Note: There's no time to explain why there's no time to explain, but. Wolf Ears, or no Wolf Ears? That's all~
Where the Sirens Sing 1.6 'Shakedown Cruise'
The shriek of claws against metal echoed throughout the isolation vaults, giving Medusa pause for a moment, but the small girl turned away and simply walked back to examination room 4. As she neared the transparent door, the bound form on the bed recognized her and began to scream, and Medusa idly closed said door behind her. The twisted, corrupted form of a siren-infested woman screamed for mercy, and she desperately fought against bonds even as Medusa's machinelike tendrils, her rigging, formed around her, and the repair ship spoke in a whisper that carried through the iso vaults, and made all who heard it shiver.
"Do not worry~ Everything will be alright soon~"
The victim's screams reached a new crescendo as a bone saw began to whirr, and then cut off with wet sounding squelches a moment later. The slow spreading pool of blood swirled once around the drain on the floor, and a moment later, considerably more blood-spattered Medusa as she exited the exam room.
The claw screeching against the metal walls had been Roon transforming partially into her rigging, and they carved a minuscule scratch into the surface as the woman leaped backward, startled thoroughly by the sudden outburst of mechanical, deep-voiced corruption that coursed through the armored carrier's voice as she spoke. Her voice, hesitant and with a scarce flutter in her chest, answered the near scream of Admiral Black with a calm and collected seeming question.
"Impossible. Supercarriers have never been resurrected as shipgirls, they have never seen combat outside of the dawning days of the Siren War. There are none left. How could you have come back from beyond death?"
Roon's hackles were raised, her claws unconsciously freezing up, Twilight had alighted near her and was forming around her waist, this had to be a siren trick, a good one, but it was a trick regardless!
It was Admiral Black who stopped any hostilities before they could begin, resting a hand on Roon's shoulder as the older woman stepped forwards and stared up and down at this… "Blue Ridge 2"
The woman seemed abjectly nervous as Black sized her up, she was tall, muscular, toned, scarred, experienced perhaps? Her rigging brocaded her flanks in a flight deck like the decks she'd seen on Enterprise, Independence and so many others, but her rigging also bore the shape of weapons thought to be too costly to mass produce, a battery of what could only be large caliber railguns under and to the side of the flight deck. Railguns and what were clearly missile cells.
"You claim to be a supercarrier, what are you armed with? What is your commanding officer? Who are you? We know of no "Yorha" as you claim to be from."
Blue Ridge struggled to answer, and the human in front of her frowned at her, she hoped she hadn't failed, she tapped her fingers against her sides but decided that if she was to answer as ordered, she should simply state the answers to the first question.
"As standard, I am outfitted with launch and care facilities for one hundred HO-type flight vessels and 90 conventional 8th-generation jet fighters. I am additionally equipped with standard defensive armaments consisting of one dozen point defense close-in weapons systems, 7 VLS cells carrying standard outfits of 40 missiles per block, and a battery of 18 standard issue 46 CM rail rifles mounted in turrets across my flanks."
Black had steepled her hands together, sitting down at the small table in the iso vault and facing the supercarrier as she rattled off a truly impressive array of armaments. The woman's face had betrayed nothing, but Black was concerned, yes, it seemed that she was incredibly powerful, but that was not a measure of trust, that was simply a judgment, and they could not be sure she was uninfected by some siren logic plague. Especially given her glitchy manner of speaking and well whatever the hell was wrong with her lower body.
Blue Ridge 2, for her part, had lapsed into silence and was internally running diagnostic checks through her systems, all her normal systems were functioning just fine, and many were in fact, better than fine. It appeared that her rail battery had been enhanced, it's cooling much, much stronger now, much more beneficial to her reactors. Some esoteric upgrades seemed to have been welded to her lower functions, stronger armor plating, a form of electromagnetic shielding, and many modifications that simply purred an "Access restricted" across her field of view when she attempted to consult them. The frown that spread across her face must have contributed to Black and Roon immediately speaking to her, the human woman with the regal bearing choosing to speak first.
"What is Yorha?"
The question she had been dreading, an answer to this could mean so much more, this could mean the end of everything. But… she had to give it a shot, at least.
"Yorha is the human defense force, made up of androids and replicants and devoted to seeing Earth reclaimed from the machine's red tide. We are in your service and seek to end this conflict for you makers."
The woman's tone was serious, brooking no arguments, and when Admiral Black, as she called herself rose from behind the table she had sat at, she did so with a weariness that Blue Ridge 2 could feel with every fiber of her body. A war-weary, tired expression and feeling suffused the woman, and when she looked back, her gaze was haunted.
"The 'red tide' you say…?"
The Admiral's horrified tone spoke deeply of the sudden, oppressive exhaustion that suffused her entire being. It was as if she had aged decades from the simple question, and the lines on her face hardened. Worried, the massive Battlecarrier spoke to assuage the Human's worries.
"Ah, I am more than capable of slaughtering any machine that comes my way, you need not fear Admiral. I will return to active service as soon as I am able!"
Admiral Black hesitated, eyes flashing with... guilt? For whatever reason, Blue Ridge's (rather limited) database on human body language confirmed it, as the woman stood and turned to the door. Pausing, Black sighed.
"...Don't push yourself, Blue Ridge Two. We'll run some tests and you can hopefully prove yourself soon enough."
The woman exited a moment later, the door shutting behind her.
A supercarrier.
A god damned supercarrier resurrected as a shipgirl- and possibly a "Commie hater" if the comment on the "Red Tide" could be taken at face value. That might cause political issues in the already frosty relationship between Azur Lane and the independent Northern Parliament...
Black could scarcely breathe, she was seated at the desk near the vault their guest and dare she hoped, ally, resided within. Roon had not passed out, but was spooked deeply by the machinelike inflection in the voice of their guest and had manifested claws that had put the cruiser on edge, now, Roon was doing the best impersonation of a guilt-ridden child that Black had ever seen, the expressions on her face one of shame as she fiddled idly with a button on her coat. It was a testament to Black's character that the surprisingly cute expression on the face of the Ironblood ship didn't get a caring rise out of her. Instead, it only added to the exhaustion the woman felt, she had been hopeful, once, but that had long since faded with endless war surrounding her. Now she just wondered how many of the women who walked the halls were going to end up MIA or KIA.
"What are your thoughts on this, could she be useful to us?"
The Admiral, for a moment, remarked on the sheer ice in her tone as she asked Roon, her face set in stone and her eyes mere chips of glacial cold in a face drawn and tired.
"She seems wholeheartedly, zealously devoted to whatever side the humans are on. It would be foolhardy to deny her sheer combat potential but beyond that? I do not trust her, we as a nation do not trust easily, and her very existence threatens to shake and twist the balance of much of the current war effort. I would see her torn apart so we can learn everything possible from her rigging."
Black made a face, communicating her disgust to Roon, who shrugged and evenly responded to the woman.
"You asked my opinion, I gave it. Human beings are universally unreliable, no matter how enhanced they may turn out to be. What if she decides to simply, refuse to fight? For whatever reason? What will you do then? Additionally, I can help but see no reason to hold her out of sorties, the Sirens infested the area we sortied to find. They have likely either captured or obtained some of her technology already. We may need her assistance for the battles ahead, and to be frank, I suspect the moment word of her existence leaks to the outside world, you will be facing inquiries by other nations."
Black's groan filled the halls of the medical ward, and Medusa, happily humming as she cleaned a bone saw, tilted her head curiously at the sound of human despair before she skipped out of the isolation ward. Roon moved out of the office soon after, the frame of the Germanic Heavy Cruiser turned to leave, took a single, faltering step, then turned back around and walked back to the isolation vaults.
Thousands of miles away, deep under the ocean, the hair on the back of Admiral Jessica Newman's neck stood up, and she idly spoke to the white-haired carrier and Russian vessel beside her.
"I have a distinct feeling someone is dancing on my grave. Curious."
The look that the two of them gave her communicated they had no idea what she was speaking about.
Blue Ridge 2 sat in the cell and thought, there was no network she could connect to, at least, none that was Yorha certified and protected, and there were dozens of unsecured and strange networks at play everywhere. Networks that connected to dozens of varying hubs, did this faction of humans not centralize their networks? How had they evaded machine invasion and corruption? Come to think of it, those strange women she had fought past to get out of the labs were not machine forms, nor were they Yorha androids, the former would never have been so beautiful, and the latter would never have tried to hurt her in the way these did. They used strange, powerful weaponry too, weapons that fitted more her battery than anything else! Seemingly much more advanced than the surrounding weapons facing and being utilized by others. This admiral, Black, she was called, possessed an android, or augmented bodyguard, a guard who possessed many cybernetic implantations, the claws she bore were shrouded, even to Blue Ridge's systems, shrouded with some form of energy field or something worse? How had she manifested them out of nowhere? This was strange, and brooked further investigation for certain!
Curious, how do these cyborgs function? There is a great deal of complexity in the one who had addressed her earlier's form… what was her name… Ah! Roon, Roon seemed on guard around her constantly, perpetually as if she was under threat, Blue Ridge read into it and began to evaluate why she would be so threatened and angry, why she'd chase after any possible representation of aggression or anger.
They feared her! That was it, they were worried about whether or not she would become a problem for humanity, as if she would ever betray her makers like that. As if she would threaten another human voluntarily- She'd rather immolate her core than betray her programming, her everything!
She owed everything to humanity, even if her programming hadn't dictated she be willing to sacrifice everything to protect and serve them, she would have done anything to protect her makers. Fanatical zeal rose in her throat as she considered the utter heresy that the enemy was truly capable of, that they would attack and strike at humanity, at their makers. She needed to speak to one of them again. She needed to speak to Roon.
The Ironblood ship, a German cruiser, was on the other side of the isolation vault, and she was there simply because she was completely unnerved by this… thing's presence in the depths of the base. She sang a pretty tune, and she knew about the varying pieces of the humans that would tug on their hearts, but there is no way she could have been anything but a trojan horse, designed and devoted to destroying what little hope they had left. No matter how willing to help she was, no matter anything else.
The woman tilted her head at Roon, and again that slight flicker of blue and red shot through those eyes that were so very human, so very alive… but so very much not real. She stepped forwards, and spoke quietly, but loud enough that the other woman could hear her. Even through the shielding.
"You have doubts about my cause, about who I am, as do I. I would like you to answer my questions honestly, and I will return the favor."
Gone was the ditzy, seemingly fanatical zeal that she presented to the women earlier, why the sudden change? What did she know?
As Roon was left puzzling, Blue Ridge felt minor annoyance building within her, the silence from the other was… irritating, to put it bluntly, and then… after a moment she gave up on waiting for a response. Tendrils of her "self" entered the nearest wireless connection, and began interfacing and secreting themselves thoroughly within. This connection linked to something within the base, from the looks of it, a game terminal devoted to a varying amount of fictional pursuits undertaken by whoever owned the thing. It was quite curious, and the supercarrier found herself idly studying some of the archaic programs, the pieces linking and curiously simplistic, but functional all the same. She played over the programs using tight beams of pure thought and began to probe within the primitive computer system. It truly was interesting to seek out small bits and pieces of varying folders. But then, the woman across from her responded.
"Why are you so-"
"Different? The mission directive has changed. Information is insufficient to build an accurate profile of the objectives and opposition facing humanity. You see me as a trojan horse, a traitor sent by your enemies… ah, the Sirens, as you call them."
Roon's mind flashed with confirmation and fear, the woman's gaze imperious and studying, and those blue eyes suddenly seemed dark with the nature of war. There was happiness there, certainly, but it was buried under layers of suspicion, experience, and tempered rage. Something had happened to this woman in her long life, and Roon felt as if she were in the presence of a true goddess of war, something that excited her, sending thrills through her body. She leaned in and looked long and hard at the other woman.
"You are already in our computer networks, I do not pretend to know what advanced technology allowed you to do so while in such a secure environment. But I am curious as to how you intend to prove that you are not a trojan horse. The sirens have done so in the past, with the Orchid class infiltrators and the Dahlia class pocket battleships. What if you are just some siren superweapon hmm?" The reply was measured, even, and Roon kept her tone clear and sane, but Blue Ridge was not stupid, nor was she ignorant, she could hear the woman's pulse elevate slightly, it would not be recognizable in a human as fear, but for what this woman was? An android? It was more than enough.
"Hmm. I do not know the definition of an Orchid Class Infiltrator, as you have directed, but how I can prove such allegiances? Allow me to confirm to you that if I wanted to leave this cell, this base, you could not stop me." Blue Ridge replied in a tone that was simply a statement of fact. This cell was strong, but it was pathetic compared to her tonnage and her power. The woman strained idly, stretching her hands up behind her head and idly directing a probing thought deeper into the computer bank she was messing with. It had led to a secure network, and into the internet through that, now, Blue Ridge was surface skimming most major news articles and the "sites" they lurked on.
This place… back in time, before Shinjuku, before the calamity, how curious. Androids are primitive here, and it would appear… that Roon was not an android, merely a human endowed with some fragments of greater power from these cubes. The humans had named them Wisdom Cubes, as they were said to contain knowledge far greater than their appearance. They had founded the kanmusu, a shipgirl program, and led to much of human resistance's successes against siren fleets. Although… very little information on the state of varying landmasses could be amassed, the internet seemed… almost fragmented and damaged.
"Your internet is damaged. Hurting."
Again… the statement of fact sent a chill down Roon's spine as she heard it. The woman across from her exhibited that strange red light flickering across her eyes once more, and Roon sighed as she simply stated.
"It's fragmentary because of Siren sabotage, it relied on cables and servers in multiple countries, decentralized, in the event of a massive solar flare or EMP. But the Sirens hit many major data centers with viruses and cut cables to many of the world's remaining countries. They are deep sea locations, and the operations to lay them cannot be done safely, with the threat of air attack so immense."
The woman nodded, seeming to take all of the information in. Before she tilted her head to the side and stared off into the distance.
"A sortie is launching, they are moving differently, strangely."
Roon's face froze, did she already have total access to the base's security feeds? What happened to the isolation vaults being "secure and safe!"?
"Do they seek suicide? They are nervous, dogged by despair. They seek a fight they are worried they cannot win."
Roon turned on one heel, and ran from the room, bile rising in her throat as that infernal, goddesses damned frightening woman continued to hum and pull apart their base's security networks like so many building blocks.
The sortie group made its way out towards the bay, Vestal bringing up the rear as Baltimore led from the front, the heavy cruisers' demeanor had been so stony-faced that their sortiemates hadn't even tried to speak to the repair ship. Their actions were cautious and they could taste the sensation of unease and the feeling of anxiety as they suited up. Rigging slowly and carefully took its shape around them, and the women of the hunter-killer group moved into the bay, slowly warming up dormant systems. In the lead was Baltimore, the heavy cruiser already launching a pair of scout floatplanes into the sky as she stared out across those foreboding waters.
"Baltimore, this is Norfolk actual, take care of yourself, and come back safe and sound."
"Yes ma'am!"
The ships left the bay in a funeral procession backed up by the woman who would put them there, or so Vestal thought. Her face was stone, motions purely mechanical even as she sortied forwards and into that strange night.
150 miles away, in the depths of a wreckage field, deep, maniacal humming echoed around the surface of the waves. Dahlia sang to herself even as tendrils of machinelike corruption plumbed and probed the depths of the ocean around her, they searched for a suitable location, she would need to put down roots soon, her precious pets needed tune-ups and enhancements that only a dedicated repair facility could provide.
"Lily~ Could you please reassemble that poor girl into a form more beautiful and fitting~?"
"Lily" a former siren patrol vessel, nodded mutely, her mistress had deemed her ability to speak to be inefficient and had replaced it with a dense, complicated set of tendrils used for infiltrating secure systems. All she had to do was get into the melee range of another vessel, and the hard work was done.
The poor girl in question, a Siren battlecruiser, coldly stared at her captors as the small patrol vessel advanced on her. As the girl opened her mouth, the Siren's impressive emotional restraint failed her, some unpleasant noises immediately made themselves known. She tried to scream, but the other girl pressed a finger to her lips and simply whispered, through awful, pulsing speakers mounted to her neck and glowing eyes.
"Oh~ it will be so fun~"
As tendrils swallowed the other woman's head into their embrace, the battle cruiser began to scream and twitch, machine code invading every single piece of her form. Every single chunk of who she was lay barren in front of her attacker, and her attacker reminded her of that as she idly tiptoed around the woman, narrating, monologuing at her vulnerability.
"Mmm, unnecessary devotion to Siren cause, removed."
A spike of agony flashed through the woman's head, and her devotion vanished, swallowed into a blank void that continued to grow even as she strained, kicked, struggled, begged, and screamed once more.
"Lily, reconfigure her mind for passive scanning and infiltration, compress her rigging to a PC Infiltration package, then set her amongst the debris, make certain that Recluse knows not to harm it when the other guests come knocking!"
Her voice was excited, genuinely, a throaty purr of passion and happiness, interrogations and conversions were always her favorites, and the fear that this poor Siren showed in her eyes was only and abruptly, rudely interrupted by the proximity drones detecting incoming enemies.
"Curious. Lily, take your prize back with you, make for the center of the Atlantic, I will reconvene with you there. RECLUSE~!"
The shout echoed across the sea and Dahlia's radios, and above, at the very surface, a red-stained head, grim smile, and sadistic glare felt itself move at the wishing of its mistress. Soon, its teeth would taste like fresh meat. It looked forward to digging its claws into the blood and viscera of the incoming threat.
Dahlia, her entourage, and the twitching form of the Siren battlecruiser vanished into the depths of the trenches in the pacific, leaving behind, a mass of tendrils, hatred, anger, and pain uncoiled amongst the debris. Eyes glimmered with untamed bloodlust deep in the ruin of the ocean, and a form spiderlike uncoiled itself.
Dahlia was by no means a stable A.I. being the shard of a being such as Blue Ridge led to some potent problems that directly afflicted her ability to create functional things, and Recluse was one of them, in the days since the initial takeover of her host body, the shard of Dahlia had begun to shatter even further. A.I. technology where the two had come from had been advanced to a fault, and it was documented knowledge that the less stable an A.I. fragment was, the worse its psychological matrix would become over time. Explicitly, an A.I. would degenerate into a feral state, overcome with machine corruption and running rampant, before it had to be put down.
Recluse, formerly Strategist, twitches, an involuntary muscle spasm etches a curved half smile across her face. She's floating, prickles of sensation running up and down her form as she lies amid the debris field. The only sensation aside from the pinpricks was the gnawing, horrible hunger lurking in her stomach and her mind a burning, screaming litany of "kill, kill, kill" into her mind. The shattered fragments of strategist calculated, and calculated, and computed optimal firing solutions, a dull bang echoing through the debris field every few seconds as she floated there. Eyes flickered, corrupted machine code running through a raging, angry mind that was destroying itself piece by piece.
"Recluse. Directive updated. Kill."
The single string of encoded instructions hit her like a train, as friendly, barely, forces left her threat range, the former strategist began drawing what remained of her shattered psyche back together. Calculations for ammunition, torpedoes and external racks of rockets and missiles were done and calculated, all in order and expectation of immediate use. Recluse's sleek flanks, a halberd built fully into her ship form, a pair of twin blades at the prow, she glowed with siren technology, and the striding, pacing female form on the bow demanded the attention of her enemies. Simply because of the red veins shot through her skin and her terrifying, fully monstrous form. Brocaded by thick plates of ablative armor, Recluse readied herself for battle, squadrons of observation and combat drones soaring from her hangars.
Flanking her form were the parasitized, zombified forms of a pair of siren destroyers. A pittance, but they were most of the forces that Dahlia could commit, not that Recluse particularly cared for them. The little ships were, even with siren enhancements, not the close-range brawlers that the fragmentary pieces of Strategists' remaining consciousness could think about. She muttered to herself… unable to stop talking inside what shattered pieces of herself remained.
"Recalculate, those tolerances won't work! They'll never hold up to the fire! The racks will burn off from sustained shellfire, torpedo tubes, maintenance request ZXQ=3 cannot stand for further damage…"
The mutterings would have irritated her, but now, breaking into psychotic laughter, she held up a small piece of a bullet casing, cradling it lovingly in one hand, the woman cocked her head to the side and spoke once more.
"Irregular armaments prepared for action, irregular torpedoes and missiles readied and mADE FOR COMBAT"
Her voice cracks into a shout, radar and sonar screaming out the approaching enemies as Recluse twitched, her measured arm sweeping giving the order to fire turning into a twisting seizing motion a moment later.
There were 6 targets, one leading with several medium naval rifles, a pair using destroyer artillery, and packing torpedoes. The finale was a carrier and very clearly a battleship, bringing up the rear with one bearing…
"Aha~"
Strategi- no, Recluse's psyche sees the repair ship and begins to let her drones lay laser-targeting pieces onto the hull of the incoming woman. She grins ferally, and a moment later, a siren destroyer detaches from her formation and begins to sail on a flanking course. The vessel shattered the waves with its bow and sent a song of acceptance directly toward her. The frail metal shell of the destroyer could barely contain the viral payload and malformed machine pieces that made up her new form. Her horrifying visage was barely concealed beneath bulging missile bays and corrupted twisted gun mounts.
The lead figure ducked and wove back and forth under a withering skirmisher barrage as Recluse directed offensive drones to harass her, retrofitted CIWS mounts added recently to her rigging spat tracer fire and flak into the skies. The smell of cordite and vengeance greeted Recluse's nose as she soared into combat, her steel hull announcing her arrival with a flurry of missile impacts! She landed on the waves and darted at the leading figure, a heavy cruiser with a fleet leader's stance. She would break this one over her guns and watch her forces scatter, already, a machinelike virus bored through her body and prepared to assimilate another. The manic grin on her twitching body causes pieces of redundant ship shell to fall from her!
Baltimore had thought she was ready, she had been a rising star in the navy, a powerful new cruiser, refitted with CIWS and experimental missiles fit for shipgirl usage, and yet… She was terrified as she sailed into the combat zone. The wreckage of siren vessels bobbed and twisted on the waves of the surface, the air choked with smoke that caused a distracting, visibility-obscuring haze to surround the sortie group as they entered the area. The traces of flames and ruin around her stung her eyes with agonizing levels of smog and pollution. Baltimore squinted, she could make out the enemy ahead, her radar helping tremendously even as it pinged off dozens of debris contacts, it illuminated a ring of small signatures above the waves.
"A drone shell, we are entering the enemy-controlled territory, this shell is likely a Strategist type work; switch to combat-ready status and prepare for action!"
Her orders were given in a low tone, partially to nullify listeners, and partially because Baltimore was worried about keeping the waver from her voice as she spoke. The woman's powerful canon swung forwards, and the short-haired commander sailed ever onwards.
The first thing to break the stillness was the crackling of the gunfire as they saw debris, and the second was the blaring of incoming missile fire. Baltimore allowed her CIWS guns to take point as they lit the skies with a blaze of tracer and flak rounds. The immediate, thunderous explosions nearly drowned her voice as she roared out.
"Simms, North Carolina! Escort positions, Huragan, search and destroy! Vestal, stand ready for repair work, Bearn, launch fighter cover, and keep bombers on deck for standby!"
Orders were given, and Huragan smiled, the sadistic pole soaring to the side on her rigging as weapons and armaments swiveled and rotated to face the expected position of the enemy. Tendrils with her 5-inch main battery extended out from her hips, and the long lance of her torpedo mounts was drawn from behind her back. A moment later she vanished into the smoke and waves, moving at flank speed into the darkness that encroached upon the sortie.
North Carolina, the advanced, powerful battleship that she was, greeted the incoming drones and missiles with a wave of defensive flak blasting the sound "ACK ACK AKC" into the skies. Dark bursts of flak greeted the occasional flare of a missile's fuel cell detonating and spinning out of control. The tall blonde grits her teeth as she tracks an incoming missile, the strange reddish projectile blazing through her flak field and into her defenses before… with a thunderous crack it slams into her port side.
"They are not anti-shipping weapons. These missiles are more akin to Reaper payloads, and hellfire anti-tanks. They sting, lots, but they're far from leth-"
Her diatribe was interrupted after a moment, by the impact of a shell smashing into her waterline belt. The small caliber round punched a small, neat hole into the core of the woman's being, cutting off North Carolina's broadcast midway through with a shriek before she responded.
"That was a HEAT shell, it broke my armor clean through and shorted out torpedo protection. Be careful, whatever this siren force is, they're using some serious firepower."
She directed her radar into the battlefield, trying to get a read on something, anything, and while she could vaguely detect a larger vessel within the field, there was no guarantee that it was a siren vessel, or that it was even a live vessel.
Frustration boiled through her, North Carolina was a battleship through and through, she hated sitting still and hated inaction even more. Her guns were ready, her fists screamed for action and violence, and she wished death upon her enemies. As much as she could, as quickly as she could indulge. Some had called it an addiction in the naval academy, especially after the second bar brawl resulting in psychotic laughter and so many medical bills and new scars. But the battleship had no qualms and no real concerns beyond violence back then. Now… she was a trusted officer, and as much as her being itched trying to fight, she understood damned well that she couldn't just simply charge through the smoke. The landmine that had caught her during the siren invasion of Central America nailed her. Hard. And she'd learned from it, now older, wiser, and with a nice pockmarked scar across her midsection from the remnants. They'd pulled out another pair of shrapnel fragments just 6 months ago, and North Carolina felt the unprepared muscles tense in ways she was not ready for as she twisted to the side from another incoming shell splashing into the water.
"Baltimore! One of the enemies is ripping me apart out here!"
The shells should have only been 5 inches, but they hit like a heavy cruiser's main battery, and while North Carolina's softer and more vulnerable places were well protected behind her armor belt, the constant application of HEAT shells on a large scale to her rigging was already having an effect, several of her secondary battery had been rendered mute and broken from direct impacts. Another popped with a loud bang as she missed another shell sneaking in from under the barrage of reaper payloads dropped from above.
"Damnit! Fucking COWARDS. FIGHT ME DIRECTLY!"
North Carolina's voice snapped out across the waves, a direct challenge issued to the smoke, fire, and fog. Her face twisted into a snarl as her main battery fired a barrage at something she swore was a positive contact a moment ago. That snarl became a roar of frustration when her firing computers reported the target closing from the starboard side, and as she whirled to face it, she saw her enemy and stood in shock.
The small girl and she was little more than a girl, soared over the waves, sickly red lines of something covered her emotionless form, and where her jaw should have been, a thick plate with a gun barrel presented itself. Her eyes were soulless, black pits that locked onto North Carolina, and the battleship at this moment felt like the rabbit before the wolf, she was so close! How had she snuck past her radar?
The girl landed a hand on North Carolina's face, and pressing her weight down, slammed the battleship into the water. She leaned over Carolina's face, her face as plastic and perfect as a doll. Carolina felt sheer terror climb her spine, lain there under an enemy destroyer, torpedoes and strange mouth cannon aimed solely at her face.
"You motherfu-"
Any noise was cut off as the destroyer smiled before she began to slip beneath the waves, her dead, pale, waxy arms wrapped tight to North Carolina's neck and waist. With a clammy grip like that of freshly bonded titanium, the battleship tried to struggle and scream, but as she did, the girl clamped her forearm over North Carolina's mouth and dragged her down, down, down into the singing deep as the battleship screamed helplessly.
Simms screamed through the smoke cover a moment later, the girl screaming at the top of her lungs over her comms as she saw the lower half of North's body rapidly sinking beneath the waves. The little destroyer locked her hands around North Carolina's ankle and pulled with all her might, her engines screaming at her as they were pushed beyond operational limits.
"NORTH, NO! GET OFF HER YOU SIREN WHORE! FLAGSHIP, SOME SIREN'S GOT NORTH CAROLINA, SHE'S BEING DRAGGED UNDER, SUPPORT REQUESTED!"
The plaintive, distressed cry found an answer in the French aircraft carrier Bearn, nominally, the other girl, built initially as a battleship, would have been enough as she rushed to assist her compatriots. It should have been enough, a mere destroyer did not have the skills, nor the strength to pull a battleship under the surface of the water. And North Carolina was fighting against it, flailing and struggling as much as she could against those clammy, awful hands.
"Bearn here, grabbing ahold, Simms, can you detach the interloper's grip?"
"Aye! I can try!"
Simms kicked at the other girl's hand, resting on Carolina's waist, only to see it withdrawn beneath the waves. She began a cheer when the crackling boom of some form of an explosion reached her ears. She turned to face Bearn and saw the girl staggering from an impact to her engines, smoke freely pouring from within her waist as a glimmer of hateful machine eyes glared out at her from the depths of the smoke cover, before dancing away as Bearn spoke.
"Engine 2 is down, I am reduced to half speed if that at all. I am a sitting duck. We need to call Vestal into the fray."
"Vestal, need immediate assistance on our position, North Carolina is being dragged under the surface!"
Vestal grimaced. She'd known this was a bad idea immediately after they'd sortied. But hearing the call made the repair ship's blood run cold. The Sirens did not need shipgirls, their technology was predominantly superior, and the only real limitation was the fact that siren ships were typically mass-produced vessels for the majority of campaigns, most humanoid sirens were distinctly rare sights on the battlefield. More content to observe, and direct their legions of puppets as proxies. Most seemed disinterested, and the few that weren't… were threatening monsters and horrifyingly potent forces of near nature in their own right.
"Vestal, reporting closing on your position."
The repair ship screamed into the location, finding a wounded Bearn, straining Simms, and a pair of long legs above the surface. The woman immediately slowed and positioned herself, swinging long cranes out, and attaching them to varying points, on the visible portion of Carolina's rigging. She was not moving anymore, her struggles having ceased a few seconds before Vestal's arrival.
The thing that had once been a mass-produced destroyer drew back her bloody fist, and studied her prey, she had anchored it successfully, and the now unconscious form of the blonde battleship was slowly sinking, but 3 vessels were coming to her aid. Her optional mission directive, given by Recluse, would fail, the programming of the enemy vessel, simplistic, made a spur-of-the-moment judgment. She let go and radioed for help, simply stating.
"Recluse. Fang-01 requests support for the optional objective."
The owner of the destroyer did not respond over comms, she did not need, simply transmit a tight beam response that accurately communicated exactly what she wanted.
The fang couldn't smile, but she would have if she was sapient enough to do so. She swam back and began extending her anchors. The ones that weighed down her prey, scavenged from wrecked siren vessels, would hold her down for the moment, she skipped past, to the underside of a large piece of floating debris near the three stranded shipgirls.
Vestal began to pull, but it was like dragging a pair of battleships, her engines screamed from the sheer effort it took, muscles threatening to pull and tear as she struggled to gain any ground! She grunted from the exertion, waving Simms away when she tried to assist, while Simms was strong, she was a destroyer, and her dead weight would not be helpful here. Where the devil was Baltimore and Huragan?
"You ok?"
A whisper purred from the smoke near a piece of flaming wreckage, and reached Baltimore's ears, she turned and made eye contact with Huragan, the Polish destroyer's cold gaze assessing the American flag vessel's general injuries and combat readiness state.
"I'll be fine. I've had worse and made it through every time, I don't feel anything broken, seems to just be flesh wounds."
The acrid stench of smoke met the back of Baltimore's throat, and the admiral coughed at the sudden influx of chemicals. She struggled a little bit but persevered through as she turned to Huragan.
"You?"
The Pole answered from behind her piece of cover.
"My number 3 boiler took a damaging hit, speed reduced. One of my turrets is shattered and I have expended all my torpedoes. I believe I scored a glancing hit on one enemy destroyer and the enemy carrier. But I cannot verify."
Baltimore nodded, sliding a fresh magazine into her main guns as her radar pinged a fast-moving contact making for the friendlies on her war map. Integrated into her systems, it gave a real-time status update to the positions of friendly forces using drones and scanning, that fast-moving dot was likely Vestal, but… North Carolina's signal was heavily distorted, barely appearing at all. Baltimore noted another group of enemy squadrons duking it out with Bearn's fighters in the skies above, fresh launches… from an enemy a scant thousand meters to the south. Her smile turned feral as she sent the updated data to Huragan, this vessel had stalked them, eluded them, damaged and hurt them. But she was exposed now, and they'd make her pay for it. The pole's smile turned equally feral as she reviewed the updated map. Before she whispered.
"Time to go. Let's kill her quickly."
The two moved as one, Huragan diving to Port and Baltimore making flank speed to starboard. The feint was directed at the enemy carrier, the woman's shocked expression as Baltimore bore down on her, guns already trained on her. She fired, and a full broadside of rippling, shrieking 8-inch fury bore down on the enemy carrier. Huragan closed to melee, raising her battered halberd a moment later, preparing to slam it home as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Recluse grimaced, she took a moment to evaluate the status of her wounds and injuries, the opening engagement had not been in her favor, at the end of the day, while an enhanced and bettered vessel, she was not a supreme, monstrous demon like Dahlia was. Baltimore, the enemy flagship, hurt her, badly, the rippling series of burns and shrapnel crossing over her body a mark of the enemy's precision battery of her form.
"Not enough. TOLERANCES NOT ENOUGH!"
She shrieked, her anger boring into her tone and giving rise to a rush of foul, red-colored oil that bled freely from a nasty cut on her thighs. Her Fangs were indisposed, too busy playing with the rearguard of Baltimore's fleet to aid her. She took a breath, ensconced behind smoke cover and debris, to redirect her repair efforts to the lower portions of her body, she would need that speed. Her battle map, accurate information delivered precisely when and where she needed it, updated her with pings that showed a shift in the tides of battle. One of her destroyers had been lost, but Fang 1, the first, was busily assaulting the vulnerable back of the enemy fleet. She'd pull through, and the enemy battleship was out of the fight already, if not nearly drowned in the waves by now.
"Maintenance schedule pushed to standard date 0121345.212, preliminary overclock locked in and readied."
Her fist curled as Baltimore and the enemy destroyer made their move, darting from behind the rocks, each one headed to a different side. Which one… which one was the larger threat, the destroyer could have expended her torpedoes, but if she had even one Recluse would pay for it… the other though… the other was a heavy cruiser. A heavy cruiser whose entire form bristled with fury and firepower.
She chose the cruiser.
A sweep of her hand reassigned dormant torpedo bombers and her remaining drones to suicidally run at the enemy's heavy cruiser. Recluse hummed a broken, discordant tone as her bombers struck the heavy cruiser with the force of a raging monster. She watched as the heavy cruiser's main battery fired at her perfect form, and in that single moment. Time stood completely still for all forces.
Simms, frozen in the act of driving a combat knife through the jugular of the second enemy destroyer, the ambushing bitch having snuck up behind them. Bearn patched holes in her boilers and shielded Vestal from the incoming aircraft with her forearm. North Carolina, terrified and screaming as anchors dragged her deeper into the black dark abyss below. Huragan, mid-swing of a blunted halberd, ready to send every remaining shell she had into the face of her enemy. Fang 1, swinging explosive-rigged anchors towards poor, exposed Bearn, a sadistic grin on her face as she prepared to tear the girl in half with brute force. Baltimore, unbridled fury burning on her face as she slammed her guns forwards into knife fight range, willing to take every hit she could to ensure Recluse's destruction. Finally, Recluse herself as she stared at the beautiful scenery around her, delighting the broken, shattered fragments of Strategist's mind inside her at the beauty in the destruction.
Then time resumed, and Simms roared her victory as dark lifeblood colored her hands and the blade she dragged through the neck of the enemy destroyer. Bearn, successfully patched holes in her engines as she fought to keep going, and finally, she saw the incoming projectiles. Vestal, ducking for cover, dislodging anchors wrapped tight to North Carolina's terrified, fearful ankles.
Titanic explosions wrought the surface of the waves, and North Carolina broke the surface a moment later to total silence. No gunfire, no torpedoes, no shouts or screams of pain, simply total, unnerving silence as she stared around herself.
"Report. Flagship… this is North Carolina, reporting free of the enemy trap."
A hand clamped down on her shoulder and then a white-haired head buried itself in her chest, the calmly accented English of Bearn coming through the tearful sobs of Simms.
"I THOUGHT YOU WEREN'T COMING BACKKKKK!"
The small destroyer wailed even as Bearn gently wrapped both of them in a hug.
"I am here… we were deeply concerned, are you alright? Vestal is picking herself up a distance away."
The words were overwhelming, but North Carolina giggled and patted Simms's small head, replying groggily.
"I will be fine, a lot of water, but nothing severe."
The quiet was broken soon after by the sound of Baltimore's engines chugging along, when she broke the smoke cloud, she was leaning on Huragan's shoulders, a nasty shell hit on her midsection… and her right arm a gory, field-dressed stump. Said arm looked to be within a container at her side, and she grimaced as she spoke.
"Corruption, sickness, damned carrier bit me with something, felt it… running hot through my body like bad coffee… had to cut it off. Give it to Medusa back at base."
A moment later, Baltimore pitched forwards, and her eyes shut as she passed out from the pain. A battered and bruised North Carolina steadied herself and scooped up the heavy cruiser in her arms a moment later. Before she issued a simple radio message.
"Objectives complete, return to base all ships."
Several miles distant, a pair of programmed eyes tracked every move they made, before the small, slight form of Fang-01 moved off towards the south, dragging intelligence and a small piece of North Carolina's rigging into her mind. She smiled, the web had been critically damaged yes, but Dahlia would have another Recluse, and it had snared one fly, after all, ~!
Notes: Anyone read that older Kancolle story, "Drag me into the depths"? Figured some good ol' KC vibes would fit. Also, this is the 4th time I've had to go and fix formatting, I can't be bothered for more.
Still jobless for now, and I've got more stuff coming. I will eventually move everything over to Archive of Our Own, including more... explicit content. Might go through all of Belated Battleships/Battleshippening, clean it up, and post there too.