Chapter 95: Virgin Vestal
"Fuck!" Jersey bit her lip and scowled at the faintly visible outline of her own slender bow. Rain poured from the heavens in great sheets so dense she could barely even make out her own stunning figure—optically of course. Her radar punched through the squall like… like… like fucking radar thrugh rain. Jersey was too wet and miserable to think up a better metaphor.
The squall started dumping frigid rain a few hours after she and her girls had put Adak island behind them. It hadn't stopped for three straight days. Jersey was soaked to the keel. Just blinking made her feel soggy. Her shirt was glued to her sinewy arms by water just salty enough to grate and grind.
Her scarf was soaked through, which wasn't even the worst part. The soggy fabric had let a few droplets of water sneak through the zipper in her vest. And now even her bra was frigid and damp against her skin. "This is fucking bullshit!"
"Poi?" Yuudachi glanced over with what Jersey could only assume was an air-headed half-smile. The rain was too dense for her to make out anything more than the destroyer's lean, low hull and flappy-flappy hair tufts.
"Fuck you," Jersey scowled and hugged herself. She could deal with water on her legs and skin, she was a warship after all. But getting water on her tits was just fucking infuriating. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch, and every passing wave made her even more miserable.
And grouchier.
"I, Musashi," there was a brief pause in the battleship's voice, and Jersey noticed her radar return flicker. Almost like the Japanese warship was shivering. "Am quite alright!"
"She is," added Johnston, "She's not wearing her shirt or anything."
"Um," Hoel piped up with a timid cough, "I'm not sure that means she's doing okay. She still looks cold."
"How can you tell?" asked Heermann.
"Well," Johnston giggled, "she's got her searchlights—"
"ALRIGHT!" Naka's shrill voice had lost all its cutesy window dressings. Three days of rain had tested even her limitless patience, and the destroyers didn't make things any easier by constantly getting bored. Johnston couldn't even play her favorite game, 'I spy something and it's Mushi's boobs', with the rain cutting visibility down to nothing.
"Fuck," Jersey cursed again and squinted at the indistinct blur that was IJN Shirtphobia. The one fucking time she might have enjoyed seeing Mushi without a shirt, and the fucking weather had to go and steal it away from her. "This. Shit," she hissed."
"It's not all bad, Jersey," Fubuki pulled up alongside with a half-grin. The little destroyer's ponytail was soaked to the back of her waterlogged uniform.
"Eh?" Jersey cupped her hands together and tried to breath some warmth into her fingers. She wasn't even that cold, the trip up to murderize the Northern Princess had been a thousand times colder. But the rain was just fucking miserable to be in.
"I said it's not all bad," added Fubuki with a strained grin.
"Fucking how," grumbled Jersey. Her fingers looked more like prunes than anything that belonged on a person—or a ship, for that matter. And speaking of prunes, she could really go for a snack. Her belly was idly grumbling at her and the thought of steaming hot soup was enticing enough to make her drool.
"I…" Fubuki sighed, "It's just something you're supposed to say."
"Well it didn't fucking work," Jersey rubbed rain off her shades in a vain attempt to at least try to retain some visibility through her optics. She scowled, and glanced down at the dutiful young girl steaming abreast. "Thanks, though."
Fubuki let out a moaning half-laugh and blushed. "T-thank you."
Jersey blinked. She'd forgotten how weird it was when she did that. "Uh… yeah."
Fubuki mumbled something incoherently happy and beamed a smile so bright it cut through the freezing rain. And for just a moment, Jersey was honestly happy.
And then a wave of rain crashed against her chest and poured into her shirt. "Fuck!" The battleship shook her head in miserable surprise.
"Don't worry," Kongou's kind voice was barely tinged by the miserable rain. Probably all that tea and Britishness in her blood. "We'll be in Japan soon, Dess."
"Yes!" Musashi's thunderous bravado boomed across the waves so loudly Jersey actually saw water droplets move out of the way. "And then, Jersey, you and I, Musashi, can share a steaming hot bath."
"A bath you say?" Jersey smiled. As much as the mental image of a very wet, very naked Musashi preening herself might appeal to her, she was more interested in taking a long, long soak. She was honestly slightly worried her mind wasn't going to the lewd place for once, but she was just that fucking wet and miserable.
"A bath indeed!" Musashi's smirk was so cheeky Jersey swore she could hear it over the crash of freezing water against her deck. "Japanese style!"
"Oh no, Dess," Kongou sighed.
Musashi let out a roaring belly laugh, "Naked!"
"Naked you say?" Jersey licked her lips and shot a glance at the indistinct blur that was Musashi. She could tell from just the radar return that the overtitted Japanese boat was preening herself and her structurally superfluous pagoadas for all they were worth. She couldn't see, but she could tell.
And that made her feel a whole lot less miserable.
But that made her feel… strange. She couldn't deny that she really wanted stick a torpedo up IJN Shirtphobia's pointless skirt. Even if she didn't quite have… fucking… torpedoes.
Heh.
Jersey smirked. That metaphor worked out better than she thought it would, and she hadn't even intended it to be a metaphor. Just a euphemism. Because a-fucking-apparently her internal monologue was deathly afraid of the word 'dick.'
That was probably Victory's fault.
"Fucker," Jersey grunted under her breath and hugged herself until her waterlogged bra started to wring out.
"Poi?" Judging by the oscillating frequency of Jersey's radar returns, Yuudachi'd inclined her head and let the wind flip her little hair tufts. It was a pretty cute image, honestly. At least in Jersey's head.
"Not you," Jersey bit her lip and scowled. She'd had fun on her shore leave. She'd gotten to unwind after the tension of battle, and… and she even fucking thought she'd made some kinda fucking progress with… with…
She'd gotten motherfucking head scratches.
Head scratches made her happy, they made her feel all warm and lo— looo— liked inside. She'd felt safe with Crowning watching over her in the night, safer than she'd ever felt before. She felt safer than she had with fucking carriers watching over her. She's steamed with the motherfuckingbig E and felt less safe than when she had Crowning watching over her.
And then she had to go and fucking leer and…
And fucking romance is hard when you're a boat not a people.
Jersey scowled and hugged herself tighter, "Are we there yet?"
—|—|—
Crowning stayed his hand moments before it made contact with the unassuming wooden door to Vestal's office. He wasn't so much afraid of the old repair ship as he was… intimidated. He found all the shipgirls intimidating to some degree or another.
Jersey, for all her adorable childishness off-duty, was still the greatest battleship the world had ever or will ever see. She was as beautiful as the dawn, and as mighty as a goddess. Depending on how you interpreted mythological references to shipgirls, she might actually be a minor goddess of the sea.
Even the destroyers intimidated him. They were tiny, lovable, and precocious, but they'd charge headlong where angels fear to tread. They'd spend their lives without a second thought if it meant keeping their charges alive. These little girls who were barely able to operate a microwave without setting something on fire had more valor crammed into their tiny bodies than every man Crowning had ever met put together.
But Vestal… Vestal was in a league of her own. Crowning hadn't said more than two words to her. But the way every shipgirl, from Wash to the littlest destroyer-escorts, spoke of her with utter reverence graved an impression impossible to shake. If shipgirls—spirits of duty and valor themselves—looked to Vestal with awe, what could a mere man do.
The professor hissed out a breath though his teeth and brought his knuckles down on the door.
"'s open," came a warm, rough voice that Crowning could only describe as sounding like an ancient pair of thoroughly broken-in work boots: Old, tough,heavy… but somehow impossibly comfortable. It made him feel easy even muffled though the door.
Crowning stifled a smile and pushed the door open with the heel of his hand. "Vestal?"
A woman glanced up from a sturdy desk bucking under mountains of paper. Her silver-streaked hair shimmered like spun metal in the light, and welding goggles perched on her forehead reflected Crowning's feline features back at him.
"Doc," Vestal smiled and rubbed the back of her hand accros her soot-marked face. Which only served to grind yet more gritty dust into her wrinkles. There was no denying Vestal was old. Even Kongou didn't look more than thirty-something years old, but Vestal looked like she was at least forty.
But she was still a shipgirl. She was still beautiful to behold, and those wrinkles in her rough skin just made Crowning feel that much more comfortable around her.
"I'm not interruption anything," Crowning motioned to the mountains of paper filling Vestal's desk, "Am I?"
Vestal glanced at the paper and lazily leafed though a few sheets. "Nah," she shrugged and hauled herself from her chair with a anguished grunt. "Gonna push most of this to the nurse's desk anyway."
It took Crowning a second to realize who she was talking about. He was so used to Major Solette getting called 'docboat.' "You mean Major Solette?"
Vestal nodded. "Yeah. He does good work." She hitched up her heavy tool belt with a clink of steel on steel. "For Army. Or anyone who's not used to… well, us."
Crowning nodded, "So I've heard."
Vestal arched her back and pressed her hands against her spine until the bones—or chain links or whatever it was a shipgirl carried down her back—started to crack into place. "Ah," a smile passed her thin lips, "Don't see you down her often, doc."
"Don't come here often," Crowning's features grew a shade tighter. He'd lost people in the war. Colleagues he'd met working to bring Jersey back, Victory… friends. But it'd always been clean. Quick. One moment they were there, the next… gone like smoke. He'd never had to watch someone he cared about suffer their way to the grave. He never wanted to.
"Mmm," Vestal nodded as a shadow passed over her face. "Pour you a drink?" she fished a bottle of rich amber liquid from her tool belt. "Technically, it's only supposed to be for medicinal purposes."
She clamped the cap between her gloved fingers and gave it a spin. "But, since I'm a repair ship, everything I do is medicinal."
Vestal grabbed a pair of mugs from under her mountains of paper, scowled into one, then shrugged and poured herself a drink. "And you look like you could use one."
"I could, actually," Crowning took what was apparently the cleaner of the two cups and let Vestal pour him a healthy drink. "Thanks."
Vestal waved him off and fished her pipe out of her jacket pocket. "So," She clamped the stem between coal-stained teeth and held a match to the end, "What're ya doing down here?"
"I needed your opinion on something." Crowning took a sip of the stiff whiskey and gingerly set the cup back down. "You wouldn't happen to have read Janes', would you?"
"I've…" Vestal let a puff of warm, sweet smoke curl from the corner of her mouth, "perused it."
"Peruse means to read carefully and at length," said Crowning on instinct.
Vestal chuckled. "I know. You think I'd just skim a book like that in my line of work?" The repair ship cradled her pipe in one hand and took a long sip of her drink with the other. "What's got your mind aflurry?"
"This." Crowning fished a massive book bound in some kind of plastic-composite. Simple silver-embossed words on the cover read 'IHS Janes' Fighting Kanmusu (2014-2015)'
"You got your own copy?" Vestal cocked an eyebrow. Steel rattled and chimed as she bent over, her makeshift skirt of tools and wrenches clanging against her desk like wind chimes. "Those aren't cheap."
"No," Crowning thumbed though the pages—and pages and pages—of exhaustively detailed shipgirl writeups to get to the more general articles in the back. As much as he enjoyed the spectacular—though sometimes spectacularly off-base—art, he had a mission. "But compared to taking big J on a date, this is pocket change."
Vestal rasped out a thoroughly-aged laugh. "I can imagine that. What's that girl eat, quarter-million a day?"
"Something like that," Crowning smiled. He wasn't all that good at math himself, and he found distancing himself from the raw numbers describing the battleship's gluttony helped his precious sanity. "More, if it's pie."
"She's into pie now?" Vestal purred a noise under her breath.
Crowning decided not to read anything into that. "Like you wouldn't imagine." He'd never seen someone look quite as utterly happy as Jersey with a pie in front of her. Just thinking about her smile made him smile in turn. "But, uh…"
Vestal cocked an eyebrow and motioned for him to continue.
The professor sighed, and turned the book over so Vestal could read. It was open to an article he'd bookmarked a few days ago, just after he'd read it for the first time.
'A kanmusume's guide to pregnancy, by repairship Akashi (JMSDF) and Major Robert Solette (US. Army.)'
It was quite a well-written article, and very humorous at that. Solette's attempts to frame a shipgirl's bizarre antics in the context of human pregnancy were constantly at odds with Akashi's explanations of the same events in ship-related terminology. Crowning might not know all that much about biology or naval engineering, but he came away feeling like he had at least a general overview of the important bits.
It helped that there were lots of pictures. Helpful infographics displayed an 'unnamed' shipgirl—although the hair-buns, nontraditional miko outfit, hair tuft, and propensity for dessing made the 'unnamed' girl's identity painfully obvious—illustrated every step of the process.
There were even little chibi-versions of Akashi and Solette chiming in from the margins whenever a point needed more elaboration. The major looked somehow angrier in his tiny state, while Akashi looked like she was having the time of her life.
"Look," Crowning fussed with the hair on the back of his neck, "I'm no expert, but does this make any sense to you?"
Vestal fished a pair of thick-lensed reading glasses from her jacket and settled them on her slender nose. She looked like an old librarian who'd just returned to work after several hours working on her motorcycle. "Huh," she muttered. "Actually, yeah. This all makes perfect sense."
Crowning blanched. "Even," he flipped to a page showing a blushing totally-not-Kongou offering her T-headed husband a model kit, "This?"
"Model cravings?" Vestal puffed on her pipe, "Yeah." She nodded, "That sounds about right. Why, Jersey give you something?"
The professor bit his lip and hissed in a breath. "A few, actually."
Vestal smirked and puffed a steady stream of smoke from the corner of her thin lipped mouth. "And…?"
"Two of herself," said Crowning, "in different scales, a couple of Hornets, and a submarine."
"What class?" said Vestal.
"Hmm?"
"What class was the boat."
Crowning knit his brows and tried to think. "I… Virginia, I think."
"Virginia, you say?" a smirk slid across the old repairship's features.
The professor suddenly felt his blood run cold. "Y-yes."
"You know," Vestal wandered over to one of her overflowing bookshelves and fished a binder out. "The navy authorized a new Virginia-class boat just before the war started."
"Uh huh…" said Crowning with growing hesitation.
"SSN seven-ninety-six," Vestal's smirk grew until her pipe was barely staying between her gleaming teeth. "Three guesses what she's called."
"New Jersey?" said Crowning with a resigned sigh.
"Got it in one," Vestal chuckled to herself and planted the binder down so Crowning could read. "Big J wants your babies. bad."
"That- no," Crowning shook his head. "That can't be. She… she doesn't want to call our dates dates. Hell, she won't even let me call her a person instead of a boat!"
Vestal placed a hand on his shoulder. There was a strength to her motions which started the professor. A kindly, gentle strength, but strength none the less. Ropes of steel under weathered flesh.
"Because she's scared," said the old repair ship.
"Jersey?" Crowning shook his head as images of Jersey storming into battle out of a storm front with guns blazing and blood hotter than the sun filled his mind.
"Yes," Vestal nodded. "Look, I might not know you very well. But I know New Jersey. Admitting she's in love means admitting she's human. It means admitting that she's fallible."
Crowning mouthed the air and fumbled at his chin. "That— is that so bad?"
"For her?" Vestal nodded, "Yes. Jersey's not a fighter, if you hadn't noticed. The better part of a century under the flag, and she only fired her guns against another ship once. She spent decades as a shield, not a sword."
The repair ship settled onto the edge of her desk and paused to take a deep lungful from her pipe. At long last, she hissed out a sharp breath and gazed over at Crowning. "She counts everyone under her protection. And she takes every loss as a damming sin."
Crowning blinked, and glanced at his shoes, "Samar."
"Mm," Vestal nodded. "Samar. The great act of destroyer defiance that will be remembered long after you and I are dead and gone."
"But the taffies," Crowning panted at the air, desperately scrambling for solid mental purchase. "They forgave her for it."
"I'm sure they did," said Vestal, "But it doesn't matter. Even if Captain Evens himself forgave her, she'd never ever forgive herself."
The professor started to say something when Vestal shut him down with a steely glare.
"And don't try and tell me otherwise," Vestal's rough voice burned and her gritted teeth flashed. "She will take that shame to her watery grave, and you damn well know it because that's why you love her so much."
Crowning started to form a retort, then thought better of it. "Yeah," he said. For better or for worse, for all her lazy, childish antics when she was off-duty, Jersey was… unyielding. The very embodiment of every virtue fighting Americans held high. She'd fight to her last dying breath it she had to. "Yeah, it is."
"Now's the part where you ask me what you can do," Vestal took a quick sip of her whiskey and shrugged.
The professor nodded. "How?"
"Love her," said Vestal. "She won't make it easy for you, but love her all the same. She's out there fighting demons, you fight hers."
Crowning nodded, and thought back to those times she'd asked him to watch over her in the night. "That, I can do."
"Good," Vestal smiled. "Oh, and come war's end, I'd better see her with at least one bun in the oven."
Crowning cracked a tired laugh. Somehow, the image of Jersey with a little bulge around the midsection was as hilarious as it was endearing.
Vestal smacked him across the face with a heavy leather welding glove. "You think I'm joking."
"A bit, yeah."
"I'm not," said Vestal. "Knock that battleship up. Doctor's orders."