Nagato kneaded her forehead, trying and failing to suppress the oncoming headache that she shouldn't even, technically, be able to feel. She, along with Ning Hai, and Tenryuu had been hastily rushed to the military docks, after being told Destroyer Division 6 had been involved in an...incident, along with Ning Hai's escorts.
Nagato had almost had a Cavitation fit on hearing the news, and only managed to calm down when it was made apparent they were safe. Still, she practically had to wrestle with Tenryuu to keep the Light Cruiser from rushing ahead, cursing the entire way, though at a little over 4000 tonnes displacement, she wasn't exactly able to offer much resistance to the Battleship once she had a good hold on her.
So here they stood, on the end of a wharf, the guilty Kanmusu lined up in front them, as Chinese sailors cleaned the mess and put out the small fires behind them.
"We were here for three hours. We were eating for most of it. You were gone for-" she checked the time, "thirty-five minutes," she finally looked up, "how in the-"
Nagato had to quickly look down again, a small blush on her face as she desperately tried to keep the six pairs of dreaded Teary Destroyer Eyes TM out of her line of sight.
It didn't work, she could FEEL it.
Luckily, while the Battleship floundered, Ning seemed to have a slight tolerance, as she stalked forward and grabbed both of the twin's cheeks, getting synchronous squawks out of them as she pinched, hard, "What were you two thinking?!" She shrieked at them shrilly, shaking their heads back and forth by the cheek, "I leave you two alone for half an hour and now poor Haikou is on fire?!"
"It wabbin't ow' fawlt!" Yu cried, struggling to speak past the pinched cheek, "She scawed us and we-"
"-panicked! We foght she wub a ghost!" Chien finished.
The shaking stopped, Ning letting go before leaning over, narrowing her eyes at the two, "You ran through several internal compartments, Haikou now has several grade-schooler-shaped holes in her hull, and now you're blaming her for scaring you?!" Her voice steadily climbed to a low yell, "What were you even doing inside her in the first place?!"
"No way..." Tenryuu looked at DesDiv 6, an absolutely horrified expression on her face, "You four didn't...?"
"They said it was okay," Akatsuki said bashfully, barely able to get the words out, "we were just going in to talk to the Captain, he seemed like a nice person, I, uhm..." She twiddled her fingers.
"Da, we were inside her." Hibiki's response was a bit more succinct.
Tenryuu hid her blushing face with her hands, "You're too young for that!" She gasped out, "Hell I'M too young for that!"
"W-What do you mean Tenryuu-San?" Ikazuchi asked worriedly, she shared a worried glance with her sister, Inazuma.
"What it means is that you are in a MASSIVE amount of trouble, young ladies." Nagato said, the impact of the words somewhat lessened by the fact that she kept her gaze firmly locked on the ground between them, "you four have probably caused tens-of-millions of Yen worth of damage to a Chinese Naval asset, all while we are guests here under their roof. What do you have to say for yourselves?" She put both of her hands to her hips, glaring a hole into the ground.
"Eeei!" Inazuma Eeped, popping around Hibiki to shield herself, "I'm sorry Nagato-Sama! I-I just, its, Hibiki saw a ghost, and then we ALL saw it, t-then Akatsuki started screaming, then we all started screaming and, and..." She sniffled, looking at the ground, "I'm sorry..."
Hibiki nodded, looking directly at Nagato, who still wouldn't meet their gaze, "Da, we thought Haikou was a ghost, I was the one to call attention to her, so the incident is my fault," Hibiki gulped, looked askance at the others, "i-if you need to punish anyone, punish me."
Nagato frowned, "I'm still not sure I understand the situation. You say you were scared by Haikou, how? She is right there." Nagato gestured at the slightly damaged missile Destroyer," she can't exactly creep up on you, how can you mistake a seven-thousand-tonne steel-hull as a ghost?"
"B-But she's right there!" Ikazuchi said, pointing at where an (until now unnoticed) young Chinese woman was clutching at her herself glumly, sat down nearby, even as sailors carried on past her, carrying broken equipment and tools back and forth through the nearby door.
She was sitting on the extended gangplank, and every one of the sailors streaming through was walking through her, her body seeming to puff out slightly like it was made of dense smoke where the humans contacted her. Other than that slight distortion, she was unmoved, not even a strand of her black hair blowing in the heavy winds.
"What in the..." Nagato gawked for a moment, even as the Destroyers who hadn't noticed the spirit squawked in alarm. The tall Japanese Battleship moved past the Destroyers and approached the gangplank.
The small Chinese girl, who couldn't be anything past sixteen, looked up at the approaching Battleship, tears at the corners of her eyes. One ran off down her face, and puffed into non-existence as soon as it left her chin.
Nagato stopped at a respectable distance away, so as not to block the gangway, the sailors kept streaming past, though a few were slowing down to see what the Battleship wanted, "Excuse me, may I ask your name, miss?" She said, already knowing the answer but wanting to be polite.
The girl wiped at her eyes clumsily, sniffing, before picking herself up from where she'd been sitting, "Y-You're not scared of me?" She said in rather clumsy Japanese, in a small voice that tugged at Nagato's heartstrings.
Nagato smiled, in what she hoped came across as an encouraging expression, "No, it takes more than that to frighten one of the big seven! I am Nagato, and you?"
The girl wrung her hands, "Uhm, I'm n-not entirely sure, but I think I'm this ship. Haikou, Type fifty-two-C Destroyer Haikou, uh, hull number one-seven-one."
Nagato crossed her arms, "You aren't sure?"
"I mean, yes, I guess I am, I remember everything my body's Uhm, done, but I only got this...THIS" the girl gestured at her humanoid form, "about a week ago, I was even more transparent then, I tried to talk to my Captain, talk to ANYONE, but they just ignored me..." Haikou scratched the back of her head, "I tried to touch them, like they do each other, but my human-hands pass right through them!"
She held out an arm to demonstrate, and a passing sailor carried right through the appendage, as if it wasn't even there, she turned back to Nagato, "see?" she gestured at the Destroyers, who themselves were quailing under Tenryuu's disappointed stare, "when those young girls came on board, they felt... different. On my deck, I mean, normally I can feel the humans on my deck, or in my hull no matter where they are, i-it never went away, when I became like this. But they... I couldn't feel them, at all. It made me curious, even more when I realized they were ships, like me." She looked at Nagato's Rigging, "you are too, aren't you? A ship, I mean. That's why you can see me, right?"
Nagato puffed up her (considerable) chest, "Yes! I am the Battleship Nagato! Lead ship of my class and current Vice-Admiral of the JMSDF. Until Yamato was commissioned, I served as the flagship of the Combined Fleet when I was a Steel Hull." She lost some of her luster, her proud grin fading a little, "I was also the only Japanese Battleship to survive World War Two."
Haikou looked suitably impressed, raising Nagato's spirits a little, "Wow! A Battleship? That's amazing!" But then promptly snapped Nagato's pride over her knee with her next innocent question, "...What's a Battleship?"
Ning Hai, who had finally finished chewing out her escorts, looked over then, seeing the cluster of sailors carefully watching the tall Japanese woman seemingly talk to herself, she sighed, walking over as she shooed them away in a flurry of Chinese.
"Is that...?" Ning Hai came to stand next to Nagato.
The Battleship nodded, "It would appear our respective escorts were not lying when they said they saw a 'ghost', though I would like to hear the story from PLAN Haikou's perspective before we proceed further."
Ning Hai looked past the two, to where the PLAN crewmen were starting to cut away at the girl-shaped holes in Haikou's side, before looking at the Luyang-2's spirit before her, "For once, I agree, though regardless, I doubt Yu and Chien will be getting their peach rations again for the next year."
She purposely said the last part loud enough to be overheard, and was rewarded with simultaneous groans.
Modern warships, aside from overheard history lessons, wouldn't even know what a Battleship IS. Haikou was laid down in 2001, the last time a Battleship was used was in 1991 during the Gulf war.
Talk about a generational gap.
Think this is the second-to-last chapter with these lasses for a bit, after that, well who knows? Probably back to Georgia and the funky-bunch.