With Georgia:

Once I was done pinning my little girls down with my mouth and giving them big 'ol smooches on their fat helmeted heads, I took them in again. My smile faded a bit, "Where's Lisa?"

The little girls looked at each other, before one, scuffing the ground (my hand) replied, "She was still in the hanger, when it, well, you know."

I looked back at said hanger, which now had a significant portion of a Battleship's hull forcibly rammed down its throat. "Oh."

The fairy shrugged, "She went out like a badass, now let us in so we can tell her how fucking insane that stunt she pulled was!"

It honestly took me longer than it should have to remember that little detail about fairies. "Oh! Right! Sure, come on in!" And so I quickly stuffed them down my shirt.

I turned back to the rest of the fleet. "So, I guess we don't need to worry about enemy aircraft anymore," I gestured at the Re's corpse, "Chitose, how well do you figure your Seaplanes can find the rest of the enemy fleet in the dark?"

The Tender grimaced. "In dense forest like this? Nearly impossible."

I grimaced in turn, "Damn," I turned inwards, "Yo Captain!"

"Wot?"

"Have my operators send my drones off to try and pick up the enemy fleet's trail again, they have thermal vision, right?"

My Captain told me to wait one, while she discussed it with the operators in question. She came back to me, "Well, yes, its gonna be a bit less effective with Abyssals, as they are pretty cold outwardly. But that just means they'll stand out against the background temperature here, not ideal, but they can be spotted."

"Good, do that and tell me when you've found them, we're going to be sat here for a while trying to patch up the girls and the last thing we need is more arseholes dropping in on us."

"Got it, we'll try and pick up their trail from the bridge."

With that done, I turned to Diane, "Alright hon, come here and let me take a good look at you."

The Fast Battleship came over clutching at her side. "Let me see it," I commanded.

Her hands slowly left her side, and I could see that her Citadel was in a bad way. The armor was actually pushed into her torso by the glancing strike, crumpling into her compartments. "We're going to need to cut that out," I said after a brief examination.

Diane's eyes widened, "I, I'm s-sure it's not that bad, is it?"

I poked the caved-in section.

Diane let out a squeak of pain as she doubled over.

"Yes, yes it is. Now lay down next to the Re. We don't have much time and I'll need your strength to turn Anne over."

The Battleship did as she was told, laying down as I reached into the Re's Tail's mouth again.

Chitose joined us then, walking over from where she'd been comforting a downed and unresponsive Anne with Lao. "What are you doing?"

I got a good grip on one of the teeth and started to winch it out by the root, slowly dragging it out inch by inch. "Getting a cutting implement," I said shortly.

Chitose shared a worried glance with Diane, "Why?"

"Take a good look at Diane." Chitose did so, wincing at the damage as I continued, "Girl needs that armor section taken out and beat back into shape." I replied, now wiggling the tooth free from its moorings, "Now, get your engineers and welders ready, would you? I don't want this to take any longer than it has to, many hands make for light work 'an all that jazz."

Chitose knelt down next to Diane, looking more closely at the damage, "This is major repair work." She said absently, gently ghosting her hands around the crumpled metal. "This would need dock-time usually, how are you going to get the armor back into shape?"

I shrugged, "Well, to be honest, I could try beating it back into shape with my fists, but metal fatigue is a thing, so it would probably be better to take some grafts off little miss snake-arse here." I patted the Re beside me, "We can just take out the armor and some sections directly behind it on her left side, and hold it in-place for long enough for our welders to tac it together, then we just feed her some components to-"

"GEORGIA!" Chitose said, reeling back, "What did I say about eating other ships!?"

I gave Chitose alook.

"Is now really the time? Are we doing this right now?" Chitose nodded, "Alright." I stood up, before walking over to Chitose, I offered her a hand to get up, and she took it, now looking a little confused.

Once she was standing, I pointed off into the trees, "If you don't want the girls to repair themselves by taking in cannibalized parts, that's FINE. But I'm going to have to ask you to step into the woods for a bit while we definitely don't do that exact thing where you cant see us."

Chitose huffed, "Look, I know its difficult, but you can't go aroundeating other people! We're better than th-"

"We. Are. Ships." I interrupted, "And while I freely accept and understand that we are people too, that does not diminish the fact that we are also god-damn boats!" I pointed at Anne, who was still laying face-down in the dirt with Hakone and Lao hovering over her, "Do you want us to abandon Anne in the middle of the woods?" I asked.

Chitose looked horrified at the mere possibility, "No!"

"Okay, you gonna carry her then?" I asked.

"I-" Chitose looked over at the 40, 000plus Tonne ship. "I'm sure if we worked together, w-we could..."

I was not impressed, tilting my head downwards to look up at her through my raised brows.

"I... I'm just afraid, okay?" Chitose sat back down, resting a hand on Diane, "I'm afraid that all this... THIS," She swept a hand over the carnage, and the tooth in my unoccupied hand, "Will change you, I'm afraid that at some point you'll do something, to someone, that I just won't be able to forgive. I just... I don't want to lose that funny little Submarine that woke me up in the middle of the night to look at the whales, that one night."

I leaned down and gave her a hug, resting my chin on her shoulder, "You won't," I replied, "If you'll remember, at the time I had to piggy-back you up to the rail to look at them in the first place!" I grinned, letting go of Chitose as I continued, "I've always been this way, its never stopped me from caring about friends, whether they be people, boats, evil boats, whatever." I put my unoccupied hand on her shoulder, "And if I can say I have ANY friends at all, you are definitely one of them."

Chitose put her hand over mine, closing her eyes for a moment as she took a deep breath, "Fine." She opened her eyes, "I'll trust you with this, Georgia. But the second we get access to proper facilities, the cannibalism stops, okay?"

I nodded, opening my mouth to reply-

"M-Miss Chitose, can you please remove your hand? Y-You're 'Ah!' leaning against my wound." Came the strained voice of Diane below us. Chitose jumped back, stammering out apologies as I barked out a laugh.

"Well, now that's dealt with... you going to help or not?" I said, gesturing at the wounded Battleship.

Chitose paused, before slowly nodding, "Alright, if it has to be done, I may as well try and make sure you don't botch the work and make her worse-off than when you started."

"Hey!"

Chitose giggled as she felt around Diane's crumpled citadel, as I checked in with the others, "Hey Hakone, Lao!"

The two ships jumped a little at being addressed, from where they'd been watching our little Soap-Opera off to the side. "Yes, Daddy?" Hakone said cheerfully.

...

...

"Please don't call me that again."

"Ok, Father."