Greyscale Memoir
Chapter 1
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United States, Norfolk, 2007
Jonathan Brandt was by no means new to the BPRD, nor was he unaccustomed to unusual circumstances that surrounded it.
He knew that whenever he went out on the job, it was almost always certain to be either boring, disturbing, terrifying, or just downright weird.
That did not, however, make him feel better about wandering through the cavernous halls of a ship this size.
His radio crackled to life on his belt.
"Jonathan?" came through the light static, "It's Kate."
Jon picked up the radio and pressed the talk button, "Jonathan here. You find anything useful up there in the bridge?"
He heard Kate's classic noncommittal hum before she answered, "Nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Captain Honors is trying to point out where they've been seeing the disturbances. How 'bout you?"
"Well," He drawled with a smirk, "I'll say that the empty hanger of a carrier sure is dark and spooky, but I can't say that I've seen anything particularly paranormal."
Looking around he could see all the planes locked in place on the deck casting shadows in the still air. Empty like this, with only the radio and the sounds of the ship to keep him company, he could see the power of the darkness. How a man's imagination could twist something a simple as an open toolbox in the dark into something...more.
He'd seen it before, he'd seen it all over the country. When you worked for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, you tended to work in dark and spooky places where the mind played tricks on you. After a while, dark and spooky become old and boring.
But every once in a while, you stumbled on to something...more.
"Captain Honors has been pointing out cold spots, places where they've heard a woman's whispers, felt a hand on their shoulder, so on and so forth"
"So...par for the course either way." Jonathan summed up as he peered at a particularly dark shadow under a plane. He pulled out a flashlight and shone it at the spot, revealing it to just be nothing, as he expected.
"We get those as much for bogus cases as we do legit ones."
"Yep," Kate agreed, "I'm about ready to take the kid gloves off up here. How 'bout you?"
Jon looked at his watch, noting the time. It was late, almost midnight. They'd started late since nighttime was often a good time to catch spirits. Often, but not always. Some spirits, depending on the type, preferred daytime. He had a feeling that if there was a spirit on this ship, and it was what he thought it was, then it probably didn't particularly care one way or another about the time.
He looked at the other device on his wrist, the leather binding almost blending in with his dark brown skin. It looked a lot like a watch or compass, a round glass screen with various gears buried beneath it and a silver needle in the center.
"I'm waiting 'till midnight," He said over the radio. "That's shift change on this ship, right?"
Kate was quiet for a moment, then he heard the radio crackle back to life, "Captain Honors says yeah. He mentioned they see a lot of activity around that time too."
"Makes sense. It also doesn't actually mean much, all things considered."
"True…"
"Well…" Jonathan said, walking over to another plane, "Might as well wait around until showtime. We'll see soon enough
Jonathan let out a breath, trying to relax. He was winding himself up over probably nothing.
It came out as a foggy mist.
His eyes widened, one hand on his gun, the other holding up his detector. The needle was spinning wildly like a compass in the north pole. He shivered and felt a chill go down his spine, his skin rise with gooseflesh, and saw a low mist fill the floor of the hanger. Most times, he might have been able to explain it as something else, but not in a Virginia summer.
"Kate, probable contact," he said. His radio crackled with empty static. He cursed, knowing he was on his own for the moment. He trusted his partner to get to him eventually, but more than a few of the several dozen possibilities said he was that help wasn't coming any time soon.
He drew his revolver, held it up with his flashlight, and began to scan the deck. He didn't get far before he saw her.
It was a woman on the far side of the hanger, dressed in all white, possibly some kind of dress, and wandering around the planes aimlessly. His eyes naturally wanted to slide off her, to look anywhere else, and a deep part of his mind told him it wasn't real.
Unfortunately for his instincts, this was all part of the job.
Jonathan squared his shoulders and walked forward. "Ma'am!" he called out, trying to get her attention.
The first couple of times, she didn't seem to hear him, nor did she seem to be moving in his direction. Instead, whenever she passed out of his line of sight, she reappeared somewhere else in the massive hanger. He could tell that this wasn't going anywhere, so he switched tactics.
He reached into his shirt and pulled out a golden ankh and held it tight in his hand.
"Spirit" He said forcefully.
Suddenly, the woman appeared in front of him. It took every spark of Jonathan's will to not flinch, but he managed to hold his ground. He'd been in the BPRD for ten years, this encounter didn't even rank on his top ten. Regardless of how...unsettling she was to look at.
On a closer look, he realized that she was wearing something similar to the navy's officer dress whites, with a few caveats. The skirt was longer, much longer, looking something more like a wedding dress but filled with rips and tears. It was also a smokey grey color rather than pure white. Her hair, which looked to be a much darker steel grey, was mostly tucked under the approximation of a dress cap. In addition, he couldn't see anything that indicated any kind of actual rank, just the implication of authority.
Authority she had in spades. Her eyes bore into his own with an intensity no living human could match. Her unblinking stare seemed to cut right through his body and judge his mind and soul. And her eyes, they were as if someone had taken two scoops on the starry night sky and filled her sockets with them. Just looking at them hurt his mind, as if his brain trying to quantify and understand what it was seeing physically hurt him.
She wasn't the worst spirit he'd seen, and she didn't appear to want to rip his throat out or turn him into a blood altar, so he managed to keep his cool in spite of what he was saying.
"Who are you?" She asked, no, ordered. Her voice was commanding and filled with roar of some mechanical thing.
"Jonathan Brandt," he said, lowering his gun and making sure his tone was in smooth measured tones. "United States BPRD Agent Jonathan Brandt,"
Her brow furrowed, as if the titles rung a bell in her mind, as if they meant something to her.
Jonathan had a bad feeling about where this was going.
"And you are?" He asked, figuring that a question for a question was usually okay with most spirits.
"I...I am…" Her frown deepened into a scowl, she looked as if her name was just on the tip of her tongue, as she'd woken in a daze and was trying to piece her past back together. "E-eris? Ingenuity? York?"
She scowled, "No!"
"This ship?" He ventured, praying to the big guy upstairs that he was wrong.
Her eyes widened as if something finally clicked in her mind. "Yes!"
She grinned, pride filling her ethereal form. Hands-on each hip, chest puffed up, and teeth gleaming with starlight, she proudly spoke her name.
"I am-!"
United States, San Francisco, 2027
"Captain Eris Prince?"
The woman at the counter nodded distractedly, "Yep, that's me."
The clerk finished filing her information into his computer, but out of the corner of his eye he tried to get a better view of her.
Not for any untoward reason, it was barely even a conscious decision. She too much of anything special, just a 30-something woman with tan skin and brown hair wearing a black leather jacket over a navy blue shirt with white stripes and the number six over her heart. Her jeans fit loosely over her long legs and hung over her black combat boots. Honestly, the fact that she towered over him would have been strange enough, but the black and gold hat she wore over her head of shoulder-length hair was something else. No matter what angle he viewed her from, he couldn't see her eyes through the shadows it cast. Nothing beyond the occasional twinkling lights.
It was almost as if-
"So do you have it?" She said, the annoyance of wasting half a day at the airport for her luggage dripping off every word.
"Er, yes," He smiled genially, "It will only be a moment, miss-"
"Captain-" She interjected sternly
He winced,
"Captain Prince" he corrected himself. "One of our staffers will be out with it shortly."
The woman let out a breath, either in exhaustion or relief he couldn't tell, and nodded, "Alright."
She stepped back a bit, folding her arms over her chest and looking around the airport. For a moment, they just stood there. The clerk tapped his finger, trying to shrug off the itch to say something. In the end, he gave in.
"Have you been to San Francisco before?" he asked finally
He didn't know why he asked that. The longer she went on without responding, the more he felt like an idiot for saying anything.
"...yeah…" She said slowly, a fond smile gracing her lips. "I guess you could say that. It was quite a while ago, though."
She looked distinctly like someone enjoying an inside joke.
"Well...I certainly hope you enjoy your return!" He said, pulling up that same false cheer he'd honed from all his hours working in retail. "You can't beat the surf and sun of our fair city!"
Though...something about her made him feel a bit more genuine about it.
"The airport's certainly changed, definitely a lot fancier than in my time. I'll give you that." She admitted with a nod. Then the corner of her lips quirked up into a humorous smirk."But it's gonna be a little hard to enjoy the sun with all this fog."
The clerk grimaced, glancing out the window to see a veritable wall of mist hanging outside. Fog wasn't exactly uncommon in the city, especially given it's seaside location, but this was easily the worst he'd seen in his whole life. It'd been like that all morning too, he'd barely been able to see a few feet in front of him driving in to work.
"Yeah, certainly a dour morning today. Hopefully it'll clear up in time for the eclipse." He said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Hopefully," she smirked, "But we'll have to see about that."
"Well, I find that optimism is…"
He stopped when one of his colleges opened the door to the backroom behind him, and lugged in a trolley carrying a large bulky container nearly as long as he was tall made out of some kind of sturdy plastic. The whole thing was covered in various latches and industrial symbols. Combined with her rank, it gave the clerk a very military-grade impression about the package.
"Ah," he smiled, "Here you are, ma-Captain. Your luggage."
"This everything?" She asked, gesturing to the luggage.
"Yes, Captain." He said, giving the woman his best retail smile. "If you need any help taking it out, I'd be happy to..."
He trailed off when the woman gripped one of the many latches on the container with one hand, lifted the box that weighed at least as much as he did with one arm, and hefted it over her shoulder without so much as a grunt of effort. He tried not to gape too hard.
"Is that it?" she asked.
"Er...yes...yes it is…" He said, trying not to think about his embarrassment by absently checking his console to make sure everything was in order.
"Good," She nodded simply, "Now I just-"
"Prince!" A boisterous voice bellowed out.
A large and rough hand slapped the woman on the shoulder, not that she so much as budged an inch. Standing behind her was a massive bear of a man. His sun-kissed skin, weathered hands, and the scar across the bridge of his nose made the clerk wonder is he was military too. He'd certainly seen a lot of action, regardless.
That might have explained his horrible fashion sense. The man wore an offensive orange and yellow Hawaiian shirt contrasting horrifyingly with his black cargo shorts and sandals that he wore over white tube socks. His sunglasses hid his eyes, and added another level to his mismatched fashion choices given the weather. Combined with the sideburns that kissed the tips of his jaw, his stubble, and wide grin, the man looked to be either completely out of touch with fashion, or so lazy as to not care what he put on.
"There you are!" He smiled broadly, his voice loud and untamed. "Been look'n all over for ya!"
Captain Prince looked at him blandly, though if pressed the clerk would have admitted catching a ghost of a smile.
"Hey Rose," She greeted with a perfunctory wave. "Just getting my stuff. You?"
"All packed." He grinned, holding a single-sling backpack that looked like he'd shoved everything that would fit inside it, then stuffed in about 30 more things for good measure. "Everything else's in the car. You ready to head out?"
"Yeah, sure," She agreed easily, walking off towards the exit with him. "You did get a decent ride, right?"
"Oh," The man chuckled deeply, "You're gonna love it."
As the two stepped away, the clerk couldn't help but note the white 6 5 emblazoned on the back of the woman's jacket.
"It's fucking pink, isn't it?"
A/n: Alright, this is me trying a new thing.
I've been interested in the Kancolle fandom for a while, and came into Azur Lane as the closest thing I could get to it in America, and I've always wanted to do something with.
That said, I've been more interested in the concept than the execution.
Short version: The waifu stuffing bores me and the Magical Sparkly Shipgirl Bullshit feels uncreative. So I'm trying my hand at making a shipgirl fic using my own Hard magic system.
The longer version is a bit more complicated, but I am using my version of hard magic system I started working on for another story. I've been working on worldbuilding for this whole thing for about a year and a half, maybe more. I could go on and on on that, but that's just a bunch of empty promises until I bring it up to the plate.
That said, this isn't actually the main story. I'll be posting that later, after I get done with a trip to Hawaii. This is kind of a side story, taking place in the same setting and time, just a different part of the planet. I've been sitting on this story for a while, and I'd at least like to get my feet wet today.
So, yeah, I've got a backlog for this, so I'll be posting semi-regularly for a little while, and once I round out the arc I'll mark this as done and get to work posting the other one. Shouldn't be more than...10 chapters?
Probably somewhere around there.
That's enough out of me. Hope ya'll enjoyed this fic, and enjoy the rest of your holidays.