"Ohnonononono." The engineer aboard the airship muttered to herself, "This is bad, this is very bad!" She raced up to the bridge to tell the captain the news when a sudden impact shook the ship and sent her flying down the corridor. The engineer rolled with it and fought through the pain to keep running. She'd deal with the bruises later.

"Captain!" She shouted, "Captain, there's some kind of strange energy in the air!"

"Oh June," the captain replied calmly, as if she was just telling him about the weather, "you think you could be a little less specific?" The ship rumbled again as the crew struggled to keep their footing on the ship's floor, but the captain stood relatively still.

"I…I don't know what it is!" June shouted, "It's stopping our radar dead! We can't even see the weapon, we just see that it's starting to crumple the hull of this ship like a tin can faster than my girls can fix it, and the stabilizers are taking a pounding! If we don't land and patch things up soon, it might start hitting something critical!"

Ugh… Johnny thought, rubbing his temples with his hands. Probably some new anti-air weapon Zepp came out with.

"Johnny!" May ran onto the bridge, gasping, "We have to land, the ship can't take much more of this!"

"Ugh…" Johnny had hoped that Zepp would give him a little more time to make off with his latest haul, but then such was the life of a Jellyfish Pirate. No plan ever survived contact with the enemy. "Fine, where's the nearest port?"

Elsewhere in the ship, Jam Kuradoberi was getting a bit pissed off. The lunch she had spent all day working on was spilling out of the pot despite her best attempts. And before any of the girls could sample it, they were running to and fro. It figured that after losing all her money trying to open up a brand new Chinese restaurant, some asshole would burn it down again.

Jam could hear the voice of her grandmother mocking her. "You need to settle down, get yourself a husband, have some children, then maybe you wouldn't keep getting such bad luck," she would say. Jam wanted to continue proving she was a chef, and the best one there was, so she decided to take this small job as a cook aboard an airship. She didn't realize until too late that she was cooking for an infamous band of almost all-female pirates led by some hotshot American. But hey, it was a living.

She started scooping some of the remaining food onto a couple of plates, scooped them up with her hands, and began to run up to the bridge. Sure, the ship might be getting hit by Zepp gunfire or something like that, but Jam would be damned if her newest job vanished and food was wasted because some idiot burned down her kitchen again.

Lieutenant Noel Vermillion looked up at the clock and sighed. Apparently, she did arrive a little earlier than necessary. She didn't know why the head of the NOL's Intelligence Division would ask to meet her in the main Port of Kagutsuchi, but this was a big chance to prove her worth as a military officer, so she decided to accept the job. It sounded simple enough: Find Major Jin Kisaragi and convince him to come back to headquarters. They were both military officers and classmates, so it would not be that big of a problem, right?

Suddenly, she turned her head to the left, and saw a ship trailing smoke as it approached the port. As she continued watching, the ship suddenly grew bigger and bigger in her field of view as it came closer and closer. Unlike most ships in the port, it didn't seem to be slowing down. A man stood on top of the tower trying to signal the ship with semaphore, and when that failed the man simply tossed a colored flare up into the air and climbed down the ladder as fast as he could.

The ship came closer and closer, and Noel was stuck between wanting to run away from the impending carnage and staying out of a sense of duty.

Finally, the ship made a hard turn as it slowed down and got incredibly close to port, but gravity slowed down the change of speed until the ship finally crashed into the port, the solid brick and concrete just barely stopping the ship before it could do any serious damage. Still, the docks were probably going to need a little maintenance. In fact, it would probably take a few weeks just to get the ship repaired or salvaged.

Noel glanced at the clock again. Her contact still had not arrived. She took a deep breath as she walked towards the damage ship. It looked like she was the ranking officer on site, and she was going to have to deal with the problem until otherwise noted.

The Jellyfish Pirates slowly made their way up to the deck as they threw a self-inflating slide over the port side of the ship. Considering their usual ramp was blocked, they had to do it this way. One by one they slid down the ramp with the speed and precision of a military outfit. Eventually, April slid off the ship, then May, then June. Jam was crying as Johnny escorted her to the slide.

"There there, Jam." Johnny gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, "It'll be okay."

"All I wanted to do was cook." Jam sobbed as she remembered how she dropped the food on the plates when the ship made an emergency landing at port, "I didn't want any of this pirating, just a kitchen that didn't burn down on me!"

"Don't worry, the kitchen's still there." Johnny leaned in close to her, "I'm sure I can make it up to you when we get it fixed."

"Really? You would do that?"

"For you? Anything."

May stared at Jam and Johnny with murderous intent for a brief moment, then turned around to see a young blond girl with a blue beret running up to them. "Excuse me, who is in charge of this vessel?"

"Johnny." May pointed up to the man who appeared to be feeling up Jam at the moment, "Hey Johnny!" She shouted to him, "Some girl wants to talk to you!"

"Oh, another one?" Johnny looked up with interest. "She wants to audition for the crew too?"

"What?" Noel gasped, though he does look kind of handsome…I wonder what his favorite…no! Focus, Noel! Focus! "I'm Lieutenant Noel Vermillion."

"Lieutenant?" Johnny asked as he came down the inflatable slide, "You part of Zepp's military?"

"Zepp? What's that?"

"Zepp, the flying continent?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. This is Kagutsuchi, and I represent the military of the Librarium."

"Really?" Johnny walked towards the Noel, "I gotta say, you're way prettier than any librarian I've met before."

"Um…thanks, I guess." Noel was unsure about what to do in this situation. Stay calm…stay calm…

"Tell me, what made a pretty little girl like you join a library?"

"Well, um…I…" Noel was at a loss for words, as the man continued walking towards her, carrying nothing but what appeared to be a wooden stick in one hand, "I…was admitted into the Academy in…"

"Look, I'm sure it's a fascinating story." Johnny walked right behind her and slowly put his arms on her shoulders, "You help us out here, I'll listen to everything you have to say." His hands slowly wandered down her body, "Maybe we can help each other out."

Noel's face turned bright red with embarrassment, while May turned to one of her fellow pirates and muttered, "Get my anchor."

"But—"

"Now."

The pirate was about to climb her way back onto the ship when something exploded and a plume of fire shot out the starboard side of the ship. At the same time, Noel screamed and whipped Johnny across the face with one of her pistols. "GET BACK YOU PERVERT!" She screamed as she summoned Bolverk into each of her hands. "Johnny, you're under arrest for damaging state property, reckless endangerment, assaulting an officer of the NOL, and…and…"

Johnny rubbed his face with one hand while gripping his stick with the other, "…and?"

"…aaand SEXUAL HARASSMENT!" She fired both pistols at Johnny, but Johnny had seen the trajectory of the bullets and parried them both away from his position in one strike with his sword hidden in the large wooden stick.

"Ohohoho, you're a feisty one." Johnny smiled as he removed a gold coin from his pocket, "It's a shame it had to come to this." He flipped it up in the air, towards Noel. Noel reflexively shot at the coin, and Johnny used the distraction to rush in and kick her in the face. Noel raised one pistol up from the ground at fired it at Johnny, making him step back briefly as Noel quickly stood up.

As the fight raged on between Noel and Johnny, Jam stared at the aftermath of the explosion that had burned a hole in the side of the ship. Thinking back to her time in the kitchen, she realized she had forgotten to turn off the gas on the stove.

"My kitchen…not again…" Jam started sobbing, and she could hear the voice of her grandmother mocking her in the back of her mind yet again.