During the Siren War, the Azur Lane made a shocking discovery; they were not the first to take the fight to the Sirens. Stumbling across a frozen, mountainous island, the girls found traces of a cataclysmic battle, as well as what appeared to be human/mechanical remains.
These were brought back and, with the power of the wisdom cubes, rebuilt as the Shipboys, ships of more futuristic yet primal origin. After initial clashes wrought of confusion, the Shipboys were reminded of the alien threat that wiped them out, and are determined to use this second chance to protect more than just the man at his side...
Chapter 1: Sugar and Bitters
Lady Hood gently read in the peaceful solitude of the Azur Lane Headquarters office. The beautiful woman betrayed no sign of her advancing age, save for the faintest of laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. Dressed in her socialite dress of Navy blue, trimmed with white, her sun hat (and communication array) was placed gently on the window sill beside her. An achingly gorgeous day, she absentmindedly brushed her lock of golden hair behind her ear, catching the sun in a dazzling display, as she busied herself in the exploits of Captain Blood.
The door to the reading room opened, but Hood made no notice of the intruder, save for a gentle smile that slowly began to grow. His timing is impeccable...
The soft clink of silver and china on the side table beside her finally drew her attention, and she turned with appreciative and gentle eyes at the man beside her.
It was not the Commander. Someone else. Someone special.
He was a very tall, grizzled looking man, appearing in his early 50s. His short black hair had streaks of gray through it and his Franz Josef mustache and accompanying mutton chops were a refined, ashy color. Well built, lean but wiry, he was dressed immaculately in a grey butlers tuxedo with accompanying overcoat, white service gloves, and silver buckle shoes. He looked every inch a perfect English gentleman, refined and elegant, completed by a monocle he held in his right blue eye.
"Your tea, marm," he spoke in a drawling Scottish accent. His stony face appeared to be annoyed, but if you were Hood, who knew just how gentle Clockwork could be when he wanted to be, you could pick up the clues that he was happy to be with his soulmate.
"You are too kind to me, darling," Hoods smile radiated the reading room as Clockwork picked up the glass of blackened tea.
"Prepared it just as ye loiks it," he growled softly, "two sugar with a splash of oil."
Good tittered in pleasure at the fruit of his labor. She graciously accepted the cup and saucer and began to daintily sip the tea. Lifting a hand to seat opposite, she bade Clockwork join her.
He was more than happy to oblige.
Before long, both were happily engaged in conversation, discussing possible life after the war.
"Where would home be for a man such as yourself?" Hood asked coyly.
Clockwork pensively sipped his tea before gazing first at the woman before him and then shifting his attention to the sea out the window. His eyes narrowed as he considered his options, each one less probable than the last.
"I'm not rightly sure, marm," he growled in his gravelly voice, "I remember the mountain, I remember Moder, Mimir, all of them...I can't remember anything before that. No place I would consider home."
Clockwork finished off the last of the tea in his cup before setting it aside.
"Home is wherever me brothers are...and ye as well."
He said this absentmindedly, as if stating a well known fact. Hood however was absolutely dumbstruck by his admission, cup trapped in her immobile hand inches from her mouth, the hand holding the saucer shaking. A growing heat spread across her face, and she knew she had to be redder than a ripe apple.
"Marm, are ye alright?"
Hood sputtered and coughed before elegantly, if embarrassed, placing her now empty cup and saucer beside her.
"Yes, dear, I am quite alright. You just took me by surprise-"
"Have I not been straightforward with my conduct towards ye?" Clockwork ask dryly, raising a silver streaked eyebrow, "Ye knows I've never been the sorts of man to dance around posies. How is it only a revelation to ye now?"
"Well, I guess you could say I've only just realized what's in front of me."
Clockwork spread his arms wide.
"Does ye loiks what ye sees?"
Hood playfully tugged at the strand of hair behind her ear, gazing at the shipboy in front of her. What wasn't to like?
"Yes, I does..."
"Ye could do better, frankly."
Gone was Hoods smile. Now it was replaced by a harsh scowl.
"Stop it. Right now."
"I's just saying-"
"Not another word."
"Ye deserves a complete man."
"Clockwork!"
"...a whole man..."
"SHUT IT!"
Hood leapt to her fear, glaring down at the man in the chair in front of her, who seemed utterly indifferent to her change of demeanor.
"Shut. The bloody hell. Up!" Hood seethed, "I don't want to hear such brainless drivel again! Nothing about you is incomplete. Nothing about you is unnatural. You are as the cubes wrought you. As mankind and even God above intended for you to be. Don't you DARE. EVER. Bring this up again!"
The man merely fixed her with a steady gaze, and for the first time, his face softened, pain showing in his eyes.
"Mine fair lady," he breathed as he slowly stood up to tower over Hood. Despite his imposing figure, Hood was unafraid, "need I remind you...of my name?"
Gently, but quickly, he began to remove his service gloves, starting with the right. Once it slid off, it did not reveal flesh and bone, but gears and rivets. He proceeded to the left hand, revealing it to also be a prosthetic of the same.
Then he removed his bow tie and proceeded to unbutton his shirt.
Hood gulped nervously, but said nothing. She hated this...she feared this.
Shipgirls were biomechanical constructs derived from the wisdom cubes from humanity's positive influence. Imagination, hope, wonder, curiosity, selflessness and love. As such, they took the beautiful forms the world knows today.
But the Shipboys...Heaven help them.
When the Sirens launched their genocidal war on humanity, they fell upon the cubes with desperation and rage. In their indignation of extinction, they created the Shipboys from their negative impulses. Anger. Bloodlust. Destruction. Misery. Revenge. The result was horrifying.
Clockwork bore himself to Hood as one of those final results. A disgusting marriage of flesh and steel. Bones broken and muscles mangled, gears and springs ticking audibly through his carbon fiber skin. Typical of Shipboys, he also had no heart, just a wound spring clacking like the clockwork machine he was.
"So," he sighed, "again, marm; does ye loiks wot ye sees?"
Hood stared a moment longer, sweat beading on her face at the grisly sight.
Then finally, raised her hand and placed it on the mechanism that replaced an organic heart.
"Flesh or machine is irrelevant," she muttered, "what matters are the parts that make you who you are, as it were. Your laughter. Your tears. Your hope. Your anger. Your soul."
She looked up to look at Clockwork in the eyes.
"I've never met a man more complete than you."
She leaned forward, gracefully standing on her tip toes, lips searching for his...
Later, Southern Sea, 55 miles off the coast of Argentina...
"STRIDSFORMATION!" Moder roared over the din of battle, rallying his men to reform the battle line. Warped and twisted visages of metal and flesh smashed into one another, hate filled eyes and mouths frothing with foam as they shredded the Sirens. Shipboys were renowned for their brutality against the enemy that was responsible for their extinction, and they made no qualms about making examples.
But none more so than Clockwork.
True, Moder was the most powerful, Dreadnought the most destructive, Cannonade the most mentally unstable and Wurmskrut...well, Wurmskrut was Wurmskrut.
But in sheer, blinding rage, none beat Clockwork.
With a mechanical howl that sounded like something straight out of a nightmare, Clockwork beat a Purifier Siren into the sea with his bare iron fists. When her broken body was beyond arms reach, he began smashing his naval boot into her concaving face. Blue alien blood burst everywhere as he savagely killed his foe.
"FECKIN' EAT IT, YE ABSOLUTE SLATTERN!" He roared, blue blood plastered across his face and staining his mustache as he continued to crush the now lifeless alien.
A Tester darted in behind, but was not fast enough. All four of Clockwork's 290mm quadruple turrets locked on to the offending Siren, and proceeded to dismember the alien. The armless, legless torso flopped and shrieked in pain as Clockwork took his time walking over to the siren and giving her the same treatment, crushing her head underfoot.
Gone was the gentleman. Gone was the refined elegance. Clockwork gave a machine scream of rage as he picked another target. This is what he was built for.
He always was, and always will be, a creature of war...
That evening...
The sea was won, again. In drunken revelry, the Shipboys celebrated their victory, drinking whiskey, wine and lagers by the barrel, singing shanties and detonating hills in the distance with cannons and rockets. Wanton destruction was the joy of every Shipboy.
Clockwork sang bemusedly along with a round of "Johnny I hardly knew ya," as the Carronade twins, Cannonade and Fusillade, kept the rhythm with their electric guitars. After departing and making his way back to his quarters, he was met with a vision.
Lady Hood seated at the foot of his steel bunk, dressed in a gentle evening dress. Her hair was done up into an elegant bun. In her hands she held two rocks glasses.
She looked visibly uncomfortable in this world of smoke and iron that the Shipboys lived in, but her eyes were a gentle light that said he, Clockwork himself, was worth it.
"Gin and tonic, with citrus bitters, just like you like it?" She smiled in that way that soothed his warlike soul.
He reached out, and gently, civilly, accepted the glass.
"Aye, marm...exactly as I loiks it..." he said, this time, with a genuine smile...
Hood stepped forward and nuzzled her face into the neck of her butler and lover. She felt the vibrations of the springs, gears and locks clicking inside him, his own unique heartbeat.
"I don't care about the beast you are out there," she whispered, "as long as the man comes home to me."
"Always, marm," Clockwork breathed into her hair as his arm snaked around her waist to pull her in close.
They spent that night together, as every beauty and beast should, two souls as different as they could be.
A tasteful contrast of sugar and bitters.
Chapter 1 of the Shipboy introductions. I have several I plan to write, but I'll post when I can.
Leave a review if you want, let me know how you like it.