Chapter 7: I Have Feet Now?

Having a body was a very… interesting set of experiences for Johnston. First… she had a body! The first few seconds of her existence had been dominated by that simple fact.

She remembered, hazily, her first shakedown cruise. She could feel her turbines idling away inside her engine room, feel her crew shuffling around on her cramped decks as they manned their stations…

But… she could also feel the cool air flowing though her lungs, feel the gently-churning surf lapping at her ankles, feel the warmth of upmpty-jillion candles against her suntanned skin. Skin She had skin now! What?

Out the corner of her eye, she could see her sisters. Hoel shot her that look. The skipper look. The long-suffering look that could only be descried as "dammit, Johnston, look where you lead us."

Johnston didn't care. She was a destroyer, she didn't run from danger, she ran at it. She was the danger! (And she knew that, deep down under those 5in/38s, Hoel loved her for it.)

Johnston glanced over, aiming to lob some snappy comeback at her nominal skipper, but the words died in her throat. It was Heermann! The last of the Taffy 3 trio, the three little tin-cans that fought like battleships! The most awesomesest destroyers to sail the seven seas! So why did she look so sheepish? With that little half-smile she looked almost… demure.

Then, a splash tore Johnston's attention away from her bash-sister. Over to… to… to a battleship.

The world around her slowed to a crawl as Johnston stared in slack-jawed awe at the most perfect example of American Military Awesomeness ever to put screw to salt. Not just any battleship, her old friend, USS New Jersey!

Nine guns, turrets bigger than her entire body, enough AAA to turn a sizeable chunk of sky into solid lead and fire. More horsepower than all three Fletchers put together.

But Johnston didn't notice any of that. She was a destroyer. She'd been inhabited by 329 sailors, many of them scared kids barely out of high school giving their all in impossible circumstances. Kids who—for all the steel of their character—where still kids.

Johnston couldn't tear her eyes off the battleships's enormous… top weight. Fletchers weren't small, at least by destroyer standards. New Jersey, an Iowa class battleship… she was stacked.

It seemed to move a solid second out of step with the rest of her body, flowing with the same graceful ease perfect torpedo spread ripping the bottom out of a nip cruiser.

Scratch that, a whole flotilla of nip cruiser.

"I missed you all so much!" screamed Jersey, throwing her arms around all three destroyers and effortlessly lifting them off their feet. Her… chest slammed into Johnston's nose, temporarily knocking the little destroyer's brain for a spin as she tried to comprehend what just happened.

"T-thanks, New Jersey!" is what Johnston tried to say. What came out was closer to a muffled grunt of "mMMmmmMff."

Jersey must have set her down at some point, but Johnston was too lost in a euphoric haze to notice. A Battleship. An Iowa class battleship. The very awesome-est of the awesome surface combatants. And she'd hugged her!

Johnston finally snapped out of her daze by the frantic chirp of her Mark 25 radar. She was about to be under air attack! By something… truly massive.

For a second, she hovered on the edge of panic. Then recognition settled in. Tiny, with a flat top, a pair of bouncy little pigtails, and a squat little island to one side, there's only one ship it could be!

"White!" is what Johnston wanted to say. But the little baby-CV slammed into her before the destroyer'd even opened her mouth, sending her skidding butt-first onto the surf,a CVE clinging to her tummy with the tightest hug Johnston'd ever felt.

—|—|—

Admiral Williams didn't recall getting his cell phone. His hands had fished it out on their own initiative, dialling the first number on his speed-dial on nothing more than muscle memory.

"NAVSTA Everett, office of kanmu-"

"This is Williams," growled the Admiral, knifing his way though the crowd of excited sailors, marines, and MPs. The sheer power of The Brass driving a wedge though the mass of fatigue-clad humanity.

A very audible gulp filtered though the phone's speakers.

"Where's Fubuki and Yuudachi?"

"They're, uh…" a brief pause as whoever was on the opposite end looked away from the receiver to shout fantic orders, *"Uh, Fubuki's getting dinner. Yuudachi's napping in her room."

"Get them gone."

"Sir?"

"Take them into town, take them shopping, I don't care," said Williams, his voice the very embodiment of Not To Be Fucked With, "Get them off the base. In fifteen minutes I want them gone."

"Aye-Aye, sir!" came the instant response.

Williams didn't bother putting the phone back in his pocket, already moving on to the next firecracker in this horribly unstable power keg. Naka was… Naka was hunkered down behind her macbook, hiding behind the mess of audio cables she'd rigged up for Jersey's little concert.

Good, it might hide her for the moment, especially with Taffy 3 still disoriented from the summoning. But the girl was wearing a traffic-orange dress!

"Gale," said Williams as loudly he could risk, grabbing the Yeoman's arm to get her attention.

"Sir?" said Gale with a yelp.

"Take Naka," he nodded to the frilly traffic cone hiding behind her sticker-covered lap top, "and fade, understood?"

Gale took a second, looking between the Admiral and the returned American destroyers. "Aye, Aye, sir."

Williams pivoted to face the gaggle of shipgirls exchanging frantic hugs. Destroyer-girls were trying to deal with when they weren't murder-crazy gunslingers who seemed to draw their power from impossible odds and lacked a single fuck to give between the lot of them.

Well… one problem at a time. "Attention on deck!" he barked, his voice echoing off the chamber walls.

Instantly the room went still. Behind him, Williams heard the rustle of fabric as a hundred or so sailors instantly shifted from the electric glee of a rock concert to stoic silence in the face of an angry Admiral.

Even the shipgirls snapped to, scrambling to their legs and standing at rigid attention. Jersey pulled it off the best, somehow looking the very image of a professional American warfighter, even in short-shorts with a guitar slung over her back. And White… well, she was trying, her ruddy face taut with concentration as she gave it her all.

The destroyers though… Johnston had her chest puffed out as far as she could manage, her arms flexed as she tried her very hardest to look match Jersey's stoic stance. Neither of the other girls were much better.

"Taffy 3 destroyers," said Williams staring down at them from the summoning chamber platform, "Report."

"USS Johnston, DD-557 reporting!" Barked the girl with the feathers, her voice overflowing with bravado. "Ready to kick nip ass and take names, sir!"

"USS Hoel, DD-553 reporting!" Barked her sister, the flame-headed girl with her hair in a messy ponytail who seemed intent on not coming in second-loudest. "Can Do!"

"USS Heermann, DD-532 reporting," came the surprisingly quiet voice of the demure—relatively speaking—little brunette. She gave her sisters a timid, loving look before looking back to Williams. "Ready for action, sir."

Williams couldn't help but smile. "Jersey?"

"Sir?" said the battleship, her voice effortlessly carrying over the little destroyers' boasts.

"That was a hell of an idea."

"Thank you, sir," said Jersey, her cheeks all but glowing with pride.

Williams felt his phone buzz in his hand, and he tilted it just far enough to glance at the screen. Outstanding, the DDs and Naka had just cleared the gate… he had time and space to manoeuvre. "You girls must be hungry."

Johnston nodded, her feathery headdress exaggerating every enthusiastic move of her head.

"Jersey, you know the way to the mess," said Williams, prompting a wave of hurriedly-stifled laughter to issue from the sea of sailors behind him.

"Is… that a question, sir?"

"It's an order, Commander," said Williams, allowing himself a slight grin. "Get these girls fed, then get then in my office by twenty-hundred."

"Aye sir," said Jersey, her eyes almost imperceptibly shifting towards the pile of audio equipment Naka'd been hiding behind, scuffing her shoe against the surf she stood on.

Williams offered a slight nod of acknowledgement. "Dismissed."