Authors' Notes: We say again: It is best you reread earlier chapters before proceeding any further and pay attention while doing so.
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CHAPTER 33
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Shocked by the sudden accusation, Naganami misjudged a backward lean, and Northampton's followup spin and thrust bit into her chin shallowly, but not shallowly enough that it did not draw blood.
"Argh!" Naganami stumbled backwards, pressing a hand to the cut.
"I made nine attacks after my first rapid slash. Not once did you Step in response." Northampton now did just that. "Once or twice might have been getting thrown off by simple surprise at battling a peer." She pointed with now-sheathed sword in the direction of Riptide busy Stepping around while trying to fall back from the Demons that were hot on their heels. The things were moving with alarming alacrity to cut off the preplanned escape routes. "This many, though? Then there is where you only target. Wrists, throat, sides, head. Not once did you go for anywhere else. Not once did you use your guns after battle was joined. There is old training holding you back. Am I incorrect?"
Naganami growled, then winced at the pain that doing so had caused.
"Do not get me wrong. I see someone skilled in her work. She will serve before kings, not obscure men. Were you no N!p, you might have been worthy as my opponent." There was disconcertingly genuine approval in Northampton's voice even as she began advancing on Naganami, slowly and deliberately taking small-S steps forward rather than letting her screws do all the work. The air tingled like there was an oncoming storm.
{One's a Natural Born?!} Riptide Seven asked, stunned. {Dafuq?!}
{Seven, focus,} Riptide Two said in a tone of reprimand, though she too couldn't entirely keep the surprise out of her voice. {We have bigger problems.}
As if cued, another set of shells shot in. Distracted by the revelation, Riptide Seven failed to dodge all of them, and enough of them hit to overcome her Unseen Shield. A final one slashed a sanguine streak along her scalp. Had the angle been just slightly off, it would have penned her bridge. "ONORE!" she yelled, equal parts pained and angered.
{What are these things made of?!} Riptide Six shouted. There was none of her usual cuteness now, only a leonine atypical anger fueled by the seeping slashes shot in her sides. {Having problems with cruisers is expected, especially when they have shields too, but even the destroyers are resisting AP!}
{Yeah, they ain't melting like they should!} The armor on the targeted light cruiser started to run like liquefied wax where Riptide Three's counterbattery fire hit, but stopped all too soon. She growled with unvarnished frustration at the sight. {They have some kinda countermagic built into their hulls?}
{Long range isn't working, not when we can't track their incoming fire reliably! Ships like us, Uatu Two or Spatha are assault types!} Riptide Seven growled at the pain in her scalp. {CQC is our strength and we should be engaged in it, not staying back taking potshots like cowards!}
{Our orders are to withdraw,} Riptide Two said.
{Well, excuse these princesses!} Riptide Seven's hands wreathed themselves in giant lupine claws of supernal fire, flexing with frustration and fury. {Can't do that without One, and so long as these a-holes are on our sixes, we can't help her!}
{Devil May Cry 3 Original Soundtrack - Vergil Battle 2}
Spotify track/6TZK3CNimVV6qPip9iA7DH
"This, however, is no mere business. That time is not now, and it is for the good of mankind that I must sink you all. Let's take this to the next level." Northampton's turrets finally moved, putting Naganami in their sights, and she spun her sheathed sword slowly in a full circle before herself. "Your skills are commendable, but don't get so cocky." She fired.
Naganami's Or blades slashed out, deflecting the incoming shells, and then Northampton Stepped behind her, already drawing.
Naganami whirled to parry the slash that came out, and Northampton Stepped behind her again, firing once more.
Naganami turned to defend herself, and as she was doing so, Northampton Stepped a third time, bursting forward into a rapid slash.
This time, the distractions meant Naganami was not equal to the task, and the blade bit into her upper arm. Only a last-minute desperate dodge prevented it from cutting deeper and hitting anything vital.
"Ugh!" Naganami stumbled back, pressing her other hand to the cut. "What was that about someone with guts?!"
Northampton glowered, and the breath from her mouth started misting with icy chill, the flanging distortion getting worse. "You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you sons of the devil, you enemies of all righteousness do not get that privilege. Honor? You dare to talk about guts and honor? Honor sank in the harbor. We are not to make you suffer, but you benighted N!ps have given us no reason to adhere to the Queensberry Rules." Her cannons angled up and rapid-fired a barrage that arced high and came down nearly vertical.
Naganami's strafe didn't carry herself far enough to clear the target area, and she had to throw herself to the side to get out.
"Scared, stressed, you revert to old, inadequate ways predating your Reawakening. Is this truly the extent of your arsenal? Where's your motivation?" Northampton shook her head reprovingly as Naganami struggled to her feet.
Northampton's left leg slid back and she quickly drew and resheathed it five times, cutting at the space Naganami occupied. The shipgirl managed to parry the attacks, but immediately had to turn to thwart Northampton's Stepping behind her in an attempt to cut down her stack. Instead of trying to counter-riposte, Northampton Stepped backwards, fired her cannons, and as Naganami deflected the shells, immediately did a second Step-and-fire, a third, and then followed a fourth Step with a rapid slash deliberately aimed low.
The blade bit into a thigh, and only a frantic twist while knocking it downward saved Naganami from a severed artery.
"Even now your skills are still almost praiseworthy enough to defy my cutting you down frontally," Northampton said while Stepping back, flicking off the freshly-drawn bloody oil… or was it oily blood... and resheathing. She sighed disappointedly. "Your so-called 'way of the sword' is a pale shadow no serious swordsman would tie himself down with. You are a child playing at war, a sportsman pretending to be a soldier. You cannot protect anything. Let alone yourself."
Without giving Naganami a further chance to recover, Northampton Stepped into the air above her and came down slashing down. Physical impact and pulse struck Naganami's protectively-raised blade of Or Energy, and she grunted from the jolt and exertion. Before she could retaliate, Northampton Stepped up again to strike a second time from above, shifting slightly, then a third. On the fourth Naganami misjudged the block, and Northampton's sword cut into the gunbarrels on her right arm. A frantic flinch saved her arm, but the turret had been rendered useless, and she staggered back.
"Either peacefully submit to judgment or fight with your all, but give me no more half measures," Northampton said. "I expect nothing less. Will you prove our strategist right? Is Japan not sending its best after all?"
Naganami merely glared ugily back, offering no verbal response but an angry, pained wheeze.
Northampton wagged a finger at her and resumed the attack.
Northampton's tactic was, for all its visual flair, really a simple one: Fight an opponent invulnerable to frontal assault by wearing it out with flanking attacks.
It was bad enough that abyssals were a nightmare to target. What made things worse was actually putting them down once shots finally connected. Shallow wounds were just expendable outer compartments. A steel hull didn't feel pain the way her crew did, and thus the monsters kept fighting where the hurt might debilitate normals. Most Summoned/Manifested could do the same, and it was not uncommon to see shipgirls with degloving injuries fail to understand why the frails looked so sickened by mere light damage. Most Natural Borns started off shackled by old instincts, and their Sierra Mike comrades saw the transcendence of this human weakness as a rite of passage.
Fairy-forged weapons changed that. Their being able to hurt abyssals as if organic meant that they could be pressured with pain, worn down and bled out with a succession of individually-minor wounds even if a large decisive blow could not be struck. Now, Northampton was reaffirming what Vulcan had once shown Ayaka: Fairy-forged weapons, or ones based on similar principles, could do the same to shipgirls.
Even in Naganami's current state, trapped by training that had had no conception of teleportation, rational mind dulled by pain and lacking the luxury of time to consciously think of using her other options, she was still too sharp, skills too deeply-ingrained to be taken from the front. Northampton might sneer at the rules and limitations of kendō, but the skills that had consistently triumphed over older, theoretically more-experienced kendōka were equally capable of thwarting her "serious swordsmanship" when used in a frontal attack. Stepping, on the other hand, provided mobility even the most agile merely human pugilists could not rival, and every fraction of a second spent turning to face the repositioned threat was a fraction of a second thrown off her defensive or evasionary tempo, adding up until finally Northampton got through. Yet even then Naganami was still able to deny her a crippling blow, much less a killing one. Northampton was whittling her down with limb cuts and gouges in her rigging, there was no denying that, but an easy kill, the abyssal was not being allowed to score.
Preoccupied by the ever-tightening noose they were in, Riptide barely noticed Solano's announcement, heavy with relief, of "bruisers away".
The F-35s of No. 75 Squadron had finally arrived, afterburners blazing with throttles firewalled, and salvoed every LRASM they had at the attacking abyssals from the safety of over 500 km out before breaking off on randomised vectors as soon as every missile was off the launch rails. Even throwing out stealth by mounting on external hardpoints to maximise capacity, a F-35 couldn't match the 24 a B-1 could carry, but the squadron as a whole had several times the total throw weight of that.
The shipgirls didn't need to divert their attention. The emissions of their radars, deflecting off the abyssals, were automatically picked up by the beamrider mods and the missiles rode them in.
The Demons had very much noticed the new threat, though, and responded to it the same way their charge had: Stepping out of the way. The LRASMs found themselves having the same problem as the YJ-12s with compensating for a target suddenly being dozens of metres away from where it was diving on.
"Solano, Riptide Two, shot trashed, shot trashed." Riptide Two said, terse with pain yet inexplicably less panicked than one might expect considering her face was caked with oily blood from a scalp nearly denuded of hair by too many close calls.
Solano slapped a hand over his own mouth to muffle an unprofessional but very deserved "Fuck".
Northampton had not been left out of the target list, and the missiles that had not been pointed at the Demons fell on her.
With a disapproving tsk, she didn't wait for all of them to draw near, but turned from Naganami and Stepped skyward to meet them. Once, twice, thrice did she caress the missiles with dissonant gentleness, and then she Stepped back down, hand reaching for the hilt of her saber as she prepared to cut down the interlopers in judgment of their crimes.
Not being relentlessly under attack, even for such a short time as this, had given Naganami time to shift out of reflexive response mode and think, even if her mind was pain-addled. What intact ranged weaponry she still had wasn't going to get through Northampton's better-than-historical protection, and her blades didn't have enough reach!
It might have been the pain that lowered her barriers. Had her mind been clear, the idea of firing off a bolt of Or Energy just like that, some kind of Hadōken or magic missile without a properly-defined mechanism, would have been repellent and inconceivable. Yet this very certainty about how the world ought to work constantly warred with the clear evidence around her that there were other shipgirls who could indeed gesture and mumble, get results through literal song and dance.
She was not currently crystal, though, and in a haze of bleeding limbs and smoking machinery, she began to believe. Shaking fingers forced to still by tooth-gritting determination opened the panel to a bracer and, guided by Will manifested in the form of a Eureka fueled by blood, desperation and pain rather than rigorously-preplanned and understood scientific and engineering principles, fiddled with the innards in the Right way. Slapping the panel shut more brusquely than was probably necessary, she raised the arm, pointing the emitter at Northampton, and clenched her fist.
Instead of a mere blade, the Or Energy that emerged was as a lance to lacerate leagues, crossing the distance to Northampton in a flash and burning down the length of her forearm before her hand could close around the hilt of her saber.
Northampton flinched back fast enough to avoid losing her hand, whirling to glare down the length of the Or blade at Naganami's pained but victorious smirk. "Scum." She spat the invective with a viciousness unlike her usual coldly calm, urbane manner and immediately Stepped in front of Naganami before the shipgirl could capitalise on the injury, retreating aircraft now out of mind. Her sword's hilt flew out and slammed into Naganami's gut hard enough the shipgirl folded forward, retching. As the hastily-modified emitter shortened out in an explosive shower of sparks, Northampton Stepped behind her, drew her left arm back, and lunge-punched Naganami into the path of an incoming LRASM. It was too sudden, and the missile could not maneuver in time to avoid hitting the object with a friendly IFF that had gotten in the way. Falling, Nagnanami barely managed to twist such that it hit her stack instead going head on into her chest. The LRASM might not have the yield or speed of the Kh-22, but that missile was designed to sink larger ships like carriers; this one would have had no problems sinking a mere destroyer like her with a direct hit.
"Why do you cry out over your wound, your pain that has no cure?" Northampton asked as Naganami tumbled, much of her stack torn off by the blast. "Because of your great guilt and many sins the Lord has done these things to you."
In this state, Naganami wasn't able to fend off Northampton's lunging with her scabbard, and after it struck, Northampton backhanded her with the sword's hilt, then drew-slashed upward. The Primal protection of the Magic Shield Naganami desperately erected with her other emitter meant she wasn't summarily split in twain like a conventional would have been, but couldn't outright stop her from being launched into the air. Northampton next kicked off from the water, rising with an eerie grace into the air while slicing upwards, and where it hit Naganami was thrown higher up. Once both were airborne, she slashed twice, seemingly causing Naganami to float, then made a series of counterclockwise upward slashes that pulled Naganami up higher still before slashing downwards, causing Naganami to fall from Heaven like a fistful of lightning.
Any other time, the water would have welcomed its own, and she would have landed unhurt.
With Northampton's Power behind the blow that cast her down, the water was like unyielding earth, and Naganami screamed as she crashed into it hard enough to crumple part of her remaining rigging and drive the air from her lungs.
It hurt.
It hurt!
IT HURT!
The Ship roared in her ears, boiling beneath her skin, blinding her sight in a curtain of red, and Naganami just wanted to let go and let it out, even as her thinking bridge tried to shout back that to lose her head figuratively would definitely lead to losing her head literally.
"This has gone on long enough. The time has come to end you rightly."
Something about the deadly certain finality in now-landed Northampton's veritably Arctic tone drove Naganami to double-check her radar, the action innate enough to her being that human training didn't get in the way, and she let out a horrified gasp of realisation. Like well-trained foxhounds, the Demons had with surprising subtlety herded the rest of Riptide towards where she and Northampton were fighting.
"You will not forget the Navy's power."
Northampton's left leg slid back into the draw stance, but this time her aura exploded outward and she began to emit thick smoke and winds that quickly went from gale-force to hurricane. The glow emanating from her sword swiftly built up to and past blinding intensity.
The RAAF UAV operator controlling the Triton observing the battle cried out in pain as he failed to shield his eyes in time again. So did a few airborne mission specialists on Solano.
Naganami's Prime sensors were screaming shrill warnings at her, but in her condition, it was too late to try putting any more distance between herself and Northampton. All she could do was pathetically attempt to raise her arms, trying to shore up her Magic Shields with the dregs of her vitae as opposed to any sophisticated corrections to her systems her end-of-tether mind had no capacity left to consider, and desperately yell into the radio. {Riptide, watch out! P-Shields up! Protect your-}
Northampton began to draw her sword and disappeared.
There was a rapid set of flashes, strobing so swiftly that to normal human perception they appeared to blur together into an epilepsy-triggering morass. The air seemed to turn into shards of broken glass, parted by glowing lines.
There was a flash of anti-colour. Not merely colourlessness, the black of darkness or even a wavelength outside the visual spectrum, but something inimical to the electromagnetic spectrum entire that made the ordinary human mind hurt in trying to understand.
There was an anti-sound. Not merely the lack of sound, but a negation thereof, leaving a void more empty than any normal silence.
Northampton reappeared slightly ahead of her previous position, kneeling, and resheathed her sword, causing another flash of light, this time visible.
"You are not worthy as our opponent."
Space, and with it air and water, thunderously rushed in to fill the void Northampton had just created, and Riptide screamed as they were dragged along. It was not merely the previous dimensional and spatial fraying, or even unravelling; this time, Northampton had outright unmade space, both material and near dimensional, in the area of effect. Thorough and perfect in its annihilation like no conventional weapon or phenomenon could, not even a gamma-ray burst or supernova. Everything within the affected area that wasn't protected had ceased to exist along with the space it occupied.
Two of the shipgirls' Primal defences were, even by all their battered standards, not up to snuff, and their screams were of pain at suddenly missing limbs.
Naganami tried to struggle to her feet nevertheless, only to look up and right down the barrels of Northampton's guns. "If you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. I warned you." The Demons, now in position, took aim at the rest of Riptide groaning as they lay helpless. "Now burn."
===[===]===
Takanami woke up.
SYSTEMS CRITICAL
IMMEDIATE REPAIR REQUIRED
To say her chest hurt was technically correct, but only in the same way that one could call the sun hot. It fell far, far short of encompassing the full depth of how dire things were.
The ruined state of her boilers, made equivalent by Northampton's use of that dark counterpart to a fairy-forged weapon to a stab to the heart, should have been fatal. Indeed, many were the harsh words her chief engineer had to say about just how bad the situation was.
Everything hurt so badly, and she just wanted to give in to the darkness encroaching on the corners of her vision. There was something inexplicably warm about it.
She'd known she had a reputation as an indecisive scaredy-cat. She'd had the misfortune of overhearing a few loose lips, even if Naganami-neesama and some of the other more enthusiastic of her comrades had made abundantly clear the price of saying that aloud again. Burning to death so intensely one emitted enough light to be aimed by had left its mark on her psyche, even as a fuzzy, phantasmal secondhand memory. She'd seen her sinkers coming last time and that hadn't made a lick of difference. The noetic echo was sour with the agony of the dying.
She tried moving her head so she could see in front of herself. She needed to know what was going on, even if her body was screaming along with her engineering department that she was in no condition to fight and ought to lie still and wait to be attended to.
She finally managed to wiggle enough to look ahead, just in time to see Northampton's forces about to execute the rest of Riptide. "Now burn," Northampton was saying.
Was this what it felt like to despair at the hopelessness of it all? At helplessness in the face of the squadron's imminent sinking?
She felt her supernal uplink fraying even as the life seeped away, vision blurring.
Her sight blurred, flashed and reclarified into the sight of a translucent Northampton standing victorious with sheathed saber held high, empty water strangely low all around in a 500-kilometre radius where Cairns should have been.
Then into where Darwin should have been.
Then into where Singapore should have been, land gone from up north in Perak in Malaysia down south to Palembang in Indonesia.
Then into where Manila should have been, all of Luzon gone.
Then into where Yokosuka should have been, Honshu missing almost everything in between Chūgoku and northern Tōhoku.
A pearl of wisdom so-to-speak hung in her mind, four kanji that tied together Northampton's outrageous claim with things Takanami had noticed but never previously grasped the significance of. Like two of the said characters having previously appeared on a certain piece of clothing.
The cut-off crushing cries and howls of millions, a bewildering kaleidoscope of diverged overlapping realities where humanity had ignored or delayed in responding to the faked distress signal, rang deafeningly in her ears.
She couldn't just give up, not when the lives of Naganami-neesama and their comrades and so many more were at stake. Could she say if she did so that she hadn't been slothful and lacking vigor? Could she say that she did not feel ashamed of her words and deeds? Could she say that she had exerted all possible efforts?
Her captain began yelling, angry and pleading and scolding, desperately trying to make her reconsider the foolishness of her decision.
The Ship merely groaned in pain, still incapacitated by the goring that had rent not just body but soul.
Any other time, she would have agreed, but everything was so clear now. There was no more fear and doubt hanging around her neck like the proverbial albatross.
Time seemed to stutter and slow, and Kaigun-chūsa Ogura appeared, a welcoming smile on his face as he offered his hand.
It is time to go.
{No,} Takanami said raspily. {Not yet.} There was still something she could do.
{Hello World Original Soundtrack - Ruri wo Torimodoshitai}
Spotify track/632mSkcQdK9ghX5Cltj0wH
WARNING: OVERCLOCK CANNOT BE REVERSED
INITIATE Y/N?
Takanami was distantly aware that it was foolish to ascribe human qualities to the supernal, which was far beyond any individual universe as said universe was to an individual human, if not further. Yet there was something that felt patient like a grandparent, even if she'd never actually had a baachan or jiichan in either this life or the last. It was a feeling of waiting for her to let go, to take her home to the place she belonged.
She refused to go quietly, but pulled back, not with anything so frail and fleeting as hands, but with all her being and self.
Flickering, ghostly even to the senses of the Spheres, hands reached out to briefly brush back, spectres from realities that would not come to pass in this one because of her choice.
The spectre of her first and only captain nodded, his expression turning sad but proud with understanding. He gently laid a hand on her head and then disappeared.
OVERCLOCK INITIATED
FOR THE GLORY OF MANKIND
Her body blazed with heat like the sun, singing with an electric brilliance that made the combined lightning received by Lakes Maracaibo and Victoria look like the sting of static. The simultaneous burning of her entire vitae store, even had it been full, could not compare. Her renewed vitality was a burden with glorious purpose.
From the outside, the blue and pink glow Takanami started emitting wasn't visible at naval-grade distances. The burst of Primal power she had pulled down, however, was as impossible to miss for Primal senses as a nuclear blast in a dark sky. The abyssals' heads immediately snapped over, distracted from the doing of deadly deeds. The Demons, like their lesser brethren, didn't react outwardly as they switched targets, but Northampton's eyes and mouth widened in horror even as her turrets started turning to address the renewed threat.
{Naganami-neesama, get down!}
Naganami didn't question how she was suddenly hearing Takanami. Her tormented body all too readily dropped flat like a sack of potatoes.
Takanami's searchlight extended and powered up, and it wasn't emitting anything so mundane as light this time.
What came out and swept horizontally through Northampton's forces was probably best called in mortally-understandable terms a beam of YOU ARE NOT. It was pure Primal unmaking, an erasure of not merely space like Northampton had just done but reality outright.
The destroyer-types, already the lightest of that party, might as well have been full-sized capital ships where their protection was concerned, and had clearly demonstrated to Riptide their innate resistance to magic. Despite the squadron's desperate efforts, no decisive blow had been landed. Northampton and the other cruisers were tougher still.
Takanami's beam disappeared all their waists and the air it had passed through from material reality as easily as if they had been wet tissue paper before a top-quality sword. Not even free-floating atoms were left behind.
In a burst of simultaneous thunderclaps, air rushed into the vacated areas, and the top halves of the abyssals fell off into the water.
The Demons gurgled, the Primal reality-altering power of Takanami's attack meaning they died as swiftly as one might expect of any organic that suddenly found much of its torso and the vital organs within missing, and began to slip beneath the waves. Northampton, busy scrabbling to stay afloat, accidentally let go of her sword. She was too shocked by the sudden eruption of pain and reversal of her fortunes to notice, but also too strong of self like any willworker worth the name to let the Reaper have his way so easily as with her lessers.
A gigantic pillar like a distorted rainbow suddenly slammed down onto and around her from the heavens, and the booming it made was to a thunderclap as a thunderclap was to the clapping of hands.
"You want me to retreat?! How about no?! This is my moment!" Northampton yelled seemingly at the air from which the rainbow pillar had come, clear desperation and pleading in her voice sounding disturbingly human despite the flanging and distortion. This was evidently not something she wanted. "I prepared for it! You are not taking it away from-"
The pillar of energy rose before anyone else could move or say anything, all observers stunned into inaction by its abrupt appearance, and when it lifted, Northampton was no longer there.
For a few moments, Naganami could only stare blankly at the miracle, overtaxed systems unwilling to cooperate.
Then her mind drifted back to Takanami. Gingerly, she struggled to get up and crawled over to where the hero of the hour had collapsed once more, nervously staying below the swath of unmade reality overhead. It had not caused a double dose of destruction to the abyssal bodies falling through it, but this was no reassurance. That it overlapped the destroyed space was doing it no favours in her eyes. The rest of Riptide followed suit, supporting their maimed fellows.
{Hello World Original Soundtrack feat. Nulbarich - Lost Game}
Spotify track/2blM0SIqgptXPpCan2lGXh
{Hah… hah… hah.} Takanami had rolled onto her back, and her heaving breaths were broken by coughing, flecks of oily blood - or was it bloody oil? - visible in the saliva. {Looks like I drew their fire again… Maybe that was also helpful...}
{Takanami!} Naganami fell to her knees next to Takanami.
ImgUr /a/6ue6sSe
DeviantArt be-ta/art/KnNI-Spoilers-Lost-Game-859932654
{Naganami-neesama… no, it's Mika-neesama, isn't it? Mika… hah… of the Nagamine family. The beautiful increase of the long peak.}
"Na-na-nani?"
Naganami froze in place, and then her entire body shuddered and shook violently. When it stopped, there was a slight difference in her posture and body language, but one obvious to those who thought they had known her. She seemed smaller, more halting and hesitant.
{You-you knew?!} Naganami-no, Mika exclaimed, trying not to look at the way Takanami was starting to turn translucent and dissolve into cherry blossoms that fell off like morbidly beautiful flakes and drifted away, taken by the wind. {You knew I'm not really-I-how-how long-since when?!} With the pain from the injuries inflicted by Northampton's saber dulling her mind the way ordinary sword wounds would have debilitated a normal, she didn't notice how the usual loud, harsh Kansai-style delivery that had been widely assumed to be a product of her previous life's birthplace in the Fujinagata Shipyards of Osaka had slipped, revealing something more in line with the Kantō way.
{Hah... hah.} Takanami made a sound somewhere between a tired sigh and a wild laugh. {Does it matter, all the little signs of an extant history… hah… that real Manifested wouldn't have? It makes no difference… hah… to me whether you're Natural Born or Manifested. I don't… hah… care whether you came from water or womb. It doesn't… hah… matter what your name is. What matters… hah… is that I've gotten to be with and fight alongside you for the past two years, a lot longer… hah… than the last time… my sister.}
{Riptide Four, hold on just a little more!} Kita's pleading voice sounded through the radio, desperate with the need to not have the blood of the first fallen shipgirl on his hands. {MEDEVAC is only minutes out! Only just a little more!}
{Never should have come here!} Naganami shouted, voice cracking. Her face stung where the tears flowing down it contacted the still-open cuts Northampton had made, but she didn't notice any of that. {I'm such a fool. We could have avoided this!}
{No, Mika-neesama.} She squeezed Mika's hand weakly. {Had to be us… hah… someone else might have gotten it wrong. Should we… hah… have refused? You've seen how grateful those we previously saved have been. Should we have left them… hah… to be slaughtered like sheep?} She coughed bloodily once more.
{Takanami, don't speak anymore! Save your strength!}
{What difference… hah… at this point does it make? I wouldn't have lasted the night.} There was calm acceptance in Takanami's voice. {Dr Yamazaki and Dr Millay's Overclock Theory is true. I saw the dark fate coming if I just gave up… hah… so many more… hah… dead if we weren't here, so I refused to just let the shinigami take me home… hah… but pulled back with all I had… hah… and gave myself one more time to burn at both ends, one more chance to give a lovely light. Ah, my foes, and oh, my friends… hah… a candle, nearly extinguished, shines brightest.} She now forced her head up to look straight at the Triton's camera. {Commander, it's not your fault.}
This was the straw that broke the camel's back, and Kita collapsed into his chair limply, tears welling up in his eyes, no thought of embarrassment in his mind.
{The abyssals played us like fiddles… but we'll get them next time. The sword… hah… retrieve Northampton's sword. It will be important. Dōmo arigatou gozaimasu, Shireikan. I'm sorry… hah… I couldn't live up to the legacy Tanaka-shōshō left. Hontō, hontō ni gomen nasai.} Takanami eased her hand out of Mika's grasp and weakly attempted to salute.
More than 20 years of service had ingrained in Kita the appropriate automatic response, and he shakily stood with the aid of his XO to return it, too overwhelmed to wipe the tears off first. Minami and the rest of the room followed suit.
Riptide's radars belatedly lit up with fast-moving friendly IFF transponders.
{Takanami, look! Look!} Mika shouted frantically. {MEDEVAC is almost here! Hold on!}
With perversely bad timing, as if in taunt, Takanami's body suddenly flared with blueish-white light.
{Takanami, hold-hold on!}
{What… what did I just say, Mika-neesama? Hah… There was no turning back. It was a worthwhile price to pay… hah... and I don't regret it. You too… hah… don't run away any longer. I don't know… hah… what happened the day you Reawakened, but now it's only hurting yourself.}
Mika's eyes somehow grew even wider, her breath more shallow and hurried in a manner that couldn't be attributed to her injuries, as the words jarred something yet more deeply-buried loose. {What-no, you can't mean no-no k-how-how do you know that?!}
{You think… hah… I don't notice how you twitch whenever the others talk about going to visit Saitama Prefecture?}
Mika flinched.
Takanami let out a pained cough-laugh. {You just did it again. There's something… no, it's someone, isn't it? Someone there… hah… you've been trying to avoid. How about those messages… hah... you pretend not to receive, that you just stare with unseeing eyes at? I'm your closest sister… hah… of course I would. No offence, Nimaki-nee.}
Riptide Six made a hoarse croak, not helped by chest damage, as she weakly waved it off.
{He… hah... clearly hasn't given up on you where most people would have, Mika-neesama. It's never… hah… too late to tell him how you really feel.}
{I don't know... if I still can,} Mika said.
{Please,} Takanami said. {If not for your sake, then mine.}
Mika let out a noncommittal whimper.
{I guess… hah… that's the best I can get.} Takanami turned to the rest of Riptide. {Girls. We had… hah… a good ride.}
{The best,} Riptides Two and Five whispered numbly, an impossibly coherent memory that shouldn't have been, given the normally disjointed ones of their first lives, of helplessly watching another comrade sink flashing before their eyes. Riptide Three put an arm around each and pulled them to herself, too overwhelmed by her own tears to say even that much.
{We all knew… hah… we knew what to expect when we answered the call.} There was no more hesitation or doubt, only an alien intensity to Takanami's face, a clarity in the face of her imminent death. {It is only because of humanity that we exist… hah… and so we must protect it… hah... whatever it takes. This… hah… this is what we came back for. Not to impose a vision of what the world could be and is good for it… hah... but to defend what is. This is a war… hah... ordinary humans can't win… hah... which is why we carry the weight of the world for them. Some… hah… some are minorly gifted… hah… and the power of the never had beens helped, but we can… hah… go even further beyond than they can… hah… and so we must. We… hah… we are not just creatures of instinct that only feed and fight. No… no 'maybe's anymore. This… hah... I'm sure of.}
The first of the Australian reinforcements leapt from the cabin of their Skyranger, landing heavily with rigging ready on the water in a protective large spaced circle around Riptide.
{For the glory of mankind. Osaki ni shitsureishimasu.}
Takanami's eyelids fell gently shut, and Mika could only watch helplessly as the last of her disintegrated into more cherry blossom petals swiftly lost to the wind. Her dog tags fell into Mika's suddenly-empty hands like they were dumbbells.
The MEDEVAC Skyranger following behind the troop transports was only in time to bear witness to weeping born of defeat and despair.
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Shizuka Minami remains the property of Salbazier from SpaceBattles. Our thanks for the assistance with her characterisation.
If you had paid attention whenever Naganami appeared earlier, you would have seen the clues coming.
The use of "Commander" by Takanami and various others is not a mistake; her lines use shireikan (not to be confused with AL's shikikan that is translated identically in English but has different connotations) rather than teitoku.