Authors' Notes: It's times like these that make us wish we had paid more attention when The West Wing or Madam Secretary were on the air.
I (Warp) have a Ko-Fi now at ko-fi /2375DDLLGBXNI ! If you like this story, would you kindly help defray the cost of the art?
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CHAPTER 35
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"Task Force VALKYRIE Command Council, all present and accounted for," Tai said.
{Battlestar Galactica Original Soundtrack - Admiral And Commander}
YouTube watch?v=DZdS2KKvwVo
"Thank you, Paul," Adams said.
The deputy commander of NAVENSCIWARCOM was seated in a secure communications room before a giant multipanel screen. Displayed on it were video windows of the respective commanders or deputy commanders of the other Task Force VALKYRIE nations' shipgirl forces. Only said commanders, their chiefs of staff and communications aides picked for their discretion were present in each room. That last part was important; as the name suggested, these meetings were for them to discuss frankly and freely as decades-old comrades, free of the need to adhere to niceties or protocol before other juniors, their superiors or the politicians.
Not that any of them were too concerned with presentation given the dire news that had been unceremoniously dropped in their laps not too long ago.
"Prosperity, I'm sorry about Takanami," RADM Russell "Stringer" Passover of the RAN said contritely before anyone else could get a word in. "She might have been saved if Chuck's sheilas had been faster."
"No." Kaishō Masaki "Prosperity" Kamiki shook his head in response to his Australian counterpart's condolences. "There was a conviction in her that she wouldn't have been. Don't blame your subordinates. I was the one who shouldn't have let it go ahead." There was a hollowness to his voice and his accent was thicker than usual.
A flag officer normally did not shed tears over a single sailor three levels down the chain of command, or even a single ship, but shipgirls changed the equation. The morale and strategic implications notwithstanding, the casualty dying a bloody death while looking like a teenage girl young enough to be any of their daughters tended to do that.
"Settler, please offer General Liang my condolences on the loss of her aircrew," Kamiki went on to say.
"Thank you. I shall," Shao said. "Stringer, please give Herc and his shipgirls thanks on her behalf for extracting Lieutenant Colonel Huang."
"Sure thing, mate."
Adams waited a bit longer for any more preamble to be given voice to, then spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for gathering on such short notice. Hippolyta apologises for her inability to attend. Have you had a chance to skim through the preliminary reports?"
There was a susurrus of affirmative noises.
"The abyssals actually having Enlightened operatives was a hard six I was hoping to not come up snake eyes on," Adams said reluctantly. "This first loss of a shipgirl is tragic, but we are not equipped to help J-DesRon Two and Hummer's staff process their grief. We are not psychiatrists. Neither are we here to assign blame or brainstorm the details of immediately workable solutions. We have analysis, doctrine and tactics departments who will put together the full picture and work on that, and it is only after they have examined the problem in depth that we can chart an appropriate strategic course. To set out some markers so that they will head in the right direction, though, we shall briefly go through the main points of the preliminary report; raise your concerns as they come up. Krampus, if you please?"
"Krampus, wait one," RADM Noel "Kidult" Smith of the Royal Navy suddenly said.
"Kidult?" Adams's surprise was, in this venue, undisguised.
"Why can't we help the bereaved process their grief? Isn't that what the whole Mind thing is about?"
There was silent staring for a few moments before the others broke out in incredulous tutting.
"What? What did I say wrong?" Smith's confusion was on full display.
"Kidult, how much of the briefings and reports do you actually pay attention to?" Contre-amiral Mathilde Laure "Trilby" Tons of the Marine Nationale asked.
"What's that got to do with this, Trilby?" Smith asked defensively.
"Everything," Tons said with a signature hint of Gaulish superiority in her voice. "The mind is incredibly complex. Every advance in neurology and psychology only creates further questions about how consciousness and the mind really works, and that was back when we only had mundane techniques to work with. All the more so now that the old materialists have been debunked. Forcibly override an abyssal's controls long enough for it to gun down its comrades? Simple enough in its inelegance it can be done in close-quarters combat. Making an abyssal misread IFF transponders so it sees its comrades as enemies and vice versa, so it willingly turns on its own without micromanagement? More complicated, but still very achievable. Setting someone's mind right without accidentally breaking or changing something that shouldn't be? Difficult." There was a snooty understatement in the way the lone word was delivered. "The teething problems your Collingwood is having with their hypercram experiments should've told you that. The mind resists and tries to reassert itself even if the original state was suboptimal, and all the more so with Enlightened operatives. Trying to make someone happy from without is a clumsy bandage at best, faster to fail and more likely to cause unwanted changes than something more careful and delicate. Husk, Stringer, you'd know all about that after what happened to her, won't you?"
The disturbed looks the two men shared said enough.
"I stand guided," Smith said softly in defeat.
"Krampus, please carry on," Adams said.
"Yes, Husk. New abyssal units demonstrate capital-grade durability and firepower despite being all subcapital types," Konteradmiral Klaus "Krampus" Hartmann of the Deutsche Marine said. "All capable of Stepping. Destroyer-types capable of Artillery Spotting. Cruiser-types excepting the unique one project a visible forcefield made of hexagons. All capable of resisting or nullifying Enlightened Science procedures." He paused briefly. "Unique heavy cruiser-type abyssal claims to be USS Northampton (CA-26). Abyssals revealed to self-designate as 'Peacekeepers'."
"'Peacekeepers'? What a load of crock," Shao said scathingly, thinking of the destruction they had crudely but catastrophically carved deep into his nation.
"Abyssal claiming to be Northampton wields saber demonstrating effects consistent with fairy-forged weapon or primium, which abyssals designate 'thaumium'. Demonstrates use of Correspondence and Spirit or Dimensional Science Spheres."
"Krampus, let me interrupt now," Tons said. "Do we know if all of them are Enlightened operatives, or merely Extraordinary?"
"Why's it matter, Trilby?" Schout-bij-Nacht Piet "Wildcard" van Doorn of the Koninklijke Marine asked. "Whichever the case, the kankerlijers still all need to die for what they did to Den Helder and Amsterdam."
"Why it matters," Tons said with annoyance that unintentionally thickened her accent, "is that it affects our planning. Leaving the details to the specialists or non, you prepare for a foe with a limited number of known capabilities, no matter how exotic, differently from a foe with a vaguely-defined toolbox. With the former, once you know what it can do and how to counter, the countermeasure will work until a new block, flight or mark comes out. You can't with the latter. Even with the current fabricators and reactors, we don't have the resources to be equipped for every contingency, and so we need to prioritise. You'd know about that, wouldn't you, Domra?"
"Da," Zeleska said in response to being called by her tac name. The RRC's commander frowned through a burnscar on her face that she had refused offers to beautify. She knew all too well about fighting this war on too little.
"Is there really a difference, though?" van Doorn asked. "Just because Enlightened operatives can do anything within the 13 Practices that their paradigms and Spheres allow doesn't mean they actually will. You know the shipgirls invariably settle on favourites; should we waste effort expecting abyssals to do otherwise?"
"Oh, and how do you know that what was demonstrated by the abyssal claiming to be Northampton truly was everything in its favourites list?" Tons was unconvinced. "It could just have considered what it was using to be adequate for fighting CQC specialists."
"Enough, both of you," Zeleska said, interrupting sharply. "Just because recent events have been distressing is no excuse to squabble like children."
Tons and van Doorn wisely decided not to try the older woman's patience.
"Thank you, Domra," Adams said. "Trilby's initial question is valid, however. Krampus, I remember the reports didn't say anything about this?"
"Ja," Hartmann said. "OEDAR remains too imprecise to clearly track individual procedures and their enactors. Shipgirl sensor logs are still being compiled and analysed and not available yet."
"Shame," Tons said.
"The main problem in battling these new abyssal units looks to be the Stepping," Adams said. "Any preliminary thoughts?"
"Unless Tomas or the other whizkids can invent a microwarpdrive or something that fits on a missile, I don't see how we can directly counteract Stepping," Tons said.
"MWD?" van Doorn's face gained a vulpine smirk. "Never took you for a capsuleer."
Tons scowled. "Non, but Francois is. I don't understand why. Under the pretty spaceship and laser disco rave façade it's too many spreadsheets, just too much like work to want to go home to."
van Doorn snorted. "Anyway, I understand there's enough difficulty with those gate things, and those are fixed installations that don't need to be hardened to survive pulling… how many Gs can a P-800 or YJ-12 pull?" He shrugged. "Don't bother answering that, Domra, Settler. It doesn't matter. Much more than anything stationary needs to worry about. It's not like they need to withstand a direct meteor strike. Then there's the cost issues with making missiles even more expensive and resource-demanding."
"Next choice then. Disrupt Stepping."
"How?" van Doorn asked doubtingly, allowing himself the luxury of a little scoff in this familiar setting. "You read al-Hallaq's reports, ja? Stepping is somehow an entirely material function, not something governed by the supernal. The shipgirls he had as test subjects could Step through a hermetically-sealed sheet of primium the same as any other obstruction even though it could resist their procedures."
"Which is why we have the specialists to worry about the details."
"Easy to say, Trilby."
"Third choice: Saturate the area so that even when an abyssal Steps, it has nowhere to go."
"What did you say about limits on the fabricators?" van Doorn asked. "Even if you used Belougas, would something rated for tanks be enough to penetrate a proper warship?"
Tons silently glared for a few moments, then switched tack. "While considering appropriate offensive measures against this new threat, what about defensive measures?"
"Preliminary reports suggest the alleged Northampton's main striking power came from its use of Correspondence and DSci procedures that can't be defended against with conventional armour," Hartmann said.
"More reason to advance our ability to apply primium applique to our vehicles."
"You've a lot of faith in something we can't even reliably mass produce, Trilby," van Doorn said. "Prosperity, can't you get that professor what's-his-name - Shirakawa? - to turn HIT's knowledge towards a phase disruptor?"
Kamiki was startled at suddenly being drawn into the byplay, but recovered quickly. "Eh? Ah, hai. I will have my staff do that."
"A disruptor for phase space effects? Easy to say, Wildcard," Tons said.
van Doorn let out a pained chuckle in acknowledgement of Tons daring to use his own words against him. "We'll all get our exotics researchers to do their parts. Can't let anyone have all the fun."
"In the meantime, set missiles to default to side rather than top attack."
"Setting the missiles to side attack? That's daft talk, Trilby," Smith said, having regained his confidence as he joined van Doorn in doubt. "They're just going to crash right into belt armour."
"Better than getting wasted entirely in the water," Tons replied. "Some damage is better than none, and at least this way a missile can come back for a second try if evaded."
"For all the good that might do considering the kind of protection even the… what are we calling the lesser ones?" van Doorn asked. "Þursar? Demons? Princesses?"
"Do we have any consensus yet?" Adams asked.
The other admirals exchanged looks with each other and their chiefs of staff, then shook their heads.
"I think we are not answering the real question," Zeleska said before anyone else could speak, and all eyes turned to her, confused. "Do we need to assume that every subsequent distress signal apparently from a new Manifestation in hostile waters is a trap, now that the abyssals have shown they can use it against us?"
The mood in the conference call, already low, turned even more sour at this.
"Prosperity, you said you shouldn't have authorised the mission," Zeleska continued bluntly.
"Ha-yes."
"Yet I am given to understand that there were unanimous baneful results to not doing so."
"Yes?"
"Have you considered why?"
Kamiki blinked, clearly put on the spot, and his jaw twitched as he tried to put together what was already known. "That rather than wasting time and resources on a…" his face darkened and twisted with self-loathing in a way he would never have permitted himself to in any other public venue, even though he knew he was speaking truth, "strategically minor force like J-DesRon Two, the alleged Northampton would have gone straight for either Cairns or Brisbane, and there would have been no warning until it was too late."
"Can they do that?" Smith asked disbelievingly.
"You know that OEDAR currently cannot detect a shipgirl with rigging off," Tons said. "Normal abyssals never bothered with this sort of subterfuge before, but we've just learnt Jötnar can indeed set elaborate traps. One could lie in wait for a vessel, hijack it to get close to the target, and only go loud once about to begin its attack. The coverage of the alleged Northampton's… ultimate… was limited, but it could have been doing a fast charge before J-DesRon Two could recover. Whether the move can scale to the abyssal's known maximum range, we don't know, but the results would be catastrophic if it could."
A shudder went through all the gathered admirals. Even without the exotic effects, a 500-kilometer radius sphere of conventional heat and kinetic energy - a weapon to surpass the Tsar Bomba, and no one was 100% sure 500 kilometers was actually the abyssal's maximum range - was the stuff of nightmares. With them… Passover looked visibly ill at the thought.
"What makes you think the abyssals can plan that far ahead?"
"Are you going to risk assuming they can't?"
Smith looked like he had bit into a surprise lemon. "No, I can't-" he began to say, before his eyes lit with a new hope he grasped desperately for. "Just because it can hit that far away doesn't mean it actually knows what it's aiming at, right? Right?"
"Not necessarily." Tons shook her head. "The Jötunn didn't touch all of them, did it, Krampus?"
"Nein," Hartmann said. "It touched only one missile before it cut down both Chinese bombers, and only touched three the second time before it attempted the destruction of all of No. 75 Squadron."
"Merci. The incongruence of numbers suggests that touching the missiles to… form a sympathetic link with their origins… appears to be a crutch rather than a real requirement."
"Does it?" van Doorn asked. "It could be operating on a different logic than one-to-one matching between the ordnance released and the launching platform."
Tons shook her head crossly. "How do you propose to test what that logic is? Preferably without getting anyone else killed in the process?"
Van Doorn was unfazed. "Just because we don't know what's in use is no reason to give the abyssal claiming to be Northampton too much credit. First, this is exactly the sort of detail we have subordinates to work on for. Second, it may have gotten the best of us this time, just like the old Axis initially did, but there's no reason to think it's any more unstoppable than they were." He grinned. "No offence to present company intended."
"None taken," Hartmann, Kamiki and the hitherto-silent Italian CO said.
"The next item would be the Jötunn's extraction method," Adams said.
"It spoke as though it expected to not sink from the damage it had incurred, but rather return to action afterwards," Tons said. "That pillar, if it was a recovery system, was ridiculously visible compared to however the abyssals normally insert troops, given our ongoing inability to detect how they're doing so."
"It's clearly for emergency extraction where subtlety isn't important," van Doorn said. "We'll need to find a way of preventing it, or else the Jötnar will just keep coming back. All in agreement that we need to raise the priority of research into accessing the supernal realm?"
There was no objection.
A frown of contemplation formed on Adams's face. "Perhaps BERND can… I vaguely recall the Iowas reported on some crater with a supernal structure in it." Tai made a note. "Prosperity, I believe Professor Watase was asking something of JEXRA?"
"Eh? Watase-hakase?" Kamiki's eyes hooded in thought. "Ah, hai. The… Agartha? Finis Terra? I'll have my staff speak with JEXRA about it."
"Please do. The rest of you, please have your respective exotic research agencies adjust the allocation of resources appropriately. Faeries abducting across the hedge, Rip van Winkle, Ys, anything that concerns inexplicable disappearances and lost lands; leave no stone unturned. I know it has been said before, but this cannot be overstated: The faster we determine how to take the fight to the abyssals, the fewer casualties they'll get to inflict on our peoples."
A stream of affirmations followed from the other admirals.
"Our next concern?"
"Takanami's last words asked for the alleged Northampton's sword to be retrieved," Tons said. "Has anything happened on that end?"
"Krampus, I'll take that," Passover cut in to say, looking a little less green now.
"Please do."
"Otway managed to locate the Jötunn's sword. The last I was told before the meeting began, another submersible, this one entirely mundane, is currently retrieving it. It will be handled exclusively with waldos, stored in the primium artefact containment device and only removed once in a Faraday-caged, primium-lined facility."
"A sensible precaution," Tons said. "There may not have been any gamma radiation or other stray emissions detected from the Jötunn, but we can never be too careful with unknown enemy equipment."
"Speaking of Takanami," Hartmann said, "there was a last-minute addition from one of the historical specialists: Composition of attackers matches that of Wright's Task Force 67 during the Battle of Tassafaronga 72 years to the day ago. ORBAT of J-DesRon Two was also near-identical to Tanaka's force in the same."
While that had already been in the reports the gathered admirals had gone through, hearing it being said aloud conferred a certain gravity that had most of them exchanging winces and nervous stares.
"Is that really a coincidence?" Smith asked worriedly. "We know the shipgirls have the ability not just to make hyperstatistical projections, but to outright alter them. How do we know everything that has happened already isn't itself orchestrated by the abyssals?"
Zeleska's expression hardened as she met his eyes squarely. "Kidult, there is appropriately-exercised caution in the face of an enemy that has just revealed new capabilities and may have even more in reserve, and then there is this." Her tone turned acidic even as her eyes shone - not literally the way a shipgirl or abyssal's might, of course - with the intensity of one following in her grandfather's footsteps to repel genocidal invaders. "If you really believe the abyssals have already rewritten the stars to say victory was made to be theirs, if you truly think destiny is for the world to be theirs, if fighting on is hopeless after all, then why even bother resisting? Let your grandparents know you're going to allow what the painter started to be finished on your watch, then throw down your arms and let your people die."
Smith was faster to blink, and he looked away sharply, disgusted with himself. "Sorry," he said, all too conscious of how inadequate the apology was.
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{Katana Zero Original Soundtrack - Meat Grinder}
YouTube watch?v=AgFJkWIamTY
"Thanks for coming down to speak with me on such short notice, Madam Shirokaze." Mia Crow, executive assistant director of BERND's Enlightened Science Branch, smiled brightly in welcome. The younger, taller woman had amber eyes and longer wavy blonde hair in a hime cut, and the suit she wore fell jauntily just short enough of perfectly sharp that the effect had to be deliberate. "Please sit."
Ichiyo carefully lowered herself into the offered chair and nodded respectfully back. "Thank you, Director Crow," she replied.
"Do you want anything to eat or drink first?" Crow gestured cheerily to the pantry where her personal assistant was waiting.
"I shall have the usual." This was not the first time Ichiyo had been asked to speak with Crow, and the aide prepared and presented their drinks.
Crow took a sip before nodding appreciatively. "Excellent work, Tim. I'll tell you when we're done."
"Yes, Ma'am." The aide promptly demurred to his table.
Crow waited for Ichiyo to finish a sip of her own and put down the cup before speaking again. "You've read the latest briefs, Ma'am?"
"Yes, I have." Ichiyo noticed, beyond the outwardly obvious way the other woman's usual jauntiness was tempered by the respect due someone who was both a senior specialist with Enlightenment and family to multiple Enlightened operatives, a subtle brittleness to the smile. "A terrible business."
Yoshimichi had once thought she'd shrugged off Nijimi's death. The allegation had angered her back then, been one of the things expanding the wedge between them, even though she knew now that he hadn't been firing on all cylinders when he'd had the misperception. She had presided over most of the funerals in Imamura and felt every loss over the decades.
Somehow, despite Takanami's remoteness from her, it was the same here.
"Captain Tai has put in a request on behalf of Admiral Adams and NAVENSCIWARCOM. They ask if you would be willing to let a team investigate your bloodline's sacred crater."
Ichiyo involuntarily took a sharp breath in her surprise. Somewhere in the back of her head, she recognised that she ought to have seen this coming, given the reports her half-granddaughters had filed. She was quick to recover, though, and leaned forward to stare at Crow over tented fingers. "Director Crow, I do not believe the gravity of such a request is properly appreciated."
Crow suppressed a shudder. She'd never met Ayaka Godai in person before, but from what she'd heard, the Natural Born was a mild sort. A very un-battleshipish mild sort. The intensity with which the grandmother was regarding her, though, reminded her uncomfortably of recently-returned Summoned/Manifested who had yet to unlearn the instinct to see everything as a potential target. "What do you mean, Madam Shirokaze?"
"You speak of our sacred crater. I have heard good things of your work ethic. I little doubt you read the reports that the assistant directors and the rest of your subordinates compile from our work. You may even have read our deliverables firsthand in preparation. Nevertheless, I do not believe Admiral Adams truly understands what he is asking for."
Crow shot her a quizzical look.
"It is true that Imamura's original records with the details of and reasons for our ways were lost in the Great Fire of Mayugoro. It is also true that what reconstructions from oral history had been made afterward were also lost when Fafnir's fragment hit. That said, even before abyssal and shipgirl alike revived the conscious use of magic, there was already over a thousand years of Shirokaze history listening to the voices of threads material and mystical. It was this adherence to musubi that brought us so far after the Schism in search of this new goshintai where mortal wisdom would have had us settle for a shorter, less hazardous voyage to somewhere more convenient. That brings me to my next point:
"The kamisama are not, for want of a better term, gods created by human hands or minds. They are not human, even if some of them started that way. They do not think the way we do. One might commune with them, pray to them, seek their favour, but they have rules that they will not countenance the violation of, and they do not care if the transgression was done ignorantly or innocently. They will have order, and the red lines they lay down cannot be bargained with or reasoned with. It is not a punishment born of anger or frustration at defiance, unlike a mortal authority figure. It merely is."
"A rule of nature, then, Ma'am?" The turn of phrase came out less lightly than Crow had hoped.
Ichiyo let out a harsh bark that could only charitably be called laughter. "You could say that. Something as certain as gravity. This request is not something I can lightly accede to, not when I have seen for myself the price of transgression." Ichiyo's expression slowly softened into one of mixed admiration and sadness. "You too would, from your experiences, know that very well."
Crow couldn't entirely stop herself from flinching at the reminder, even as vague as it was. She knew rationally that Ichiyo had the clearance needed to read up on her history and almost certainly had done so in preparation for this meeting, but there was something about the old woman giving voice to it that conferred a dread quality. "Yes, Ma'am, I do," she said cautiously.
"Good. Were it anyone else, my no would have been automatic, but having done the appropriate review, I am of the opinion that you and Assistant Directors Faden and Joyce will approach this with the care and caution it deserves." Ichiyo took a deep breath, then sighed; the action was a stark reminder to Crow of the other woman's true age. "Was it only 30 years ago that I would have balked at letting anyone be party to our ways who wasn't either of the bloodline or joined by marriage from within Imamura?"
Crow helpfully refrained from mentioning that 30 years was more than half a lifetime ago for herself.
Ichiyo shook her head roughly. "I have come to accept that the shrine will not last without fresh blood from outside; what is another compromise come the apocalypse?" She bowed her head, fighting the urge to massage her temples. "I will have to make my peace with Shitori no Kami and the ancestors for this."
Crow waited in patient silence, clamping down on the urge to lighten the mood with a helpful quip.
Ichiyo's head came back up to look at her, eyes intent once more. "I will allow this, but I have conditions."
"You need the agents involved to make the appropriate offerings?"
"Correct. An excellent deduction, Director." Ichiyo nodded approvingly. "Those who wish to enter the kakuriyo must make the proper obeisances to Shitori no Kami, or else. Any instructions I give to that end will need to be followed to the letter with the same care as given to OSHA compliance. This is of dire importance for the safety of the agents involved." Her already intent gaze sharpened further. "My eldest granddaughter and grandson-in-law have suffered enough. I do not know yet what most important thing will be demanded as the price for any who fail to comply, but if that should come to pass, it will not be because I failed to adequately teach them."
"That can be arranged."
"Furthermore, I will only take volunteers. Shinto does not have a prohibition on practising another faith alongside it, but many other religions do. I am not inconsiderate. Whatever my opinions on other beliefs, I do not want any agents to have to compromise on their existing faith or lack thereof because they are ordered to participate. Sacrifice might be demanded of us, but that is all the more reason not to do it carelessly and unnecessarily. I need people who can wholeheartedly and sincerely commit, not someone made to give to his country."
===[===]===
The first sign the over-strength squadron of light shipgirls patrolling off the east coast of Hokkaido had of anything wrong was the shield that flew in and took a head off.
{Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number Original Soundtrack feat. Perturbator - Sexualizer}
YouTube watch?v=IaE20aXxCz4
"Looks like you couldn't get ahead in life!" An entirely too cheerful voice shouted.
The shield abruptly stopped after passing through and out the other side of the defenders' formation, snatched out of the air by the Jötunn with the Roman attire.
On the side of the formation from which the shield had come, the Jötunn that was the sister to Northampton with blue-and-patched eyes bounced giddily on her feet, grinning toothily. "Yahoo! Did you miss me, Hokkaido?"
"Kishu-"
"No," the Romanesque abyssal leader said with a slight shake of her head, suddenly next to the squadron leader trying to call in the enemy contact, a flagpole sticking through the victim's chest. The shield applied directly to the head for massive damage simultaneously left the victim too dazed to Overclock in time and provided the leverage needed to extricate the weapon.
The startled shipgirls looked between their two assailants, angry yet scared by how two of their number had already been eliminated before anyone had known they were under attack.
"Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?" The Romanesque abyssal asked.
The one with the eyepatch helpfully mimed seppuku.
The shipgirls only gripped their weapons more tightly, trying to look determined. The sweat beading their brows and trembling hands put the lie to that.
"Sure you don't wanna?" The eyepatched abyssal asked cheerily. "We've 27 stars between us, enough to sink anything that moves!"
Screaming, the nearer shipgirls to the eyepatched abyssal jumped into close-quarters combat with her. One slashed at her with a sword.
The abyssal leader caught the blade in her teeth, bending backward like in a particularly lethal game of limbo, and kicked a leg up and out, catching her attacker on the head. The shipgirl lost her grip on the weapon, seeing stars and spitting sanguis from the kick, but her woes were not over yet; the abyssal's aura flared, Primal power overriding the safeties on the falling sword, and she palm-struck it into its owner's gut. Even as the shipgirl fell backwards, the abyssal twisted the blade and disemboweled her. "That's got to be a terrible tummy ache!"
Two more shipgirls charged the Jötunn from opposite directions, firing as they approached.
The abyssal literally danced around the incoming shells, and when they got into CLOSE RANGE, she ducked one of the shipgirls' punches, and a whirling elbow strike sent the would-be puncher careening into the fist of the other. A well-placed kick caused the unfortunate victim to spasm while falling and cunt punt the puncher who had managed to connect.
"Hey! Didn't anyone teach you about blue-on-blue?" The eyepatched abyssal asked, admonishing.
As the puncher shrieked in agony, the abyssal whirled into another elbow strike, then made a twisting leap onto the shoulders. Her legs gripped the shipgirl's head and she spinned, spinned, and spinned some more, faster and faster like some grotesque parody of a helicopter, until the head came off with a pop.
"Pop goes the weasel!"
The shipgirl who had been punched began to stir groggily, and was suddenly aware that the eyepatched abyssal was behind her, patting her down.
"This yours?"
The shipgirl, startled by the sight of one of her torpedoes in the Jötunn's hand, tried to raise a still-intact turret to fire.
The abyssal slapped her arm away and slugged her in the head, and as she fell to her knees, rammed the torpedo into her mouth and kicked. The detonating warhead blew her head off.
"Annnddddd that's a mindblowing finale! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!" The abyssal bowed and scraped to an imaginary audience.
Whether it was augury, clairvoyance, hyperstatistical projection or oracle hacks, all forms of predicting the future had a common problem: None of it was any good if you couldn't act on what you learnt. The Roman-attired Jötunn was proving this all too clearly.
No shipgirl could be called slow. Even an average one could go a few rounds of tag against a good prizefighter or get a passing score on a special forces training course, and the lumbering old battleships were not much more ponderous.
None of those present were fast enough.
Radar-guided fire control didn't make any difference if the target just wasn't where it was expected to be, and torpedoes fared no better. Debuffs, disables, environment and metric-altering effects, nothing seemed to stick to or could pin down the abyssal, and she retaliated with punches and kicks that sent victims flying, blows and lances from the flagpole, and the shield being thrown such that it bounced around like the unholy offspring of a billiard ball and boomerang.
All too soon, there was one last shipgirl left standing. Before she could make even a futile attack, the Jötunn charged into her with an upward shield strike that sent her airborne. When she came down, she was greeted by a flurry of punches and kicks before the abyssal threw her into the air again, leapt up to grab her in midair, and brought her crashing down to an explosive end.
Now there were no more standing shipgirls.
"Hey, Mau Mau, you did leave a survivor as Lolpenn told us to, didn't you?"
"Mau Mau" slowly and silently turned to stare at her comrade.
"What?"
Shaking with annoyance, the Romanesque abyssal stalked between the shipgirls, which were glowing and breaking apart into cherry blossom petals. "This one?" She finally managed to locate one that wasn't dissolving.
The eyepatch-wearing abyssal Stepped to the battered body in question and squatted beside it. "Mau Mau, that's an exhuman." She pointed at the now-dissipating blue and pink glow where there should have been rigging. A few test tickles failed to elicit any response. She next drew her sword and slid the blade into its gut, then grinned and guarded. The shipgirl would surely spring to life with an attack she could gallantly counter, and then apprehend the now-revived survivor afterwards!
Any second now.
Any second.
Any second...
When no such thing occurred, the shoulders of the eyepatched Jötunn drooped in disappointment. "Aw man, I think we really sank them a-hey, wait." A twitch had caught her eye. "Mau Mau, that one's still afloat!"
The Romanesque abyssal sped over to the survivor her comrade had pointed out, who while beaten and bloody was indeed not dissolving. She grabbed the shipgirl by the blouse and pulled her upright. "Listen only to the sound of my voice." The roughness of her handling was a sharp contrast to the gentle malice of her tone.
The shipgirl groaned weakly and painfully, unfocused eyes making a pathetic attempt to look at her captor, but offered no resistance.
"English, fatherfucker. Do you speak it?"
"Ha-yes."
"Good. Pass a message to the speed slut. I'm throwing down the gauntlet." The abyssal with the eyepatch helpfully threw one at them. "Tell her. She can lie with as many men as she thinks she needs to gain power. It won't be enough. I'll sink Tashkent, the Le Fantasques and the Capitani Romanis, and then I'll be back to finish the job. Whoever comes, whoever it is, I'll sink them. I'll sink them all."
===[===]===
Authors' Notes: Mia Crow also courtesy of Salbazier from SpaceBattles. Thank you for your assistance with her segment. Something like the scene between her and Ichiyo was in the cards for a while yet, but our thanks nevertheless to Trainvoi from SpaceBattles for the reminder.
