Disclaimer: I do not own either Kantai Collection or Halo, nor do I gain any monetary funds from either them or this fanfiction.

Author's Note: Read and Review! Once again, this was co-written by Carlos! This one was tough to start, but once it got going it took a life of its own! I should have another one sooner than I did this one!

Italics - Radio, Ship names, thoughts

Bold - Jarring events

The steady beeping of a heart monitor was what awoke Takao-class cruiser Atago from her slumber. The steady beep-beep-beep-beep from it was somewhat echoing, but understandable. She had 12 hearts technically after all, so the constant droning of them seemed odd only to those who didn't know her makeup. Of course, given the state she was in, one could easily have forgiven them for wondering if she was about to keel over...

The cruiser looked down past her generous bosom to where her lower half was... or should have been. The medical blanket which was put over her was suspiciously flat below her waist-line, and the blonde-haired kanmusu hesitated for a moment before lifting the edge to examine herself. The ship-girl let out a whimper as she saw both of her legs missing from the hips down, bare metal showing where there should have been creamy skin and pleasant curves... But at least from the looks of it it wasn't still raw.

Atago remembered the last moments before she'd lost consciousness. She'd been dodging fire from two of her Abyssal counterparts, a Ne and a Ri, while another pair of late-model Ha's had dropped their torpedoes into the water while she was still blinded from shellfire. They'd torn into her midsection and stern with a vengeance, and while she'd been unable to retaliate, she'd at least taken some consolation in seeing one of the red-eyed monsters taken down by Hatsuzuki. The ducky little destroyer had been quite angry it seemed, though Atago had blacked out before seeing anything else. But the cruiser DID know that she'd lost more than half of her displacement, and that her stomach should be a ragged mess by now. Instead, she'd already been rebuilt to the point where engineering faeries were already working on the sockets where her screws would reconnect to her turbines... Or rather, where her legs would attach to her waist.

The sound of someone clapping outside of the medical-slash-maintenance dock's doorway came, and Atago put the sheet back into place before calling out. "Come in!" Within a second, the door opened and the cruiser's sister ships Takao and Maya came in, to which the blonde gave a smile.

"Atago-chan! You're awake!" Maya said happily, moving to embrace her with a grin while Takao frowned at her.

"Maya-chan! Atago is still on the mend! You shouldn't be so physical with someone still in recovery!" the name-ship said, though inwardly she was also glad to see her sister already awake.

Atago merely chuckled. "It's alright Takao-chan! Atago is already out of danger! Pan-paka-PAN!" she said with some fanfare, lifting an arm up into the air while smiling to show that she was, in fact, doing okay.

"Moooouuu~! You shouldn't worry us like that! You were nearly sunk! If the combined fleet hadn't gotten to you in time..." Takao said, only to be interrupted.

"Haaa, but I didn't! So obviously we made it out okay, ne? A.. ano..." she suddenly said with a twinge of nervousness. "We... DID get out okay, ne?"

Takao sighed as Maya pulled herself away, taking a seat on a nearby chair. "The base was... destroyed... five days ago," the name-ship stated at last.

Atago's eyes widened into blue pools. Nearly a week she'd been out? And to learn that they'd failed? "So... we couldn't stop them then? W-What about the others?" she asked. "Hatsuzuki-san? Wakaba-chan? Yuugumo-chan?" Atago's eyes were tearing up as with each name her sisters' expressions were getting duller, her words falling out of her mouth faster with each one. "Teruzuki-san? Nagara-chan? Agano-san? Furataka-san? Sh... Shigure-chan?"

Maya was the first to speak. "Shigure-san made it out... Her luck held through. Only a few shell hits... Nagara too, though only barely. Furataka had to be dredged up, like you almost were... Wakaba is still in critical condition. The others... Will have to be re-summoned if they're to take to the field again..."

The blonde felt salt-water trickle down her cheeks at that. So many of her friends... "Did... did anyone make it out of the base at least? Any survivors?" she asked, almost begging, only to be struck numb as Takao shook her head.

"We lost it all... The engineers, the technicians, the magicians... We lost all of them." The heavy cruiser gripped at her own arms as they were crossed in front of her. She wasn't exaggerating when she thought to herself that this had been a disaster. It was one thing to lose a base under normal conditions, those always hurt. They were here to defend humanity after all, come forth from the beyond to stand against the tide, to be the shields of those who'd built them, poised to stand upon the seas and cast back the darkness threatening those under their care... and to fail was galling in the extreme.

But this wasn't just a normal loss. Those engineers and technicians hadn't just been sailors and crewmen... They had been the world's foremost experts on ship-girl summoning. They had led the way to calling forth more of their sisters from their rest to answer the call to arms, who combined everything from traditional shinto rituals, quasi-mystical chants, European sorcery and druidism, along with technical science, Quantum science theory, and old fashioned prayer to The Powers That Be. They were the ones who'd led Japan's defence through faith, magic, and logic... And their loss would mean the end of more than a third of all summonings they could do in the foreseeable future... With one attack, the Abyssals had struck a vicious blow that could mean the end of the Home Islands... and perhaps the Pacific as well. The Americans had their own ship-girls after all, but they had only just been getting the hang of it, and had precious few who were willing to embrace the idea of plain old Magic as being a military necessity... and now a good chunk of their shamans were gone too...

"Hey hey now... I know it's bad, but it's not the end!" Maya said after a moment of silence as her sisters delved into a funk. "After all, we DID get Atago-chan back, along with Shigure-san, Nagara-chan and Wakaba-chan... And it's not like the Abyssals came out unscathed either!"

Atago looked over at the brunette. "Eh? Then... We... We made them pay then?" she asked.

"Hai! According to Nagato-sama, pretty much nine tenths of the enemy's forces were destroyed in the attack! Also, they actually left some of their own sunken ships behind!" Maya said. "Naval Intelligence is already foaming at the mouth I hear to study them... They're calling it the score of the century!"

Atago blinked in surprise. "Whaaaaa? But... Don't they always haul away their dead?"

"Mmm!" Maya nodded earnestly. "But! This time they didn't! Whether someone booby-trapped the base or not isn't yet known, as Intel is still examining the base, but some of the Abyssals were blasted to bits while on land... It's thought that whatever killed them did it after the others had left, so there was noone to carry them off! We could learn a LOT from them now! Maybe even find out where they come from!"

Takao nodded at that. "That is correct... It's the first time we've been able to recover anything but a few destroyed drones, and even those reduced themselves to mush and rusted out slime after a day or two... This time the scientists might be able to glean something truly valuable from them. Our friends did not fall in vain at least..." she said with her usual solemnity.

Atago sighed, leaning back into the hospital-bed-like-berth at that. "Ah... Well... At least that happened at least. Still, I wish we'd done more..."

"We cannot dwell on what we did not do, Atago-chan... Only on what we WILL do," Takao said. "I know that this is a bit much to take in right now, but the Admiral would like you to take it easy for awhile, okay? We don't want you pushing yourself more than necessary, or it'll only make your recovery longer..."

"Hmmhmm," Maya nodded in agreement, causing the third sister to sigh in her berth.

"Hai... Tell the Admiral that I'll report for duty as soon as I can, okay?" she asked.

A warm smile crossed Takao's face. "I understand, and I will tell him. Get well soon Atago-chan... Everyone will be waiting to see your smile!"

"Haaaai~!"

Yellow eyes looked out from behind a pair of sunglasses along the coastline, as their owner swallowed another mouthful of water from a bottle in her hand. She'd dropped down from orbit during the night a few days ago, dropping herself above the water to limit how much detection that she would be risking, then making her way into the shallower parts of of the bay around what her little map-satellite hack had told her were the Philippines. In fact, it was a bit north of where she'd first popped up, an island the map said was called Manicani. Filing that away for the time being, Leviathan had found herself hitting the water just off of a place called Aurora National Park. She'd stuck low to the water, hoping that none of the coastal patrols would spot her as she hovered above the waves, but despite expecting some kind of alarm going off, the spaceship-turned-woman found herself in the clear...

(Four days ago)

The area was nestled in a series of mountains that would hopefully keep any radar or land-based sensors from detecting her, or so she thought, and the area was protected enough that humans wouldn't show up too often... Or so she'd thought. Instead it turned out that while she wasn't being pinged on any sensor nets that she could detect, the area WAS a tourist area. A surprisingly vacant one, but still one that saw visitors it seemed, even with naval travel in such disarray. Within the first few hours Levi had almost been caught by park rangers, and she'd had to find ways to hide herself amongst the caves and trees. At one point she had submerged herself into a pool just below a waterfall, letting the water slough off her armor plates as she waited for them to pass...

She found out rather quickly that while her air-tight hull meant that Leviathan didn't have any leaks going in the water, it was still wasn't a pleasant experience. Water got into her engines' thruster housings and were nearly fouled as a result. True, she could still ignite her engines without too much fuss, but the sensation was somewhat like what she overheard her crew once saying about having soggy boots after a march... She was NOT a fan.

The most shocking part of that day however had NOT been finding herself undetected... No, THAT was reserved for when she'd been tromping around the park's underbrush and trails. Leviathan had been pushing aside a log that had gotten in her way when she had idly wondered what it would have been like if she hadn't had her armor on in this place, to sneak around like one of her Marines on a wilderness training sim... And had jumped out of her skin (in a way LITERALLY) when her armor, her hull and and her weapons, all started to vanish, turning into a white fog that left the cruiser much smaller than she'd been before!

Taking a look at herself after that had revealed that Levi'd been rather understating her assumptions before of her current situation. She didn't have a humanoid form... It WAS human! A look at herself in a pool of water showed that Leviathan's face held sharp features that looked a combination of Romanian and Asian features, with dark-blue almost black hair that was held back in a short ponytail, and bright yellow eyes in slightly slanted eyes. Her upper and lower body were covered in what, to her eyes, looked like an officer's battle uniform, a grey-white suit with flexible armor weave that did nothing to take away the appearance of ceremonial Navy Whites, the seams locked in such a way that could become air-tight should it prove needed, with a sidearm that looked suspiciously like a combination of a standard M6 pistol and one of her 50mm PDC's... Sturdy boots covered Levi's feet, and a tac-pad was wrapped around her left forearm. The latter hadn't just been a surprise to her either... Hephaestus had been somewhat alarmed at seemingly losing physical form, only to perceive his ship-partner through the pad. That particular mystery was one that Leviathan felt she was going to have to solve at some point as well, but for now she'd not look a gift horse in the mouth as she started making her way towards what she hoped was the nearest bit of civilization.

This turned out to have a few caveats however... Namely that no matter that she ran on a deuterium-fueled reactor and some of the finest engines that humanity had ever created, her human form it would seem had a few issues with heat. It wasn't long before she felt it necessary to peel off the top of her uniform outfit, tying the jacket around her waist as the cruiser cooled off in the night air. Her torso was still covered, though it looked like it was just with a black muscle-top, the likes of which she'd had in her storage bays for marines and ODSTs... PT wear. Setting that aside again as part of the previous mystery, she noticed a few other things, namely on her arms.

It was against standard UNSC protocols to adorn a ship with ornamentation outside of special circumstances, as the normal color schemes approved were meant to give said ships a greater stealth capability against the black of space, or so theory went. So it was odd to Leviathan to find that her arms and shoulders had a set of curling lines that went up them, surrounding and intertwining with four very familiar symbols.

The first of which, on her left shoulder, was the Eagle and Globe symbol of the UNSC itself, stylized wings emblazoned against pale flesh proudly while the lines surrounded it in an aura of grandeur. On her left forearm, Levi had a more menacing one, but one that still bore itself proudly. It was the burning Skull and SOEIV motif of the ODST, her Helljumpers' own regimental sigil. Grinning at that, the cruiser noted that her right arm held similar motifs, namely the triple-looped braid surrounding a Longsword that was her air-group's symbol, with the motto "Raptores Numquam Delinquent" or "Raptors Never Fail" stenciled on the braid. The last one though, wrapping around her right forearm...

Every UNSC ship had its own name, number, and its own personal emblem, gifted to each ship once they were commissioned and presented to the captain upon their maiden voyage. Leviathan's own sigil was that of a rearing Carcharacus Mountainus, or White Mountain shark, a creature discovered on Reach back when it was first being colonized that was 8 times the size of an average Great White shark of Earth. It was characterized by three dorsal fins along with a set of fanged mandibles that could be unhinged, similar to a snake's jaws, allowing them to stretch wider than they otherwise would have been able to and grasp with that much more strength... Thinking about it, it reminded her that Hephaestus' new form, the one on her MAC gun anyways, actually looked somewhat like the skull of the Mountain shark, which explained a lot really... Seeing her personal sigil mounted on her forearm caused her to grin, and a flex of the limb made it look like the beast was tensing to pounce...

That had been a few days ago though. Between then and now, after finding a public transport that she was able to beg a ride on, Leviathan had discovered many other things about this planet, and its people. They really were using some of the more primitive tech that humanity had access to, though if it were a backwater it'd be somewhat understandable. The bus was a rickety, gas-guzzling thing that took her from the park to another city on the island, barring a few detours, named Palayan. After a couple of hours of looking around and soaking in the local dialect, using her onboard translator to update herself quickly, Leviathan found herself in another dilemma...

She was fucking HUNGRY!

Her internal storehouses, or rather her new miniature quartermasters, were rather loudly telling the ship-woman that their stores were needing replenishment after her little sortie against the Abyssals, and her chemical fuel stores were running near a quarter of their normal levels as well. If she wanted to be at top condition, she was going to need a top-up. The problem was, where the hell was she going to pull that from? She couldn't just go rob a supply depot... Or could she?

While she'd been contemplating that particular mystery, she'd come across a rather unorthodox solution to it... Namely, she was mugged. Well, rather someone TRIED to mug her. It really didn't do well to pull a knife on a warship capable of smacking aside an asteroid... Adding two buddies to the mix didn't do anything to help him either. Thankfully, Leviathan didn't believe in using excessive force outside of necessity, usually, and a quick few blows to her assailants' skulls and rib cages meant they were down for the count. Admittedly, Leviathan had been worried for a moment. She'd never actually struck another human being before like that... She had half-feared she'd wind up liquefying the poor fools with each hit. Luckily for them though, Levi hadn't mis-guessed her strength, and had pulled her punches effectively enough to only break a few ribs and give them a bad series of concussions.

The real silver lining came from taking the would-be-muggers' wallets though. Though they hadn't had too much hard currency, they'd had a few credit cards that they'd not maxed out before crossing her path, and the ship-girl felt that a little bankruptcy was a small price to pay in return for her not handing them over to the cops. Assuming that the cards were theirs that is... So while leaving the trio of hoodlums to recover in the alley, Levi had made her way over to an ATM. Admittedly, it had taken some finagling to figure out the access numbers for them, but her engineers had been more than happy to hack the things. She HAD planned on using it to bribe some poor individual into letting her buy some fuel and materials, but instead...

Her travels were stopped by a scent. A tingling on her sensors that caused some part of her core to activate targeting sensors and zero in on the source. It didn't take much more than circling the block once to find the source either... It was a bar. Well, the scent wasn't, that was coming from IN the bar, but Levi didn't care about that. What she wanted was inside of it, and her brain was currently locked in 'Search and Destroy' mode... Before she knew it, she was standing next to the bar's window into the kitchen, her yellow eyes looking over an in-house spit with roasted bird and fish and small mammals of some kind on it, making the most delicious of scents.

Leviathan didn't even register that it wasn't just her that was salivating. Her entire crew compliment was doing the same, and somewhere in her storage bays the cry came up that this would do PERFECTLY to restore what she'd lost! The cruiser probably should have wondered as to the logic of such a thing, but she was too damn hungry to care.

"Barkeep! How much for what's on the spit?" she called out in Filipino, drawing the attention of one of the waitresses that was on hand.

"We've got lechon manok, grilled tilapia, and pork sisig. Which do you want?" she said.

"All of it!"

The waitress blinked at that, but one look at the woman's face showed that she wouldn't take no for an answer, and so got ready for a triple order. "Gotcha hon. Anything to drink? I've got Tanduay, Ginebra, some San Miguel and Red Horse if you want the lighter stuff... Or if you feel like something fruity I can just grab you a Calamansi..."

Leviathan thought for a moment, before shaking her head. "I'll take some rum if you've got it... As well as some water."

The waitress nodded. "Tanduay's your poison then. Be right back!" she said, before moving to the kitchen to deliver the order.

Four hours later, the waitress was huddled in a corner wondering what she had done. This woman... no, this MONSTER, had just finished off her fourth chicken as well as her fifteenth helping of fish, and was starting in now on her third helping of pig... The whole pig... And on top of that she'd drank probably close to a full keg of rum and didn't even have the decency to look tipsy! Admittedly, the fact that she'd drank a full barrel of water would have explained it a bit, but then again, the foreigner hadn't even paused to go to the restroom once... and her stomach wasn't bulging out even an INCH!

After watching the foreigner slam down another empty bottle, she'd stopped taking shots long ago, the waitress simply handed her another while her manager was looking on in horror. The worst part was, they couldn't actually kick her out either. After the sixth helping, they'd made mention that she'd have to pay up front for any more... and the pale-skinned tattooed woman had slapped down the equivalent of $3000 US dollars in pesos onto the counter. And told them that she had more if needed. At this point the other customers had bailed out, not wanting to know what was going on, only feeling a need to flee before the strange woman wound up biting off something attached to them...

Leviathan meanwhile, was simply enjoying herself. The sensations passing over her sensor array were like NOTHING she'd had before! Oh sure, she knew what chicken was, she'd had enough of the simulated stuff in her crew's galley beforehand, same with pork and fish and beef, but she'd never actually experienced it herself! Was this what it was like for all humans? If so, then she could understand the old saying of an army moving on its stomach! Every morsel that passed her lips was like an explosion of flavor that caused her struts to shake with delight! And the RUM! Smooth as silk and left a wonderful sensation as it flowed down her throat into her fuel reserves, transforming itself into the exact chemical mix she needed for her maneuvering thrusters once a few additives were thrown in! The water went straight into her reactors, making them purr with satisfaction as they returned to optimal operating levels...

Finally, the heavy cruiser set the last of 20 plates down. "Ahhh, that hit the spot perfectly! Hey barkeep!" she called out, causing the woman to start in surprise. "Do you know how I can get to Manila from here? A bus or whatever?" she asked.

The waitress nodded somewhat hurriedly. "Th... There's a tour bus that goes there every day at 10 in the morning..." she said, pointing towards downtown. "Just... Just off 4th street. The depot's got a sign... You can't miss it!"

"Great! Thanks for the help!" she said, fishing around in her pants pocket again for a moment. The waitress feared what it might be, before Levi slammed down another $1000 worth of peso. "Here's the tip, have a good day, alright?" With a wave goodbye, Leviathan took her coat and threw it over her shoulder as she headed for the door, a grin on her lips and a jaunt in her step...

The waitress looked down at the money for a solid minute before realizing that it was hers, and hurriedly grabbed at it. The manager looked like he was going to protest for a moment, but a sharp glare from the waitress silenced him. She pointed down at the money, then between herself and the kitchen. From said kitchen the cook's face glowered out at the manager, eyes fixed on him as he nodded his head, and the man sighed in defeat. They'd earned it after all...

The door opened once more though as Levi stuck his head in. "Sorry, one more thing," she said, causing the three staff to bristle in fear of what fresh horror might be brought... "Can I get another bottle of water to go?"