"H-how… How did it g-get in here?" Longfellow stuttered, staring in horror at the Ne-class Abyssal that stood in the middle of the passageway.
The most likely scenario was that the Abyssal advance had gone deeper into their fleet than they thought, and that perhaps this specific Abyssal was a member of a naval commando squad sent to specifically eliminate the command structure of the human and ship girl fleet.
But Drake did not say any of that to Longfellow, because he was far too shocked to speak. The heavy cruiser's haunting blue eyes pierced through the American admiral, and terrible memories of the Battleship Princess' red glare resurfaced in his mind. It was as if the Abyssal were Medusa, and Drake had been turned to stone.
Luckily, Longfellow retained some of her senses, and she pulled out her sidearm and pointed it at the Abyssal. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably and sweat trailed down her freckled face, but she resolutely stood up to the Abyssal.
"G-Get out of here! Get out or I'll shoot!" she warned the Ne-class.
The Abyssal said nothing. Instead, the heavy cruiser began advancing on the pair, her metal boots clanking on the floor as her burning eye switched to target Longfellow.
Gasping in fear when the Abyssal advanced, Longfellow fired her weapon. The first shot missed, but the young officer desperately popped off a few more, and some of those did impact the Abyssal. However, though the bullets appeared to have penetrated the Abyssal's skin, the Ne-class was unaffected, and she kept advancing regardless. Longfellow's eyes grew wide and she fired again and again until her clip clicked empty, but the Ne-class continued walking.
It was at this time that Drake finally dragged himself out of the recesses of his memories and returned to reality. There are people counting on me… I can't die here!
Like Longfellow, he too pulled out his handgun and aimed it at the Abyssal. Unlike her, however, Drake forced himself to breathe and maintain his composure despite the intense, primal fear he felt. Closing one of his eyes and taking aim, Drake fired at the Abyssal, aiming for her head. The first shot hit her face but only bounced off her mask, causing her to flinch but doing no damage otherwise. Changing tactics, Drake instead aimed at where he thought her heart was and squeezed the trigger a few more times. The bullets found their target, and tiny squirts of cyan blood sprayed into the air. When this also caused the Abyssal to pause briefly, Drake thought he had hit his mark, but the Ne-class regained her stride shortly after.
So handguns won't work here, Drake realized. That was probably an obvious conclusion, but he had to give it a shot. He thought maybe shooting her eye out might have an effect, but that was a small spot on a moving target and Drake wasn't that confident in his aim.
"Sir, we have to run," Longfellow decided, eyeing the advancing Abyssal with a shaky look.
"Y-yeah," Drake agreed.
With that, the two officers turned tail and sped away from the Abyssal. They were going in no particular direction, and all they knew was that they had to get as far away from that creature as they could. However, the sounds of the heavy cruiser's boots on the flooring grew louder and more intense, and the Americans knew that she was chasing after them in earnest now.
Shit! Get me out of here! Drake pleaded to no one in particular as he heard the Abyssal approaching.
Drake and Longfellow eventually found themselves in front of a staircase that descended belowdecks. Drake remembered that one of the armory rooms was located on the level below them, so he went down the stairs as fast as he could and tried to push open the door. However, he was met with resistance.
"What the fuck! Why won't it open!" he shouted in frustration and fear as he tried to force it open.
"Admiral, hurry! She's here!" Longfellow shrieked in his ear.
Drake caught a glimpse of the Ne-class at the top of the staircase, and his efforts to shove open the door were redoubled. Longfellow tried to add her strength to the task too by slamming her body weight against the door, which actually managed to open it. The door flung open and Longfellow fell through it, landing on her face. Drake stepped over her and continued running, his mind overwhelmed by the instinct to escape. It was only a second later that he realized that Longfellow wasn't following him, and he stopped in his tracks to help her up.
By this time, however, he was too many steps away from her to immediately reach her… But the Abyssal wasn't. Drake watched as the Ne-class lifted Longfellow up by the neck, her pale, white hand wrapping itself around the lieutenant commander's throat. Longfellow kicked her legs helplessly as the Abyssal lifted her up, and her hands tried in vain to weaken the heavy cruiser's grip. The young officer's terrified eyes found their way to Drake, and tears welled up in them as she silently begged him to help.
A split-second later, the Ne-class bashed Longfellow's head against the bulkhead, smashing her skull open and painting the walls and floor with blood and pieces of bone and gray matter. The Ne-class dropped the half-headless corpse and then turned her single empty, icy eye onto Drake once more.
Drake ran harder than he ever had before, again just blindly trying to put some distance between himself and the Abyssal.
Damn it! He cursed to himself. Just like last time… These Abyssals… They always make me feel so helpless!
The rear admiral soon found himself below decks, but what was surprising to him was that there were no sailors around. He guessed many of them were up above decks or in or around the bridge or in the engine rooms. Maybe that was for the best since they would just end up as victims of the Ne-class if they were down here anyway.
The clanking of the Abyssal's heels told of her approach once again, and Drake was reminded of the horrible sight of Longfellow's death. Panic struck through him as he realized there was nowhere to run anymore. The only place left to go was…
Drake sprinted to the ship girl holding area. Slamming open the door, he ran inside the large, empty room and hurriedly flipped the switch to open the bay door. Jumping out into the waters in the middle of a battle with the Abyssals was a suicidal move, but if the other option was certain death at the hands of the Ne-class, then he didn't really have a choice. He had to take the chance.
The Ne-class ran into the room shortly after Drake, and the American froze in fear again when he saw her. However, he knew he that this was his only chance to escape. He ran towards the water that was beginning to spill inside and prepared to dive in, but then he hesitated. He completely forgot that Abyssals could sail on water just like ship girls, and that the Ne-class could just catch up to him easily even if he tried to swim away. The Abyssal was without her rigging right now, but she still had on her metal boots, so could she still sail with them?
Unfortunately for Drake, that moment he spent hesitating was enough for the Abyssal to close the distance. The Ne-class lunged at Drake, and he reflexively dodged and ran away from her. The Ne-class then reached out with her boot and tripped him, causing him to fall before he could get far enough away. In desperation, Drake pulled out his pistol again and fired every last bullet in his clip at the Abyssal from where he lay on the ground.
As expected, the attacks did nothing and just made the Ne-class flinch, but Drake took that opportunity to get up off the ground and drop into his CQC stance. If she's like a ship girl, then I may have a chance…
There was no running now, and though he was afraid, Drake refused to go out like a coward. Not when his own soldiers will still out there, fighting.
The Ne-class' expression did not change when Drake stopped running, and she merely approached him again. This time, however, Drake did not try and run, and instead, he rushed at her, slipped under her grip, and rammed his right shoulder into her. To his surprise, the attack actually caused her to stumble, and he then grabbed her and lifted her up. Without her rigging, she was actually not much heavier than Suzuya, and Drake tossed the Abyssal with all his might and sent her crashing against the bulkhead.
Stunned, the Ne-class slowly stood back up. Aside from the shock of Drake's sudden retaliation, though, the Abyssal looked to be unharmed. Drake frowned at that. There was no way he was going to kill her simply by beating her up; he needed to somehow choke the life out of her or penetrate her heart or brain. The latter two options were out of the question, so he would instead need to find some way to incapacitate her so that he could then crush her trachea. That was definitely not going to be an easy task.
As the Abyssal glared at him with her burning cyan eye, Drake recalled the conversation he had with his father before the battle. The image of his mother and other family members like Lira also filled his mind, and now that he was standing here facing down this Ne-class, he wondered if he would ever get to see them again.
Well, doesn't matter. At least they can't say I went down without a fight, Drake convinced himself. If he died here, fighting this Abyssal, he wondered if the citizens of Tangier would forgive him. Would they praise him for standing up and not running from death? Or would they curse him and say that their sacrifice wasn't worth it after all if Drake couldn't even kill one enemy heavy cruiser?
Human and Abyssal stared each other down, one of them scared and desperate while the other prepared to kill with calculated efficiency. But the two combatants looked away from each other when a third figure entered the battle. Slowly, Shoukaku's bloody, beaten form sailed into the holding area through the open bay door. The white-haired carrier blinked her tired golden eyes in surprise when she saw her commander facing off against a lone Abyssal.
"A… Admiral?" she questioned, wondering if she was hallucinating.
"Shoukaku?"
The carrier then turned to the Ne-class cruiser, who was regarding her warily. Shoukaku detached what little of the damaged rigging she had left and walked out of the water.
"I am not sure what is going on, but I doubt you are welcome here," Shoukaku said, facing the Abyssal.
"Ship girl… Do you want do die defending this human?" the Ne-class asked in a raspy voice that sounded like it was being muffled by something. It was the first time Drake had heard the Abyssal speak.
"I would rather die than allow you to harm any of my comrades," Shoukaku replied. "My arrival has sealed your fate, Abyssal."
While Drake was thankful for Shoukaku's sudden appearance, he was also slightly worried that she would lose. The carrier did not look healthy at all, and there were burn marks and bloodstains all over her battered body. Drake cursed himself at wasting all his handgun ammunition. If he still had his sidearm, he could at least be useful as a distraction.
Wait, the armory! That was the whole reason he had even came down here in the first place.
"Shoukaku, hold her off for a few minutes. I'll be right back!" Drake yelled to his ship girl as he ran out of the room.
Hoping that Shoukaku would be all right, Drake hurriedly tried to remember where the armory was located. He ran through the hallways and searched until he came across what appeared to be the entrance. He rarely entered the armory room even on his own ships so he didn't know if they would have anything good, but anything would be a great help at this point. For some reason the door to the armory looked like it had been forcibly ripped off, but Drake was not going to worry about that right now. On the walls of the armory were some M4A1 rifles and a few other handguns, but what caught Drake's attention the most were the machine guns and the lone SMAW rocket launcher that rested next to them. Drake had never really used any of those heavier weapons extensively, but he knew they would be more effective than any regular rifle or handgun.
Deciding to take the gamble, Drake grabbed the SMAW after loading it with one of the two missiles provided for it. He knew running through the passageways with a loaded rocket launcher was not a good idea safety-wise, but time was of the essence. Drake made it back to the holding area, where he saw Shoukaku grappling with the Ne-class. Shoukaku was clenching her teeth with exertion, and she looked ready to collapse at any moment. The Ne-class, on the other hand, did not appear to be fatigued at all.
"Stand back, Shoukaku!" Drake shouted as he dropped down onto a knee from the far end of the room and look through the sights to take aim at the Abyssal.
Through the scope, he could see Shoukaku turn to look at him and then detach herself from the Abyssal, but before she even finished doing that, Drake fired his weapon. He only had one shot, and he couldn't risk missing. In loud flash, the missile shot through the air and smashed into the Ne-class, blowing her up. Shoukaku was also thrown backwards by the explosion since she didn't have a lot of time to get away.
Tossing the empty SMAW onto the ground, Drake rushed over to the scene. The Ne-class lay on the floor, her body charred, but she was still moving. Shoukaku was not, however, so Drake had to finish the job himself. He jumped on top of the Ne-class and grabbed her throat with all his strength, his muscles bulging underneath his uniform. The Ne-class weakly choked, and she reached up to try and force Drake off. Drake was too overcome by adrenaline and rage too even register her attempts, and he only squeezed even harder. Soon after, the life in the Abyssal's cyan eye faded.
Drake then turned to Shoukaku. Her eyes were closed and she was lying on her back, her clothes ripped and her body bruised and broken. Just from a glance, Drake couldn't tell if she was unconscious or dead, but either way, he needed to get her to the ship girl repair area inside the ship. Trying not to hurt her even more, Drake gingerly picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the room. He at least knew where the repair area was, so he wouldn't have to blindly search for it like he did for the armory.
But as Drake made his way through the passageways and towards the large repair room, he again noticed a disturbing lack of personnel. He knew they were in the middle of a battle and that people were busy, but there was no way that there would be nobody over here. Slightly confused, the rear admiral turned the corner and saw the slumped over body of a sailor sitting against the wall. There was a large hole in his chest, and a streak of blood was painted on the bulkhead behind him.
What the…
Moments later, he spied the figure of a Ri-class heavy cruiser emerge from the other end of the passageway. The cruiser was clad in very little clothing, revealing her sickly pale skin, and her burning cyan eye contrasted with her otherwise drab colors.
Fuck! I should have known that the Ne-class wouldn't be alone!
As the Ri-class strode towards him, Drake put Shoukaku down next to the dead sailor. He wouldn't be able to outrun the Abyssal and pick up a new weapon in the armory if he had to carry Shoukaku the whole time, but he also couldn't just drop her and run for it himself. Instead, his only choice was to make a stand here and defeat the Abyssal, or at least hope that someone would come and save him again. Ri-classes were generally weaker than Ne-class Abyssals, so Drake was hoping that he would be able to stand a chance this time… But he knew that was a longshot.
He glanced at the sailor's corpse and hoped it had a weapon on it, but there was nothing. Cursing to himself again, Drake dropped into his CQC stance and prepared to fight the Abyssal off with his fists. The Ri-class blindly charged at him, and Drake again was able to outmaneuver his enemy. Luckily, it appeared that these Abyssal commandos hadn't been trained in any form of CQC. Ducking under the Abyssal's lunge, Drake kicked her hard in the side of her knee, causing her to lose her balance. He then jumped on top of her and tried to strangle her like he did with the Ne-class, but the Ri-class managed to push him off. He tried to regain his balance, but the Abyssal retaliated with a kick of her own. Drake jumped backwards, knowing that a full-strength hit from an Abyssal would probably kill him or at least do severe damage.
However, since he had to react so quickly, he lost his balance again and stumbled backwards. Instead of slamming into the bulkhead or tripping over his feet, Drake found himself steadied by a pair of strong arms. Confused, he looked back and saw a familiar face but not one he expected to see here of all places: Nagato. She appeared to have come out of the repair docks room just now, and there was a blood-stained bandage on her head that wrapped around her left eye.
"Well, this is an interesting scene," Nagato said with a smirk, letting go of Drake and cracking her knuckles as she faced the Abyssal. "I thought I heard noises out here, but I didn't think there were any of you scum still left."
The Ri-class merely scowled and ran at Nagato, but the battleship did not move. The Ri-class' fist made contact with Nagato's collarbone, but the Japanese ship girl did not even flinch. Instead, she grabbed the head of the enemy heavy cruiser and then twisted it backwards, killing the Abyssal in one stroke. The dead commando fell to the floor unceremoniously.
"Hmph. These Abyssals are fairly weak when they are not on the waters," Nagato observed. She then saw Shoukaku's unmoving form resting against the bulkhead. "Is she all right?"
"Uh, I don't know. I brought her here to the repair area but got distracted by that Abyssal," Drake answered, still unable to make sense of the recent events.
Nagato went over to Shoukaku and picked her up. "I see. You did well to bring her here then, sir. It probably was not wise to try and fight an Abyssal with your bare hands, though."
"Not like I had a choice…" Drake replied. "But what are you doing here?"
Nagato let out a tired sigh. "I don't want to bring you bad news, but the fight is not going well. I was injured during the battle and so I was tasked with bringing some of the more severely damaged ships back to the main fleet. However, given the chaos of the battle, I was unable to find a safe path back to the Bushido. Haruna was also sailing back from the fight, and so she saw me and my charges and said that we could come back to your ship instead. But when we got here, we saw the Abyssals had installed some sort of ladder-like apparatus on your carrier and were infiltrating the ship. Therefore, we followed suit and tried to kill them before they could cause too much damage. Evidently we missed one, though."
As if on cue, Haruna herself suddenly ran into the passageway. Her expression turned to one of surprise when she saw Drake, Shoukaku, and the dead body of the Ri-class.
"I'm so sorry! I let her get away from me!" Haruna bowed in apology.
"Luckily I was here," Nagato said to her. "But aside from that, have all the others been exterminated?"
"I think so… Suzuya came back and said she beat two of them by herself since she wasn't injured," Haruna informed her.
"Suzuya is here too?" Drake asked.
"Oh, yes, sir. The heavy fleet was ordered to make a general retreat, so some of us returned here," Haruna said. "All of us except Bismarck… Wait, Admiral, what happened to Bismarck?"
"She should be fine now. I sent her to go help out Kaga. But if you're all coming back, then I guess this battle really is lost…"
The three stood silently for a moment.
"I'll go and have Shoukaku repaired," Nagato finally said, disappearing back into the repair area.
Drake thought about the situation. If Abyssals are able to get this close to us, then things are rapidly deteriorating. At this point, I need to get everyone in my fleet back safely and then retreat as fast as I can.
"Haruna, head down to the holding area. Make sure everyone else in our fleet returns and report back when that happens."
"Sir," she saluted before heading off.
Drake himself began walking back to the situation room. He needed to find out if Kaga had defeated or escaped the Princess yet, and then he needed to get both her and Bismarck back to the ship. He also had those American destroyers that were under his command, and hopefully they hadn't been sunk yet.
When Drake came back to the situation room, he found that most of the junior officers were still in there. They stared expectantly at him when he entered, wondering what all the ruckus that had only just died down was about.
"Let's get back to work," he said to them before collapsing in the chair in front of the console. He was all too aware of the missing adjutant at his side.
A wave of exhaustion crashed over him. He had been running on pure adrenaline for the past half hour or so, and now events were catching up with him. He had no idea how he had managed to stand up to two Abyssals in CQC and even help kill one of them, and the recollection of those experiences without the numbing effect of the moment made him tremble.
No. I've got to stay focused, he told himself.
He could worry about that stuff later, but right now, there was still a battle to fight.
Shigure sailed alongside her sisters, her dark hair moving slightly in the wind. The battle against the Aircraft Carrier Princess had ended some time ago, and so Kaga had ordered the escorting ships to sail back to the main fleet because many of them had been severely injured during the air attacks. As usual, Shigure herself managed to escape without any major injuries, but she did take a few hits, causing smoke to trail from her rigging and bruising her a bit.
Murasame ended up worse off. A few torpedoes had exploded beneath her, essentially disabling her legs and preventing her from sailing on her own. Therefore, Yamakaze, who was the least damaged out of the trio, was currently sailing with Murasame's arm slung around her shoulder. This meant that they had to go slower than everyone else and were more or less left behind, but they did not mind because this area of the sea didn't appear to have any enemies in sight.
"Do you need me to carry her now, Yamakaze?" Shigure asked her younger sister.
"No, I can do it," Yamakaze insisted.
"Sorry about this. I should have watched where I was going," Murasame sighed.
Shigure shook her head. "It's not your fault. You shot down more aircraft than either of us anyway."
"Ehehe. But still, I can't believe Kaga and Shoukaku actually managed to sink a Princess by themselves," Murasame said.
"They weren't by themselves. They were able to do it because we all helped as one fleet," Shigure said. I guess you were right after all, Admiral.
"I'm just glad there were no scary submarines…" Yamakaze added, suppressing a shudder.
"Uh-huh. I just hope we don't run into any on our way back," Murasame said.
"No way! That won't happen, r-right, Shigure?"
Shigure tried not to laugh at her sister's franticness. "Don't worry, this is the way we came from, so I doubt the Abyssals could have made it this far back."
"So how do you think the rest of the battle is going?" Murasame then asked.
Shigure hadn't really thought about that until now. "Um… I don't know. I think we lost a lot of airpower in our initial strike, so that might be a problem…"
"Well, the rest of the fleet is really strong anyway," Murasame confidently stated. "If we've got ships like Yamato and Nagato, then there's no way we can lose, right?"
"Yeah…" But the enemy has strong ships too…
"How far is the ship? Maybe we should have asked the rest of the fleet to wait for us," Yamakaze then said.
"Shouldn't be too far now. If you squint you can see shapes on the horizon," Shigure pointed out.
Murasame tried to do just that. "Yeah, I think I can see them. But hey, what's that over there? It's small and moving really quickly."
The three Shiratsuyu-class destroyers turned to look at a figure approaching on the horizon. As Murasame said, the figure was moving at a fairly high speed, and it was obvious that it wasn't a traditional warship. At first Shigure thought it might be Shimakaze or someone, but as the shape got closer, her blue eyes widened as she recognized what it truly was.
"It's her!" Murasame cried out, her expression a mixture of surprise and horror.
The Destroyer Princess… Shigure lifted her gun and prepared her aim, but some part of her knew that it was useless. She was already injured, and if she had to fight while protecting Murasame, who couldn't even move, it would be even more difficult.
The Abyssal approached, but for some reason did not fire upon Shigure or her sisters. Instead, the Destroyer Princess just grinned cruelly at them.
"So here you are. Glad you didn't sink yet," the Princess said in an almost gloating tone.
It was then that Shigure noticed what was in the Abyssal's hands. In the clutches of her right fist, the Destroyer Princess held the heads of Yuudachi and Kawakaze by their hair. Both of their faces were frozen in terror and pain, and the bases of their necks were darkened with red blood from where the Abyssal had sloppily cut them off.
"Here!" the Destroyer Princess smirked, tossing the two heads in front of her and into the water.
Yamakaze shrieked, and Shigure immediately rushed to retrieve them. Before the heads could sink and be lost forever, Shigure pulled them out. But now that she was closer to them, she could see more clearly the brutality of the Abyssal's work, and she felt like throwing up.
Yuudachi, Kawakaze… No…
"Hahaha! You're like a dog playing fetch," the Destroyer Princess laughed. "Do you know how easily I could put you down right now?"
Shigure didn't say anything. The glassy and panic-stricken eyes of her dead sisters stared back up at her.
"Hey, bitch, I'm talking to you!" the Destroyer Princess went up to Shigure and pulled the ship girl's gaze up forcefully by yanking on her dark hair.
The shining, sinister gaze of the Destroyer Princess bored into Shigure's own scared blue eyes. Protectively, Shigure clutched the heads of her sisters closer to her, but she could still feel their dead gazes on her as well. She felt as if she would collapse under the weight of their stares.
"G-Get away from her!" Murasame yelled at the Princess, but she was in no position to actually do anything.
The Destroyer Princess glared at Shigure. "You're pathetic. There's nothing but fear in your eyes."
Roughly, the Abyssal shoved Shigure's head back down. She then smiled.
"I wonder, can you stand up in fight right now? Even if I said that I would kill both your sisters if you didn't?"
Shigure made no response. She tried to stand up, but her whole body was trembling and she found it difficult to move.
The Destroyer Princess pointed her left hand cannon at Shigure's head. "I gave you a chance to get stronger back at the Finger, but it looks like you came back as weak as ever. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't end your miserable life right now."
Murasame jerked free of Yamakaze's grip, only to stumble and fall. "I told you to get away from her!"
"Murasame!" Yamakaze cried out, sailing in front of her fallen sister. She lifted her own gun and pointed it at the Abyssal, but she was trembling just as much as Shigure. "I-If you want to f-fight someone, fight m-me!"
The Abyssal Princess did not take that seriously at all. "You're all worms, squirming about helplessly. As much as I enjoyed our previous meeting, doing the same thing over and over again gets boring. Your two weak sisters were no threat either. Is this really all the famed Shiratsuyu-class can do?"
The three sisters could make no attempt to deny the Abyssal's words. They were far too weak to do anything to a Princess in their current state, and they all remained rooted in place, frightened and only moving with the slight bobbing of the waves.
The Destroyer Princess sighed in disappointment. "And I here I thought this would end up being some great battle, but so far it's just been our side slaughtering yours… Tell me, have any of you ever hated someone or something so much that it consumed your life and your every thought?"
Again the sisters made no reply.
"Heh. Didn't think so," the Princess smirked. "Well, then you will never understand me, or any of the Abyssals… But maybe you can learn. All right! I'm going to let you go this time with your dead sisters. Use this opportunity to foster the dark feelings inside you, and then when you have come to understand me, maybe we can fight as equals. That is when I will not hold back. Until then, ship girls."
With that, the Destroyer Princess turned around and sailed back where she had come from, cutting through the waves with her speedy rigging. When she left, Yamakaze fell to her knees in relief, though she was still trembling. Shigure's gaze was still fixed on the lifeless heads of Yuudachi and Kawakaze.
"Guys, we can't stay here. There could be more Abyssals," Murasame warned. "Let's go. We need to hurry and get back to our fleet."
"R-Right," Yamakaze shakily agreed, getting back to her feet and picking up Murasame. "... Shigure?"
Wordlessly, Shigure got up and followed her sisters. Her blue eyes stared dully ahead.
Bismarck double checked her radar, which, along with her engine, was practically the only piece of her rigging still left somewhat intact.
This looks like the place, she thought, looking around at the empty sea. I don't see anyone, though. Did Kaga already leave?
The German battleship had sailed to the coordinates given to her by her admiral in order to assist Kaga, but given her injuries, she had to take her time in getting here. She didn't hear any sounds of fighting except in the far-off distance, so she assumed that the battle here must already have been finished.
Wow. I guess that's why she's the flagship, Bismarck marveled, recalling her own match with Kaga when she first got to the base.
It was then that Bismarck noticed a lone figure crouched over in the distance. Bismarck sailed over to it, and as she got closer, she could see that it was Akagi from her fleet.
What's she doing here by herself?
As Bismarck approached, Akagi did not even bother looking up at her. The carrier was severely damaged, and her clothes were torn and bloodied. A relatively large hole had been punched through Akagi's stomach, and Bismarck cringed at the injury. Akagi's eyes stared blankly at the water in front of her.
"Akagi. What are you doing here?" Bismarck asked.
The IJN ship girl said nothing.
"Where is Kaga?" Bismarck then questioned. There's no way that Kaga would just leave Akagi like this.
After a brief pause, Akagi spoke. Her voice was very quiet and raspy.
"... Kaga… Is gone…"
"What?" Bismarck raised an eyebrow.
"She's gone!" Akagi suddenly screeched, causing Bismarck to jump back in surprise. The carrier then doubled over and began coughing harshly.
Gone…? "What happened to her?"
"... She sunk," Akagi replied after her coughing subsided, her voice even weaker than before.
Bismarck's eyes widened. "She… But that's…"
Akagi did not speak after that. Instead, the carrier just fell over, and Bismarck had to grab her to prevent her from sinking. Akagi's golden eyes were now dim, and it clear that she had succumbed to her injuries. Bismarck wouldn't be getting anymore information out of her.
Could Kaga really have sunk? Bismarck wondered, shocked. It does make sense, given that there was no one here. If Kaga had won the fight, she would have reported back and taken Akagi with her… But how could she lose?
As the shaken Bismarck held Akagi's lifeless form in her arms, she then spotted another shape sailing towards her. Bismarck squinted her blue eyes and made out the familiar figure of Ark Royal. The German sailed over to meet her halfway.
"So you're still alive, eh?" Ark Royal greeted, her sapphire eyes and tired smile displaying her fatigue.
Trailing behind Ark Royal were the bodies of the two American carriers, Saratoga and Intrepid. Ark had apparently brought some towing wire with her, and the two carriers were attached to Ark's rigging as she sailed. They were clearly dead, and their bodies looked like props out of a horror film. The skin on Intrepid's face had been burnt off, revealing the skull beneath, and one of her arms had been blown away at the shoulder. Saratoga's torso was smashed open, and her bloodstained ribs jutted out, burnt flesh clinging to the bone.
"Is she dead?" Ark Royal asked, pointing towards Akagi.
"Ja. She told me that Kaga also…"
Ark Royal sighed. "I see. I did hear the sounds of battle fade away some time ago."
"What happened here?" Bismarck asked, still confused and dumbfounded at the whole situation.
"It's a long story," Ark Royal said, then held her head as she stumbled a bit.
"Are you all right?"
"Hah… I'll be fine," Ark Royal weakly smiled. "I think we should just get back to the fleet…"
Bismarck grit her teeth. This was not how it was supposed to end.
"Yeah… Let's go."