I don't know how long had passed since I'd been arrested, it felt long anyway. So I ended up being chained to the interrogation table, sitting in the room in silence with Duke of York standing on the other side of the room in silence, having given up on asking me any questions a while ago. Not long later there was a knock on the door and another figure entered the room, Hornet…? She sat down on the other end of the table and stared at me with this look of…disappointment…? We sat in a momentary silence, before at last Hornet asked, "What part of 'stay here' and 'don't leave this room' did you not understand?" I just stared down at the table with an overwhelming feeling of wanting to be sunk. "Do you know how much grovelling I had to do in front of the commander? I'm pretty sure that someone has recorded all that in its entirety." I could hear the sounds of Duke of York's footsteps as she grabbed my hands and started unshackling them. "The next time I tell you to do something, I'd like for you to do it, okay?"
"Yes, boss…" I mumbled embarrassedly.
"Good. Myoukou is outside. Wait there. And follow me." She didn't have to emphasise that much; I'd learnt my lesson.
We followed Hornet to the commander's office. Waiting for us there was the commander, the queen, Warspite, Enterprise and Amazon. It looked like most of the royal navy ships were not happy in the slightest.
"So…" The queen hissed "The commander here has ordered that you are to assist in this so-called investigation."
"Well, two heads are better than one…right…?" The commander replied sheepishly. The way Queen Elizabeth was glaring at him, she was not happy at this in the slightest and might have been quite tempted to do a mutiny and punch him in the face. Or maybe she'd slap him across the face, I can't quite imagine her punching anyone.
"Well…I guess that means that we should figure out this code then…" Myoukou sheepishly interjected.
"We have no idea what it is that we're supposed to do though, Warspite here doesn't remember writing out any of this code." Explained the queen, Warspite nodded her head in agreement.
"Actually, I don't think we're supposed to ask Warspite how to solve the code, I think that something about Warspite will help us solve the code." Hornet added
"What do you mean?" the pint sized royal asked.
"Well, what's Warspite here famous for doing?"
"Longest confirmed hit on a target." Warspite replied immediately with pride.
"On who?" Hornet added.
"Umm…"
"Well I'll cut your little trip down memory lane short, it was Giulio Cesare."
…
"…And…?" The queen scoffed.
…
"I guess none of you have heard of a Caesar shift before huh?"
"A what?"
"OH! Allow me…~" Amazon gleefully replied as her chibi form slid across the office with a screen and her pointing stick at the ready. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a screen in here though. Amazon then proceeded to explain about a Caesar shift with some slides of chibi characters. "Julius Caesar needed to send a message to one of his generals that he'll be arriving with reinforcements, but he didn't want the message to fall into the hands of the barbarians. So instead, he wrote the message out in Greek, a language that they didn't know. However it wouldn't work if his opponents knew the language too, such as his political adversaries back home, so he devised a simple code to hide his messages from prying eyes, the Caesar shift. Simply take whatever letter you want to write and replace it with the one three letters down. For example, Hello would instead translate to Khoor, to find the code, replace the letter with the one three places behind it."
"Which means…" Hornet added "the code translates to: 'Go to the records department, spy section, gadgets folders.'"
"Wow, that's brilliant work Hornet senpai."
"I helped too!" The other blonde haired tsundere yelled.
"Well I guess we know where we're going now." I said turning towards the door.
"Just a moment…" The queen haughtily demanded. I stopped in my tracks and turned to face her. "Before you three amateurs go anywhere near the spy section of the records department, we're going to have to insist that you do something for us…"
Having signed some deviation of the official secrets act, as to not leak any information that we find in there, we now found ourselves in the spy section of the records department, the three of us in our own little group with a pile of folders around us. "Shit…" Hornet muttered.
Myoukou's head flicked up with high speed from the folder she was reading. "What?" she gasped in offence.
"Camel shit to be precise…" Hornet replied showing us the file, "Disguise a landmine as a piece of camel shit, drop it in the desert, and hope an enemy jeep rolls over it*. I mean if I was driving in the desert and I saw a piece of camel shit on the road, I'd try to avoid it at all costs. What have you found rookies?"
"Rats." I replied.
"What?" Myoukou asked, a little less offended now.
"Find a load of dead rats, stuff them with dynamite, smuggle them into power coal fired power stations, and hope the workers shovel the rats into the furnace*." I explained "What about you Myoukou?" I asked.
"Itching powder…"
…
The two of us just stared at her in disbelief. "Please tell me you're joking." I said.
"Myoukou never jokes." Hornet responded.
"HEY! It wasn't my idea! Someone had the bright idea of spreading itching powder all over Ironblood uniforms!*" The three of us just sat there in silence. "Britain certainly made some weird gadgets."
"Yeah, I know." I responded. "I read about an idea of mixing sawdust with ice to make it stronger, and less easy to thaw.* I mean, what was the idea of that? Were they going to try and freeze Ironblood equipment with a giant hosepipe?"
"Eh, could be worse." Hornet added "I've read a Northern Parliament idea to strap landmines to dogs and have them run under Ironblood tanks*."
"Oh no! That's terrible!" Myoukou gasped.
"Don't worry it has a bittersweet ending. Apparently, they practiced this idea on Northern Parliament tanks, so when the time came to use them in battle, the dogs ran under the Northern Parliament's own tanks instead of the Ironblood tanks*."
Myoukou looked pale "How dreadful! I wouldn't want to do anything like that!"
"You? No." Hornet replied, giving a small cough as she pulled a file from behind her back and handed it to Myoukou. "But…all's fair in love and war…"
Myoukou opened the folder and read the contents in silence, I was worriedly intrigued. "What is in that folder?" I asked Hornet.
"An idea from the Sakura Empire near the end of the war… To release bubonic plague*." I turned my head back to Myoukou.
"Myoukou are you feeling okay?"
Myoukou slowly lowered the folder, her face looked ghastly.
"I…I think I'm going to be sick…"
"Okay then, you take Myoukou to the toilets, will you? I'll carry on reading these files." I hurriedly assisted Myoukou to the bathroom, concerned about how her righteous yet genteel nature was going to fare with the rest of the contents of these files.
Half an hour later, with Myoukou feeling a little better we returned to our section, only to find Hornet nowhere in sight, (un)fortunately Amazon was there to guide us to where we needed to go. Eventually we arrived in another part of the section, where everyone else was waiting. "You find something?" I asked.
"Well of course we did, otherwise we wouldn't have asked you to come over." The queen haughtily replied.
"What did you find?" Myoukou weakly asked.
"Are you feeling okay?" Warspite asked.
"She's fine. More importantly…" She handed me a folder labelled 'Project H'. "Apparently, there was some secret experiments conducted in the Maple Monarchy by a lake. And apparently the commander here has never known about this."
"It's true…" he confirmed.
"We've managed to identify the lake." Warspite added, "Hopefully we'll be able to find something that was left behind that can help us identify what was being built there."
"The Maple Monarchy huh?" I said, thinking out loud. "So when do we leave?" I asked.
The queen's face dropped. "You're not coming with us surely?"
"Why not?" Enterprise countered "If this treasure can help us against the sirens, then it would be quite beneficial to Azure Lane."
"Agreed." The commander concluded. I swear I could hear Queen Elizabeth's teeth grinding.
"Fine…" she reluctantly sighed. Enterprise and the commander oblivious to the annoyance in her voice.
"Alright then rookies!" Hornet cried "Better make a quick trip to the bathroom. We're off to the Maple Monarchy!"
* Yes, these are all true, look them up if you don't believe me.