Chapter 72: Support Meets Jeep
As Admiral Goto glanced from the limp form of his unconscious supply officer—who was also a command cruiser from the Imperial Navy—to the towering young woman doing her darnedest not to look up said officer's very short, hipless skirt—who was also a fleet carrier of the Imperial Japanese navy—one thought ran though his mind on a constant loop. 'I've lost control of my life.'
"Um," The towering young woman stifled a stiff stage-cough with her gauntleted hand, her cheeks flushing a pale rosy color as she stared anywhere but up Ooyodo's skirt. "Is… will she be alright?"
Goto sighed and stared down at the cruiser. "Knowing her, probably," he said. The officer hurriedly unbuttoned his jacket, laying the thick wool fabric over the cruiser's hips to hide her—Goto still wasn't sure of the exact term when it came to a shipgirl. Keel? Bilges?—from prying eyes.
"Mm… okay," the new girl nodded. The heels of her solidly armored boots raised off the water she stood on with a creak of thick leather. Her cheeks still glowed in a girlish blush, but she wasn't quite as fidgety as she had been a few moments ago.
Looking at her, Goto couldn't help but be struck by how young she looked. Akagi and Kaga both looked like stunning young women well into their twenties. Youthful, but still full-grown adults.
Not so with the newface. Even though she easily towered over everyone else in the room, she had a youthful glow to her round face, a timidness in her motions and a… a softness to her features that made her look so much younger. Goto couldn't help but think of timid terror of a college freshman stepping onto campus—and out of her mother's arms—for the first time. Hell, she didn't look much older than eighteen!
"What's your name?" Goto kept his voice calm and inviting. Suddenly rejoining the land of the living couldn't be easy on the girls, even ones who didn't look frightened just to be alive.
"Oh!" The girl almost jumped out of the water, her heels clicked together with the sharp rap of their steel armor plates crashing together. "Sorry, uh," she fumbled with her bow, dropping the long, thick piece of iron-reinforced bamboo into the water with a very undignified plop.
The carrier stared at her bow for a moment, then slowly drew herself back up to her full—towering, Goto couldn't get over how massive the otherwise young girl was—height. "Support carrier Shinano of the Imperial Japanese Navy," she rattled off. "Just give me a chance to fight, sir."
Goto blinked. Shinano… it explained so much. Not only was the girl—was Shinano—towering, her whole body seemed to tense with furious strength. Her mostly-bare legs rippled with the kind of muscle tone he'd only ever seen on a cruiser—or Musashi—and her thick neck flowed into a powerful back just peeking out of her kimono. Her armored chestplate bulged over her breasts, a plate much thicker and heavier than the simple lacquered wood breastplates CarDiv1 wore, and even her boots looked fit to stroll though a mine field with.
But… but she was still a support carrier. Her aviation complement was smaller than even Ryuujou, and if her appetite was anything like her half-sister's limitless gluttony… Goto hated himself for thinking it, but he would've given anything to switch this girl for a proper fleet carrier. One of the Cranes or Dragons.
But if he always got what he wanted, he wouldn't be an Admiral. "Welcome back, Shinano." He offered the girl a hand to help her off the summoning pool's still waters.
Normally, it was more a symbolic gesture. But given the clumsiness she'd displayed so far, Goto was starting to think he might have to support her.
"Thank you, sir," Shinano took his hand with a grateful smile—a toothy smile that fit ever so lopsidedly in her youthful face—and carefully tested the cool stone floor with her toe.
"You should be aware," said Goto, "Things have… have changed since your first tour of service."
"The Americans won, didn't they?" asked Shinano. There wasn't any anger in her voice, no bitterness or even a note of curiosity.
Goto nodded. "How'd you know?"
"They," Shinano smoothed the rusty fabric of her Hakama, "We, I guess… the admiralty sent me into battle when I was only half-finished," she explained. "I didn't even have a proper airgroup, just…" she shivered, "special units. That's not something you do if you're winning, Admiral."
The Admiral nodded solemnly, his gaze drifting over to where Ooyodo was stirring herself from her shock-induced coma. He'd check in on her, but he'd learned that anything worrisome enough to crash his logistics officer would cause a freak-out when she woke again.
And right on cue, Ooyodo sat bolt upright with a rabid look of horror on her face. The same one she'd worn after Kaga's first dining binge. "Supply!" she howled, her voice little more than guttural cry of horrified rage that somehow managed to force itself into coherent meaning though sheer fury.
"…" said Shinano. She actually pronounced ellipsis, Goto wasn't sure exactly how. It was an ability all shipgirls seemed to share, though none of them could explain it to him.
It worried Goto that nothing of what just happened gave him even the briefest moment's pause.
Ooyodo, meanwhile, tore the jacket off her hips and stormed off towards her office in a seething rage, leaving a trail of superheated air and steam in her wake.
"Um…" Shinano pointed the heavily-armored finger of her archery gauntlet at the angry command cruiser.
"It happens," was all the response Goto could produce.
"Uh huh," Shinano let her hands fall to her hips. "Are you always so calm about this?"
Goto motioned broadly to Shinano's towering form.
"Point," the carriergirl sighed, her muscled shoulders drooping to a slump. "So… who, uh… who are we fighting?"
"Demons from the Abyss," said Goto.
Shinano opened her mouth to ask a question, but all that came out was a truly thunderous rumble from her stomach. The carriergirl winced, her hands suddenly clutching at her waist as her knees almost buckled. "Owww…." she moaned. "Uh, sir?" Shinano clawed at her belly even as she forced herself back upright, "Can we maybe-"
"Of course," said Goto. He knew better than to argue with a carrier's mealtimes. Especially the mealtime of a carrier who'd just come back. "Right this way."
"Thank you," Shinano offered a weak smile as she fell in behind him. Only to stop and bolt back to the pool after taking less than three steps. Goto watched her sprint over to the summoning pool, and nearly trip on the ancient stone as she skidded to a stop. She stammered out a few weak apologies to the priests in attendance and fished her bow out of the water before bolting back to Goto's side.
"Sorry," she blushed beet red and slung her bow over her shoulder, the massive weapon simply vanishing between moments with the rest of her rigging as she settled herself solidly into 'girl mode'.
Goto scowled at the horizon. The poor girl needed a lot of work.
—|—|—
Shinano hugged herself as she walked, her teeth gritting as she tried to squeeze her stomach—stomachs? She had separate tanks for fuel oil, avgas, and ammo, did that mean she had three stomachs?—into ceasing its/their furious demands for sustenance, but to no avail. The girl was starving hungry, so hungry the only reactions she could offer to her Admiral's concise and impromptu briefing were even more concise nods and grunts of acknowledgement.
She wanted to be more eloquent. She was a carrier of the Japanese navy, she knew she was supposed to be the elegant lady of the seas. She who's wake was cherry blossoms or something. But her tummy hurt. It took everything the carrier had just to squeeze down on her waist and pray her belly didn't just up and incite a mutiny. She didn't know why, but she felt like that latter possibility had a very real chance of happening.
"You're taking this very well," said her Admiral. He'd given her his name,Goto,but it didn't matter to her. He was her Admiral, and that was enough for her.
"Hmm?" A pathetic grunt was all the ravenous shipgirl could manage. Her eyebrows curled up in a pathetic attempt to apologize for her inarticulate responses.
"Not many girls take our new allies so well," said Goto. The man slid a little closer to offer the girl some support, only to back off once he realized how immensely heavy she was.
Shinano let out a wimpier. She was close enough to smell lunch cooking. Rice, fresh-caught fish, spices… the air was heavy with food. It wasn't enough to vanquish the ravenous beast living within her stomach—she'd decided she only had one—but it was enough to sate it for a while. "It's nice," she said.
Goto cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I fought against an endless wall of steel," explained the carrier, "Now that wall's on our side."
Goto smiled. It was a resigned, joyless smile, a smile conjured up from a half-forgotten memory instead of any actual mirth, "That… a good way to think about it." The Admiral obligingly held the door open for Shinano—something that made her blush an even deeper shade of red than she had before.
But any sense of embarrassment vanished as the sights—and smells—of food assaulted her senses. Shinano couldn't even put a name to half the things she saw and smelled as she wandered over to the serving line as fast as her long legs would carry her.
A tray ended up in her hands—she wasn't sure if she'd asked her body to pick it up, or if her stomach had overruled her own command to satisfy its own desires. At the moment she didn't even care. She was hungry, hungrier than she'd ever thought it was possible to be. And she had a banquet waiting for her right there.
Shinano mutely shuffled from one station to the next, loading up her plate with mountains of rice, sushi, curry, dumplings, and things her brain couldn't even find the right words for. It didn't matter how high each cook piled her plate, almost half of it was gone by the time she reached the next station.
"Suh guuuh~" she let out a weak-kneed moan of pleasure as her stomach finally started to cool its heels. Eating was a new experience for her. She wasn't full, wasn't even close. But just the act of eating was lifting her spirits higher than she ever thought possible.
"Ahem," a voice coughed a few feet back the line from Shinano.
"Murh?" was the carrier's eloquent response as she spun on her heel.
A tall Myoukou—who Shinano instantly recognized as Ashigara—pursed her lips with both hands balancing a tray that wasn't nearly as overflowing as Shinano's. "Could you find a table?" she asked with sweetly-smelling force, "you're holding up the line."
"Oh," Shinano glanced down at her tray. There was so much… but somehow she knew she wouldn't be able to fill herself with what she had. Oh well, she could always make a second trip, "Sorry, ma'am."
Ashigara tensed, then bit her lip and held her breath until her face turned a very interesting shade of blue.
Shinano let the cruiser continue uninterrupted. She looked so old and dignified, the carrier couldn't bring herself to butt in, so she busied herself with looking for a table to sit at.
She didn't have to wait long, she saw an open spot not twenty feet away from her. With the tiniest, cutest carrier she'd ever seen frantically waving for her attention right next to it.
Shinano popped a dumpling in her mouth—something to tide her over on the walk—and made her way over to the table. Only to stop three steps in after her chopsticks fell off the side of her tray. "Umh," Shinano gulped though a mouthful of dumpling.
"Don't worry about it!" a Kagero-class destroyer picked up the fallen pair and offered Shinano a fresh set.
"Thehk yuh," Shinano smiled, and the destroyer bounced off to rejoin her division with a hasty "No problem!"
The carrier shrugged and made her way—more carefully this time—to the seat waiting for her. She'd barely even sat down when the cute little carrier girl introduced herself.
"Hello!" She thrust her little hand at Shinano's heavily armored breastplate with more vigor than Shinano thought possible. "USS White Plains, nice to meet ya!"
Shinano smiled and shook the girl's tiny little hand with her much larger gauntleted one. Then she stopped, blushed, and pulled off her heavily armored archery glove and gave the little carrier a proper handshake. "Support carrier Shinano," she said with the closest approximation of a bow she could offer while sitting—and without planting her face into her heaping mountain of food.
"Shinano, huh?" White Plains smiled and settled down onto her stool. The little American might be full of precocious energy, but it was almost comical how much smaller she was then the towering Japanese girl. "Oh, and you can call me White."
"White, hmm," Shinano let the world roll around in her mouth—along with four dumplings and a heaping helping of rice. "I like that, it sounds cute."
White beamed, "I think it fits me!"
"I do too," Shinano smiled and took a bite of her rice. At least, she tried to, her chopsticks missed the bowl, and she had to step back and try again. "Sorry, I'm…" she slumped, the muscles of her thick neck going slack, "I'm still getting used to this whole thing."
"Being a girl?" asked White as she sipped on a tall glass of some pink liquid.
"Being… anything," said Shinano. "I was sunk without even a proper crew…" The carrier gave up on trying to get her chopsticks to play nice and just shoveled at the rice with her hands.
"Oh," White sighed and set her glass back down. "Well, I'm sure you'll get the hang of it!"
"You really think so?" Shinano said. Or at least tried to say, the rice filling her mouth turned her sentence into a confusing mix of mumbled syllables and individual rice grains flipping through the air. But White seemed to get her meaning regardless.
"Mmhm!" White nodded so enthusiastically her pigtails kept bouncing for a good minute afterwards. "I'm teaching carrier classes until my next convoy," her little chest puffed out with pride, "I'd be happy to teach you!"
"I'd like that very much," said Shinano. Her memories of the war were little more than ghostly shadows. But even then, the legendary toughness of American carriers stood out like a gleaming pillar in the gloom. If she could learn even a tenth of what they knew…
"Hey, Shinano?" White stood up on her stool so she was almost eye-to-eye with the towering support carrier, "Can I see your planes?"
Shinano stopped, the bulge in her cheeks slowly fading as she gulped down her latest morsel. "Uh," she said, "Uh… I don't really… I don't have any."
White cocked her head to the side.
"I was sunk with, um…. 'special' aircraft." Shinano winced as she said it. White winced too, and her face morphed from curiosity to pained sympathy. "My pilots don't even know how to land on me," she said, "And even if they did… I don't have any planes for them to practice in."
White carefully pulled herself up onto the table and shuffled over the off-white surface to wrap the towering Japanese carrier in a hug. "I'm so sorry."
Shinano leaned into the hug, grateful for the comforting warmth of the little American's embrace.
"I can lend you a few," said White. "Some FM-2s and TBFs… it wouldn't be your full airgroup, but… it'd be something to practice with. At least until your real planes get here."
Shinano smiled and peeled herself back from the little carrier. "Really?"
"Mmhm!" White nodded energetically, "Could even send a few damage controlmen over while I'm at it!"
Shinano let out a very undignified squeal and squeezed White into a crushingly tight hug. "Thank you!" Tears of unmitigated joy welled up in her eyes as she squeezed the American tight, "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!"
White just giggled, apparently she was enjoying the attention.
And then Shinano's stomach had to ruin the moment by letting her know it wasn't done being fed with a thunderously loud roar. The support carrier's eyes went wide as she carefully set White down. "Um…" she glanced down at her midsection—which was still grumbling at her—then back to White.
"Strawberry milk?" White smiled and offered her glass to the carrier.
—|—|—
The quiet, repetitive thunk of an exhausted, constantly-suffering navy NCO banging her head against the pile of leafy lettuce and… well, mostly more lettuce daintily piled up in the center of her tray tore Professor Crowning's attention from the country-fried steak he was working his way though.
"Fuck my life," Gale's moan was almost lost in the salad currently trying to swallow her face whole. Her shoulders slumped against the worn wooden table and even her healthy—if a little bland, especially considering the excellent comfort food the galley produced—meal seemed to wilt in her presence.
Crowning dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, and cocked an eyebrow at the grumbling, ever-suffering sailor.
Gale, who somehow read his expression even with her face buried in salad, simply extended a finger in the direction of the doors and let out a quiet grumbling moan of frustration.
Crowning set his fork down on his plate with a gentle sound of stamped-steel on plastic and turned to follow the sailor's finger. It didn't take him long to spot the source of her apparent discomfort.
USS St. Louis—or 'Lou" as she apparently liked to be called—strolled down the chow line with a carefree smile on her face and a springy sashay in her step. The light cruiser—Crowning was rather proud of himself that he'd finally got the distinctions nailed down—was still in the same outfit she'd been summoned with: Shorts that showed off slender, sinewy legs, a sleeveless shirt that covered a chest not nearly as perfectly sized as Jersey's, with her flaming hair tied back in a ponytail that didn't do a thing to keep her shimmering copper mane from dancing like a bonfire in the wind.
But more to the point, she still had all her guns. Crowning hadn't seen an American warship walk around with all her guns summoned before, at least not this long after summoning, but somehow… the look just suited Lou.
Two long, sleek-looking revolvers that Crowning couldn't identify hung low off her hips, supported by crossed gun-belts decorated with rows of spare bullets. Another pair hung from a heavy leather-and-canvas harness wrapping around her shoulders and back, while yet another gun was strapped sideways in the small of her back, nestled in the curve of her slender waist.
Watching her fill her tray up with one of every item on offer—and offering a bright smile and gangling curtsy to each and every cook filling her plate—Crowning was starting to see just why Gale hated interacting with the shipgirls so much.
Lou was thin—one might even go so far as to call her skinny. Her waist looked tiny enough even in her loose-fitting sailor top, but her broad hips and sinewy muscle kept her from looking even close to malnourished. She looked like a featherweight boxer; small and light, but every inch a fighter. And she was carrying a tray laden down with enough food to feed Crowning three times over.
And now she was sashaying though the mess hall looking for a spot to sit. Crowning hated to admit it, but he had a hard time not noticing the way her hips swooshed back and forth with each hip-swinging step.
It was… it was almost like the way Jersey walked, only not as… fluid. Crowning would never call a girl like Lou ugly, but that didn't change the fact that she wasn't nearly as pretty as Jersey. Her hips weren't as wide as the battleship's, her thighs not nearly so muscular and toned.
When Lou walked, it was a showy, girly bounce of barely-contained energy. But when Jersey walked… Crowning hated to duck back to the ancient cliche, but it truly was poetry in motion. The way her whole body flowed into each step like quicksilver on a mirror. Jersey moved like no woman he'd ever seen, she moved like a symphony of steel and muscle, even when—no, especially when she didn't think anyone was looking. The girl had a grace all her own, a grace that-
"Doc?" Gale flashed Crowning a toothy grin, a loose piece of lettuce stuck to her forehead.
"Hmm?" Crowning pursed his lips.
"You're thinking about Jersey, aren't you?"
The professor offered Gale a timid smile. He'd long since learned never to try and sneak something past the seemingly omniscient NCO. "I miss her," was his only explanation.
Gale opened her mouth to shoot back a teasing retort when a smooth twang cut her off at the turn.
"Pardon me," said Lou, her hair all aglow as she beamed at the two with that luminescent smile of hers, "This seat taken?"
Crowning bit his lip. He couldn't say no to a smile like that, the girl looked so… so happy just to be alive and back in the land of the living. But if Gale didn't want to watch her eat, the professor would find the coldest part of his heart and ask her to eat elsewhere.
At least that was the plan before Gale spoke up. "No, uh… go ahead."
Crowning shot her a questioning look, which Gale replied to by furiously jerking her head at Lou's beaming grin.
"Thank ya!" Lou set her tray down with a heavy thump and offered the two a curtsy. Or at least the closest to a curtsy she could manage in shorts while strapped with gun after gun. "Admiral told me you two helped figure out how to bring me back, yeah?"
"It was mostly-" Crowning and Gale launched into explanations over one another, only to shrug and sheepishly retreat back to their own chairs.
"It was a joint effort?" offered Gale with a shrug.
"Let's go with that," said Crowning. "Arthur Crowning," he offered her a hand which she shook so vigorously it banged against the table a few times.
"Yeoman Second Class Sarah Gale." Gale offered her hand, which received another equally enthusiastic shake.
"Oh…" Lou let out a proper southern sigh and leaned back in her chair. "It's so very nice to be back in the states again."
Crowning shot her a confused look, "Back in the states?"
Lou nodded, and popped a tater tot in her mouth. "After the war-" she squealed with pleasure as she bit into the potato-based nugget. "Mmm, these are delicious."
"We try our best," said Gale. Crowning thought the sailor did an admirable job a hiding her envy that 'doing our best' mostly meant cranking out the most artery-hardening dishes imaginable to keep the shipgirls happy.
"Well, I thank you from the bottom of my…" Lou bit the corner of her lip, her cheeks puffing out as she stuck the tip of her tongue out in thought. "Should I say heart? Or boilers, maybe?"
Crowning shrugged, "I've been studying you girls for more than a year. Even I'm not sure half the time."
"Well regardless," Lou popped another tot into her mouth with another purr of delight, "Thank you so much for your effort, Yeoman!"
Gale blushed, "We do what we can, ma'am."
"Aw, don't call me ma'am!" Lou flipped a lock of flaming copper hair out of her eyes and smiled at Gale with that irresistible million-candlepower grin of hers. "How old do you think I am, anyway?"
"Well…" Gale shrugged, "You're a treaty cruiser, gotta be at least in your seventies, right?"
Lou froze, her smile fading into an even more adorable pout. Her brows knit together and the leather of her harness creaked as she crossed her arms with a huff. "Don't have to tell everyone."
Gale rolled her eyes and stuffed a mouthful of lettuce into her mouth.
"So," said Crowning, eager to get the conversation back onto some sort of rails. "You said you were happy to be back in the states?"
"Oh, yes," Lou's pout vanished in an instant, and the old smiling cruiser was back. "After the war, the Navy sold me to the Brazilians." She shrugged, "Don't get me wrong, they're nice people. But… it's not.. not home, you know?"
Crowning nodded and took a sip from his drink.
"Anyways," Lou took a huge bite of a loaded baked potato—one of massive ones Kidd's DesRon had helped prepare—and dabbed a few spots of sour cream off the corners of her mouth. "I hear Frisco's back. That true?"
Gale nodded.
Lou sighed. She actually sighed, like girl in a bad fifties movie fawning over her high school crush. Her cheeks glowed even redder then her flaming hair and she settled her head against her hand, "She's so pretty, isn't she?"
Gale's fork clattered the the floor. "What?" she said with the level of utter flatness in her tone that only a Navy NCO could manage.
"Frisco!" said Lou. "I know she's real sensitive about being Nisei and all, but-" the light carrier let out another of those happy sighs, "She's just so pretty, you know?"
"Uh…" Gale glanced from Lou to Crowning and back. "You know her?"
Lou nodded. "I was tied off next to her during Pearl," she stopped, "Well, not right next to her, but I could see her." Her smile faded until it suddenly seemed forced. "I, uh…" she scratched at her chin, "You should've seen her Poor girl was in port for a defouling, her hair—hell, her whole outfit—was a mess. She kept fretting every time she thought someone was looking at her."
The cruiser stared at something a few miles behind the table for a moment, her eyes glazing over before she shrugged back her demons. "Yeah…" she sniffed, her gaze drifting back up to Gale and Crowning, "And now she's back. And I'm never gonna let her forget how silly she looked."
"You sure that's wise?" asked Crowning, "She's pretty crafty."
"Well I'm craftier!" Lou banged her fist on the table with a wild-eyed grin. "More crafty? Craftier?"
Crowning nodded.
"Okay, Craftier. I'm craftier than her!" Lou sat back in her chair with a happy grin, "You know, I got underway on the seventh. Went out hunting for the Jap flatops." She sighed and patted the butt of one of her guns, "Might've caught 'em too if I didn't have to put my guns back together." She shrugged, "Well… maybe."
"That why you carry them with you?" asked Crowning.
Lou nodded, "You never know when something might need to get shot."
"Well," somehow, the leafy sprig of lettuce hanging out of Gale's mouth as she chewed only added to her dry sarcasm, "Brazil didn't take the America out of you."
Lou beamed happily and popped another tater tot into her grinning mouth.
—|—|—
Akagi let out a long, happy, but above all exhausted sigh as she shuffled though the flimsy sliding door to her tiny little room. Kaga wasn't home—she usually wasn't. The only reason the two carriers shared a room is because neither of them could stomach taking an entire bedroom to themselves only to leave it empty half the time.
But the absence of her sister—by fact, if not by design—didn't do much to temper the carrier's happy mood. With so little coastline to defend, Akagi rarely ever saw her CarDiv 1 sister. She'd learned to treasure the odd moments when they were both off duty as delicious deserts, not a staple food to build her life around.
It didn't matter anyway. As Akagi flopped onto the heavy blankets resting on the bed she shared with Kaga, she noticed they were still warm from Kaga's superheated body temperature. Akagi smiled and burrowed deeper into the residual warmth still clinging to the heavy quilts. Kaga might have a heart ice, but she was still soooo warmmmm.
It would've taken every last shred of self control Akagi had not to sigh with pleasure at the warmth of her beloved sister curling around her like a gentle hug. But Akagi wasn't feeling very stoic, so she didn't even try to stop her sighs.
But as much as she would have loved to curl up into a tight little ball and fall asleep under the heavy blankets, Akagi was still a fighting carrier. That meant she had certain responsibilities to take care of. Responsibilities like unpacking her stuff in some kind of order that wasn't just 'dumped on the floor' so she didn't upset her beloved half-sister.
Akagi allowed herself one more minute to curl up under the blankets before pulling herself free and shuffling over to her seabags. She was halfway though folding up the swimsuit Ryuujou had suggested to her—Akagi still had to thank her properly for that. The little light carrier really had an eye for color—when yet another responsibility made itself apparent.
She had to find out what that noise was. It almost sounded like a Zero roaring up and down the halls, accompanied by heavy foot falls and childish giggling. Akagi was equal parts confused and amused as she opened the door.
At which point the confusion jumped though the roof. As, somehow, did the amusement.
A carrier she didn't recognize—a carrier who utterly towered over her, stood frozen between steps in the hall.
Her long, heavily muscled arms were held wide like the wings of a plane, her fingertips so far apart they almost kissed the walls. Her lips were pucked, like she'd been making engine noises with her lips, and her face—her incredibly youthful face. Akagi was pretty sure Ryuujou looked older—was rapidly blushing out of the visible spectrum.
On the mystery carrier's shoulders was a much tinier carrier Akagi couldn't help but recognize. Little White plains beamed from cheek to chubby cheek. She too held her arms out like the wings of a—much smaller—airplane, while her legs were crossed over the mystery carrier's heavily armored chest to keep herself in place.
"Um," the mystery carrier somehow blushed even redder. "Hi… Akagi-sama."
"Hello!" White waved so fast her arm turned into a blur.
Akagi smiled and offered a lazy wave in return. "Hello, White. Carrier-san."
"Shinano," said the mystery carrier. Her hands were still frozen in the air as she gave Akagi a stare that wouldn't be out of place on a doe crossing the road. Something that made Akagi giggle, given how the mystery carrier—how Shinano—looked like she could effortlessly break her in half if she wanted to.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," said Akagi. "What're you two doing?"
"Uh," Shinano slowly let her hands fall to her side, "Flight training?"
Akagi raised an eyebrow.
"I- I didn't come back with any planes," admitted Shinano with a sheepish shuffle of her massively armored boots.
"So I'm her planes!" said White with a giggle. The tiny CVE slipped off Shinano's shoulders and shimmied down the massive girl like she was little more than a timid jungle gym. "Also, Akagi?"
"Ye-oof!" Akagi grunted as White slammed into her stomach at flank. Her chubby little arms wrapped around Akagi's waist and squeezed her tight.
"Thank you for watching over Jersey," said White. Her face was barely visible past the bulging lacquered plating of Akagi's breastplate, but the Japanese carrier could still feel the little CVE's thankfulness radiate though the air.
"You're very welcome, White." Akagi couldn't resist ruffling the little girl's hair.
White giggled and shuffled off to her room, leaving Akagi and Shinano alone in the hallway. Shinano looked like she wanted to say something, but the towering monster of a carrier kept fidgeting and glancing down at her armored toes instead.
Akagi was the one to break the silence, "Shinano, you were a battleship last I recall."
Shinano nodded sheepishly, "I was converted to a carrier to…" she blushed, "To make up for your loss, Akagi-sama."
"Please, Akagi." Akagi placed a hand on the much taller girl's shoulder, a note of surprise flashing across her face at the sheer amount of muscle hiding under Shinano's loose kimono. "And that's nothing to be ashamed of. I was a conversion too."
"Yeah, but," Shinano shrugged, "You're Akagi. Of the Kido Butai. I could never replace that."
"Maybe you can," said Akagi, "You have a very good teacher."
Shinano bushed and mumbled something as she scuffed her boot against the carpet.
"Where are they putting you up?" asked Akagi.
"Oh, with White," said Shinano. "She, um… she offered to share her room. It's really big and…" the towering girl fiddled with the end of her loose half-ponytail, "And I think she just likes having something around to escort."
Akagi laughed, "I think you've chosen a very good roommate."
"Thank you," Shinano bowed from the waist, but because of her towering height she managed to plant her youthful face right into Akagi's bountiful chest. "I, Uh…" she stammered out an apology and sheepishly shuffled back. The poor girl looked like she wanted nothing more than to melt into the wall like a ninja.
"Don't worry," Akagi offered Shinano her very warmest smile. The one she usually held in reserve for well-deserving destroyers. "It's hardly the worst thing a newly returned girl has done. You're still getting used to your new body."
Shinano seemed to accept the explanation. Her blush at least seemed to fade by a fraction.
"I usually get breakfast at six," said Akagi, "I'd be happy to have you join me."
Shinano let out a squeal of unmitigated joy. "Really?"
Akagi nodded. "Of course. Now-" she stifled a yawn. "Good night, Shinano. I'll see you in the morning."
"Good night, Akagi-sa-" Shinano coughed. "Good night Akagi."
Akagi was almost to the door of her room when she heard the other carrier cough.
"Um… Akagi?" Shinano rubbed the armored toe of one boot against the heavy canvas upper of the other, "Can… can I have a hug goodnight?"
Akagi smiled and drew the towering girl into a warm hug. "Of course you may."