Chapter 2

Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff put on his white jacket, finishing the Kriegsmarine dress uniform set. He strode over to the balcony of the Naval Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It had been three days since he ordered the Frauenschiff of the KMS Admiral Graf Spee to scuttle the ship and follow it to the depths, and he had carried that burden ever since. He had kept up a positive appearance in front of the crew, but his staff knew that it was all an act. Hans could no longer keep up that face, and he knew that if he ever returned home he would most likely be branded a coward for not going down with his ship. So he knew exactly what he must do, the Kapitän strode over to the desk in his room and sat down, retrieving a pen and paper to write down a final note.

'I can now only prove by my death that the fighting services of the Third Reich are ready to die for the honour of the flag. I alone bear the responsibility for scuttling the panzershiff Admiral Graff Spee. I am happy to pay with my life for any possible reflection on the honour of the flag. I shall face my fate with firm faith in the cause and the future of the nation and of my Führer.'

Once finished he folded it neatly and placed it in an envelope. He had made sure to make it appear that he was fully devout to the Third Reich and the Führer as to make the acceptance of his crew and staff back in Germany easier. He then took the letter with him and lay on his bed, placing the letter on his chest. Langsdorff retrieved his sidearm from his belt and raised it, saying one simple thing, "I am truly sorry Spee." A single shot rang out through the hotel, signifying the ending of the career of one Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff, former Kapitän zur See of the KMS Admiral Graf Spee.

Graf Spee stirred from her slumber, she let out a small groan at the aching all over her. Her eyes then burst open at the realization that she was still alive, apparently failing at her last order from Langsdorff. She shakily stood, bracing herself against her ship's railing. 'Wait, the ship?' She thought, looking around herself and seeing the KMS Admiral Graf Spee in apparently perfect sailing condition. She closed her eyes and did a mental check of her ship, confirming what she saw, the Admiral Graf Spee had been repaired, and even given a brand new Arado Ar 196 Floatplane for her ship's catapult.

Spee slowly made her way to the Bridge of her ship, supporting herself on anything she could, amazed and somewhat ashamed that she still lived. She failed her Kapitän's orders, a shameful thing for any Kriegsmarine ship, especially at the very beginning of what she felt was to be a long and arduous war. She looked down in shame as she entered the bridge, making her way to the radio looking at it, contemplating on what she should do. Using the radio was a dangerous move for a ship, for even if your messages are encrypted, your signal could still be picked up by the enemy, marking your location on their maps. She sighed before speaking, deciding that possibly finding out where she was outweighed the threat of her transmission being picked up by the enemy.

"This is the KMS Admiral Graf Spee, broadcasting to any Kriegsmarine ships in the area, I do not know my current location, please respond as soon as possible." She then stopped her message and set it to repeat every 10 minutes or so.

Once this was done, she decided to pick a direction to move, turning North East and going full steam, her smokestacks bellowing out dark clouds of exhaust. She could not figure out where exactly she was until night, where she could see the stars. It was at this point where she finally noticed the faint tingling in the back of her neck that she was well familiar with. She stood and walked out off of the bridge, holding out her hands and calling forth her rigging. Black metal ending with large red fingers encased her arms, two shark esque mounts each with a 28.3mm gun on their sides hung around at her hips accompanied a shark like tail and two quadruple torpedo tubes also hovered above the guns of her rigging at her shoulders, an aircraft catapult poking up just behind her head. Spee let out a small sigh of relief as the itching went away, though her body still ached like she had just done a 4 hour work out.

She put her arms down, the red fingers barely touching the ground due to their length. A tingling sensation then nagged at the back of her mind, something she recognized as her Radar picking up something. Once she focused on it, she found a large signal moving straight towards her port side at a speed of approximately 35 knots. The ship girl shifted her guns to that direction and looked out across the blue sea, scanning the horizon. She spotted a black shape moving rapidly towards her and she narrowed her eyes, she didn't feel any radio signatures and the silhouette didn't look like anything man made, rather something much more natural.

The shape soon came into much clearer view of her Rangefinders and her eyes widened slightly. It was a dragon, not of the western type, but rather one commonly portrayed in the east. It had a white faceplate looking like bone and Red accents along the cheeks and black body. She fired one of her 150mm secondary guns off to the side of the creature, hoping to scare it off, but the dragon only increased its pace. The Spee shot yet another shot from a 150mm gun, this time closer to the dragon, the water from the impact spraying over the dragon's face, yet it continued towards her, showing no signs of stopping. She opened fire with her ship's Flak 20 and Flak 38 anti-aircraft guns, raking the creature's body with it, doing minimal damage aside from small fist-sized craters peppering its body.

The dragon pulled its body up from the water, looking down on the Spee around a kilometer away. Its mouth opened and an orb of light began to form in its mouth, sparking out like electricity. Graf Spee frowned, aiming her front 283mm main turret at the beast, firing a High Explosive round out of the first gun in the turret. The large round flew through the air and hit its body, blowing off a large chunk from the dragon, making the creature recoil and let loose the building energy from its mouth, a lightning bolt going high over Spee's ship. The dragon looked down at the Kriegsmarine ship, anger evident in its red eyes. Spee fired the second gun in her fore turret, another HE shell hitting the dragon and doing a similar amount of damage lower on the dragon's body, causing it to bellow out in pain. Seeing that the creature was not going anywhere, Spee fired the last gun in her fore turret, hoping to finish off the creature. Yet in an amazing feat of speed, the dragon maneuvered away from the shell, having the semi-expensive 11-inch round detonate harmlessly in the water behind it.

Spee continued to frown in concentration, opening fire with all four of the 150mm secondary guns on her Port as well as her dual 105mm Anti-aircraft gun on her port and stern, multiple pock marks covering the creature and keeping it stunned, unable to retaliate from the firepower of the 'Pocket Battleship.' Wishing to see this over with, she fired all three guns in her aft 283mm turret at the dragon, one shell hitting the body at the waterline, another hitting further up, and the last slamming into the animal's head, detonating and slaying the creature once and for all.

The black dragon fell to the water with a loud splash, sprinkling the port side of the Graf Spee with water. Spee looked on confused as the dragon's body slowly began to dissipate into black smoke. Deciding it best not to linger at what might be a large signal to any nearby hostile ships that something had happened here, she set her speed to the maximum 28.5 knots, steaming along to the North West, unto the unknown.

A greyed man sat on a fishing ship, a bottle of beer in hand. His name was Montgomery Chapman, a veteran of the tail end of the Great War, where he served in the Valerian Navy, back before they had all those fancy airships that Atlas had invented. He took a sip from his beer, enjoying the feel of the sea wind against his face. He was interrupted as his Grandson, Emeric Chapman leaned out the window of the bridge.

"Hey Grandpa, I'm seeing some smoke on the horizon." Emeric said, looking concerned. Montgomery stood and walked onto the bridge of his small fishing ship, looking out to where Emeric was pointing. "You think someone killed a Grimm?"

"No, it's too thick for Grimm dissipation, looks like there might be from a fire." Montgomery replied, reaching down and pulling out a pair of Binoculars and looking through them at the smoke.

"A fire? On the ocean?" Emeric asked skeptically. Montgomery froze when he finally saw where the smoke was coming from. It was a warship, one that eerily reminded him of the Atlestian ships he faced in the Great War. "Grandpa?" Emeric asked, concerned at his grandfather's silence and stillness, "You see something?"

"A warship." Montgomery stated quietly, still looking at the moderately large ship. As he spoke, a light begun to flash above what he assumed was the bridge. His eyes widened after a second as he recognized the ancient communications method, Morse Code.

"A warship? On water? But those haven't been used in well over 60 years." Remarked Emeric. Once realizing that the warship was talking to their ship, the elder Chapman scrambled to get a piece of paper and a pen, jotting down what the ship was transmitting while also looking at it through his binoculars. After the ship repeated its message twice, he looked down, translating the series of dots and dashes.

"If you transmit on your wireless, I will open fire." He said to himself, going pale.

"What!" Exclaimed Emeric, clearly panicking, "But they can't do that!"

At this point, the warship had gotten close enough to be seen without aide from binoculars, showing off its towering frame compared to the dinky fishing trawler. After around 10 minutes of tense silence, the ship came along-side the Chapman's vessel, though neither of the native Valerians could see any of the warship's crew, though they did see a crest on the ship's bow, two trios of diamonds and two roosters, each pair diagonally opposite of each other. The ship halted alongside the trawler, letting the two men onboard take in the impressive firepower present on the vessel.

A woman around 5'6" appeared on the side of the vessel, looking down on the fishing ship's crew. She had white hair with a small red streak down it as well as light blue, bordering on white, eyes. Her outfit was what caught the eyes of the two men, an extremely short black skirt with red accents and a stylized curved shark smile with the edges of the mouth going from hip to hip. She had a white belt set cockeyed on her person, a pistol stuffed into it, and above that were two triangle shaped holes showing off parts of her side torso as well as a bit of the underside of her moderate chest assets. And finally, around her neck was a long scarf showing a black cross with a white border atop a red background.

"Namen und Treue." She spoke, loud enough for the two Valerian's to hear from their position well below her. Emeric looked over confused and scared to his grandfather, who glanced briefly over to his grandson before returning focus to the woman before them.

Graf Spee had come alongside the fishing ship she had spotted, sending her regular message that she broadcast to her raiding victims. But she had no intention of stealing from a small ship, just gaining information, she just did not want them to alert anyone to her position. In order to make herself as least threatening as possible, she opted to not have her rigging present and keep her ship's weapons fixed forward.

"Uh, pardon?" The elder man asked below, pulling Spee back to reality. English, he spoke English, with the accent of an Englishman no less, so it would be possible that she was in her sister, Deutschland's, former raiding area. That was certainly possible, though it was not nearly foggy nor cold enough for that. She decided that further information gathering was necessary.

"Name and allegiance." She repeated, this time in the man's native tongue.

"Ummmm, Montgomery Chapman and Emeric Chapman, citizens of Vale Ma'am." The elder one, Montgomery, stated nervously, obviously intimidated by her ship. The man's answer brought about confusion and complication to her initially simple plan to stop the first ship she saw and question the crew. She had never heard of Vale, and when she mentally referred to her charts, she didn't find any country by that name. She then decided to go for a more general question that would at least give her somewhat of a bearing.

"What ocean is this? North Atlantic? Indian?" She asked him, being sure to keep her tone and face neutral. At her question, both the Chapman males looked between each other before the one named Montgomery spoke up once again.

"We're in the Central Sea Ma'am, around 40 Kilometers west of the City of Vale." The man's response did little to clear things up, so she decided to go more 'hands on' with her information gathering.

"May I board your vessel and see your charts?" Spee asked, receiving a hesitant nod from Montgomery, prompting her to jump from the deck of her ship onto the smaller fishing ship, rocking the boat slightly with her impact and causing her to stumble a bit. Once she regained her stability, she followed the elder man into the bridge.

Frauenschiff – Ship Woman (A fictionalized term for shipgirls that I came up with)

And here is chapter 2, I do hope that you all are enjoying this so far, because I'm having a blast writing it. I'm actually doing a paper on the Battle of the River Plate, which prompted me to write this fic, so that's cool. Also, my apologies if the 11 inch (283mm) guns seem a bit underpowered, but if I'm gonna be serious, I doubt anything other than a Headshot or complete splitting of a Sea Feilong could kill it, so 6 shots was most likely overkill, only requiring 2-3 well placed shots max. But anyways, please tune in for the Adventures of Cinnamon Roll Spee next time, and feel free to leave criticism, roast me, threaten my life, or anything else along those lines.

Sayonara readers, Gamenian out.