had needed to take some getting used to.

"A real cynical Eeyore, isna that lass of yours, Formtaker One?" Hood asked Bismarck, blue eyes glimmering with amusement under her red-rimmed spectacles. The long blonde hair with pink flower and clothing - gold-trimmed white capelet over her long-sleeved dark blue blouse with a standing collar and blue plaid pleated miniskirt - fluttered with every firing of her guns.

Unlike back in Operation Torch, all the landing sites' defences were getting a thorough working over first. Only then was the C4ISTAR designated Monty passing on the go-ahead for the infantry to land. No one was going to repeat the mistake from last time, even if there was now a battleship who had to have curbed her enthusiasm to lead the plundering.

"'Lass'? Man, Perl One, she's three years older than you," Bismarck replied. The expression framed by her own blonde hair and blue eyes turned very unchancorial even though she knew it couldn't be seen from this combat-separated distance. Her default outfit consisted of a peaked cap, sleeveless tunic, elbow gloves, thighhighs and boots, mainly in grey but with red and black trim. "Hoodie."

"Miladies, there is a perfectly simple explanation," Richelieu said flatly, unamused by the byplay. Unlike the other two, there was a dullness to her crown-braided long hair and her eyes were a greyish purple. She wore a high-collared blue and white Napoleonic tunic extensively lined with gold aiguillettes, over which went a red sash. Below that went a gold-trimmed white skirt and greaves and sabatons over red thighhighs. "We have to look after our own shores first. We're not the Americans or Japanese, who have so many shipgirls they can send them overseas to fight at will. We needed time to build the numbers needed for this attack and work our way south to liberate and secure Malta, and there are advantages the other countries have that we don't." The memory of the sour face Jean Bart had made on learning that they would be on the same side as the Americans and British in this place and time made her crack a smile.

"Luçon One, always the voice of reason." Bismarck made grumbling noises. "Gasbag One, you heard that? Now I want a magic dragon's railgun! It's not fair!" Her arms flailed in the air childishly. "Why does the Pacific Protectorate get to have all the fun?"

"Don't worry, Große Schwester! Even if Chaldea can't get Thor or Mama Odin to appear, JEXRA will reverse-engineer Frau Fusou's spell, and then you can feuer, feuer from out of the range of that meanie Ark!" Prinz Eugen said brightly. The green-eyed, twintailed heavy cruiser wore attire similar to Bismarck, but her tunic had long sleeves and came with a black pleated miniskirt, black over-kneehighs and white gloves instead. "Konteradmiral Hartmann will surely praise you then!"

"Talking about planes…" Bismarck pouted. "Gasbag One, get down here! I'm the King of the Ocean and I say ships aren't supposed to fly!"

The taller-than-Yamashiro battlecruiser's maybe-smirk dissolved as she squinted harder at her younger, even taller superior.

"Gasbag One, Perl One, belay that last," Hood said while raising a hand to the rim of her spectacles. Her eyes glowed, briskly built up to a blinding intensity and released an optic blast she swept through an inbound squadron of abyssal planes that had gotten through the combat air patrols. "Biscuit, just because you're envious doesn't mean you can be a wet blanket. You're just insecure that you can't sense her through your domain when she's out of the water."

"Geez!"

===[===]===

"I can't figure this out!" Uileag growled, frustrated.

Ayaka looked up from the marudai she was making a new kumihimo with. "Uiui, still having problems?"

"Yes!"

She got up and walked over to him. "Why don't you make use of my cognitive faculties? It's not like you're doing anything I'm not cleared for, or that you'd be allowed to bring home anything with a high classification."

Uileag looked at her suspiciously. "This is just an excuse to feed, isn't it?"

Ayaka rolled her eyes. "Uileag Greer, if that was what I was really after, would I pussyfoot around like this?"

"You once would have," Uileag said.

"Yes, I once would have." Ayaka let out a self-effacing snort. "That was a long time ago. Look, if I could plug you in remotely, I would, but I just can't seem to join the dots despite how long I've been working on it and the advantages it would confer! There's some kind of mental block where joining the looms of our minds is concerned. It doesn't make sense, since multithreading is supposed to demand only the same grasp of Mind, that we have to do this by hardwire." Her smile grew cheeky. "Besides, are you really saying you can get enough of me?"

"When you're a glutton with no sense of time and place, yes."

"It's not like you're unable to provide," Ayaka replied with unhelpful slyness. "All this is symbiotic, not parasitic; hasn't feeding me only improved your ability to do so further?"

Uileag groused, looked back at what had been vexing him for the past few hours, then resignedly let Ayaka go ahead.

The inflow of information proved distracting. *I see, now that you're actively letting me have access, that's what all this means-Uiui, your thoughts are going haywire,* Ayaka thought concernedly at him. She'd heard on En-secure channels that would-be rapists and sexual assailants of shipgirls found the last thing they would ever consciously do literally mind-blowing. The conviction Other Her had conferred on her said that it was very appropriate for the lowest of scum, utterly lacking in the milk of human kindness, who had spent their lives doing nothing but taking to spend their last moments giving all they had of a different sort of milk to those who would use it for a far better cause. She turned to see his eye focus also flying all over the place.

"Whoa!" Uileag exclaimed aloud, surprise causing his accent to lapse into audible Irishness, his hands in the deathgrip of a first-time roller coaster rider. "This-shite, this is something else. You've never had this on previously. Is that how you see things when your rigging's active?"

*Mental multithreading does take some time to get used to,* Ayaka thought back. *It was equally disorienting for me the first few times, and I've never entirely gotten used to it.* She didn't hide a frown, though it wasn't because of his grip, which wasn't anywhere near uncomfortable to one like her. *All-this isn't how I always see things in combat, no. It has to be separately activated. Some of the others live life like this, but I know Yorktown doesn't, and I can't imagine always being like this.*

*You don't?* Uileag had regained enough control to not let his mouth run simultaneous to his thoughts, though the disbelief remained clear even mentally. *I don't even know how I can see despite you being in the way, but that aside, all this additional processing power, information unification and multiple perspective means I can finally see how everything fits together!*

===[===]===

"Doc, we got a call from the cops. That guy who was found mauled by wild animals, there was an APB out for him."

===[===]===

"Seal, Kishu. Mayday received from friendly at vector 287, 200 miles. Engage."

"Ou!" Shimakaze was changing course and accelerating even as she replied to the JASDF E-767 AWACS in question. She didn't bother asking any questions about why foolhardy civilians were still braving the seas without escort. "Kishu, Seal, committed."

The target, the Ri leading the raiders in question assessed, had demonstrated a statistically improbable level of success at avoiding motion-hampering damage thus far, something that might lead a human to call it quite the entertainer, but it would be over with this next shot-

A sudden shock was the next thing it knew, and that prompted it to look down and see a white-gloved fist emerging from its chest, sending the ruins of its internals flying.

It was only as it was falling backwards onto the water, Shimakaze having extricated her arm with its now-stained glove and moved on to the rest of the raider squadron, that the sonic booms created by her and the trio of Rensouhou-chan caught up.

===[===]===

{Nee-sama, is this the wrong place? There's nothing to see here.}

Yamashiro didn't like to doubt her beloved sister, but she couldn't see the point of this particular excursion.

{I had a vision during morning prayers yesterday,} Nakahara replied gently. {It showed me the place where the houses shook like being caught in an earthquake from passing trains.}

{Here?}

One of the BatDiv's escorting destroyers, black-haired with braid and ahoge, was staring down through a fence at the railway lines below with perennially sad blue eyes.

Ayaka looked away from the deceptively routine sound of a train pulling out of the station below to said station's south exit doorway down the tarmac slope to the left. There was something strangely soothing about the view despite all the concrete, metal and obvious artifice. It made one feel like things had barely changed almost one and a half years into the war. This northern part of Tokyo, the special ward that contained it being on the border with Saitama Prefecture, had gotten off lightly so far. Admittedly, from a cold tactical perspective, the southern approach was far more target-rich all along the Uraga Channel up Tokyo Bay, no thanks to FLEACT Yokosuka, while there was all of Chiba Prefecture to destroy when coming from the east. Yamashiro wasn't, strictly speaking, correct, but she wasn't the target audience for the Memorial Museum of Writers and Artists. Granted, neither was Ayaka.

Just as it was with trying to specifically summon someone through the rituals, so too had no one yet found a definitive way to determine who was a latent Natural Born before her Reawakening. There was no active supernal uplink or other telltale. Even with futurecasting, the best anyone had ever managed was a large, approximate location.

The sign by the doorway said Tabata.

===[===]===

{Latest reports indicate that among the dead from drug overdose found at the underground orgy raided two weeks ago are the internationally-wanted cybercriminals…}

===[===]===

"Can this hull transform, Haida?"

The Canadian shipgirl in question, along with much of the bridge crew of HMCS Haida the reactivated steel hull, turned to stare judgingly at the lieutenant that had spoken up abruptly.

"It's-it's just, you know, one of my kids read some old scifi comic about ships with glowing logos that can transform and fire death rays," the none too young man said with sheepish hastiness. "Thought it would be cooler than having to bring this girl back as is, them VALKYRIE thingamajigs or not, eh?"

"What's the matter, Chief Cannel?" The captain, who had not been paying too much attention to the wayward junior officer recounting the fantasies of his child, asked concernedly. There hadn't been anything of note on these reactivation sea trials even though there had been so many years since Haida had last moved under her own power, and he hoped it stayed that way.

The older NCO being addressed forced his fingers to stop drumming on the station before him. "Grandpa died serving on this here ship. The missus and kids are a bit nervous." He didn't notice that his fingers had begun moving unconsciously again, silently tracing some pattern in the air.

===[===]===

"VLS cell UNREP test number 3 under induced Sea State 6 is a success, Ma'am."

"Very good, Commander. Offer my congratulations to Captain Passos and the team on successfully exceeding the expected UNREP and strikedown requirements." The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) captain turned away from the pulled-from-mothballs Ticonderoga-class cruiser being used as a testbed to the chief petty officer standing beside her with a pensive look. "Penny for your thoughts, Chief?"

"I don't know whether to be glad that we finally have a viable VLS cell UNREP capability back after so long, one that can handle Tomahawks and SM-6s, or worried that it took this newfangled 'enlightened science' to make this happen."

"Not enamoured with the ability to UNREP a Mark 41 or the production boosts?" A questioning look formed on her face. "I thought you'd be overjoyed that most of the fleet can finally sortie with a full set of cells, or are now getting INSURV figures of merit of 0.9 and higher. Both of these would have been pipe dreams just years ago, and all this without needing to rely on Capitol Hill to loosen the purse strings. I'm also hearing good things about exploratory studies into speedloaders."

The CPO frowned disdainfully. "We have barely begun to recoup our losses, Ma'am. Restoration is one thing, but even this way into 2024, we are still far short of the number of platforms we originally had before this war started, to say nothing of manning them. We're dependent on too many gimmicks and silver bullets, and I'm hearing less than encouraging things from my contacts in NETC (Naval Education and Training Command) about trying to reproduce hypercram. Rear Admiral Adams is the last person I would have expected to be on board with unproven technologies after having been one of the outspoken skeptics of, among others, CEC and NIFC-CA."

The captain made a pained sound that might charitably be called a chuckle. "This war is making strange bedfellows of us all. We're both old enough to remember when China and Russia were the enemy."

The CPO's frown deepened despite his nod. "Instead, it came from not one but two unexpected sources."

Both shared a grimace.

"Not Vice Admiral Nagara?" The captain now asked.

The CPO stared upwards in thought for a few moments before shaking his head. "Everything I've seen and heard says Admiral Nagara is preoccupied with keeping ever-insatiable DC happy. She points Admiral Adams in the desired grand strategic direction and lets him be the one really driving NAVENSCIWARCOM's strategic planning. It's him who tells Admiral Markson which way to go, even if which projects to actually pursue are Markson's to choose. No, Admiral Nagara's not to be blamed for this."

The captain grunted assent. "Still, I should be glad we got Adams and Markson. It could have been Horrible Hemphill."

The CPO winced. "Don't remind me of that, Ma'am."

===[===]===

"Police today busted a major human trafficking ring taking advantage of abyssal-fleeing refugees with hundreds of victims after investigating the suicide of what turned out to be one of its leaders, whose remorseful suicide note opened the doors to a major intelligence coup…"

===[===]===

The abyssal base that had taken up residence at St Lawrence Island was a Gigeresque tumour.

Shells empowered by Nakahara's railgun spell and cruise missiles rained on it like a storm of meteors, cratering it into a misplaced moon surface.

Normals might have sheltered in place and tried to wait out a siege. Abyssals were not normals, though, and streamed out of barracks and bounteous buildings to meet the attackers head on.

"Uatu One-One, Queenmaster. Bandits are taking the bait."

Queenmaster was the callsign of the new USAF C4ISTAR assigned to supplement Overlord now that enough shipgirls had returned to raise the operational tempo. The assistance with coordination was needed on a Pacific Protectorate joint operation like this involving Canadian, Chinese, Japanese and US warfighters, a large enough force that the futurecasts were finally giving beneficial results on proceeding.

"Uatu One-One copies," Yorktown said in acknowledgement.

The Russian situation was still a political mess, and according to CAPT Zelben, Vice Admiral Zeleska had been visibly struggling to contain her annoyance even as she apologised for the shortfall it caused. The same distance that led the cloistered Muscovite politicians to merrily dismiss anything that didn't directly threaten them, though, meant that nobody paid much attention who shouldn't when the RRC reached out to the VVS and conventional VMF to conduct live-fire exercises. With some discreet portal use mixed in, that lent a few hundred cruise missiles to the effort.

The shells aimed for the abyssals were more sparing, and if carriers were not in the crosshairs, changed target once the current one was damaged enough it lost speed. Not out of some notion of distracting the abyssals with their damaged, mind. It had long been proven beyond reasonable doubt that the abyssals made no attempt to recover their damaged for repair, not when they could deploy more in short order.

"Good. Let them come!" Princeton said eagerly. "Time for Hiryuu and Souryuu's performance to purge as much of the Temples of Cloacina as possible!" She offhandedly dropped a few depth charges through a portal and was rewarded with the head of a submarine.

No, the idea was to let the abyssals pile up, the better to clear out as many of them in one go as possible. This was a big enough operation that much of the Fleet Kanmusu Force had been deployed. To that end, the conventionals were focusing on the infrastructure and not wasting any ammunition on the mobile units.

Not that they could, anyway. Cracking the VLO problem on mobile abyssal units was still a work in progress. Yorktown understood there was some talk about using Obrimos warheads to try disrupting it, but that had been quickly shot down. Producing the things was hard enough, and besides, the issue wasn't one that could be solved by just throwing a big wad of Or Energy at it. Many a shipgirl who knew enough of Prime to infuse her munitions with or directly weaponise Or Energy had already tried.

Yet even with prioritisation of the carriers to deny the release of hostile aviation, the abyssal base had spread like a cancer across much of St Lawrence Island, protected by the fog and its remoteness from effective suppression. That meant enough land-based planes had managed to make it off the ground despite the liberal employment of runway denial munitions as to be concerning.

Which was where the next step of the plan kicked in.

"Tall Man Three, Uatu One-One. Execute."

"Uatu One-One, Tall Man Three copies. Anti-aircraft warfare? You can count on me!" Maya shouted, an aura of blue bordered by brown springing to life around her. "Ducklings, form up!"

The Akizuki-class destroyers gathered in a combat-separated line centred on her, auras alight.

"Tryna leave me out, Tall Man Three?" Oakland shouted indignantly as she invited herself, a few more other navies' air defence specialists joining in with tsking and disappointed grumbles.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing, Uatu Two-Three!" Maya laughed heartily. "The rest of you non-boukuukan just hide behind us, 'cause ittt'sssss high noon!"

An eagle screeched as red skull markings flashed into existence on every one of the incoming abyssal planes before the air defence specialists opened fire, and what an inferno it was. If the standard anti-surface Artillery Spotting was a firehose, the anti-air barrage available to them was a rushing rapid. The bandits were pulled under and drowned, the sky getting swept clean by shells, energy and exotics so quickly that to human perception, it seemed all were shot down simultaneously.

"Grandslam!" Maya shouted with a victorious fist pump. "Isn't it obvious? I'm the Great and Powerful Maya-sama, you know!"

Even after that, though, the flushing out of the abyssal surface defenders remained incomplete. It was no quick work; a destroyer with a flank of 35 knots still needed hours to close the gap, and the damage-caused slowdown extended that further.

"Uatu One-One, Queenmaster. Abyssal lead elements passing 100-mile mark."

The call Yorktown had been waiting for finally came in. There was a faint hint of nervousness in Queenmaster's voice at how the threat display had become a sea of red.

"Stand by." Yorktown didn't share the sentiment.

"90 miles."

"Stand by."

"80 miles."

"Stand by."

"70.

"60.

"50.

"40.

"30."

That was the next cue Yorktown was waiting for. "Dragon One, Dragon Two, Uatu One-One. Cleared hot."

Just because Warspite and Scharnhorst had set a record of 24 kilometres didn't mean the attackers now had to wait for that.

"Dragon One-" Hiryuu said, her aura of orange bordered by brown flaring to life as she notched a new arrow.

"Dragon Two-" Souryuu joined in with an aura of green trimmed with blue.

"-Uatu One-One! Bulldog! Ryuu ga waga TEKI WO KURAU!"

The two dragons' enthusiastic yell was certainly loud, but that was nothing when compared to the deafening roar, thunderous enough to rattle bones, that followed. The fired arrows exploded into giant energy dragons of orange and green and promptly plowed through the enemy lines like NFL quarterbacks taking on a high school team. By the time the dragons fizzled out, the acne breakout on the threat display had almost entirely cleared up.

"Uatu One-One, Queenmaster. Multiple hostiles eliminated."

Multiple hostiles, the Critic thought with a vicious mental chuckle, was such an understatement.

"Queenmaster, Uatu One-One. Initiate assault phase."

===[===]===

"I c-caught this one trying to run away, Charlie!" Spence shouted haltingly as she wrangled a Ro with an energy net. It was making an almost commendable effort to break out of the restraint, but to no avail; the net just reformed over any holes shot into it.

The / assault was now in progress /, though not before the landing sites had been thoroughly worked over first. The abyssals might have no qualms against using their escorts as minesweepers and shock troops, but humanity did not have that luxury.

"Excellent work, and now I am here!" Charles Ausburne shouted, pointing with her heroically giant warform active. "Render unto me the villain!"

Around them, CQC-focused shipgirls laid into the remaining abyssals at CLOSE RANGE before the normals moved in to secure the location, aided by distant fire and other support measures like Kamchatka remotely making the abyssals see hostile torpedo boats everywhere. Enough still remained even after the Dragonstrike as to put up resistance. Out of the corner of her eye, Charles registered Naganami cutting up a Ri with artfully fast yet precise footwork and strikes using her Or Energy blades. Charles's tactical assessment noted not for the first time a curious shortage of big-S Stepping on the part of the other shipgirl once CQC was joined in earnest.

"Y-yes!" Spence squeaked as she pulled on the net, throwing the Ro towards Charles. Eyes alight, the now-grown shipgirl met it halfway with a mighty punch that folded it like an accordion, and with the crack of a sonic boom it rocketed towards a nearby bunker.

The bunker rocked when what remained of said destroyer hit it hard enough to become splatter and oil stains, but its door did not yield, and would have still resisted direct JASSM hits or capital-grade broadsides.

"Pizza time!"

Charles's follow-up kick sent the door flying, and it flattened another Ro too slow to get out of the way.

"W-wow, that's so cool, Charlie!" Spence shouted. "As expected of a symbol of peace and justice!"

"Your praise is appreciated, my sister, but we're not done yet! Your turn, Takanami!" Charles slapped the Yuugumo, who had been following close behind, on the back and pushed her forward. "You're a star, and what do stars do?"

"Shine!" Takanami's yell came out loud and clear, the motivation imparted by Charles having overridden her innately tremulous tendencies. "Shine shine shine shine shine!"

The strobing of her supercharged searchlight was brilliant in the most terrible sense. Each strobe made a normal flashbang look like a handheld sparkler, and Takanami's delivery was like showering normals with an entire AGL belt devoted solely to flashbangs. The Primal power unleashed in the searchlight meant it didn't stop at bringing light to the darkness of the bunker's first level and ruining optics and control facilities; it forced the abyssals within to confront the overwhelming pain this would have caused to a normal, and like the beasts they really were, they shrieked and wailed like the damned. Weeping ichor and oil from so-to-speak eye sockets, some started firing at random with the desperation of the senseless.

Charles pulled Takanami back behind herself. Naganami had trusted her to look after the little sister when she had come up with this plan, and no heroine would break a promise! Battleship and cruiser shells from the first line of defence flattened harmlessly against the bulging muscles of her warform with its enhanced fortitude. Her retaliatory dash punch closed the distance before anyone could load a second salvo and turned a Ta's head into paste, made the rest of the body ragdoll hard enough it hit and left a crater in the wall no short distance behind, and sent the PT Imps on this level of the bunker flying from the shockwaves produced alone, which also made the other abyssals present fall down. Soon the bunker rang staccato with thunderclaps as she punched, kicked and threw the remaining abyssals and abyssal accessories within at and through the walls.

===[===]===

"Citadel, Gelaf One! Where's our support?!"

The day had started off so well too, and then Amalgam 919 had had its patrol off the Gulf Coast rudely interrupted.

"Gelaf One, Citadel," the USAF C4ISTAR in question replied. "QRA and air support are still en route, ETA 5 minutes."

The brow of the air battle manager within grew increasingly furrowed as he stared at the visual from the Global Hawk he had vectored in. He'd never seen this particular abyssal type before with its short silver hair, purple eyes, mouth locked in an inhuman grin, half-unzipped black hoodie exposing a black bikini top, and hooves rather than feet. Most concerning, though, was the large tail it had with another, monstrous head at the end, mounting better, longer-ranged main guns than the two Rus escorting it - and those were already the red-glowing "elite" variants appearing increasingly often these days - and spitting planes from its many-toothed mouth.

He'd immediately kicked it upstairs. This was above his paygrade.

"That's strange," said Ms Wynn, the ONI analyst who had been called in. "What's a new abyssal type doing away from the Pacific theatre? That's where the combat remains the heaviest, even after the liberation of St Lawrence."

"I don't know, Ma'am," Citadel replied. "Everything we have is already uplinked to you and Gelaf Actual."

"Gelaf Actual affirms picture receipt," the amalgam's CO said. "Citadel, you said 1-4-0 bandits?"

"Yes, Sir, that have been observed. Almost double the wing of a standard Wo."

"Ms Wynn, there have been no prior sightings of abyssal aviation battleships?" Gelaf Actual asked.

"No, Sir."

Gelaf Actual studied the tactical plot before him for a few moments, considering its indicators for his beleaguered amalgam, the trackers for the abyssal force converted from optical input forming a morass of red, the Quick Reaction Amalgam still en route and the disposition of other friendlies in the vicinity. Then he signalled the comms officer. "Initiate Shockwave Code: POINTLESS MONK. Authentication as follows."

The comms officer started, surprised by the unexpected order, but complied nevertheless, entering the provided authentication code. "Authentication has been accepted. Connecting."

"Sir?" His XO's nervous grip on the desk had not eased off. "You're using a Shockwave to call her in?"

"Anomalous materials are present. I'm not waiting for ACC or the QRA." His tone brooked no argument. "No offence meant, Citadel."

"None taken, Sir," Citadel replied with what might have been a chuckle had it not been tainted with the stress of being a hapless observer to the unfolding events over a hundred miles away.

"Go for Comber One!" a too-cheery woman's voice, one entirely too familiar to the inhabitants of NAVSTA Everett, literally sang.

"Comber One, Gelaf Actual-"

"Yes, Sir! Your girls need help, and the Star of the Fleet shall deliver! Ichibyou keika."

Gelaf Actual cocked an eyebrow, confused, as the heretofore very female voice transformed into a perfect impression of a Japanese man he was vaguely aware of having heard before somewhere but couldn't place. An actor, maybe? "We haven't sent coordinates yet."

"Nibyou keika."

"Have we?"

"Sanbyou keika."

"No, Sir," the comms officer said, equally flummoxed.

"Yonbyou keika."

Citadel and Wynn sighed simultaneously.

"Gobyou keika."

"She does that, Sir," Citadel said.

"Rokubyou keika.

"Nanabyou keika."

A shadow suddenly fell over the new abyssal unit, and it looked up in time to see the underside of a yellow steamroller, a white glow visible at the edges.

Imgur /a/AinGPOw

be-ta/art/KnNI-MissouWRYYYYY-851589370

"Here's a steamroller!" Missouri yelled as she landed it on the abyssal hard enough that the surrounding water exploded up like a geyser, but she was not done yet. The new abyssal twitched just the slightest bit underneath, and her arms came up and then began raining punches down so speedily that she seemed to have grown a forest of limbs, yet powerfully enough that the steamroller rocked violently and water fountained from the spillover force of every blow. "Useless! Hachibyou keika! Mudamudamudamudamudamudamuda-"

A notification chime distracted Citadel from the thought of how many pages Missouri's warcries would take up on the transcript, and he read out the incoming message. "Comber One, Citadel. Do not be too thorough with the target. The abyssals having a successful aviation battleship is concerning, and Iteration wants to retrieve its wreck to study how they overcame the Larson-Moore-Eick problem."

"Kyuubyou keika! WRYYYYY!" Missouri shrieked in a way that was as stretching the bounds of the humanly-possible as the backward limbo lean she was doing, which was bent so far backwards her rigging was scraping the steamroller, then went back to punching. "Mudamudamuda-" Around her, the rest of her amalgam laid into the new unit's escorts.

"We'll be tentatively calling this thing a Re-class," Wynn said.

Gelaf Actual grabbed the desk hard enough his hands started to hurt in an attempt to resist the urge to facepalm.

===[===]===

{Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing all night long!} The kingpin gesticulated violently as he paced up and down around the room occupied by his increasingly worried regional leadership.

{Boss, you need to calm down,} his trusted underboss said placatingly.

{Calm? I am calm!} The kingpin's bloodshot eyes were growing steadily wider with every word. {I'm very calm considering what I go through every night!}

{Sir, maybe some time away from here would do you good,} one of the regional leaders said.

The kingpin stopped pacing, turned to face the speaker with a maniac grin growing on his face. {Time away? Yes, of course you'd like that, wouldn't you, so you can take over?}

{N-no, boss, of course not!}

{Enough lies! I say enough!} The kingpin drew his sidearm suddenly and, with a discharge deafening in these tight quarters, shot the speaker.

Stunned, no one else moved as the now-victim, astonished first by the abrupt attack and then by the pain his awareness was swiftly being reduced to, clutched at the hole in his chest, then grabbed at the man to his right with now-bloody hands. {H-help…}

The man to the right met the victim's eyes, and then he was many years and miles away, another comrade dying messily in his arms, gasping raggedly and making steadily-weakening desperate pleas for assistance while he could do nothing.

This regional leader exploded from his seat, and before the victim could finish sinking bonelessly into the chair, he had wrested a gun from a nearby guard. He saw no more boss there anymore, only an enemy to avenge himself on, and the firearm barked repeatedly.

No one left the room alive.

===[===]===

Yamashiro awoke slowly and strangely groggily to the warmth of a repair bath.

{Hey you, you're finally awake,} Yuubari said. The green-haired light cruiser wore the impish grin of someone who had been waiting a very long time to say something.

"Ooooooohayou, Yuubari-san," Yamashiro replied, groaning through the sleepiness-induced inadvertent dragging of her words and not getting the gag. {I feel weird.}

Shipgirls were hardly immune to difficult wakings. After all, every ship's engineering department had at least one story of a boiler slow to light. This time, however, was different.

Now that she was a bit more alert, Yamashiro could tell that something was not the same. The warmth didn't just come from the bath fluid, but within. Every shipgirl got sufficiently used to the faint creeping sensation of fairies at work and warmth of her boilers that it became background noise, but it felt different now. There was also a new heat beneath her skin, one that seemed stronger in her chest, and she hesitantly rubbed at it.

{Take it easy now! The boiler upgrades will take some getting used to.}

{Boiler... upgrades?} Yamashiro asked. She had frozen in place, afraid that she was hearing things.

{Yup! You want to be extra careful the next few days; you're going to need time to adapt to the increase in output!}

{How mu-} Yamashiro stopped again, abruptly aware she was missing something. Someone, to be exact. {Nee-sama! Where's Nee-sama?!}

{Relax!} Yuubari held out a hand placatingly. {Her remodelling went well too. Why don't you shower off first and join us in Test Chamber 2 once you're ready?}

Yamashiro made a displeased sound but complied reluctantly. After showering away the repair fluid, she got into her clothes, the kimono top of which had gained a cherry blossom pattern, and made her way over; despite her worry, she couldn't help noticing how she felt lighter on her feet. There, she found Yuubari, Nakahara, and an extensive buffet spread laid out. {Fusou-neesama!} she shouted as she unreservedly leapt. {I was so worried when I didn't see you when I woke up!}

{There, there. There's nothing to worry about,} Nakahara said while catching her.

Anything that might have been said next was unceremoniously cut off by a pair of loudly-growling stomachs.

{Eat up, don't be shy!} Yuubari was still wearing that impish grin. {You've expanded fuel storage to fill now.}

{We do…?} Yamashiro asked hesitantly.

{Yup! Just help yourself! No need to leave anything behind. It's all yours!}

After they were done with the meal, with Akashi watching on a holographic projector from Sasebo, Yuubari had them summon their rigging.

The first thing that Yamashiro noticed after it had finished unfolding was a new, oddly-shaped shield with strange embossings and markings. {Is this… a flight deck?} she asked, confused, as she turned it all around to look it over.

{Yup! Analysing the wreck of that Re took some time, but it gave some much-needed insight into finally overcoming the Larson-Moore-Eick problem. There's still a lot more room for improvement, though.} Yuubari took out a telescopic pointer and gestured with it at the flight deck. {Catapults are here, hangar here. The 40 Zuiun and majority of your new air wing complement will come later; we're still ironing out the kinks in the Kai II and the Seiran, so you have to settle for Model 12s. Eventually we hope to have you operating proper carrier-based planes.}

{So optimistic.} To say Yamashiro frowned would be technically correct, but it wouldn't adequately describe the depths of doubt displayed.

Yuubari's smile dimmed. {You're right,} she said, though the face she made said it was a concession as difficult to extract as teeth. {Hiryuu and Souryuu are doing what they can to get your aircrew ready, but the aviation cruiser is a lost art. The Mogamis and Tones never did much defensive or offensive aviating, nor did,} she winced, {those ships-}

{You can say 'Ise and Hyuuga', Yuubari-san,} Nakahara said gently but firmly despite Yamashiro's surprise.

{Y-yes, them, or Gotland. Vikramaditya lost her missile launchers when being converted from Admiral Gorshkov, so her crew wouldn't have been of any use even were she still intact, and Admiral Kuznetsov… was in a strange place even before the abyssal sinking.} The thought of the infamously-troubled "heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser" put a pained look on Yuubari's face. {None of the other returned convertees managed to operate as surface combatants before being converted to carriers, which is why they're no help either. If only that joint Chaldea-RRC-SPNIF project would actually bear fruit, then we might reliably get some of our never-built designs rather than have to increase aviation capabilities by any means necessary or rely on the luck of Manifestation.

{On a happier note, we upgraded your armour! Impressive, isn't it?} The grin returned to Yuubari's face. {Barbettes, belt, bulkheads, conning tower, turrets; you name it, we replaced with STS and upgraded it. Boiler count and output, extra turbines, redundancies. Bunkerage, like I said. You'll see the detailed technical specs later.

{We finally finished replacing the last of your 35.6cm guns with 41cms and enabling full radar guidance.} Yuubari used the pointer to indicate each of them. {Thanks to Spatial folding, we didn't need to sacrifice a single turret while installing your aviation facilities, and we didn't even have to do it a thousand times.} The grin briefly intensified. {Same for switching your casemated 15.2cm singles with turreted 15.5cm triples. The prototype 41cm triple is still giving problems, sadly. You won't be getting any of the really new stuff yet, though.}

{What?!} Yamashiro sputtered disbelievingly.

{Yamashiro,} Nakahara said, the slightest edge of reprimand in her tone.

"Gomen nasai, Nee-sama."

{Please relax, Yamashiro-san,} Yuubari said. {The remodelling done on you both was already at the bleeding edge of stability; there still isn't enough data to say that any further advances can be safely incorporated right now. Even with the contributions from the CSTE technical and scientific mission, JEXRA still hasn't managed to reliably replicate the flipsides as hypertech.} The SPNIF might be the part of the PLA directly responsible for commanding shipgirls and researching the phenomenon, but the majority of hypertech and exotic phenomena research was under the ambit of CMC Special Task and Evaluation instead. {That means that even though you have the power, we can't give you railguns yet. There's no point in laser PD right now when HELIOS, Silent Hunter and TALOS are still inferior to the Bofors 40mm L/70s your Type 96s have already been replaced with, or with a RAM-type because that carries much less ammo for how many planes the abyssals send at us. As for VLS cells, what's been done during this remodelling is already testing the limits of our understanding of Correspondence; until we can be confident there won't be problems, we won't risk trying to squeeze them in.}

Yamashiro made no effort to hide her disappointment.

"Dōmo arigatou gozaimasu, Yuubari-san," Nakahara said in thanks despite that.

{No~need for thanks!} Yuubari replied. {Just honouring Hiraga-kaigun-chūjō's legacy! You'd know that, right, Yamashiro-san?}

{Eh? Ah, yes, Hiraga-kaigun-shōsa-no, he was kaigun-chūjō at the time of his death…}

{Anyway, Minami-kaishō-ho says you two can have the rest of the day off! We'll begin trials tomorrow.}

===[===]===

"Run that by me again," the stocky man with eyes older than the rest of him said, interest thick in his vaguely Middle Eastern accent as he looked at the instrument readouts being presented. "The primium sample is distorting the local Infrastructure?"

"Yes, Mr al-Hallaq."

===[===]===

"Four-One, Four-Five. Winchester!"

"Again, Four-Five? What did I say about fire discipline?"

"I'm sorry!"

"Uatu One-Two, Bykir Four-One. Four-Five is Winchester."

The request and who it came from were still unfamiliar to Ayaka. Amalgam 146 "Bykir" was one of the more recently stood up units. Too new to have participated as a whole unit in the Battle of St Lawrence Island, they were dedicated first and foremost to combat operations rather than being dual-use like Uatu. Currently, that meant they were one of the units Uatu was working alongside in the joint TFV liberation of the Philippines as part of a greater Southeast Asian campaign. She still wasn't used to having them around. "Roger."

Her free left hand slapped at her rigging, came away with a shell that she flicked upwards like she was flipping a coin, accompanying its progress with the mental image of sand flowing upwards in an hourglass. Putting the umbrella away, her fingers carried out unbraiding motions, and her surroundings started to turn fuzzy green once more. Counterclockwise she turned, foot forming a circle, before bringing it in to touch the other foot and out again. She wove a supernal thread anew as she brought up and focused on the mental image of the shipgirl in question, and snatched the falling shell out of the air with her left hand and pointed towards Bykir Four-Five before turning it counterclockwise.

This was one of the ways to use the shifting sands on others, rewinding their temporal states. Externally-provided repair and resupply was more efficient than self-repair, and even discounting that they didn't provide an instant boost, energy bars only went so far where resupply was concerned.

"Ammo status green again! Thanks, Uatu One-Two!" Bykir Three-Three shouted shortly thereafter.

===[===]===

{What do you mean, one of the retired shinkansen trains is missing? How does 400 metres and 700 tonnes of rolling stock just disappear like that?!}

===[===]===

"Telemetry is good," the JEXRA engineer said.

"Very good," the supervising JMSDF officer said. Keying the radio, she now said, "Soaring One, Seikan. You may go loud."

"Seikan, Soaring One copies," the shipgirl in question replied in a warm, big-sisterly tone. "Going loud in five, four, three, two, one, mark."

The JEXRA-Hachinohe Institute of Technology team huddled around their equipment in the JMSDF Ōminato Base control room, watching the feed from the special satellites with bated breath for any changes. They were accompanied by JAXA personnel on secondment, the JMSDF personnel who normally operated out of said room, and the other international observers connected via videoconference. It was for the benefit of this last group that they were conducting this test in English. Officially, the project was a pan-VALKYRIE one, but HIT's headstart on dimensional sciences thanks to Profs Shirakawa and Tomizawa and the body of work on the supernal already built up from Silver Ladder made it uniquely suited to lead.

An amorphous yellow blob appeared on the displays.

"Contact! One bogey on OEDAR!" The engineer shouted.

If this had been on infrared or radar, the size of the smear of a contact that had appeared and the erratic way it was shifting around would have been an unacceptable level of imprecision, especially for fire control.

Compared to anything that had been available before, the ability to do more than merely say there might - MIGHT - be something out there at BVR without needing a shipgirl in the loop or a visual observer, even a drone, recon plane or satellite, at the right time and place was a massive coup.

"Soaring One, squawk flash," the officer said.

"Roger, squawk flash." Soaring One proceeded to pulse her IFF transponder.

A green dot appeared within the yellow blob.

"Bogey is friendly!" The engineer shouted.

"Very good!" The officer turned to face the observers. "Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen! The Or Energy detection and ranging system Mark I is now operational!"

The control room and the observers erupted in cheers and applause.

===[===]===

In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped, and all involved probably should have recognised that.

===[===]===

Authors' Notes: Our continued thanks to Kyryst also from SV for pointing out areas needing clarification.

We hope you did indeed pay attention. You might be able to figure out what's going on.

Hindenburg is courtesy of Sputnik from SpaceBattles. Hood is the WSG version. Bismarck and Prinz are KC versions. Richelieu is a hybrid of KC's hair and eye colours, WSG's hairstyle, leg armour and top, and AL's skirt and thighhighs.