Jean Bart

I groaned as my eyes opened slowly. It was that same strange feeling I used to get, waking up past noon after a wild night enjoying the company of rum during my construction. The same eye boogers, dry throat, and disorientation.

I looked around me. The room had a very monotone look to it. White walls surrounding a white tiled floor and a white ceiling. White curtains covering the window, so I had no idea where I was, and a white closed door, leading god knew where. To my left, a woman with shoulder-length white hair and a white nurse outfit was absorbed by her book.

The only non-white thing in the entire room was to my right. The tips of some cat-like ears peeked over the edge of the bed I was resting on. I would have thought nothing of it, normally, but those ears were green. What kind of creature had green ears, ever? I reached and rubbed those ears with my fingertips.

"N-Nyaaaa?!"

The sudden cat yell, louder than anything a cat should ever be capable of, almost made me jump off the bed and land on the floor. Those ears, somehow, had an entire, yet small, person attached to them.

"W-What are you doing to Akashi, nya?! That is sexual harassment, nya!"

"What the…"

A girl with cat ears, for real? I remember some of the higher ups in Iris, when it still was an Orthodoxy and global politics weren't shit, that the girls over the Sakura Empire were half human half animal in appearance, but I never gave it much thought, thinking it was just a common joke or something. I mean, who wouldn't? Most of us in Iris are relatively normal, even compared to those magic-using folks in the Royal Navy

"Akashi, what's going on?"

The white haired woman had let her gaze leave her book and focus on me. Her light blue eyes had a very complicated expression, one I understood, if I was to be honest. Richelieu once told me I used to have the same eyes when I was forced to attend parties in Iris. The woman didn't want to be here.

"The patient assaulted me, nya!"

"I… think it's safe to assume she was just curious about your ears. Never seen any?"

Took me a few seconds to realize she was addressing me. Trying to speak up only made it more evident, just how dry my throat was.

"No."

"Can you forgive our guest, Akashi?"

The catgirl seemed to give it some thought, scratching her head. Or at least that's what it looked, I couldn't see her hands through her comically oversized sleeves. Were those wrenches peeking through the ends instead of fingers?

"If that's the case, Akashi can forgive you. But you won't get discounts in my service, nya!"

I raised my eyebrow and the other woman sighed. I let myself fall back on the bed. This place was pretty obviously a hospital. There were two options, either the god I had forsaken was actually real and was tormenting me after my pathetic defeat in Casablanca, or I was salvaged and brought somewhere, by someone.

"I probably should get this out of the way. My name is Tirpitz, second ship of the Bismarck-class."

I felt a small shiver down my spine. The Bismarck-class was ordered by the Ironblood as a response to me and my sister. Perhaps in a different scenario I would have gotten to enjoy a fight against them. That is the way it should have been, if they hadn't trampled over my country. I felt a tingling feeling burn inside me.

"Did ya just refloat me, as a hostage? The cowardice of the Ironblood knows no bounds."

"You weren't sunk, nya."

I turned to face Akashi, and before I could ask what she meant, she shoved a flat wooden stick into my mouth and shined a flashlight right in front of my eye.

"The Eagle Union damaged you pretty badly, nya. Jammed turret and partially destroyed stern, but you didn't sink nya."

I swatted Akashi's hand away. Damaged pretty badly you say? That girl's 16 inch shells were no joke, and she had brought that carrier along…

"I… went through your records." The white haired woman, Tirpitz, took out a small bottle and poured a bit of a strange, strong-smelling liquid in a green glass, offering it to me "The Ironblood doesn't have rum, but this should be…"

"Like hell. I ain't takin' anything from you snakes."

"I-Is that so…?"

I could clearly see her hand shaking lightly. She pressed her lips together. What even were those eyes? She looked lost. Were these the people that had trampled over the Iris Orthodoxy? What was up with this woman?

Bah, whatever. If they wanted to kill me they would have already, and I've always wanted to check Ironblood liquor. It went down with fire, like rum. I felt some unfamiliar taste behind it, herbs? Spices? Couldn't tell.

Looking at Tirpitz again, that seemed to spark a weak smile in her face. To think this woman, the second in line to command the Ironblood, would look this pitiful...

Someone knocked on the door, getting everyone's attention.

"Nya! Akashi must leave for her other task, nya! Jean Bart-san, no fighting with your rigging for a few days, nya!"

The catgirl sped through the door the moment it opened, before whoever knocked could enter. On the other side of the door, a short black haired woman in a nurse's outfit, and a girl with blue hair and pigtails.

"Dame Tirpitz!"

The young girl ran towards Tirpitz with a smile, almost tackling her out of the chair. She had a complex expression halfway between sadness and uneasiness. The distance she seemed to have with everyone kinda reminded me of Richelieu.

"U-556… please…"

"Oh, the guest woke up!" The girl stood at attention "I have heard about you! As a fellow Knight, I hope we get to share our knightly ways one day!"

Knightly ways? Nobody told me that the Ironblood had their own Knight order. To be fair, no one really told me anything, just reports of city after city, port after port, falling to their onslaught. The idea of the noble title of knight being wasted on a member of the Ironblood made my blood boil.

"Don't compare a Templar Knight to your made-up…"

"Hey, frenchie." The black haired woman raised her voice to interrupt me. "We have a lot to get done, so if Akashi gave you clearance, let's get moving."

"What makes ya think I'll follow any of y'all, anywhere?"

The woman raised an eyebrow, eyeing me from head to toe.

"I have taken time out of my very busy schedule to help you get around the base, so you either move your ass yourself or I will make you."

Obey or be secluded inside this tiny room. Was this woman aware of the impression she was giving? I was basically a prisoner of war at this point.

"If you could start acting like the adult you are supposed to be, like an actual flagship, we may get somewhere."

"What did ya say?"

"Exactly like that idiotic sister of yours, Richelieu." The woman sighed "That attitude is making you lose time you may never recover."

I was starting to get angry "If you hadn't invaded us, I wouldn't have lost any time at all."

The woman's expression soured a bit "I'll give you that much. Follow me. In some way, this whole thing may prove worth it for you."

The young submarine girl let go of a flustered and uncomfortable-looking Tirpitz and went out of the room. After a few seconds of considering if I should just ignore Akashi's advice and put a hole through that woman's chest with my rigging, I decided to stand up. My legs complained, but managed to hold me straight somehow.

I followed the two through the corridors, trying to maintain a certain distance from the woman while U-556 frolicked around me like a pigeon around baguette crumbs.

"Hey, hey! How are the knights in the Vichiya dominion?"

"There are no Knights left in the Vichiya. I… gave the order."

"The order? Did you excommunicate them?"

There was something about this girl that made me talk, naturally. Perhaps it was how bubbly she was, or her curiosity about the knights. But after that question, I felt a knot in my throat. I didn't excommunicate them. At all. What I did was far, far worse.

"She ordered the fleet stationed at Toulon to scuttle themselves."

The mood of the little girl died down.

"Oh…" she said, looking down "So that was you. I had heard of it, but imagined that such an order could only come from High Command."

"I'd rather not be lectured by someone whose entire purpose was to sink innocent merchant ships."

"Ah, I am not lecturing you…" U-556 let out a short, awkward chuckle "It's just… it must have been hard, to make such a decision. Kind of like Frau Eugen back then…"

"Hey, U-556." The black-haired woman stopped suddenly, turning around and laying her hand on the submarine's head "Wanna ride Rio de la Plata for a while?"

The girl's eyes brightened like lightbulbs

"For real?!"

"Just make sure Odin doesn't see you, okay?"

"Thanks, Deutschland! Artus cannot go over land easily!"

The woman's eyelid twitched at the name, but as she made a sign, a metallic serpent appeared, almost making me jump backwards. It arched around, like a real, sentient being, before rubbing its… nose? Against Deutschland's palm.

"Have fun."

"Yayyyy!"

The little submarine jumped on the mechanical rigging and disappear in the next turn, leaving me alone with Deutschland and an awkward silence

"Rio de la Plata? Isn't that Spain's language?"

"If I feel the need to tell you, I will. For now, shut up and follow. Even you, in your imbecility, should be able to do just that."

It was now my eyelid that was twitching. In my admittedly short service record, I had met people that were overly lazy, like Malin, or too stuck up, like my sister or Bèarn, but the way this woman, Deutschland, spoke to me as if I was nothing.

"A bit too insulting considering I'm a guest, dontcha think?"

"You deserve every single insult you have gotten, and more. Before long, you'll know why."

"I know I didn't deserve to have my country be taken over by yours, killing thousands of innocent people."

"I will warn you once. Don't link me to the decisions of High Command. I have lost a lot to their idiotic orders. Don't question my loss, and I won't question yours."

I laughed "You, lost something? Don't make me la…"

Deutschland grabbed me by the throat before I could finish and slammed me into the metal wall. If the sudden pain and the complaints from my ribcage were anything to go by, any normal human would probably have died on the spot.

"...ggh?!"

"I hate people like you, always talking out of your ass." Her eyes were fixed on me, with pure rage in them. I don't think I remembered ever seeing that kind of rage before. Massachusetts and Ranger both had some signs of regret and pity, but that was it. "War is war for both sides."

"You've… sunk… merchants and unarmed… ships before…"

"The things I was ordered to do don't define me!" Her grip tightened around my neck. Crap, I was starting to lose feeling on my hands "You wouldn't understand the feeling of being unable to help due to orders from above. Of being ordered to stand by and do nothing. That impotence, that feeling of being useless!"

"Lützow!"

I fell to the ground, coughing loudly. Deutschland had released me.

"What's the matter, U-556?"

"Rio de la Plata lost control, and I thought something had happened…. what's going on?"

"Someone started speaking without thinking, don't worry." Deutschland reached to pat the little submarine girl.

"I'd like both of you to take it easy, Lützow." Yet another woman in a nurse outfit appeared in front of my still blurry sight. "I believe your task was retrieving Frau Jean Bart, should she wake up, not trying to make sure she went to sleep forever."

"I've always been quick to lose my temper."

"Just make sure we don't have another Montevideo. Uruguay still wants to drop war crime charges on you." The newly arrived woman looked at me, and lent me her hand to stand "Seen better days, I take it?"

I would normally swat that hand away, but I wasn't really in the condition to reject it. She helped me stand, not without difficulty, as I scratched my sore throat. I was pretty sure that Deutschland had almost cut my neck with her pointy gauntlets at some point, glad to prove myself wrong though.

"What… is wrong with you heathens…" I coughed, grabbing Odin's hand for some support "Retrieving me? Your little lap dog almost strangled me to death."

"Lützow has seen better days. Once she decides to explain her story to you, I trust you will understand, both her reason, and how much you owe her. Now, we have something to show you, through that door." she pointed to the door I guessed she must have come through, a door just as monotone as the one in the room I had woken up in.

"You are very mistaken if you think…"

"Mein Gott, move it!"

I felt someone's foot, most definitely Deutschland's, in my back before she basically kicked me through the door. What waited for me inside were rows and rows of hospital beds. People were complaining about how much they were hurting, others mentioning how the hospital was so boring… most of them were too bandaged to make anything out of them.

"What's the point of this? Trying to show me how bad your people have it? This is nothing compared to what the Iris Orthodoxy has gone through."

"I understand your hostility." Odin shrugged. She picked a list from the bed closest to her "I hope I am pronouncing these right. Volta, Lynx, Jean de Vienne, Colbert…. Do these names ring any bells?"

"Of course they do. You think I would recognise my comrades in arms?"

"You would be surprised who recognises who in this mad world we live in these days. A few weeks back Strasser almost killed the Fifth Carrier Division from the Sakura Empire…" Odin sighed in disappointment "Some master tactician, that girl is…"

"Like I give a damn what you scurvy dogs do. Y'all can sink yourselves for all I care."

Odin facepalmed "And I thought George and Wales were slow on the uptake…" she looked into the list again "Parzival, when I chant a number, mind telling me if you find it?"

"Eh? Sure."

"Mogador, 102."

The submarine girl pointed somewhere behind me "There."

"What…"

"Foch, 121."

"In the corner."

I turned around. The girl was not lying. Right next to me, a big 102 hung from a bed's rest, in which a girl was staring at me through the piles of bandages. Somewhere in the corner, the 121 had someone else, equally covered in bandages and with IV lines in her arm, also staring at me.

"Do you need me to go through the entire list?"

No…. no no, that couldn't be…

"Are…. are you using… this must be inside one of those Mirror Seas… you must be using those body doubles I heard through the radio at Casablanca."

"Look, you are thinking like those bastards at Kiel." Deutschland opened more curtains. Lines and lines of people in beds, some covered entirely, some with a fair bit of bruised skin showing from below those bandages. "Sorry to disappoint, but these people here are the real deal. I towed them here, with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau."

"DONT FUCK WITH ME!" I punched the cabinet next to me, knocking it over. A fair bit of… stuff fell all over the place. I felt a sharp bolt of pain through my hand, probably glass cuts, but I paid them no mind "IF YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME, IT'S ONE THING, BUT I WON'T ALLOW…"

"Jeanie?"

The words froze in my mouth. Suddenly, my throat went dry in a second and my body stiffened. My tense muscles made the palpitating wound in my hand much more intense than it had felt a mere five seconds ago

That voice….

There was only one person that called me like that.

I turned around. The same cat girl from before, Akashi, was behind a pushing wheelchair, barely making it over the handles, short stack she was. And in the chair… same argent hair as I remembered. Those crimson eyes, similar to mine, which had made Jeanne say we looked like sisters in that regard more than a few times. The same calm face, with a great deal of surprise and relief.

"D-Dun...Dunkerque…?"

"Jeanie, it's really you!" her face lit up with that smile she always had on when she saw the kids enjoying her confections "But how?"

"We sent Tirpitz to the Atlantic as a distraction, Odin went to bother those tea drinkers in the Denmark Strait, and I dragged her ass here." idly mentioned Deutschland

"Is that so? I'll have to put something together for you all when I can walk again."

That's when it hit me. The wheelchair. And the fact that Dunkerque had her lower half covered with her hospital gown.

"Dunkerque." I said, with a shaky voice "Why are you in a wheelchair?"

The entire room went into silence. No complaints about pain. No strange cat sounds or purring from Akashi. Even Deutschland stood there, silent, behind me.

"Well, Jeanie… scuttling charges are quite powerful, and we…"

"Dunkerque." I repeated, my voice on the verge of breaking "Why are you in a wheelchair?"

For a few seconds it looked like she wanted to say something, but whatever it was, she kept to herself. Her smile wavered as she forced herself to keep it up

"There's one thing I realised back in Montevideo." Deutschland walked calmly towards Dunkerque's side. To see them side by side… It felt so unnatural. Dunkerque had been personally tasked with sinking her before, and now she didn't bat an eye. "The most dangerous person isn't your enemies at war, it's the leader that either doesn't think, or doesn't care about the consequences of their orders."

With those words, she lifted Dunkerque's gown up.

I had never really considered myself an overly emotional person. Not that I had trouble expressing how I felt, I just had severe trust issues with pretty much everyone since the fall of the Iris Orthodoxy. Sure, I felt anger when my sister told me to flee instead of fight, and frustration at my lost duel with the Eagle Union girls, but… I couldn't remember anytime in which I had actually cried.

Not when the Orthodoxy fell.

Not when reading reports of mountains of deaths.

Not when I got the news that Bretagne had sunk, or that our supposed allies, the Royal Navy, had betrayed us.

Perhaps that was why the tears caught me by surprise when I saw what lied below that hospital gown. My legs started to feel weak, like they refused to let me stand for a second longer.

"Jeanie…"

"Are you sure this was the right call, Lützow?" asked Odin, with her eyes fixed in the exact same place as mine.

"Sometimes it takes shock therapy to break the news to stubborn people. Trust me, I would know." Deutschland's voice felt numb, devoid of all the rage she had shown me before, and replaced by bitterness and distress as my knees finally gave out and I fell, right in front of Dunkerque. "I can't watch this shit, I'm out. Brings back very bad memories, even if Dunkerque was lucky enough to only lose her legs."

Author's notes:

Welp. there it is, second chapter. Things got a bit dark at the end, but hey, after being scuttled, did anyone really expect them to be able to just walk away from it?

One thing that may be confusing for some is the fact that some people address our dear Ironblood Spiritual leader as Deutschland, and other people as Lützow. Don't worry, this will be explained in future chapters.

Fair warning, this upload came this soon not because I am some sort of super fast writer, but because I had it written by the time I posted the first chapter. As I said in the first author's notes, I had been thinking on whether or not to post this story for a while, so I had two chapters ready. From now on, it's all uncharted territory, so future chapters probably won't come as fast as this one did.

That said, I hope you enjoyed it, and until next time!