Picture, in your mind, a perfectly written, fully planned out story.

Then imagine a script that's incomplete, still attempting to be finished, and on fire in some places.

Expectation. Reality. Woohoo.

I have no idea why this image of a chibi Graf Zeppelin making a sand mound while being cheerful is so amusing to me but it is.

"Good morning, Admiral."

I blearily stared at the cup of coffee being held out to me. Who's holding it? I don't know. I'm not awake enough to see. I took it.

After a decently long drink, I could see. I took in the shipgirl in front of me. Uh, the uniform was UNSC standard. I couldn't tell from her physique what type of ship she was, though. She had the… development I normally associated with battleships, though that was hardly an indicative factor when the Takao class cruisers somehow outdisplaced them. Her hair, on the other hand, was purple. So… UNSC.

"Yeah. Who are you?" I asked.

"Marathon-class cruiser, UNSC Leviathan, ma'am." She said, though she was a hell of a lot more casual than the Ashfords were around me. "Served in the Reach defense fleet. Shot up my fair share of alien fucks before they ripped my reactor apart."

"Pleasant." I remarked. "So, you're my secretary for the day?"

"That I am." The cruiser replied.

"Great."

I'm not about to say Leviathan and I had ourselves a great time, but it wasn't unpleasant. Ironically, I saw a lot of myself in her. She didn't give much of a shit about proper acting, but you could tell where you stood with her.

"So, allegedly, we sink all this time and resources into these, and they make for good Abyssal killers?" Leviathan asked as she shuffled through the plans for Tosa, I believe.

"Allegedly." I replied, my feet on my desk while I spun a pen around with my hand.

"Hey, Admiral?" I glanced up as a destroyer- I want to say Royal Navy?- poked her head in.

"Yeah?" I asked, dropping my feet back on the floor.

"We blew up some Abyssals, but there were some weird ships with them. They don't look like mass produced Abyssals, and some of them dropped these." In her hand, she held a glowing cube.

"Interesting." My brow furrowed. Something else was helping the Abyssals? Dammit, do we have another Covenant on our hands? "Can I see it?"

"Yeah, we got a few of them." She handed it over. The cube felt… warm, in my hand, the light inside of it pulsing slowly, almost like a heartbeat.

Wait… those plans all called for Wisdom Cubes…. Cubes… I had one.

Well, that was… easy?

The cube's steady glow soon began to pulse erratically. The thing itself began to heat up, before springing from my hand and landing on the floor in front of my desk, where it reached it's brightest.

"How do you do? I'm Cassin…. If you have no business with me, I'll just head to the docks…" A black haired destroyer said, looking like she was about to fall asleep standing up. Leviathan and I blatantly stared for a moment, before I at least attempted to put on 'formal officer mode'.

"Nice to meet you Cassin. If you'll hold on one second…" I tapped a button on my desk's holoscreen. A ping let me know a United States/Eagle Union ship would be on her way soon. "Your escort to your dorm should be here soon."

"Thanks…"

When she left, I turned to Leviathan.

"Guess we know what those cubes are for, eh, boss?" She said.

"Guess so." I replied. "I'll get the R&D girls on this. Probably let our third party in on this as well."

Further study in R&D turned up disappointingly little. All that was really known was that if I held one in my hand for longer than three minutes, it would summon a new shipgirl. When we tested with two, it summoned a heavier shipgirl, IJN Ise. When tried with three, nothing happened. It looked as though the only thing requiring more than two cubes at a time would be the paper ships. Perhaps it was because it took more energy to manifest form for something that had never been constructed in steel?

I suppose it makes… some sense.

No, I'm not dead. Yet.

Creativity hasn't been on top of my mind, at least for this.

See you in another half year.