With Georgia:
Chitose strained her eyes against the coming gloom, trying to make out where the shots had come from, "What's the hell was that?" she asked rhetorically, before looking over at me gripping my stomach, "Are you OK?"
"Yeah, just got a bit hungry all of a sudden, and I just tried to contact my fairies, but I'm not getting any response from them they-" My Captain interrupted me, which was rather easy to do when she was located somewhere in what passed as my brain.
"Hold on, I think I may have a way to tell, gimmie a minute," She said, I waited a moment, before she came back, "We just got some fairies through your summoning chamber, they're pretty scrambled, give us a minute and we'll see what happened to the rest."
"What's the matter Georgia?" Hakone said, looking a little worried, which was fair, as to them I'd basically stopped conversation mid-sentence, only to stare off into space for a bit.
"My Captain thinks she might know what that shellfire was, gimmie a minute." The Ri-Class nodded in reply, and a few minutes later my Captain finally came back with an answer.
"They're dead."
It wasn't a very good one.
"What?" I almost yelled, but a quick shooshing gesture from Lao quieted my voice to a low rumble.
"Well, some of them are at least, well, were. Soon-To-Not-Be." My Captain seemed to struggle for a moment, before continuing,"We're waiting on your go-ahead to resummon the rest, it'll take a chunk out of our supplies and-" I counter-ruppted my Captain.
"Yes yes! Do it! I'll just eat one of the enem-" I looked at Chitose's disapproving face. "Errm, find some supplies the next time we make it to town?" She nodded, I sighed.
"Nice save," My Captain said.
"Shoosh" I gave her the mental equivalent of a raspberry, as I could feel myself grow peckish again, probably the feeling of crew being summoned, "So, they have anything to say?" I said after a short silence.
"We're parsing through it now, resummoning scrambles short-term memory, and a bit oflong-term memory, we're putting the story together though." I waited a little longer before she got back on the horn.
"The Aviation Battleship saw us, those rounds we heard hit the ex-fil SDV vehicle."
I gasped. "Oh no! They shot Wondertwin 1!"
Lao looked over, quirking a brow, "They shot what?"
"That mollusk-thing that follows me around! You saw it, my Fairies were on it back at the bridge, remember?" I replied.
The Frigates eyebrows shot up, "Oh that...! That's a part of your Rigging isn't it?"
"Yeah! I have to go back! I gotta get-"
"Are you insane?!" Chitose interrupted, which was honestly starting to get annoying, "A Re-Class could destroy ALL of us!"
Lao spoke up, hands up in a calming gesture between me and Chitose as she looked at both of us, "Nono, as much as I hate to say it, the Abyssal has a point."
I pouted, "Name's Georgia, you know." Lao just rolled her eyes before continuing.
"OK look, I know it seems stupid, but nows the best time to deal with them, their fleet is separated, they have a Battleship with only two Cruisers as support, and the suns going down, so we should probably be able to creep up and take 'em out before they know what hit them!" She slammed a fist into her open palm, emphasizing the point.
Chitose opened her mouth to argue, before thinking about it and just letting out a sigh, "Oh, Sendai would love this..." We all looked at her in varying levels of confusion, she noticed and explained, "She's a Japanese Light Cruiser, has a thing for Night Battles."
"I feel like that's a euphemism for something..." I said, waggling my eyebrows to defuse some of the tense atmosphere.
Chitose, surprisingly, seemed to somewhat agree with the assessment, "I'm... honestly not sure myself, but she was known for it when she was a steel hull, so we all just try to just believe she means it literally."
Diane, who had thus-far been silently watching our little pow-wow with Anne and Hakone, spoke up.
"Miss Georgia?"
"Yes, Miss Diane?" The Ta looked a little flustered at that, I smiled, "IfI'M lady enough to be a 'Miss' you are too."
Diane's cheeks lit up in an interesting shade of light green, "I well, I suppose," she kicked at some leaves bashfully, "Regardless! Miss Georgia, may I enquire as to the progress of your drones? We may be able to get a more tangible appraisal of the situation. And perhaps launch a pre-emptive strike with your ordinance?"
"Oh yeah! That's right," I said, turning to Chitose, "Hey Chitose! Mind walking me through that third eye thing again?"
The little drone buzzed through the bushes, weaving through the branches with a slowly improving amount of skill as its operator got used to the controls, it blew past spiders' webs, its mass belaying its observable size. Eventually, just as the first stars began to shine in the sky, it was able to make out the soft orange glow of a fire ahead, darting in to investigate.
I switched out control of my drone to my operators, who took the reigns as I turned to Chitose, who knelt beside me. "Alright, I got eyes on them, they look like they're just... waiting around, I... I saw Wondertwin 1, looks like it took a shell right to its aft. Not much left..."
"There were survivors." My Captain piped up suddenly.
"What?!" Chitose startled back a little bit, while Lao frantically shooshed me, I ignored her.
"I said there w-"
"I heard you the first time! Just, how? How did you know!?" I continued, Lao , unwilling (and unable) to actually make me be silent, simply shot me a contrite expression. I blew her a raspberry as I listened to my Captain.
"We can't summon them, six members of SEAL platoon 1, the demo-girls, arent responding to our attempts in the summoning chamber. They must have survived the explosion, though from what the drones are picking up..."
"Well? Don't just pause like that, lay it on me!" I pleaded.
"They may have been captured, it's likely the enemy fleet wants to interrogate our location or destination out of them." She said ominously. I passed on what I'd been told to everyone, before exclaiming.
"Damn it! My little girls are probably getting water-boarded or, or, being forced to watch CAILLOU or something in there! Is there any way to try and contact them?" I said the last to my Captain, who seemed to shrug.
"Well, aside from radio, I don't know... I can see them on our transmitters, now that we know they aren't dead, looks like they are being kept inside the Re, they must not have confiscated their BLUFOR transponders, but their communications aren't working, we've tried."
I slammed a fist into the palm of my other hand, "Damn... wait, Chitose, your planes..." Said Seaplane Tender perked up.
"Ah, yes? What about them?"
"You can control them, right?"
"Yes...?"
"How."
Chitose looked at me like I had shrapnel sticking out of my head, again, "Like I taught you with the drones, you focus in on the individual piece of equi-"
"Yeah Yeah Yeah! I know that! But your planes have PILOTS, you aren't controlling the plane, you control them, who then controls the plane, right?" Chitose thought about it for a moment, before nodding hesitantly.
"Well, yes, I suppose so..."
I grinned, "I think I may have an Idea..."
Chitose went a little pale, a Pavlovian response to that phrase, I'm sure, "Oh, that's not ominous at all..."
"Oh shoosh you."
Inside the Re (lewd):
"Interesting weapons your friends have here," The Marine, a somehow beefy looking lass asked, holding up an empty M-4 carbine, barrel never leaving the ground as the fairy checked it over carefully, "No bolt action... how does it reload?"
The SEAL didn't respond, simply staring at the table. She was handcuffed to the chair, arms behind her back.
The marine turned the gun this way and that, before finally noticing the empty slot on the bottom, "Ahh, so it's a magazine-fed weapon, fancy, considering the size."
"..."
"Nothing to say?" The marine put the rifle down, handing it off to another girl standing next to the table, she pulled up the next object of interest, this time a small pair of lenses, night vision goggles. "And this?"
"..."
The marine looked behind the SEAL and nodded, and the fairy standing behind the restrained prisoner brought down the butt of her Springfield, cracking the SEAL between her shoulder blades and sending the fairy's big-head forward to bang off the table in front of her with a muffled grunt.
"Don't think you can get away with the silent act with me!" The marine said, "You can act like as much of a badass as you want! But we'll get you to talk," She grinned, "Or maybe not, there's six of you, after all, we can afford to lose a few of you, it'll be fun to see which one of you breaks down first-"
The SEAL seemed to jerk, as if she'd been stuck with a cattleprod, she slumped.
...
"H-Hey?" The Marine Interrogator looked over the guard who struck the prisoner, who seemed just as non-plussed "how hard you hit her?"
Before the guard could reply, the SEAL shuddered awake again, looking blearily around, blinking against the bright lights, "Ugh, well this is... different?"
The interrogator grinned, "Ah! so she finally speaks!" the SEALs gaze snapped directly to the interrogator as she continued, "well, seeing as you suddenly decided to start talking..." the fairy held up another item, a square block of C-4 "know what this might be? All of you had these in your kit, so they must be pretty useful, huh?"
The SEAL looked at the block of explosives with raised brows, before looking at the other fairy, "field rations."
"field rations?" the Marine said skeptically.
"Yeah, mashed potatoes if you wanna be specific." The SEAL replied.
the interrogator curiously tore open a corner of the block, before tearing off a chunk of the claylike explosive. She put it in her mouth, chewing twice, before spitting it out violently, making a retching sound.
"This tastes like shit!" She exclaimed, grabbing the glass of water from the table and chugging it down to wash out the taste.
The SEAL shrugged against her bonds, "It's army rations, what do you expect?"
The interrogator finished her drink, before standing up, "Blegh! Fuck this, you," The guard stood at attention, "put this one back with the others, we'll let 'em stew 'till morning, then see if we can shake some actual information out of them, keep the lights in their cell on, don't want 'em getting any 'beauty rest' now, do we?"
The marine nodded, grabbing the SEAL by the arm as she was hoisted out of the chair, the interrogator made to leave, before turning back, flinging the package of C-4 at the guard, who deftly caught it, "Throw this shit in with 'em, I don't wanna waste any actual food on these chicken-shits."
With Olivia:
"Aww man, I can't believe this!" Olivia paced back and forth in the small cell, shared by the other four girls that had been captured, "captured on our first mission?! The other girls will NEVER let us live this down!"
One of the other fairies, nursing a swollen jaw, shrugged, "'cud be wors'" she said through her swollen lips, "ab least wem' they're fed up wib us dey'll just shoop us in da 'ead or sub'ding-"
"Why don't we just, you know...?" Another said, this one nursing a bruised arm. The other looked at her, and she made a cutting motion across her neck with her thumb, "There's always that way out, right?" She finished.
"That sounds a lot like letting them win, to me." Olivia ground out after a moment, "If I'm gonna die, it's going to be with my hands around one of their scrawny little nec-" She made to choke the air, but was interrupted as the door to the brig flew open.
Lisa tumbled into the small room, kicked inside by her captors, Olivia sprang to catch her, but didn't quite make it before her squad leader's head bounced off the floor.
"See you girls in the morning!" The guard said, tossing something in after Lisa, before slamming the door shut. There was the'thunk' of a heavy lock being turned.
"You alright Lisa?" Olivia asked her partner worriedly, helping the other fairy to her feet. Lisa didn't respond immediately, turning around and picking up what had been tossed into the room, before turning back, revealing it as a block of C-4 "I come bearing gifts, girls!" She said, grinning widely.
"No way..." One of the fairy's pulled a blasting cap out of her boot, waggling it before the rest, "Lisa, how the fuck did you manage to get your charges in here!?"
Lisa grinned widely, moreso than Olivia had ever seen the fairy smile, before:
"There is no Lisa, only ZUUL!" Georgia replied.