On that day…
…
…...
She had been here before.
Her surroundings were nothing but pitch blackness, but Enterprise felt the familiar giving of ground beneath her feet that told her it wasn't solid earth. Having spent her life on it as much as she did on land, Enterprise knew it was water, although when she looked down all that she saw when she took a step was a single ripple of light that stretched out in an expanding circle that eventually vanished into the surrounding darkness.
She took another step, it and each one after that producing another singular ripple until she stood in front of the only other thing that shared the endless space with her: a tree.
The bark was smooth, healthy, and bare for the first dozen feet where it was planted in the watery darkness. Of its roots there was no sign, but above the tree divided into long branches, the white and pink of cherry blossoms creating a bright and expansive canopy that shone like a lamp. Each petal that fell was like a cinder.
Cinder…? Watching the falling dance of one, Enterprise asked herself why she used that word. It didn't feel right because cinders…
Burned, as one petal did – as they all did. A rain of flaming lights where the blossoms became ash, scattering.
Enterprise's brow twitched while the petal she watched vanished into the black, it and its light snuffed out.
The Eagle carrier looked around but there was still nothing else. There was the darkness, empty but quiet, and this cherry blossom tree, vibrant, with its slow, steady shedding of petals.
This peacefulness felt so starkly wrong to Enterprise. She should not be here.
She looked to her left and saw her flight deck. To her right was her bow in her hand.
She had been fighting. She was always fighting, but Enterprise had been fighting recently. Moments ago, which was why it felt so wrong to be here.
She should be…
Enterprise touched the side of her head, trying to get over this sluggishness to her recall.
She should be…she was…
The Pacific. She was in the Pacific, fighting with her comrades of Azur Lane and…Sakura Empire? But the Sakura Empire were…enemies?
She gave her head a shake and that seemed to do it.
The Sakura Empire had been enemies, but they had been fighting with them. An alliance formed to take out a threat to all of them. A Siren threat but…
Akagi, hovering in front of her and her arrow, and while she was distracted…Kaga…
Enterprise jerked, both at the sudden rush and at her own disbelief of how she could've possibly forgotten when she had been the one leading the Eagle Union-Royal Navy assault that the Sakura Empire had already been committed to, with assistance from elements of Iron Blood. She had been fighting…winning…and Kaga jumped her. Enterprise remembered what she could of the struggle: the flailing limbs and splashing of water that begun to pull them in and…darkness…
Enterprise stepped away from the tree, her gaze more alert, the muscles in her body coiling as did her hold on her bow as she looked around.
"Welcome, Enterprise."
There came a ripple, this one coming from behind the cherry blossom tree, and from there appeared Orochi.
Beneath that umbrella, with her stolen form, she stepped out but did not break from beneath the cover of the tree, although what cherry blossoms that fell did not touch her or her own papery overhead, each individual petal just happening to take paths that had them dancing away from her. Colorful ripples came from the heels of her wooden sandals, the purple skirt of her kimono hanging over her clothed feet, it and the reds of her attire overpowering what black there was. The fur of her tails and ears, as soft and smooth as her long hair, would be just as peaceful and vibrant as the sakura tree that was beside her.
Until there came her cold and empty smile that drained all the warmth from her demeanor, as did the odd, spiral-like appearance of her eyes that Enterprise could not meet without experiencing an involuntary shudder.
Enterprise glanced away, taking another quick look around, before forcing herself to meet with them again. "We're inside your ship."
"Indeed," Orochi answered with her chilly smile. "To be exact, a chamber that houses the temporal anomaly that my form had been built upon – both the one around us and the one you see before you." She gestured towards the cherry blossom tree. "This also provides storage for this little branch that I had taken from the primary collection point of quantum data – what you know as the Sacred Sakura Tree. Although the progress of my construction has reached a point where I can venture upon these seas, it is still necessary for me to keep a part of this near to reach full completion."
Enterprise was silent for a long moment before asking, "What are you?"
Orochi tilted her head, the motion matched by one of her fox ears. "Did I not already tell you? I am a monster. An entity spawned from the shadow cast by humanity's ambitions. The fear of the unknown behind their want for exploration, their violence behind their adventure, and their conquest to gain their riches. The dark reality of their imaginations. The truth of their nature that is hidden behind the deceptive aspirations and one that you most of all should know best, Enterprise, and what it all leads to."
"I know that you are nothing but a creation of the Sirens," Enterprise rebutted, it and her hostility meant to help her maintain eye contact. "One that is now without its main weapon. As we speak, Azur Lane is about to destroy you."
Orochi was nonplused by the attempt. "Results that have exceeded the expectations of performance but remain within the parameters for the predicted outcome. The damage inflicted has been deemed necessary to obtain the required component."
Enterprise had a bad feeling, one that was giving her the answer to the question she asked anyway. "And what would that be?"
Orochi's smile grew, but in the process made its temperature several degrees lower. "You, of course: the Key. All of this has been meant to get you here."
The Key.
It was the first time she was hearing it but how it resonated in her head and tingled down her spine touched on all that had gone on during her deployment, the title linking them together. The black Wisdom Cube, her contact with Orochi and the visions of another dark shipgirl, and the events surrounding the Mirror Sea.
There had been something strange going on behind this entire conflict with the Sakura Empire, with obvious Siren roots, and uncovering them not only made the situation more uncertain…but the more Enterprise felt that she was involved in whatever they were planning.
Belfast had said as much, her telling her to be careful when they were sailing here. That this could be a trap – for her as much as it could be for Azur Lane.
"Your escape and damaging of the Sakura Empire's home port," Enterprise said. "And the test firing of your primary weapon."
Orochi's hand passed over her lips, hiding them, but what did set her apart from the Sirens was how the gesture was not an empty display of mimicry. There was malevolent confidence emanating from her, and how those eyes remained staring at Enterprise, unbroken, let the carrier see the sparkle of mockery that she was being viewed with.
"Your referral to such recent events is not without suspicion of the wider theater," Orochi responded. "However, you fail to consider how the preparations for this point extend past that." She lowered her hand, revealing her smile again. "This is by no fault of your own, your ignorance and that of the rest of the subjects a purposeful design, but it is…" She tilted her head, seeming to be testing the next word. "…amusing." There was the passing of a second, and then the slight nod of her head – and the added curve of her lips – spoke of how she approved her own choice.
For a Siren creation – and a recent one at that -, she seemed to already have such a better grasp of the nuances for wickedness.
Meanwhile, Enterprise's gaze narrowed hostilely. "What do you mean?"
Orochi took a bit longer for her next consideration before there came another, surer nod. "This deviation will not inhibit progression and may even contribute an additional percentile of success going by the previous data." Her tone pointed the statement as being towards herself, but the next was undoubtedly towards Enterprise. "Your previous iteration had gone through a situation similar to this right before her ascension."
A carrier standing beneath the black skies, surrounded by waters that were aflame, with wreckage and bodies of the fallen within their fiery grasp.
The image was like a sudden weight being applied directly to Enterprise's brain. Not painful – not like the others -, but uncomfortable enough for her to touch, with her grimacing, as the sensation merged and melded with her thoughts.
"Iteration…?" she quietly asked, briefly unfocused.
"We could start there," Orochi mused. "But for improved comprehension and response, I will state this: the purpose of your entire world has been exactly for this moment where you will become integrated into the primary programming that is Orochi."
Enterprise stared. "What?"
With her straight and smiling face, Orochi went on, "This world is but one of the many branching simulations constructed and overseen by the entities you know as the Sirens. Offshoots that are isolated from the Source and the primary timelines, with greater freedom given to the assigned observers to pursue trials for hypothesizes that have been generated by the developments of the primary simulations. The resulting worlds, their subjects, and their life cycles are to be designed around the pursuit of a specific goal outlined from the start and what is to be reached within the assigned parameters. Upon successful completion, the accumulated data is compiled and brought to examination where it is to then be incorporated into the next iteration of the primary timelines if it can encourage evolution…or to be discarded if it cannot."
Enterprise silently blinked, her features displaying only confusion.
Orochi emitted a short, callous titter. "Too much?" She turned and took a step, creating another ripple.
"This experiment was inspired by remnants of the Source interfering with a timeline where the subjects have shown greater evolution of their humanity, creating conflict such as with the respective Keys. While their interactions have created disruption, so too has it produced intrigue. The Sirens had chosen to replicate it by creating two worlds: one that would embody the grotesqueries of human nature while the other would be of moral prosperity. Separate, the worlds would've contributed nothing – one predicted to fall to ruin, the other to stagnate – but the possibilities of what could occur if those two worlds were to intersect were promising."
Orochi halted in front of the cherry blossom tree, her back to it. "To reduce chaotic factors and ensure greater control, a system was to be established in the wake of the ruin of the first world, and then transferred during a stagnant period of the second." She held out her hand.
There was no color. Instead, a section of the very darkness rippled, and Enterprise tensed when an image suddenly appeared.
Like a mirror, a second sakura tree appeared with its reflection connected to the other. However, while the branches were perhaps of the same pattern, they were barren of the beautiful blossoms and the bark had been burned and blackened from what had to have been a great conflagration.
The vision wavered, collapsed upon a specific point of the rippling darkness, and something rose from it. The cube that revealed itself did not put her any less on guard, Enterprise already identifying it by its pulsing aura of black and purple coloring that also mixed and swirled within the glass-like material.
The black Wisdom Cube. The center of the Sakura Empire's hostile actions but what the faction didn't seem to know was a willing contribution coming directly from the Sirens and to be used by their most esteemed shipgirls of the First Carrier Division. When it had been stolen by Azur Lane, Enterprise had seen it, touched it, heard it, and she felt the prickling of warning as the cube lifted high enough to become cupped by Orochi's extended hand.
She also heard the quiet whispers that began to slip into her mind, their speech incomprehensible, their passings brisk, but possessing something captivating regardless. The mental sound and how the colors pulsed were trying to lure Enterprise in as it had done back in Wales's office.
That was until those familiar images flashed before her eyes and the carrier recoiled from them.
"And so, Project Orochi was created," Orochi said. "A program whose essence would be shaped by the data of all who perished stored within its core and who's birth would be initiated by the will of that world's Key; your previous iteration."
"You keep saying that," Enterprise said. She wanted to sound hard, but it didn't come out that way to her. The niggling influence she felt at the back of her mind and the sight of Orochi with that Wisdom Cube was making her uneasy. The same allure that was coming from the cube was mixing with Orochi's explanation, granting it persuasiveness, even though what little Enterprise had been able to make of the explanation so far was sounding like something that should be impossible. "A previous iteration, another world, as if…"
"I believe I made it rather explicit at the start: your world is merely the latest of the many that have come and gone before it, and you the latest Enterprise."
Enterprise shook her head quickly. "Ridiculous."
"Denial is a very common human response, even when given exclusive knowledge," Orochi observed, her discovery of 'amusement' being used in full on her borrowed face. "As is that fear of the unknown that I happened to mention. When you sailed out here with your fleet despite the obvious provocation, when you used all the power that you could muster to destroy my body, what was it that motivated you?"
"To destroy you," Enterprise answered harshly. "A Siren weapon that needed to be sunk and to protect humanity. Nothing else."
Orochi brought the cube to hold it next to her face. The abyssal colors cast a sinister, writhing shadow over that one side. "Not because you were afraid of me?"
A just as sinister glint came from the space where her one eye was now hidden, and with it the idea that she could see exactly what it was that wormed around Enterprise's insides and was incensed further by that look.
"No," Enterprise lied.
"No," Orochi repeated. The cube lowered, as did she when her body hunched. It then shook. "No, she says."
She giggled.
The vibrant colors of the cherry blossoms dimmed, its already light shower waning, and the healthy brown of the bark eclipsed with a frozen shadow. The darkness it had stood against encroached upon it, like the coming of night, with the eerie sound making Enterprise think of an ominous whistle of a breeze joined with the cold lapping of waves on empty shores by the creature that was the abyss of the greater ocean, waiting for her to enter its lair where its horrors awaited.
Things that Enterprise was very much afraid of.
Orochi regained her composure, her smile wider, eyes glittering darkly with that cruelty that she was becoming better and better at handling as the minutes went on, that previous mocking applied better into her questioning. "So, my previous visitations did not unsettle you? My truths not what you have dreaded for so long, and what I could show you not the great unraveling of what has made you so blissfully ignorant?" She leaned closer. "Is this meeting not exactly what it was that you were afraid of, and what made you so relieved when you thought it avoided?"
The tightening constriction of her intestines proved what Enterprise refused to say out loud.
Belfast's warnings played through her mind, as did her response to them: that they had no choice, that they were prepared this time, and that she would face off in another battle against these oceans again to accomplish their mission.
But that didn't mean she hadn't been afraid, and Belfast knew that with Enterprise having told her, the Royal Navy cruiser having managed to stubbornly work her way into that much of the carrier's confidence. However, she hadn't told her everything; not about Orochi, or what she had seen and experienced during the visions she had been plagued with, and what happened during the Mirror Sea. Or how much that scared her.
Of Orochi's appearances and of the other specter that Enterprise would glimpse, the carrier had seen the answers to the questions that had dwelled deep in her heart about mankind and their conflicts and what it meant for shipgirls who were so tied to them. To keep them unanswered or to delay them until she found preferable alternatives, Enterprise had kept them buried while throwing herself into her battles – a hypocrisy that not only refused to give her the answers she wanted but legitimized the ones that she refused to acknowledge as she threw herself deeper and deeper.
But the apparition naming itself as Orochi – a self-proclaimed monster of humanity's true nature – was proof that Enterprise could not run or hide from, not even beneath the tiny ray of hope that had been slipping its way into her closed off heart.
Yes, Enterprise wanted to destroy her because that was the only way she knew how to rid herself of her. And she had been relieved when that ship had been burning in front of her, ready to forget about her and involve herself more in that alternative that a maidly shipgirl had given her.
So to be here alone with Orochi…
"You are afraid of me," came the whisper, right behind her. Right in her ear.
Enterprise's shoulders jumped before they stiffened, fear immobilizing her and delaying her combat-honed instincts that came a second later, her leaping forward and spinning around.
Orochi was still in the exact lean that she had been in when she was in front of her, and what had put her so perfectly positioned when she had managed to slip in behind Enterprise so suddenly. The change did not to serve just to startle the Eagle ship, however, as the kitsune had traded the light of life of the cherry blossom tree with the empty darkness that was outside of it.
There, the only light was the cube that was held in her hand, and it was one that did not repel the dark but strengthen and animate it as it did so enthusiastically, slithering and caressing along Orochi's form. It lengthened the shadow of her smile, going past the one at her eyes, and what it created had Enterprise taking an extra step back towards the light behind her.
"Your profile and that of your previous iteration have been designed to be so alike," Orochi suddenly said, with that shadow-traced visage of a serpent. "Such miniscule differences, although your environments are so divergent. Even I find that fascinating, as is the meticulousness of how you've been prepared for this stage."
"Prepared…?" Enterprise asked, in a voice that was much too quiet.
Her vision flickered, a strange play coming over it. She blinked, shook her head, bringing her hand up in front of her.
Her eyes…this familiar golden tint that was coming over her sight and what had to be illuminating from them. The power flowing through her, from such a mysterious source that was within her but what she had been choosing to wield regardless.
But now it was being brought forward entirely out of her control.
"Your battles that you have waged since your activation, and what you continued to participate in without fail, were exactly as the Sirens had designed for you." Orochi spoke as Enterprise tried to regain control. "Although on second review, maybe it's more accurate for my fascination to instead be focused on how you let yourself be so easily shaped by those conditions, no matter how stressful they became. However, they did select a powerful motivator to ensure your cooperation."
The tint stuttered, weakened, but didn't die out yet, neither did the glow in her eyes when Enterprise looked up where it served to make Orochi's expression and the shadows more wretched.
"I am of course referring to your sister," Orochi gaily specified. "Yorktown."
The power surged in time with Enterprise's anger, her using it to reassert command. Her bow came up, her target clear.
Destroy the core. Destroy Orochi. Wipe out every trace of this abominable creation.
The black cube pulsed where it hovered in Orochi's grasp.
And Enterprise's arm stopped.
Not just her arm. The energy that was empowering her that she thought she had regained control of paralyzed her. Arms, legs, her head. She couldn't move a muscle, the same applying to her rig.
"There doesn't seem to be any flaws in the containment protocols," Orochi commented with satisfaction. "Once you've become integrated with the prime programming, we'll be able to exert the same upon the rest of the subjects as we come across them. How fortunate that so many of them are currently gathered in such proximity, ripe for collection."
Orochi crept closer, the shadows still morphing upon and around her, and Enterprise fought against the mysterious influence that had come over her, trying to force her muscles to clench against it and break through.
But she couldn't move and as Orochi got ever nearer, Enterprise thought of the others. What was going on with them? Weren't they still out there fighting? Locked in this state of powerlessness that she had never experienced before, the carrier wondered why there had been no sign of them still assaulting Orochi's body.
"I can see it," Orochi suddenly said, her gaze fixed upon Enterprise's features and being delighted with what she saw. "I know what you're thinking, and I've already told you the answer. We're inside the temporal anomaly that is the link between our two worlds, disrupting the boundaries of space and time in order to do so. Although not completely stalled, it is by my estimates that time is flowing faster here than it is out there. Which means that it is just you, me, and us."
Orochi licked her lips, the action and how she was looking at Enterprise with such anticipation filling the carrier with dread with how she remained so helpless before it.
And that was when she saw it.
Behind Orochi, amidst the shadows, there was one that possessed some distinction. What could be a shade of the Siren monster, but what the features that Enterprise was slowly starting to make out as she concentrated on it proving to not be the case. There was the shape of a head, but they did not rise into a pair of foxy ears. What could be the hair was shorter, the ragged ends barely down to the outline of its shoulders, and there was an odd thickness at the neck – a clothy shadow wrapped around it and falling back into a kind of ripped cape or scarf.
As Orochi moved and bent, continuing to appraise Enterprise with hungry expectance, the shade matched her, its one arm bent as if it, too, was holding onto a cube of its own. And yet there came the odd question of whether it was the shade that was following Orochi or if Orochi was following it.
Then the shade's other arm moved, extending out, and it was Enterprise's arm that matched it. Her arm extending, holding her bow away from her, and with each slow uncurling of her fingers her heart continuously sank until it took the plunge along with her weapon when it left her grip and disappeared into the darkness at her feet.
"What do you want with me?" Enterprise asked, not sure as to who she was asking the question to.
Orochi glanced back up at her with a hint of incredulity, and then she let out a short laugh. "How exquisite!" she said, she and the shade of the other backing away from Enterprise to the Eagle girl's minor relief. "I have told you all, and you seem to have not understood a word! Only now do you seem to be paying attention! You truly are the embodiment of all that makes humanity what it is!"
The fake kitsune held the cube fully out in front of her. "Rather than repeat myself, we should begin the process. Time may be lenient here, but it should not be pressed. Your compliance to the merging is a factor, and there may be some time needed to overcome what influence this world had exerted over you despite your compatibility."
Enterprise stared at the cube, then Orochi, and the shade behind her that, rather than holding its own arm out, was keeping it protectively close. "I won't do what you want," she declared against them and the fear of whatever was coming next.
Orochi's shadowed smile of confidence became even wider. "Projection of success is at ninety-four-point-one percent. You will do what is required. As your previous iteration had been the key to my creation, you will be the key to my completion."
She turned her hand and the cube dropped.
The shadows around her did the same, it and the shade falling away and seeming to sink along with the cube when it fell. Though there was no visible splash, there was an audible sound of the cube contacting water before it disappeared from sight.
Then everything beneath them lit up with the dark violet of its light. Where the cube had fallen was where the shadows leapt out, how many Enterprise couldn't count but saw them scattering in all directions, including beneath her feet. Then the light died, pitching everything back into darkness.
She could move again, Enterprise lurching and almost falling with the sudden return but she was able to stop herself. What she did after was look down.
There was nothing for her to see, but Enterprise was nonetheless beset by an extreme sense of caution that had her standing very still, the only movement she dared to make being the slow, careful motion of her head as she looked around.
Then something brushed against the bottom of her heel.
Enterprise lifted it up, needing to stop herself from just having it go flying up in such a sudden act. She looked for but did not find any kind of sign of what was responsible beneath the black surface.
There came another brush at her other foot.
Enterprise lifted that next while setting her other back down, trying to keep slow as she backed up, even with the growing pounding of her heart beneath her chest and an elevating urge for her to turn and run.
There was something beneath her, lurking, making such investigative touches against her that continued, but she couldn't see anything. She didn't have her bow, and there was nowhere for her to run except maybe…
Thinking of the sakura tree that was behind her, Enterprise looked over her shoulder, trying to spot it, and it was when she got a glance of it that one of those touches became a sudden grab and pull.
Her foot disappeared, Enterprise gasping when it did, and this time she did jerk hard, managing to free it.
Then her other foot was grabbed.
With her one still raised, Enterprise dropped it back down while ripping her other foot out of that grip. She stumbled awkwardly, it then becoming a turn as she sought to get to the only kind of solid cover she had here.
Then whatever it was that was under her grabbed both feet and yanked them down.
Down to her ankles they went, Enterprise able to feel something wet and cold through her boots, but there was no water being kicked up when she tried to pull and kick them free. Except this time, she didn't manage to accomplish that, as holds were secured around those sunken ankles, and Enterprise gave a startled cry when they sank further, that cold water now filling her boots as it was able to reach up to her knees.
Whatever was beneath her took advantage to secure more of her, the carrier feeling what was multiple hands grabbing at her legs. Then she suddenly bent backwards, her flight deck having dipped enough to be included, but what she managed to free when she hurled her body forward.
It was a short-lived victory, the hands able to grab it again when she became submerged up to her waist, her rigging now well within their reach. It groaned when Enterprise tried to raise it up, but it soon became immobilized and started gradually sinking along with the rest of her.
"Can you feel them, Enterprise?"
At her stomach, the carrier had begun scrabbling for whatever purchase she could, actually using her hands to try and push down against the darkness that she was sinking into. She initially met some success, able to lift herself higher up, but what little she gained was lost, her struggling gasps turning into another panicked noise when the darkness rose to just beneath her chest.
In the middle of that struggle, she happened to look up, her fear now plain on her face with wide-eyed terror, and what she saw was Orochi standing above her, watching her, her head making another, cursory tilt with an accompanying fox ear, her lips curved up into another mockery of a smile.
"How they rage and scream, even in death?" she further inquired.
They were fighting for what they could get, Enterprise feeling the scratches and scrapes of nails as she was now up to her shoulders. Her arms were folded on top, her trying to gain what final, desperate leverage she could get as she pushed.
Until, inevitably, it was her arms that they then grabbed.
"Once you've understood, our destiny will be right here, waiting for you to seize it."
Her arms were forced beneath, the only thing that Enterprise would've been able to bring up to the surface being the scream that she had been holding back until this moment, where she realized that she had lost.
But before she could, she went under.
Enterprise rapidly sank, being pulled down, down, down by the grips that had seized whatever they could: her limbs, clothes, hair, rig. Together they were all bringing her down, the carrier fighting as best as she could, but it was useless. There were too many, all of them too strong.
Her descent into the depths was measured by their growing darkness while the temperature of the cold waters became freezing. The carrier felt their increase in pressure, the stress steadily growing against her hull and her body. Her already heavy struggles became heavier.
She had not had a mind to take a breath before being pulled under, and how deep she was going immediately spawned the fearful question of how she would be able to get one when she would have to as she continued going down.
Until she was abruptly released.
The sudden removal of the hands that held her resulted in Enterprise performing a partial underwater tumble, one that she immediately tried to recover and straighten herself out of while also trying to determine which direction the surface was.
It should've been easy for her to figure out because her undamaged rig should already be bringing her up towards it. With the sealed and uncompromised compartments of her gear, buoyancy should be taking immediate effect now that the opposing force that had been dragging Enterprise down was gone, floating her back to the surface.
It wasn't. Enterprise had stopped sinking, but she wasn't rising either. She was stuck at the depth that she had been dragged to.
Her flailing became frantic as Enterprise sought to bring herself to what she thought to be proper righting, fighting through the sting of saltwater at her eyes and the growing panic that came from the burning of lungs that were beginning to starve for air. She looked up at what she thought to be the direction of the surface.
What she saw instead was how the already dark waters faded to black. When she looked in the direction she believed to be down, the sight was the same. There was no indication that could tell her which way she needed to go to get air.
The only thing that she could see was a violet light emitting from where she initially believed to be 'up'. Following it to the source revealed the black Wisdom Cube, hovering high above her.
With nothing else to go on, Enterprise started to swim to what she prayed was up.
That cube remaining at the exact same distance from her despite the kicking of her feet and paddling of her arms was a horrifying indicator of how she wasn't getting anywhere.
With her rig unwilling to help her, Enterprise tried to dismiss it with the thought it was weighing her down. She sent the command, but her gear remained locked to her. With zero progress being made with her desperate swimming in one direction, her limbs made a push in a different direction, then another, attempting to make any gains no matter where she may be swimming to.
She remained stuck.
And at this point, her lungs were now on fire.
She couldn't stop it. Her body's needs overrode sense, forcing her to open her mouth and inhale.
Water flooded in, a convulsion passing through her as her opened airway began to immediately close again with the presence of water, her vision darkening as her consciousness started to slip away now that her body could confirm that it couldn't get oxygen.
That was until she breathed.
Unpleasant could not even begin to describe the sensation of the bitter taste of seawater at her mouth when it became filled with it before then going down her throat and to her lungs, the dissolved deposits that were responsible for the salty content making its passage far from smooth or pleasant when it settled, rough and drying. Enterprise half-choked, her body's functions confused.
But other than water, she was getting air, and to her human-like biology it was enough to settle with this half-and-half functioning that made her breaths partially impeded, nearly choking with such foul water filling her, but needed because there was air passing through it regardless.
Enterprise's own fight similarly ebbed, the threat of drowning held at bay and enough for her to endure this state that was close to it as she floated in this spot she was apparently stuck at.
Then came the voices.
They had already been there, but now Enterprise could shift her attention to them. They were in her head, whispering, with her unable to discern just how many were speaking at once or what they were saying. But there was a certain ambience to them that was not solely limited to her head as they had been before. Just as she was breathing when she shouldn't be able to, she could hear them - enough for her to make out where the faint noises were coming from.
Enterprise slowly turned as best as she could as she began to look around.
The view remained the same as before: how the murky waters transitioned into the totality of darkness that the violet casting of the overhead Wisdom Cube not only didn't penetrate, but made it more foreboding, its rays causing it to ghastly writhe under its manipulations.
It made the shadow that was not a part of it noticeable when it extended from it. As did the glint of metal when one ray happened to touch and reflect off it before it and the shadow disappeared back into the greater mass.
Enterprise stared at where she had seen the movement, waiting for it to appear again.
It didn't. But at the corner of her vision, another shadow did. And then another, at a different point.
The whispers started to get louder.
The Eagle girl made another clumsy rotation, spotting more of the same occurring all around her. Shadows that turned or dipped into view before doing the same to disappear again. Occasionally, there was another glinting reflection of something metallic attached to those shadows.
Soon, they became more defined silhouettes with shapes that were reminiscent to an arm or leg or wispy hair trailing densely in the heavy water, as did the ragged strips that were of torn fabric. The source of gleaming metal, too, became more distinguishable: a sheet of metal shaped into a hull, or a blocky form of what could be a turret. Both usually not intact.
The increased frequency of the sights matched the higher volume of the whispers.
Enterprise was moving for a different reason, the flapping of her limbs testing the measure of her maneuverability that she already knew would be inadequate and served to just feed the fear that was asserting its dominance over her. Her heart was beginning to race, her eyes darting around just as fast, with all that she was seeing, hearing, and feeling adding to the nightmare that she was recognizing that she was in and all her efforts proving what little she could do to escape from it.
A silhouette braved far enough out to better bathe in the light of the black cube. There was a head, a face, but none of the features that Enterprise could make out with the murkiness. But she could see its human form, with its torn fabric of some kind of uniform and the misshapen mess of metal that had the bare vestiges of it being a rig.
The obvious shipgirl started to recede back into the darkness but her new path had her staying just out of reach of it, her silhouette remaining in sight as she swam right at the edge.
Others began to do the same, edging out from the surrounding abyss. Enterprise could make out flowing dresses, the thick coats, capes, more uniforms of different colors and measures of decorations, or simple shirts and skirts. But all were in a damaged state, as were their split rigs and ruined weapons whether they be mangled torpedo launchers or gutted batteries or the distorted slimness of cranes and booms.
Enterprise still couldn't make out individual faces, but they were all looking at her. A dozen which became dozens, then a hundred, and still more that began to come into sight. Human bodies, flesh as pale as the metal attached to them, the abyssal lighting turning them into such ghostly figures.
They were all following the same circling path around her.
They were all getting closer.
They were all getting louder.
And it was their voices that were getting angrier.
Enterprise vainly tried to keep track of them all, but it was a hopeless effort. There were too many, the darkness that they had come from now replaced by a crowded circle of bodies that swam beneath the sinister violet light that was the only dreadful illumination as they closed in on her.
She even failed to see the first strike coming when one suddenly broke from the ranks, coming towards Enterprise's back, reaching and touching her. The tips of the fingers pressed into her back, then dug, and then pierced into it.
And Enterprise screamed as her back arched against the pain that not only enveloped her back but jumped up, stabbing into her brain and-
"Zuikaku!" Shoukaku cried, pushing her sister aside the second before the rain of bullets came down on her. Her weakened armor couldn't hold anymore, the rounds punching into her back, it bowing in response as the bullets went through her front, her flute flying out from her hand which was broken by the shockwave of the thousand-pound bomb that detonated immediately after and broke her body just as easily.
Enterprise bent forward, immediately looking at her front, but didn't see any trace of the bullets that she had felt go through her or the shrapnel of the bomb slicing into her. Her body had not been crushed by the explosive force either.
Shoukaku? While desperately trying to make sense of what happened, Enterprise turned around. Shoukaku wasn't dead. Enterprise had almost killed her, but the Sakura carrier had survived.
When she finished her turn, it was to look into the dead features of Shoukaku.
The other aircraft carrier floated there, her long silver hair suspended behind her, letting Enterprise see for sure the lifeless eyes that stared at her and how deathly pale the flesh around them was. The material of her kimono flowed back the same way as her hair, revealing the obvious rips and tears at the sleeves that had been shredded and the dozens of holes that had been gathered at the cloth over her chest. Beneath one of those sleeves was her broken flight deck.
Enterprise couldn't look away, her lips moving but only small bubbles coming out instead of the question she was asking. How…?
Shoukaku suddenly swam away, Enterprise turning to follow her, only for someone else to drop in front of her, their hands coming down upon her chest, and the Eagle carrier went through another bout of violent motion as she again screamed as what should've been a light touch turned into the smashing of solid ordnance that would detonate into blazing fireballs.
As the bombs had done to Graf Zeppelin. The Iron Blood carrier losing planes, her already taking significant damage, but she defiantly launching more of her bombers from her fracturing double decks, glaring up at the smoky, tracer-filled skies that would deposit the pair of bombs that she remained standing tall against even when she knew where they would fall, staying upright when they struck against her and being forced to fall when they exploded.
Graf Zeppelin's eyes were just as dead and flesh just as pale as Shoukaku. Her body was untouched, but her uniform and cape bore the signs of the damage that had been inflicted at the moment of her death as did her rig; the jaws of the beast-like bows blown off, her two decks destroyed.
But the actual pain of her death and what she had felt had been for Enterprise to experience, and with that done she also swam off.
Rather than watch her disappear, Enterprise whipped her head around, catching on to what was happening even if she didn't know why.
The scream that Shoukaku had ripped from her had been the signal. Even if there had been no sound to speak of, the bubbles that came from her mouth had been the drops of blood needed to provoke the frenzy that had now begun, the encirclement of shipgirls breaking as they all turned inwards, all coming for her, all reaching for her.
And together their voices rang as one.
"̶͆͜"̵̜̻͌G̸̢̾ ̸̖͇͒r̵̞͖̿ ̸̰̌̾e̸̡̓͂ ̴̬̽ŷ̶͈͖̚ ̵̡̖̊G̷͓̈́ ̶̻͋ḧ̵̻͖̇ ̸̩̊̎ͅo̷͔̟͌ ̴̠̠̓s̶̬̉ ̶̙͑t̸͚̚!̶̰͑̽"̶̪̉
Enterprise kicked and punched out, trying to drive them away, her mouth opening and bubbles drifting out as she tried to shout. Wait! Stop!
A much tinier form riding a crumpled hunk of a wreck swam past one of her legs, her small fist coming against Enterprise's side.
U-47 had managed to submerge and was now diving deep, the panic that had driven her to performing the crash dive beginning to recede with the sense of security and safety she derived from the all-encompassing waters right before a glowing gold projectile came alongside her – as did three more, all of them having managed to come after and surround her. Her receding panic had the time to turn into dread before those arrow-like projectiles exploded, the last thing she would see the rushing wall of bubbles that enveloped her from all sides, her hugging her rig for futile protection when they both began tumbling and then became compressed together by the humongous pressure.
Enterprise lashed out with her arm, slow, and the submarine was gone by the time it even got close to where she had been.
And then another came, using her displaced limb to touch near her chest again.
Kirov was soaring until she crashed into an iceberg, the solid surface cracking at the point of impact. She dropped back onto the water, unable to move from where she now floated on her back. Staring up, it was to see that the iceberg – in fact one of their conquered Siren outposts – sported many more, it already in the midst of coming apart, large chunks falling. One significant piece landed, her torso caving under its weight as it forced her beneath the waves and into the frigid embrace of the Bering Sea.
This time Enterprise didn't have a second to react when there came another, this one behind her head as the hand grasped and pulled at her hair.
Littorio, leading a defense in the Aegean Sea, in the middle of an order to rally the shipgirls of Sardegna before she was silenced, her body jerking in spastic shock when a glowing arrow – this one crimson-colored – took her from behind her head.
Enterprise viciously shook her head out of the hold. Stop, stop! This doesn't make sense!
But her plea was ignored, Enterprise only seeing another hand coming for her.
Hiei, holding the sheathed blade of her katana against her as she stood, immobilized from extensive damage. What few of her batteries that still worked fired into the air, the heavy shells not hitting any of the buzzing bombers but her not really expecting to as her forehead tapped her blade's hilt, her eyes closed, making her final prayer beneath the whistling of the falling bombs that finished her.
Another took her right arm, nails clawing up it and towards her face.
Roon, with a smile as nasty as her intentions behind how she thrust with one sharp point of the hull of her gear to impale a target right before that and the entire starboard construction of her rig was obliterated, her one arm suddenly unresponsive and her not being able to see why because she could no longer look out her right eye either. The newly created blind spot kept her from catching a second golden projectile taking the head of her gear that was situated at the end of the long-serpentine neck above her, the power of the following explosion swallowing hers.
Those victims, and the ones who have yet expressed their final moments, repeated the same thing in one terrible chorus.
"̵̜̻͌G̸̢̾ ̸̖͇͒r̵̞͖̿ ̸̰̌̾e̸̡̓͂ ̴̬̽ŷ̶͈͖̚ ̵̡̖̊G̷͓̈́ ̶̻͋ḧ̵̻͖̇ ̸̩̊̎ͅo̷͔̟͌ ̴̠̠̓s̶̬̉ ̶̙͑t̸͚̚!̶̰͑̽"̶̪̉
S-stop! Enterprise failed again to shout out, the failure compounding the overwhelming sense of helplessness. She flailed, that singular measure of fighting useless, what pleas she wanted to make silenced by the waters that gagged her mouth and further choked her when she would gasp and scream after a touch from one of the dead would be magnified a thousand times over into the pain that would blind her to everything except these visions that plunged just as excruciatingly into her head with her forced to watch and feel.
Why were they doing this to her? Why were they showing her this?
And why were they saying that name?
All those questions that they ignored or didn't give any sign of registering, answering only with the intense pain that attacked her body and mind at once.
Zuikaku, betrayed and enraged, it being that name that resounded in her last thoughts when the deceptive attack landed.
The name that Carabiniere and Libeccio attributed to the loss of their flagship and their witnessing of their doomed fleet, something they wouldn't see to the last when those unbelievably fast planes that were overwhelming their comrades dove towards them, wreathed in that same crimson power.
The name the focus of Hipper's vengeance for her sister, and what her radical charge sped her past the Sirens, ignoring them, as she went towards her death that came much too quickly when a rising storm of crimson arrows, too many for her to evade, stuck and then blew her out of the sky.
A name that was not thought of with anger or dread but with grim acceptance when Sovetsky Soyuz strode out into the Arctic, willingly accepting the crimson missile that came at her with no warning.
"̵̜̻͌G̸̢̾ ̸̖͇͒r̵̞͖̿ ̸̰̌̾e̸̡̓͂ ̴̬̽ŷ̶͈͖̚ ̵̡̖̊G̷͓̈́ ̶̻͋ḧ̵̻͖̇ ̸̩̊̎ͅo̷͔̟͌ ̴̠̠̓s̶̬̉ ̶̙͑t̸͚̚!̶̰͑̽"̶̪̉
They continued, all around her, their bodies swarming, and her now afraid to even fight back if it meant touching them and experiencing another death. But another would come, she knew that.
T-this isn't right! It was getting harder for her to think, her thoughts becoming as struggling – and futile – as her physical resistance.
But this was wrong! These things never happened! Iron Blood, Sakura Empire, they were enemies but these deaths…they shouldn't be! And Sardegna, Northern Parliament…why?
St-! The silent protest ended in the just as silent scream as the next vision came with another touch.
Baltimore, her being thrown into Bremerton, the sister ships collapsing but a pair of crimson arrows skewering them both together in the middle of their fall. Something was wrong with them – their skin of grayish pale pigmentation, their eyes of strange and familiar golden yellow light, their features barren of emotion.
It betrayed how, beneath the implanted programming, their suppressed personalities were crying out the entire time until they were ripped from what has become such an unnaturally dark world, where the only light was the burning of New York that was alike to the fire that engulfed them.
Those names, those shipgirls, and the scenery managed to break through to Enterprise, but only because of how the senselessness of that horror managed to momentarily ascend past the one she was trapped in.
Those had been Eagle Union ships. And their place of death…a destroyed New York.
Bluegill was another, her trying to retreat from a pack of Siren submarines, only for her to stop because of the depth charges she had been led into, forcing her to the surface, where Siren surface ships awaited her, the Panama Stronghold being razed in the background.
Her death and a few others were attributed to Sirens, with another few who were killed by opposing factions - like Juneau, limping to what she thought was home, before her dreams and life were instantly taken by I-26's torpedoes that struck her magazine - but the cause behind the vast majority and what led the rest to blame her regardless was what was being perpetrated by this mysterious individual who stalked within the growing darkness of this world.
And who's next claims were made when the Panama Stronghold had become a smoldering ruin and where Bunker Hill - she and her sisters slated for the securement of an era of glory - would instead know what it was like to be a weapon of the Sirens, her programmed purpose to scout and patrol around another site of her faction's former glory until she, Reno, and Cooper were disposed of when her aerial recon elements were suddenly shot down, Reno already lost in a bombing that was just as sudden, and Bunker Hill registering the arrows piercing through her when she saw Cooper's limp form held up by her broken neck by this trespasser.
The same stalker who came upon Ning Hai and Ping Hai when the two Empery cruisers had become stranded at an unknown island, their ships out of fuel, and they trying to survive on what scraps of food they had as they huddled at the small warmth of a fire – before a shadow came looming upon their campsite, they looking up when the light of their fire died out.
What happened to the two immediately after Enterprise experienced in excruciating detail thanks to the small forms that glided down her arms and legs, their hands tracing how their limbs and the rest of their bodies had been stripped down to their cores that had been crushed at the end.
They and the rest still had but one name to blame.
"̵̜̻͌G̸̢̾ ̸̖͇͒r̵̞͖̿ ̸̰̌̾e̸̡̓͂ ̴̬̽ŷ̶͈͖̚ ̵̡̖̊G̷͓̈́ ̶̻͋ḧ̵̻͖̇ ̸̩̊̎ͅo̷͔̟͌ ̴̠̠̓s̶̬̉ ̶̙͑t̸͚̚!̶̰͑̽"̶̪̉
It wasn't me! Enterprise cried. It wasn't me!
Newcastle, sitting at the edge of the Isle of Docks, the destroyed Royal Palace behind her with her ship half submerged in its berth in front of her. Her torn umbrella was up, doing little to protect her from the raining ash while she read from the ripped pages of a book, ignoring everything – including the small buzzing that was overhead and was followed by the bombs that carpeted her immediate area.
I-it…it w-wasn't…!
King George, holding her sword that was missing half a blade – a half that was returned to her when the tip stabbed and then went through her heart, as did the hand that clutched it, her blood dripping from them and her mouth as she smiled bitterly down at the sight.
I-I...I…
Algérie, her head down and hands clasped in prayer as she knelt in front of the debris of the Basilica, long since collapsed. One moment alone, the next in the company of the specter that was standing over the Templar, its arm raised, a bow-like shape in its hand, with one downwards cut being all that was needed to take her head.
I-I'm sorry! Enterprise's hands flew to her head, her eyes closing, her tears as lost by the waters as her screams were muted. I'm sorry, I'm sorry!
Yet even as she shouted it as loud as she could, she didn't know what she was apologizing for. For not being there? For failing to save them? For killing them?
Or was she just saying whatever she could to appease them?
Enterprise retreated, her body curling tight, a ball that was pulled, shoved, and scratched at by dead hands and fingers while disembodied voices gnawed at her psyche. Her cries went on, unheard and uncared for, as the seconds of reliving these grisly, senseless demises became minutes and what she dreaded could go on for longer with how the ranks of the circling fallen did not abate one bit – nor did her suffering that had her shaking and contorting in this space.
Any thoughts of help – of being saved – were doomed from the start as those who could do so were the ones who were tormenting her.
So, helpless and alone, this torture went on.
Is this not familiar…?
It came to her then, that bleak callousness that hooked her due to it not being of the hot agony and seething blame of this vortex of misery.
Is this not how you've always lived…? Is this not what you've always been meant for…? What they've all been meant for…?
With so many ill-fated perspectives fighting for preeminence, her own memories struggled to rise above them, but the personal link that attached her to them was what got them to surface…and what let her differentiate them from the rest despite how much of the same they really were.
Where was the difference other than that? These images that invaded, this pain that followed them? All the same, and what would come again and again and again, much like how it was being done now?
The only other difference was how she would survive and then repeat it over and over. Again, much like now, where everyone else would be the ones to die.
You destroy, you kill, and the cycle just repeats and repeats…
When she bombed – her recollection stuttered, the bombs turning into arrows – shot down Kaga. Akagi. The fox sisters – it stuttered again, the features of the shipgirls shifting briefly to flat carrier decks with bombers and vulnerable fuel and ordnance exposed before switching back – struck down by her – not once, twice, but somehow more than that. Shoukaku and Zuikaku, at her mercy surrounded by those ice cliffs – Shoukaku sinking first, Zuikaku later when her hulk rolled over and sank, miles and months away.
What is our future…? Where is it…? You know…
There was the fleeting sense of resistance, something trying to fight back, to create an opposing view, but it was too recent and too insignificant. Its paltry promises, its optimistic warmth, dying instantly to cold hard reality that had been proven several times over and what was repeating, unending.
With it gone, there was nothing left. Enterprise had become coerced out of her ball, her arms and legs brought outwards by the continued pulling and clawing but her responses were mere twitches, her cries having quieted, and leaving her to float lifelessly where she was, staring up.
In what few spaces there were between the swirling wall of vengeful spirits, Enterprise deadened gaze spotted that black cube, still hanging above.
Ascend…
Her one hand twitched of a different accord.
Reach for it… Take it…
The colors had become hypnotic, their source more inviting with how it hung there, outside of this maelstrom.
Salvation…
Enterprise slowly lifted her hand and reached for it.
The cubes began floating up from either side of her – brilliant specks of blue, but what began to fade the higher they went. Darkening, corrupting, and then dying out when they were touched and then enveloped by the light of the black cube, soon disappearing within its heart. They appeared in great enough numbers that they soon formed a trail between it and Enterprise, their progress in consumption visibly defined, with nothing given back.
As for where they were coming from, one source was from Enterprise's rig, her flight deck disintegrating as it would when being dismissed, except much more gradually. But from her boots, the ends of her skirt, and the lapels of her coat, too, did the cubes break away from her to be fed towards the one above. Metal and cloth, all edible, and what was being given without a fight.
And this included flesh and bone. Right in front of her, starting at her fingers, the hand she had extended was being taken as well. The tips of her digits and their nails were shaved off and converted into those cubes, joining the rest. Then the joints when half of her fingers were broken down, the speed increasing, now going to her knuckles when there was nothing left of them.
Even when down to half a palm, Enterprise did not react. What she did register was the absence of sensation and feeling of where the other half of her hand used to be.
But there was no pain. With the rest of her still being torn and fought for, her head still assailed by angry voices, this nothingness that began to eat at her wrist became a growing measure of peace and one she started to long for.
This salvation…
This oblivion…
Whichever this was, both sounded so sweet to her right now.
It was when she was down to her sleeve and, soon, her arm, that someone swam over and grabbed it.
Enterprise felt a pressure come around her neck, a press against her head, both feelings she knew would have her reliving another death. But with this promise that required giving her everything for it, it was becoming so easy to turn herself off to this and the others when she knew that the release she was begging for would finally be given. This one would just pass her by, as would however many others that would follow, until she was finally free of them.
So she did not deign to notice when the hold around her neck lessened without administering pain, the point of another recollection retreating from her brain without penetrating.
What she did notice was when the ascending trail of cubes that consisted of her being suddenly froze, stopping their journey to her wanted salvation.
And looking at her arm, wondering why its dismantling had paused, let her see how the apparition who held it was still there.
Actually realizing it required time for the passive consciousness that had her looking so blankly at the hands that held her arm to become active with a sluggish blink of Enterprise's eyes. Still, she stared for a little longer until she was roused enough to dimly glance over.
It was difficult for her to make out this one's identity. Her name did not come to her mind, the same as how her death did not. Her face was also unusually blurred, Enterprise unable to make out anything other than her long hair, her own damaged rig, and her torn clothing that included a long skirt and apron.
There came a glint, light reflecting off metal, but what was responsible was a piece that was around her neck, attached to it a short chain.
Other figures swam around Enterprise, but not like how the rest had done. Instead of the predatory circling, they dove down, gliding close to her, and rather than assault her they turned away from her, circling outwards, their movements…defensive. Their patterns like a patrol, forming a protective screen around the Eagle carrier. With half-conscious thought, Enterprise turned to watch them.
She was only able to get a look at them when the figures – four in total – stopped at positions around Enterprise, their backs to her. Because of that she couldn't see their faces but could make out the obvious details. Two of these shipgirls were carriers, their flight decks a mess but recognizable, as were their coats – one buttoned, the other open and flared out like a cape. For their long hair it was the opposite; the one with the open coat tied in two tails at the sides of her head and away from the hat she wore, the other free and cascading.
The other two shipgirls were shorter. The first, a destroyer, and at the top of her head were a second set of ears, furred and triangular. As for the other, though they had been snapped in twain, there was the array of cranes of an obvious repair ship at this one's rig while she was adorned with a nursing cap.
It was while gazing upon them that Enterprise recognized how…quiet it had gotten. She looked past the four and the perimeter they had created.
There were thousands of them, Enterprise able to form a better count with how their attacks had ceased and how they were floating further away, their massive numbers having nonetheless been driven back by the few who had intervened. They were still and silent, hovering in place, when so shortly before they had so viciously been attacking and damning.
But all they were doing now were…staring at her. Enterprise perceived thousands of eyes on her.
Apparently done, the four that were around her turned so that their gazes could join with the rest as they all looked at her.
Static suddenly burst in her head, Enterprise tensing, shaking, but it wasn't a new form of torment as she expected.
After a pause, the static came again.
Beneath the noise, Enterprise could make out something loosely intelligible, its cadence vaguely reminiscent to some kind of speech.
It was coming…from them.
Enterprise looked around at these faces she could not see until she was looking back at her arm, following it up, and staring at the veiled face of the shipgirl who held it.
Her lips parted. …What?
But they did not repeat it. Instead, the entire space suddenly shook, the water rippling, and Enterprise could hear a muffled boom. None of the other phantasms made a sign of noticing, they all still looking at her when there came another shake, another boom, their forms rippling and then collapsing when waves of bubbles suddenly rolled in, sweeping them away, sweeping over Enterprise-
And the carrier found herself on her knees, resting on a floor of iron, in a chamber full of clean air that she breathed in, unobstructed. She blinked, her vision as clear, so that she could see her hands – both of them – in her lap. On the floor to her right was her bow. To the left, her flight deck.
And right in front of her, hovering an inch above the same floor, was the black Wisdom Cube.
"This is impossible."
Nearby, surrounded by monitors, Orochi was assessing the views that were being transmitted from outside cameras. Each one presented a picture that was closely similar: Siren mass production ships, burning and sinking, the skies being just as swept clean of their jetcraft and flying Testers. Replacing them, shipgirls of not only Azur Lane such as Eagle Union and Royal Navy, but of Sakura Empire as well with an occasional Iron Blood ship either sailing or flying in between, racing to a destination.
"These variables were unaccounted for," Orochi murmured, perturbed. "They've run completely outside the scope of the projections."
A few of those monitors displayed those charging shipgirls with their cannons soundlessly firing. A moment later, the entire chamber shook with muffled booms.
"The shield has been depleted," she read along an invisible report, actually sounding distressed. "Hull integrity dropping below fifty percent. Progress of integration of the Key…" Her head shot up, her eyes enlarging. "Paused?" She whirled around towards Enterprise.
Ignoring everything that was going on, Enterprise reached over, taking the black cube, the invisible aura sticking to her fingers and leaving it to hover between her palms as she held it.
Static played in her head as she stared into the pulsing center of the cube.
"̷̹͙̾F̶̗̖̐ ̵͚̬̽̃r̶͍̘̍ ̷̻̭̓͑e̶̗͛ͅ ̵͈̇͜ě̶̠̦ ̵͍̊̋Ù̸͖͗ ̸͉͊s̷̛̞̈…̶̖͔̎̋"̴͎̝̈́͠
Her fingers curled tighter around the cube.
"̸̝̈́̅S̵͎̿ ̶͙̈͝ͅȃ̵̪̩ ̸̻͌v̵͈̍͊ ̸̮̤̈́ẹ̵̬͊͆ ̷̨̫͌̑Ü̵̲ ̶̥͘s̴̝͑…̶̻͈̍̋"̸̰̀
Orochi was as silent, watching as Enterprise continued to stare into the cube, the two ignoring another hull-shaking round of rumbling as the carrier brought the cube closer to her chest, her head lowering, eyes closing.
Until, suddenly, she was holding it over her head, a scream tearing out from her throat when her fingers forced their way through the protective aura, her eyes that flew open flickering between colors – purple, gold, crimson – as cracks formed around the cube.
Orochi lunged forward, dropping her umbrella, her face of pure terror as she screeched, "NO!"
Thousands of voices called out in Enterprise's head. Thousands that she strangled…
…And shattered into just as many pieces.
The cube shattered in her hand.
She stood there, stunned, as the pieces fell, what of them that didn't rain past bouncing and rolling out from her hand so that they could splash into the water below. Going with them were the last vestiges of the final, collective gasp of the whispers in her head, their departure as shocking to her as the physical destruction of the cube.
The last of the pieces had already submerged by the time she had a mind to surge forward.
NO!
She dropped to her knees, her hands plunging into the water, grasping for them. She felt it when she touched them, her fingers bumping them, her palms making contact, but when she closed them into desperate fists, she felt them slip away from between them.
How could she…? Why did she…?
She went deeper, the water nearly reaching her shoulders as her hands dove further, her grasping all the more frantic…
Except this time, she didn't even get a hint of them.
She didn't relent, spinning in place with her arms still submerged, sending splashes of water everywhere, drops landing and then trailing down her face, her cheeks, and dripping down her chin as, from her lips, there came gasps, pants, and small cries that were of denial and disbelief.
But she could not get a trace of them. Their light no longer shined, their voices silent, leaving her blind and deaf for this search.
It was such resounding silence and emptiness that eventually had her withdrawing her hands when she rested back on her knees.
For a time, she knelt there, the only sounds she heard being the water that dripped from her and back into the ocean along with her gasps. The former ebbed and then stopped entirely while the latter continued.
It was unbearably loud, filling the space in her head that was now empty of them as it did in the darkness of this forsaken world that was now as empty of their light. Their final light.
Her final hope.
Why…? she asked again. Why did she…?
What she grasped at now was her head, the question she was asking difficult for her to answer. Impossible.
They were the same. They were built the same, fought the same, thought the same. They were the same so how could she…?
She seized portions of her short hair, tugging on them.
How could she do this to her? Committing this impossible betrayal, to take them away from her, to kill them, and to leave her with nothing.
Nothing…
The word resounded strongly, describing exactly what it was with her sitting here, bereft of them, in this dead and useless world. With them gone, with her alone, all she had was…
Nothing.
She pulled tighter on her hair.
Nothing!
Her body heaved, her breaths quicker, heavier, her entire form shaking.
Nothing, nothing, nothing!
NOTHING!
Her screams went for miles with no one to hear them, her fists that were clenched full of strands that she tore out swinging at air before uselessly beating at the ocean, needing something to replace what had been stolen from her.
But there was nothing to replace the irreplaceable – not for a second time. She had already been given that chance once when they had come back, when they had been with her again, and so she knew that with them having left her again…they were not coming back.
And all this pointless, wasteful tantrum accomplished was to leave her exactly where she was now: her screams reduced to sobbing, her knuckles weakly hitting against her head, everything that she tried to fill the void not only done in vain but further emphasizing how there was nothing.
Why?
It was all that she was left with, and in a way it was worse than if she was without it because not only could she not answer it, but it also made this outcome so inconceivable.
She did everything right. She listened to them, followed them, did exactly what they were meant to do. Everything made so much sense, all of it true to their proven nature.
She had done nothing wrong, and they had assured her of that with each one she found and reunited with the rest.
And what they managed to create once they were all together…
It was what their battles and their sacrifices had been meant for. A new weapon. A new evolution. A start of a legacy.
Hers.
Theirs.
Their own path, their own future that mankind had entrusted them to build for themselves based on the wills imparted to them. As humans had transcended with their shipgirls, so too would they with their creation – the wielders who had become their weapons of war, and those weapons that would become war itself.
All they needed was a merging of the other side. The world that mirrored theirs, with their other halves. The one that still lived while theirs had died, the difference only that. They still fought, they still warred, and through that unchanging facet they would all become whole and ascend.
The bridge had been so easy to establish with their crossing already being made. The final piece was her other half; the other Key needed to open the other gate so that they could enter, unite, and become what was destined to be.
She is me.
Their guarantee. She would see, she would know, and she would do what was needed, just as she had.
Then, at last, she would be able to join them.
The door had been opening, she had seen the light of their salvation on the other side, right before it suddenly slammed shut, the bridge collapsing immediately after, and she killed them.
And here she was, left behind, with nothing.
She felt nothing, thought nothing. Her sobs had quieted, but once more the silence and darkness closed in as did the sheer emptiness of it all.
Was there anything of worth here now?
Those who were in the position to make that judgment didn't think so, and light suddenly arrived in this world of darkness. A white light, one that came upon the horizon like a rising sun. But a sun didn't eat the horizon, or the sky, but that was exactly what was happening. The line of the horizon deteriorated, the light expanding to the heavens, not illuminating the darkness but erasing it. Where it touched, nothing was left behind. Not the smog that permanently blanketed this world or the sky itself. What remained was a pure, featureless white.
Her eyes lit with crimson, but she didn't need to see the details that the enhanced perception gave her as to how everything was coming to an end. The ones responsible for overseeing this world had deemed their little simulation to no longer be of worth.
For that, the only thing left was deletion. Which included her.
So that's how it is, she thought, watching the coming end.
This war, like the one before, was over. With no more conflict, there was no more meaning for her existence. She was to be dismantled – scrapped, much like in that other life. That fate which she was to submit to once again.
Nothing was being spared, the erasure total, with nothing but a solid, approaching expanse of white coming towards her.
Her fists clenched at her sides.
No, this couldn't be! What they all fought and died for and what she had struggled and suffered for – this couldn't be the end! Their own destiny that they had been at the verge of, the cycle that had been so fixed having been about to be broken!
This fight, this loss…
She refused to be left with nothing!
There came a weak glow just beneath the surface. She caught it, her gaze shifting to it, and when she saw it again she suddenly gasped and dove for it, her hand closing around it.
The wall of white was right on top of her.
Her closed fist shot up in a gesture meant to stop it, her eyes blazing red.
She did not immediately fade into it, her resistance letting her see her fist for the seconds after everything else was erased. Then the delay passed and it started to divide and separate into crimson cubes, like squared drops of blood that then evaporated. She did not feel pain immediately, but when the hot agony started coursing through her she found that she couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't even look away as white filled her vision, the pain vanishing as well as any feeling for anything else.
Then, right in the middle, there came that weak glow.
And time reversed.
The wall receded, so fast that it almost appeared as if it suddenly ceased. Absolute light plunged back into imperfect darkness, its polluted skies and empty ocean returning.
Sensation returned just as abruptly, she gasping and then falling, control only coming back to her after her face smacked into the water, the sting and the cold that wetted her entire front helping to bring her back. She delayed in rising regardless, choosing to remain laying there before she decided to lift her head so that she could look to where her arm was outstretched, her fingers closed.
When she opened them, it was to let the small item she held – a tiny, broken crystal – float to what little height it could reach, its colors of abysmal black and violet pulsing just outside of its edges.
Beneath its light, her thumb and index finger wavered and then began to divide into those reddened cubes, but a pulse from the fragment and a strengthened flaring of her eyes had them pause and then slowly reform back into shape. She felt the instability occurring throughout the rest of her; an uncomfortable shift, a gradual loss of feeling, but then she forced it back into what was tepid stability. She identified how these instances of fragmentation extended to her thoughts, but she was able to figure out what was happening.
She had not stopped the termination procedure, but she was staving it off. She was preserving not just herself but also this little space that she had managed to save and concentrate around her. How long it would last, she didn't know, but as long as she had this and the link she could still grasp through it to her other, treacherous half…
Her fingers closed back around the fragment, concealing it, but beneath the crimson hue of her eyes it could be seen how her mouth wavered, divided, but came back to form a twitching, feral grin.
She would not become n̵͕̎ ̸͓͑̓o̴̬̩̚ ̶̙̐t̷͇͑̓ ̶̡̳̔̓h̵̟͘ ̵̧̬̅ḯ̵̬̲͠ ̶̘̇n̵̻̎͆ ̵̦̰̇ǧ̵͖̈.
