The brown-haired girl trudged through the streets of Shibuya carrying a white grocery bag, dressed in an ordinary hoodie and jeans instead of the flamboyant clothes and rigging she wore in the past. The clothes because she did not wish to attract attention, and the rigging…
They had taken it out of her. Ripped her powers out of her body. For the Eagle Union and Royals, hell, even for the Ironbloods, it was easy, as their rigging was attached to them via bolts and a frame. The mystical technology of the Sakura Empire's koukubokan was etched directly upon the souls of the girls that harboured it, allowing them to call forth great feats without the use of anything that even remotely resembled technology. Akagi's hellfire. Hiryuu's cards. And Zuikaku's own planes, the product of more than ten years of intensive research and development, able to be formed from nothing but a wish and a wisp of incandescent light.
The magic had been part of her, a companion from the day she was born, and having it parted from her felt like they were physically tearing her soul into two.
She was the last of the great carriers of the Sakura who served in the cataclysmic war between the major powers of the world. Everyone else…
Her hands clenched around the cracked Sakuran flute in her pocket. It would never sound for anyone other than its owner, but given its current state, she doubted it would play for anyone even if it lacked its mystical loyalty.
What she would give to hear it sing just one more time.
Just one note, always slightly sharp, and a little too nasal. Shoukaku was far from perfect at playing the noukan.
Far from perfect at anything, honestly. She was an incorrigible tease and constantly infuriated everyone who wasn't in the Fifth Carrier Division. Zuikaku was the only one whom she allowed to see her true self, and even that was in no way approaching the model Sakura lady.
Even so, she still didn't deserve...at least, not in that way…!
Even so, Shoukaku was her sister's sister.
She didn't deserve her end at the other side of that submarine's torpedo tubes.
She didn't deserve the way her country dishonoured her memory, calling the surviving KAN-SEN cowards and the missing ones weak.
She may not have been elegant like Nagato or strong like Akagi, but she was...Shoukaku. She cared.
Zuikaku almost couldn't remember the last time someone who wasn't a fellow KAN-SEN did. She returned home, carrying the memories of war in her mind and the souls of her comrades in her hearts, only to be greeted by—
"Monsters."
"Look at them...they are trying to be human. And after all the things they've done, too...have they no shame?"
On top of the guilt of war, the surviving Sakura girls were forced to bear the rage of a wounded nation. Naval Command had made the decision to side with the Sirens, they said, and look where that brought them. And during the Week of Rage, the seven-day battle that raged over Leyte Gulf and took Shoukaku away from her sister forever, the Sirens were nowhere to be found save the last day, where the ragged remnants of the once-proud Rengou Kantai stood to repel an Eagle assault that would no doubt have smashed through the Sakura battle line, taken Zuikaku's life and many others, and seized Guadalcanal in an iron chokehold.
But they had swooped in, thousands of mass-produced ships emerging from a huge pillar of fog that crashed down from the sky like a heavenly spear. Having terminated the agreement with the Sirens two years prior, Nagato ordered the fleets to fire upon the disgustingly biological-looking black hulls, but they had simply sped past the hapless Japanese fleet as if they weren't there, shrugging off shells and bombs like they were raindrops.
The black fleet stopped for a moment, and a small shape emerged from one of the larger models, a Rook-type battleship. It was humanoid, but dwarfed by its massive rigging, swimming under its feet like a hammerhead shark, with several drones bristling with guns hovering around it.
Then it vanished, crossing a few hundred metres in a blink of an eye, and Purifier began to tear the Union fleet apart.
Eight mass-produced destroyers exploded one after the other, the last one lifted up into the air and snapped in two by a gigantic explosion.
"Ah…"
The despondent cry came from Takao, who was leaning on the two destroyers Naganami and Asashimo with a huge bloodstain on her lower back soaking her white uniform red. Zuikaku thought at first that Takao had quailed before the monstrous strength of their erstwhile saviour, but she then remembered that every last one of her sisters had just been sunk, one after the other, in front of her eyes, less than five days ago.
Whether Takao was bemoaning her class's fate or was simply struck senseless by Tester's obscene ferocity Zuikaku would never truly know, for the tears that ran from her glazed eyes could belong equally to fear or grief.
The Eagle Union fleet managed to ward Purifier off, but not without the Sakura facing down the supporting Siren fleet. Focusing their firepower, the fleet killed ship after ship, one after another, one by one, slowly and laboriously.
After the smoke had cleared, Purifier had skipped off back into the pillar of fog, bringing the Siren fleet with her. The two opposing forces had sized each other down, both haggard, both bleeding, both tired of war.
And as if they came to a mutual understanding...they just left. Left Leyte, left the battle, both sides mutely steaming home to lick their wounds after what had been the largest and longest naval confrontation between KAN-SEN ever, and likely forevermore.
That was the only reason she lived, and Shoukaku died. The mere presence of the true overlords of the sea.
And now, the Sirens were gone. With no one to vent their defeat on, no one to blame for the atrocities committed by the land armies, the ire of the people fell on their warriors, and they demanded someone to blame.
Zuikaki got off easy, with only dirty looks and insults slung her way, and also possessing a frame large enough to dissuade most from attacking her—in spite of their superhuman durability, they were no match when outnumbered. Not like Nagato, tried for war crimes perpetrated by the Sirens and living under home arrest, the dishonour of four years of slaughter heaped on her. Not like Suzutsuki, who she found crying and bruised in an alley one day, who she nursed back to health, who still cried out and clung to Zuikaku in her sleep.
Not like so many of the valiant warriors that fought ahead and beside her, now condemned to an eternity rotting in the waves, their rigging the only things left of them, their corporeal forms having evaporated into blue light the moment they were struck down.
Hiryuu. Souryuu. Hiei. Her own sister, who died shielding her from Cavalla's spears of death...the list went on, and on, and on. So many faces, so many voices, all reaching out and grabbing at her, trying to pull her down, to join them—
Zuikaku shook her head. It did not matter. The dead stayed dead, as an ancient Sakura proverb went.
It did not matter. She could confront Shoukaku's bleeding visage later. She could gaze upon Hiei, her body riddled with holes, when night fell.
For now, when she was awake, there was life, cursed, repetitive, slogging life to live. It was a life filled with constant guilt and blame, both from others and herself. But it was life with every second paid for in blood by those she fought beside, and Zuikaku would be damned if she simply threw it away. The dead deserved better.
She had to get home and make dinner. Suzutsuki was waiting for her.