Chapter 57: Umm... Oops?
Heermann rested her arms on the rim of the hot tub and smiled. She honestly couldn't be happier. Her sisters—and little Sammy too!—were snuggled around her like a whole fleet of soft teddy bears. Her belly was full of fresh warm toast and her very favoritest food: scrambled eggs with plenty of pepper and just a dash of salt.
Even the wounds on her legs had dulled away. Gone were the shooting pains she'd felt every time the tattered steel twisted the wrong way. Instead, the stumpy remains of her shins just… tingled. The teeny torches and grinders of her faeries tickled the insides of her skin as they went about preparing her for a step-stagger weld.
It felt like someone was touching her with a feather, but in a kind of way where they could pretend they weren't touching her at all the instant someone with authority noticed.
But the thing that made her happiest of all were the antics going on over in the swimming pool. Miss Musashi and Jersey were busy brawling in the water. But not in the violent kind of way battleships normally brawled while they were in the water. It was a playful brawl, like the kind that Heermann and her sisters would get up to—at least when Gale wasn't looking.
Jersey was having fun! Heermann couldn't help but giggle as she saw her very favoritest momboat thrashing miss Musashi around the water! Heermann didn't remember much from… from the time after she was hit. But she knew her Jersey had been really sad. She didn't know how she knew, but it was just a feeling.
Something in the big battleship broke in the Bering sea. But now it was fixed! Jersey wasn't fretting over Heermann's stumpy legs anymore, she was… she was being herself.
It made Heermann's day—probably her whole week—when the little destroyer saw Jersey's face split into a smile. She loved her momboat's smile. It wasn't pretty or elegant, but the lopsided grin that pushed Jersey's cheeks up so far she was almost squinting was just the cutest thing Heermann'd ever seen! Jersey didn't wear it often, but she looked so happy when she did.
Things only got better when Tenryuu—her second favorite momboat—and the Japanese destroyers came in with lunch.
Unlike her sisters, who ate nothing but traditional American food, Heermann's service with the Argentinians had given her a more refined palate. But she was still an American at heart. She loved burgers with every fiber of her heart. If she had a heart. She still wasn't quite sure where the 'girl' ended and the 'ship' began.
But that was a question for another time. A time when there were not burgers. Mmmm…. burgers…
The Japanese girls—except Naka and the destroyers who'd been stationed in Washington—froze at the sight of that much hearty food. Musashi stared longingly at the trays. Mutsu cuddled her belly while her eyes started to tear up. Akagi stared slack-jawed at the trays and drooled.
Jersey, however, had no such hesitation. "C'mon!" she barked as she waded over to the pool side. She planted her hands on the smooth coral-green tile and pulled herself out of the water with a grunt, sending sheets of oily water cascading of her muscled back.
Heermann smiled at that. She might not be a battleship, but she could still be proud of all the perfect American Engineering that went into her flagship.
"Dig the fuck in!" barked Jersey as she piled up a small mountain's worth of burgers onto a tray.
The formerly-frozen Japanese ships in the pool erupted into a flurry of action. The pool churned white as every girl scrambled to the poolside with all the horsepower their plants could manage. There was some other stuff going on too, but Heermann was more preoccupied with watching Jersey walk over with lunch.
"Jersey!" Heermann threw her arms up in happiness at the sight of her beloved flagship—and the burgers in her arms.
"Are those for us?" Hoel pointed to the mountain of burgers-with-everything.
"You're the best!" cheered Sammy.
Johnston didn't say anything. She was too busy staring slack-jawed at the way Musashi's swimsuit supported—or failed to support—her main battery. At least until Hoel elbowed her in the ribs. "Ow, hey!"
"I did nothing," said Hoel with an angelic little smile.
Sammy's hand crashed against her face like an overweight pigeon encountering a skyscraper window for the first time.
Jersey blinked, frozen halfway through the process of setting her tray down next to the pool. "Little shits," she scowled. Or at least tried to scowl. That lopsided Jersey-smile stubbornly held its grasp on her face, so her attempt at scowling just made it even more lopsided.
"You love us though." Heermann reached out to hug Jersey's arm as tightly as she could.
"Oh, I love you, Heermann," Jersey leaned over the pile of burgers to heard her flotilla into a hug, "And you," she roped Hoel into the pile. "And you," Sammy giggled as she got added in too.
"What about me?" Johnston's feathers slumped into a pout that matched her screwed up little face.
"Nah," Jersey winked, "You're just a little shit."
"Aww…" Johnston hung her head in mock shame.
"A gullible little shit at that," said Jersey, "Get your perverted ass over here!"
"YAY!" Johnston darted over to join the group hug.
And then she had an idea. The kind of idea that could be shared with her sisters with nary more than a significant glance. The kind of idea that would get them all in sooo much trouble. But would be sooo worth it.
This was going to be epic.
"NOW!" barked Hoel.
At her command, the three Fletchers—plus little Sammy—pulled with all their might. Jersey was already leaning over the lip of the hot tub, they just… need… to… overbalance… her…
Heermann panted. This was harder than it looked. She was straining away with all her might, but Jersey wasn't even budging.
"Girls?" said the battleship.
"Yeah?" Johnston's face was beet red as she strained to topple the battleship into the tub.
"I displace fifty-seven thousand tons."
"And?" asked Hoel.
"All of you only displace seven thousand," said Jersey. The battleship made a show of casually taking a bite from her burger while her flotilla still struggled in vain to send her toppling into the water.
"Darn," said Heermann. It would've been so funny!
"We'll try it again later, don't worry!" cheered Johnston.
"Maybe White could help?" suggested Sammy.
Hoel sighed as she slumped back into the water. "I wonder what she's up to right now."
—|—|—
Fleet Carrier Kaga stood with her hands on her hips. Her fingers were carefully placed to present the appearance of her usual stoic calm without putting any pressure on the ragged flesh around her slowly-healing torpedo wounds. She might wince in pain every time she accidentally brushed her bruises, but she was a carrier of the Kido Butai. She would not—could not—show weakness. Especially not in front of the impressionable light carriers.
And so Kaga stood on the water, her eyes lidded as her scouts whirred across the surface, her ears attuned to the tiny hum of radial engines echoing against the tiled walls.
This had been a swimming pool once, a pool that Kaga could barely fit into—at least if she was in her rigging. Now, it was the base ASW training pool.
The modification had been extensive—and from what Kaga understood, quite expensive. The tiled surface of the pool had been covered with thick, rubbery mats to absorb echoes and muffle the engine noise of any lurking submarine. The water had been dyed a dull—and nearly opaque—ocean blue to further mask a submarine's shadow. Dotted thought the pool were obstacles and man-made sandbars, giving submarines places to hide, and places where the shallow bottom would force them to the surface.
But the expense had been well worth it. Days at sea—braving the ever-present threat of abyssal ships all the while—could be compressed into a few hours in the safety of the training pool. And all under the watchful eye of an instructor.
Kaga let out a hot breath. She'd found Iku lurking in the acoustic shadow of an island nearly half an hour ago, and her planes had been hammering the lewd girl's location with depth charges ever since.
Kaga scowled to no one in particular. It grated on her to spend so much time—even with the compression of operating without rigging—prosecuting a submarine that likely sunk after the first attack. She was a fleet carrier, she had more crucial things to take care of. She wanted nothing more than to break off and find something useful to do.
But Kaga refused to bow to the temptation. White's training had hammered the virtue of patience into the fleet carrier's soul. She would stay on-station until she knew Iku no longer presented a threat.
"Kaga-san!" Shigure, one of Kaga's escorting destroyers, tugged at the carrier's loose sleeve. "Hydrophone contact."
Kaga followed the slender line of the destroyer's finger. Whatever the destroyer heard, it wasn't Iku.
"Spotting a strike," said Kaga. Normally, she'd have simply vectored a few planes from the group already harassing Iku to sniff out the new contact. But White had—somewhat arbitrarily—declared that Kaga's fore elevator was jammed in the up position. She couldn't keep that many planes in the air, forcing her to improvise.
It was a skill she was still honing, but the fleet carrier was determined to practice until she could improvise with clockwork perfection.
Kaga felt faeries scramble along her deck as a flight of B6Ns were brought up to the flight deck to be fueled and armed. Kaga would've preferred to streamline the process by fueling and arming her planes in their hangers, but she fought back her instincts. She would not forget the lessons of Midway.
"Preparing to launch." Kaga drew her bowstring back with a quick yank. There was none of the graceful artistry she normally displayed; she simply pulled the string back far enough to get her plane in the air, then let fly.
Instead of letting the string flip around to her wrist, Kaga's fingers raced it to her bow, catching it moments after it sent her first arrow hurtling into the air. There was no time to do things gracefully, she need only do them fast.
Kaga caught the string with the thick leather of her glove and fished an arrow from the bundle held in her left hand. The deck-park technique White had shown her had almost made up the speed lost by fueling on deck. Almost.
Kaga was seconds away from letting her second B6N fly when she heard a frantic chatter coming from her faerie CAP. The carrier's eyes jolted to the miniaturized Reppus.
A flight of equally-tiny Avengers—backed up by a trio of Wildcat fighters and a giggling White Plains—screamed towards her with all the fury of their full-sized selves. During the war, this kind of situation would've sent even the level-headed Kaga into a panic.
But not today. Today, Kaga knew what to do. The carrier tossed her arrow into the pool. A fueled, armed torpedo bomber was nothing more than a very dangerous hazard if it was caught on deck. Instead, she reached for one of the fighter-arrows she clutched in her off-hand. The benefits of deck park; she always had a few spare Reppus on hand.
"Not today, White-sama," smiled Kaga. She felt her faeries scrambling to their battle stations. AA gunners manned their tiny mounts, while aviation crews secured ordnance and purged her avgas lines with inert gas. Kaga would not fall prey to—as White so eloquently put it—an "explosive fart."
"Is that sooo?" White giggled as her planes bore down Kaga with all the speed their tiny little engines could manage.
Kaga just nodded as she let her fighter-arrow fly.
—|—|—
Kaga sat motionless in Akashi's waiting room. Her back was straight as an ar- as a ramrod. Her features were perfectly still as she fumed in the most stoic manner possible. Sweat beaded along her eyebrows and flashed to steam against the burning heat of her hands rested calmly in her lap, and her gaze was locked dead ahead.
"I'm not mad you know," said White with a smile so huge it threatened to leap off her face. The little carrier was as sweet as ever, even with an arrow embedded deep into her shoulder. If anything, she looked happier than she normally was.
Kaga let out a quick breath through her nose. The tendons in her neck went taut as she was forced once again to acknowledge her mistake. "I don't want to talk about it."
—|—|—
Uploaders Note: Yes, the author was making a reference to that Kaga and young!Zuikaku picture there.