"They're almost in range," San Juan stated tersely, peeking through her binoculars towards the incoming shadows on the horizon. "I'm estimating about 30 miles out, speed still at about 30 knots."
Atlanta didn't respond, instead fidgeted slightly with her anchor chain as she watched the incoming smoke extending over the horizon.
"They seem to be pushing themselves pretty damn hard, maybe they'll get tired and give up?" San Juan suggested with feigned sincerity, looking back in Iowa's direction.
Iowa swayed slightly, he clothes ruffled and undignified, drenched in sweat and panting audibly, the battleship did her best at keeping up appearances by offering a chipper thumbs up and a tired grin to San Juan. Her boilers in full throttle building heat, strain, and pressure up in her in the last hours of running herself past her engineering standards.
Next to her, was USS Franks, who appeared extremely distressed as to the slow pace of the squadron, casting anxious glances to the smokestacks on the horizon, intensely aware of their slow pace but caught between her sympathy for Iowa Franks seemed stuck between advocating for speeding up or slowing down.
Around in close proximity, the other three destroyers appeared to share similar levels of discomfort despite their earlier serious and stalwart attitude towards the aerial attacked. The smaller vessels all seemed acutely aware of their lack of suitability for open water naval gunfights. Even Stewart betrayed herself to Iowa and stole a rare glance towards the pillars of smoke with an uneasy expression.
Iowa sighed audibly, attempting to break up tension "Eh, we'll get there fine, if worse comes to worse I've never had a problem shrugging off a few shells to the belt." Iowa replied, with only slightly more sincerity than San Juan's earlier statement and between quick tired gasps of breath.
None of the other girls seemed convinced, but San Juan gave another encouraging grin, "hopefully it doesn't come to that, the Kongous are pretty fast and pack a heck of a punch from what I hear, we should be fine once they arrive."
"But they didn't even say when they'd get here!" Haggard replied, throwing her arms up crossly and still clearly angry at the lack of communication that the other squadron had expressed.
"Eh, they're just a bit odd, I'm sure they're well on their way."
"They do reportedly have a knack for showing up when needed." Atlanta confirmed dryly.
"If all else fails, Ardent and her girls are coming!" San Juan affirmed. Iowa noted a small smile encroach upon Franks's face, "That's quite a few more torpedos and a hell of a smokescreen we can lay, which should keep us safe until the Kongous arrive."
Haggard seemed sullenly unconvinced, but Iowa could see expressions of improvement on her sisters faces.
The wake beneath Iowa's hull continued to churn as she pushed herself through at full speed. Beneath her hull, she could feel her boiler heating up at the rapid work of her engineering crew slowly getting more and more alarmed at the increasing pace.
A fairy in thick black soot and an adorably oversized wrench introduced itself upon her bridge.
"How bad?" Iowa asked, gritting her teeth and pushing through the strain.
The fairy let out some choice angry squeaks.
"Yeah, so would a 14" gun, we need to keep pushing, we can damage control later."
The squeaks intensified and the adorably tiny figure waved it's wrench about.
"Yes, I'm sure, if we slow down we die, if we don't slow down, I *might* explode, lesser of two evils here." Iowa exclaimed, wiping her brown with a handkerchief, "believe me, I agree, this really sucks."
The fairy's squeaks became grumbles of protest.
"Just try to keep me from exploding or something from breaking"
The fairy let out a reluctant affirmative and continued down to the boiler room.
The brief silence that expanded following Iowa's fight with her engineering crew was interrupted by Hailey as the destoryer took a serious expression and turned herself towards the horizon, staring intently at a cloud bank, "Hey, I've sighted that aircraft again."
"How far out is it?" San Juan asked, returning to near obsessively watching the ships.
"Still hanging out at the distant edge of our sight." Hailey sulked, "too far for five inchers."
"Yeah I see him too, the little bastard." Haggard snarled, shaking her fist as conspicuously as possible at the distant spec, "Just a bit closer and we can fill him with holes!"
"Language!" Atlanta admonished.
"Come on 'lanta, there's a time and a place," San Juan interjected, before her look backwards caught the exhausted form of Iowa, bringing a look of concern to her face, "Hey, Iowa." She asked, "You kind of look like shit, no offense. Do you need us to slow down?"
"I'm fine," the battleship wheezed with attempted stoicism. Pushing through her pain. "Just a bit winded."
"No, no you're plainly near breaking," San Juan stated flatly, "just how pissed off is your engineering staff right now?"
"I'm fine."
"Seriously." San Juan asked, "how far past you operation capabilities are you right now."
"Just a tad." Iowa plainly lied.
"Pushing yourself too hard is going to break something, a still battleship is worse than a slow battleship." San Juan explained.
"I've done worse," Iowa explained
"Aren't you coal powered? Does overdoing you boiler risk explosion or some shit?" Haggard questioned.
Iowa's hestiated slightly, betraying her lack of confidence to the contrary. "A boiler explosion is not going to kill me any more than that gunfire would."
"Jesus Iowa, we're just buying time. Atlanta, we need to slow down or Iowa is going to explode." San Juan cried, jesturing her sister's attention towards the struggling battleship.
Atlanta glanced uneasily at the horizon.
"I'm fine, I know what if could handle." Iowa panted laboriously.
"We're slowing down." Atlanta finally declared, "fifteen knots."
"We need to keep moving!" Iowa demanded angry and exhausted, "that's a hell of a lot of firepower over there," she exhaustedly gestured towards the horizon.
Interrupting her martyrdom, a hand tugged at Iowa's own sweat drenched arm. "Iowa, you promised." Franks pleaded.
"We need to keep moving." Iowa protested weakly before finally succumbing with a defeated grimace. "Okay," she said to Atlanta with a sense of finality and slowing in the water, "setting speed fifteen knots."
Her screws slowed and she felt as if a weight lifted off her lungs, or whatever passed for her lungs as Iowa decelerated slightly, easing into the water at reduced speed.
Franks smiled slightly and Iowa heard a cheer go up amongst her engineering crew. But the glance she stole towards the horizon betrayed the enemy encroaching ever closer.
"Well at least now if Iowa explodes today, it won't be her own damn fault," Haggard exclaimed with a lopsided grin before being admonished by Atlanta.
"I'd still rather go faster." Iowa sullenly declared.
"And I'd rather you didn't explode," Atlanta chided.
"Hey! Look!" Hailey suddenly cried excitedly, pointed outwards in the direction opposite of the smoke. Straining her eyes, Iowa noticed the forms of a quad of destroyers, their leader proudly flying the union jack and waving a joyful full armed wave and barreling ahead towards the Americans, behind her the three girls had a surprising range of expressions from gleeful enthusiasm to utter disdain.
"That Ardent?" Iowa asked through heavy breaths.
"Yup!" Franks answered through returns of the British girl's enthusiastic wave.
"Huh," was Iowa's sole reply.
Steadily the figures gpcrew larger, Ardent's jolly grin barely subsiding in the good half hour before her arrival, the angry destoryer and gleefully enthusiastic destoryer appeared continuously bickering as the column approached with their leader occasionally making an comment unheard to the Americans that inevitably caused one or both of the others anger.
Eventually, coming into good range, Ardent restarted her full armed wave and called out. "Hey Fran!" she yelled at Frank's while speeding happily towards the American formation, "it's good to see you!"
"You too!" Franks greeted before the smile on her face faded slightly, "it'd be nice if there wasn't because of a whole fleet of Abysaal after us."
"Speaking of which, "San Juan," cut in tersely, "as much as I love heartwarming reunions, we should pick up what ground we can and try and move."
"What's cruising speed?" Ardent asked from aside her friend, moving to settle smoothly into formation.
"Fifteen knots."
"We'll pick it up to eighteen if Iowa thinks she can handle it." Atlanta stated questioningly towards Iowa.
"Are you crazy?!" One of the newcomers from the back asked, pushing past Haggard, "that's slow as hell! No way we can outrun the Abyssals like that, they're like 20 kilometers away!"
"Yes, we're aware," San Juan stated with a tint of anger, "it's the fastest pace possible."
Akebono cast an angry glare towards Iowa and the battleship picked up some choice words to the quality of turn of the century battleship construction priorities. The American returned the angry glare as the Japanese ship fell into place next to her terrified looking countryman.
Atlanta, led off the formation and, screws biting into the water, Iowa followed suit, taking her usual place at the center of the formation, surrounded even more thickly now with a healthy layer of destroyers.
Ardent and Franks stood near to her left flank, catching up with smiles but a thin undertone of tense nervousness. Given the current undertone of their situation, Iowa was surprised at even the vague normalacy of it all.
It wasn't until she had gained speed that Iowa stopped paying attention to Ardent and Franks and noticed the form of a ship matching pace with her. A British destoryer clad similarly to Ardent but with her Navy cap worn more casually over her short blonde hair and bearing "HMS ZUBIAN" upon it. "So who's this lot?" the newcomer asked through her accent
"Who? Me?" Replied Iowa indignantly.
The girl approached closer, poking Iowa slightly on the arm and prodding and pulling her sweat stained clothes, "Yeah, we mean you. You some kind of Ruskie? One of those old boats they dragged through the war or sumfin?" she asked lifting and examining the battleahip's right arm.
"No, I'm the USS Iowa." Iowa stated and jerked her hand away. "I'm American"
"We've been on Iowa- not in a weird way," she affirmed, slightly flustered, "they run tours on the ship." The girl explained, "anyway, when we checked the boat out, there was big sixteen inch guns and lots of turrets. But the Ruskie boats were a bunch of shit old ones, back from before even my time."
Iowa found her angry rebuttle killed between her still winded breaths, "Different Iowa." She explained simply.
"Oh right," Zubian seemed pleased by the response, "like how after we were scrapped the Navy built us some replacements in the next war?"
"Uh- sure?" Iowa asked.
"Yeah it's about the same."
The next few minutes of sailing turned into repeated lackidasical questions about who Iowa was and what she did in the war. Iowa's terse replies and the incoming battleship column did little to dissuade to jolly little destroyer from her excited questions.
"So you must not be such a fan of the Spanish if-"
"Oh tosser!" Ardent loudly interrupted from Iowa's flank. Whirling between the destroyer and what her alarmed expression gazed at, Iowa hear the noises of a distant rolling thunder and a glance at the series of flashes beneath the column of smoke confirmed her suspicions.
"damn it" She stated flatly.