12618: Kongo is not allowed to dabble in time travel! Your teleportation abilities are creepy enough. To say nothing of your vent climbing abilities.
12618a: No you may not have a cloaking device either!
12619: Okay, who gave Nagato a tribble?!
Kongo was known around the base as a sort of cop. Whenever there was trouble, especially if it added to Goto's stress, it was a guarantee she'd become involved sooner or later. And with three separate incidents so far this week involving Iku, a visiting USS Iowa and Iku again it would probably be better that Kongo intervene sooner. Preferably before such incidents happen. Thus was the reason the Japanese battleship took a trip down to US 7th fleet headquarters in Yokosuka. But despite the location, it was not one of the American shipgirls she was looking for.
Finding Defiant wasn't that difficult. Unlike her fleetmate Thunderchild (the starship not the torpedo ram) who enjoyed the secrecy of her lab, Defiant loved loud obnoxious places. She liked being the center of attention, even more so when she could beat up on people to get it. It wasn't uncommon for her to be thrown out of several bars in a day, returning to the places after the appropriate bribe and apology had been delivered and in the meantime, checking out every bar in town until they had all thrown her out at which time she would promptly start over again in the next city over. All Kongo had to do was follow the trail of destruction.
"YAHHHHH!" With a crash a human male missing his socks and shoes as well as a few other garments went flying into the street, pieces of a glass window littering the ground behind him. He landed at Kongo's feet face down and moaned.
With merely a raised eyebrow, and boy did that say something for the insanity of shipgirls if that was her only reaction, Kongo walked inside. And promptly had to dodge another flying human, this time a red faced younger male still clutching his drink as he slid off the end of the bar table. Kongo's eyes traced his direction of travel to the other end where Defiant stood, still in an attack position.
"Who's next?!" The warship snarled, not even breaking a sweat as she straightened and looked around. Kongo stepped forward. "Miss Defiant, I'm here to..."
"Excellent, another kanmusu." Defiant grinned, cracking her knuckles. She did the same with her shoulders. "This should be interesting."
Kongo quickly realized she probably should've kept her mouth shut. She tried to back out of the ring she'd just found herself in. "Now Miss Defiant, I only want to ask you..."
"Enough talk Britboate! Just fight!" Defiant snarled, her face twisting into a mischievous grin. "Or are you too frightened to take me on, you overpriced 20th century battleship!"
Well, Kongo wasn't about to stand for being insulted in this manner. She glared at Defiant. "Not, another word!" She hissed.
"Or what? You'll throw tea at me?" Defiant sneered.
With a yowl, Kongo launched herself at her opponent, dodging a nasty right hook that just missed her conning tower. She jumped onto Defiant's back, grabbing a bottle offered to her by the anxious bartender and started beating Defiant over the head with it. Defiant slammed them into and through the wall dumping them in the street where the two rolled around, holding each other in a headlock and snarling insults all the while. People came outside to see what the commotion was and subsequently cheered them on.
Eventually, running low on fuel Kongo had to surrender. When she did, Defiant let her go, stood up and offered her a hand. Kongo took it gratefully. The Starfleet kanmusu was sweating now and did have a bruise or two on her otherwise perfect face from Kongo's desperate punches.
"You fight well." She said and Kongo, too sore to do much, simply nodded.
Defiant clapped her on the shoulder and half dragged her into another nearby establishment but this time she was more civil. She set Kongo down in a booth and slid in opposite to her. While they looked over the menus, Kongo spoke up. "What I wanted to ask you earlier is..."
"You want to know about time travel." Defiant said, taking a sip off her glass of wine with a smirk. Despite her crude attitude, she had refined tastes. "My question is, why come to me? Enterprise would be a more obvious choice."
"Which is precisely why I came to you. My usual antics are hard enough on my teiketou as it is. And despite her record, the Enterprise's seem to have more of an alternate reality/weird anomaly kind of time travel going on. I'm looking for something a bit more basic." Kongo replied, enjoying the flavor of her steaming cup of green tea.
"Fair enough." Defiant answered. "Well, I'm assuming you already know the story of my time travel adventure." At Kongo's nod she continued. "There is more than one way to travel into the past but the means to do so for a ship of your type are exceedingly more limited..."
"Explain." Kongo said.
"One of the more simplest and in my opinion, crude methods of time travel is a sun warp. The gravitational pull of the sun combined with the effect of solar activity on a warp signature creates an unusually strong amount of chroniton radiation. This radiation surrounds the ship, interacting with the warp field to produce an effect similar to a worm hole. Allowing the ship to travel through time as well as space, at phenomenal speeds. The reason I say it's crude however is due to its inaccuracy. It takes precise calculations to even remotely chance at emerging at the right point. And even so there is no guarantee. That is not to say it can't be done. Enterprise did it, as did Bounty as she apparently prefers to be called." Defiant sniffed at the mention of the Klingon warbird. Apparently she still had a sour spot for Klingons after they broke with the Kithomer Accords and attacked DS9.
"Obviously I can't do something like that." Kongo said. "So what's another way, that I could try?"
Defiant opened her mouth to reply, then paused as the waitress delivered their first round of plates. Once she had gone, the pair resumed their conversation.
"Another way is to do what I did. And use the Orb of Time. I've about figured out how it works now." She said.
"You still have it?!" Kongo was surprised.
"It's actually in Thunderchild's lab but I've got a cloaking device so it's not that hard to get to." Defiant smirked.
"Could I, see it?" Kongo asked eagerly.
"No."
Defiant's answer surprised her and Kongo had to ask her to explain herself. Defiant chuckled. "I know what you're trying to do and while I do not think giving you permission to try is a bad thing as I very much doubt you can successfully achieve a temporal displacement I'm not taking any chances. 'Fuck it, it's Kongo' has been the statement of one too many things that is weird and wonderful about shipgirl abilities."
"Wha-" Kongo had heard such exclamations from her superiors before, her teikatou included, but she never thought she'd hear it from Defiant.
The warship raised her glass to her lips again but paused. "In addition, unlike Thunderchild, I am still an active Starfleet vessel. And as such, giving you the ability to time travel would be a severe breach of the temporal prime directive that none of the Enterprise's could not overlook."
"Hmph, you're no fun." Kongo pouted.
"No fun hmm?" Defiant pulled something out of her pocket and tossed it to Kongo. Without thinking, the battleship caught it. It was soft, furry and made cute purring noises that made Kongo's heart melt.
"I was going to leave a batch of those on Nagato's desk. You can come with me if you like." Defiant offered. Kongo's grin carried a hint of maniac glee, the starship noticed. She quickly made an add on. "If you teach me how to climb through vents like you can."
Kongo's grin widened further. "Done!" She announced.
It had been a long day for Nagato and it was barely half over. Already she had a string of paperwork to do. Apparently Defiant had gone on another of her barstorming events and even managed to get into a fight with Kongo. Nagato vowed to take the battleship aside and have some very strong words with her about decent conduct.
Sighing, and feeling at least somewhat recharged after lunch, Nagato readied herself for more paperwork and opened her door...
Goto was pleased things were going so calmly for once. His base was quiet and there hadn't been an incident report on his desk all day. Well other than an angry barman calling a few hours ago about Defiant but since the starship wasn't in his chain of command he simply passed off the complaint to the appropriate authority and let it go. He was just about to take a sip from the delightful tea that Kongo had procured when a loud scream made him jump, spilling tea down the front of his shirt.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK! YOU'RE SO CUUUTTTTTEEEEEEE!" Nagato's squeal which sounded a lot like she was Nagamon at the moment, made Goto want to bury his head into his arms. The day had been going so well too.
Sighing and making his way to his lead secretary's office, because as much as he didn't want to he needed to know, Goto entered Nagato's office to find her fawning over a box of tribbles. Above the oblivious battleship, a hatch cover opened seemingly on its own and Goto got a glimpse of his girlfriend before she clammered inside the vent, a vertical vent and shut the door.
Two questions rolled into Goto's mind, both answered in quick succession. Where did the tribbles come from? And how did Kongo acquire a cloaking device. The admiral scowled, navigating around the melting Nagamon and standing underneath the vent, he glared up into its dark depths.
"Kongo, just you wait until I get home tonight!" He shouted. There was no answer although he could've sworn he heard feminine giggling.
"There will be rules, so many rules for this!" Goto muttered as he left, making a note to call in the Nagamon response team as soon as he got back to his office. And he needed to have a talk with Admiral Nakamura and get Enterprise D here. He knew this was all Defiant's doing and the warship needed to be suitably punished.