Chapter 48: She Was Russian...
Jake Lee squinted into the inky expanse surrounding the snowed-under island of Adak. It was just after nine, and the darkness of the sky had started to meld with the equally dark water into a contiguous blanket of dark that surrounded the lonely little island like a blanket. Except this blanket made things colder.
The islander brought his binoculars up to his eyes and winced as the cold steel and rubber bit into his face like so many tiny knives. The shipgirls, or at least the first few, should be showing up any time now. But all he saw in the infinite expanse of uniform blackness was the curling wisps of his own chilly breath.
Nothing. Lee scowled and clapped his gloved hands together to work some circulation into them. As winters go, this one was pretty chilly, and the stress wasn't helping either. Wait-
Lee slammed his binoculars to his eyes so fast they almost left bruises around his eyes. A light… he saw a light… somewhere right about… There!
It was definitely a signal light. Two flashes, then four, then two. The identification code the Navy'd sent. Lee fumbled his gloved hands over his own signal light and haltingly sent the return signal.
The shipgirls were getting closer now. He could see the silhouette of their slender hulls knifing though the black water. At the same time, he saw the hints of girls storming though the water at a sprint.
"Hey!" Lee waved his arms as frantically as the heavy insulation of his dayglo red parka would allow. "Hey! Over here!"
The lead ship tossed a wave at him. At least he was pretty sure it was a wave, it was hard to make out anything beyond rough gestures in the gloom. A few moments later, he saw her low-slung hull disappear behind a row of fishing boats.
The four other, smaller shipgirls trailing behind her followed suit. Each one rather inexplicably sailing behind the tied-off fishing boats. Lee could imagine one, maybe two of them snuggling in where he couldn't see, but there just wasn't room for all five of those hulls to tie off where he couldn't see.
Before he could ponder the matter further, Lee took off running down the pier to meet them. If that man from the navy was right—and since was an admiral he probably was—they didn't have a moment to loose! Lee kept glancing over his shoulder at the row of parked fishing boats, hoping to catch a mast or… any indication that there were five very dangerous warships tied off on his little island.
But when he finally rounded the corner, he didn't find anything of the kind.
A beautiful young woman with two glowing… horn… ear… things inexplicably floating next to her short hair was helping another, much smaller girl up onto the pier.
"Hey, uh," Lee rocked on his heels, his eyes scouring up and down the short, top-heavy woman. She was dressed in a cardigan, a very short skirt, and thigh-highs. "How are you not freezing?"
"Scarf," said the woman. Her eyes—or eye, as it were. Lee was pretty sure he saw an eye patch on the woman's face—never moved from the little girls she was helping up onto the pier, but one finger jabbed at the fuzzy purple cloth knotted around her neck.
"But…" Lee gulped. That skirt was riding perilously high as she leaned over to help yet another tiny sailor-suited girl onto the pier. A good chunk of her snowy-white thighs were exposed to the biting winds, she had to be freezing, and if she couldn't feel it… "You're only wearing a skirt."
"But she has a scarf," one of the little girls, the short-haired brunette, gave Lee a look that was equal parts innocent and confused. "Why would she need more, nanodesu?"
"Mmhm," added the purple-haired one, "being overdressed really isn't ladylike."
The third girl, the snowy-haired one just turned to Lee with a long, silent look. Then she let out an almost imperceptible sigh.
Lee pursed his lips. It was freezing out, and letting little girls like that wander around without coats just felt wrong. They weren't that much older than his little sister. Then again. They had scarves. "You sure? I can get some hot coco for you."
The three girls—four, now that the young woman had hoisted yet another onto the pier—glanced at each other with a uniform giddy smile. Even the stoic snowy-haired one looked interested. Then the purple-haired one spoke. "No thank you."
"Yeah, it's not ladylike to eat before your guests."
"Heermann and her sisters need it more, nanodesu."
The snow-haired girl just shot Lee a look a pint-sized resolute look.
"Good girls," said the eye patched woman with a smile. A smile that died as she turned to face Lee. "Tenryuu," she said flatly, "fufufu, you scared and all that shit."
Tenryuu waved at the cluster of girls shuffling along behind her like so many ducklings. "Akatsuki, Inazuma, Ikazuchi, Hibiki," she said, prompting a nod from each girl as her name was called.
"Jake Lee," the Alaskan jogged down the pier, angling towards the waiting convoy of pickup trucks. "We got the Admiral's message, but we're scrambling to pull it all together."
"How can we help?" asked Tenryuu in a very motherly-commanding sort of way.
"Got a lot of hungry girls to feed," Lee jogged off the pier onto the more-or-less clear path to his waiting truck. "Could use a few more hands in the kitchen, especially once the planes get here."
Tenryuu nodded. Her shoes didn't so much punch though the late-evening snowfall as glide over it like it was hard as ice. "What else?"
"We're turning the Inn's swimming pool into a dock," Lee shrugged as he fumbled for his keys, "But we can't make heads or tails of the instructions we got."
Tenryuu nodded, her twin floating ear-things lagging just a split second behind. "Okay, Hibiki, Akatsuki, you're on pool duty. Everyone else, to the kitchen."
The girls all nodded resolutely, their tiny faces set with determination as they piled into the bed of Lee's all-wheel-drive truck.
"Any of you ladies know how to drive?" asked Lee as he coaxed the diesel engine to life.
Akatsuki's hand shot into the air like a canon, with Hibiki's following behind at a more sedate pace.
"Good," said Lee as he pulled the truck off onto the road proper, "I'll drop us off at the Inn," he motioned to where Tenryuu sat in the passenger seat, "Then you can use it for whatever errands you need."
"Korosho."
Akatsuki grabbed the hulking truck's dashboard like a sailor clinging to the only life raft left in the middle of a howling typhoon. Her knuckles were white and her fingers gouged deep into the plastic. She might not know as much about driving as her longer-lived little sister, but she was pretty sure one typically slowed down when driving around patches of black ice.
One most certainly did not use the slickness of patches of black ice to slingshot a truck around frozen roads faster than it had any right to be going. It just wasn't elegant, or ladylike!
"M-maybe you should slow down?" mumbled the nameship of the third generation of Special-type destroyers.
Hibiki gave a tiny huff. Her face was the same mask of passive indifference it always was. She even looked a little bored as she flung the wheel over, her sleeves whipping from the violence of the motion. "Nyet."
"Hibikiiii," moaned Akatsuki.
"We're on a clock," said the younger destroyer, her hand departing from the steering wheel just along enough to give the hand break a gentle tap.
Akatsuki winced as the truck hurtled towards a huge ice-boulder. She curled up into a ball, making herself as small as possible while the suspension groaned under her growing weight.
But the crash she'd been expecting never came. Hibiki worked whatever dark magic she'd learned from the Russians and swung past the land-going iceberg like it wasn't even there.
"Korosho," muttered Hibiki, a teeny-tiny smile flickering onto her normally stoic face.
Akatsuki was about to shoot back a response of her own, but she sallowed her words at the last second. Snippy replies just aren't elegant. And as much as she hated to admit it, Hibiki had a point. The little destroyer felt her face go red as her complaints back up in her mouth, puffing her cheeks out like Akagi at the dinner table. "Okay."
"Hm?" the snowy-haired destroyer glanced over at her purple-haired sister.
"You're right," admitted Akatsuki, her hands ever so slowly releasing their death-grip on the dash. "Heermann-chan needs help right away."
Hibiki nodded as she almost effortlessly drifted the truck into a parking lot. In what felt like one motion, the stone-faced girl pirouetted the vehicle around a snowbank and slid it into a perfect parallel-dock. Err… parallel park. "You have the list?"
"Yeah!" Hibiki pointed to the sheaf of index card-sized paper clasped in her hands. Lady Jersey's faeries had helpfully provided full blueprints of everything they needed, even if they did offer it with their own teeny-tiny 'hey's. "Let's go!"
Akatsuki leapt out of the the truck, her shoes skittering across the snow as she ran towards the nearest storefront as fast as her mildly-unsteady legs could carry her. She couldn't quite read the brightly-lit English writing, but she knew enough to figure out that this was an auto-parts store of some kind. Which was just what she needed.
The little destroyer burst though the doors, her shoes squeaking against the concrete as she angled towards the counter. "Gimme All the-" Akatsuki stopped, and flung up a single finger. She took a deep breath, composing herself into a proper lady. "I mean, hello good sir."
The man behind the counter, a giant mountain with hairy, musclebound arms and an equally hairy beard, just gave her a stunned look.
"How are you this fine evening?" Akatsuki spread her skirt in a proper curtsy. "My friend and I-" she motioned to the blank-faced Hibiki slowly trudging her way over the snow- "require the use of some of your motor oil."
The Goliath of a man—or perhaps of a poorly-shaved polar bear—folded his arms across his massive chest. "What?" He said. Or at least Akatsuki assumed he said. She saw his furry bead move, but the sound rumbled out like a battleship's main battery.
"Oil, my good man," said Akatsuki, her cheeks starting to glow red as she swirled her skirt in a most ladylike fashion. "Texas tea? Black gold?"
"Motor oil," said Hibiki. The snowy-haired girl shot her elder sister a withering glance, "We need at least ten gallons."
"Oh!" Akatsuki glanced at the tiny notes she held clenched in her palm, "And all the metal shavings and de-icing salt you have."
The giant bear-man behind the counter furrowed his impossibly bushy brows in thought. His beard fluttered as he let out a huff. One massive paw carved a wide arc though the air as he motioned the girls to follow him into the back, "sure thing, miss."
"Thank you, sir!" said Akatsuki with another giddy curtsy.
"'s no problem," the man rumbled, "Always happy to help out a lady."
Akatsuki let out a squeal that quickly shifted into ultrasonic frequencies. Hibiki just stared stoically into the distance.
—|—|—
Inazuma carefully balanced on the non-skid tread of her borrowed stepstool, a heaping bag of instant mashed potatoes held tightly by her tiny hands. "Are you ready?"
The tiny faerie perched precariously on the handle of a towering metal pot nodded. The minute figure held up her stopwatch to Inazuma before nodding to where another gaggle of faeries were standing by by with a clipboards at the ready.
"Okay." The destroyer carefully perched the stuff paper bag on the rim of the pot. "Adding the potatoes in three… two… one!" The soft shoompf of powered potatoes gliding into boiling water was met with the equally soft click tictictictictic of a teeny stopwatch.
Inazuma glanced at her faerie, who flashed her an enthusiastic thumbs up. Or what the destroyer was pretty sure was a thumbs up. It was really hard to tell with their teeny little hands.
"Potatoes are cooking!" she said, spinning around on her stool to catch her momboat's attention.
Tenryuu glanced up from the carrots she was chopping, face face a glowing red from the flowery pink apron she'd donned. The toothpick she was chewing didn't make her seem any less girlish and motherly, either. "Good," said the light cruiser with a smile.
"I mean, uh…" Tenryuu coughed and bit down on her toothpick as she twisted her blushing face into a determined scowl. "Meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat," grunted the cruiser while she jabbed her knife in the general direction of the freezer. "Go make some."
"Okay," said Inazuma. She hopped down from her stool and started walking over to the freezer. But before she made it there, she took a quick detour to throw her arms around her minder's tummy. "I think you're really tough, nanodesu."
Tenryuu's face contorted like a jello cube in the barrel of a 46cm cannon as she tried to grimace badassfully and beam like a happy mother at the same time.