The voice called out again in Japanese, echoing through the dank walls of the submarine pen, a light flicked on, illuminating the previously dark and calm waters of the entrance way.
The woman stirred more seriously now, worry taking her usually soft face. She turned inward to her crew, "The Japs are coming, what do we do?" she whispered frantically.
Her faries for their part, were valiantly if vainly attempting to organize and find some sort of battle readiness, opening boxes at random from her stores to find ammunition or weapons, trying to build up steam in the boiler rooms and in the marines case, building sandbag walls upon the deck. Their borderline panicked helter-skelter did little to try and calm the girl's nerves as she desperately thought of a solution.
Her bridge crew offered a squeak solution as ripples began to appear near the entranceway.
"No! We can take the Japanese Navy in a fight" she explained, not bothering to hide her growing worry, "there's probably dozens of them out there! They may even have some of those big ships we kept hearing about like Nagato!" She gestured towards the entrance fruitlessly, "they're coming in and I'm not big and scary enough to-"
The girl stopped, looking at the wake, growing in size as whatever ship there crept through the rubble. The girl turned towards her crew, deep in thought, "what is the scariest ship we have?"
The faeries thought for a second before one offered a suggestion.
"Okay. I have an idea," the girl announced, putting a confident expression on and turning towards the entrance way,
"This is the gos-" she started quietly, her own voice slightly shaky from nerves. "Okay," she muttered to herself. "Deep breaths. You can do this, you just have to bluff them."
-xXx-
Picking her way through the path, Fubuki struggled to maintain a balance between alertness over enemy targets and watching out for rubble twisting its way near the surface. As such, going was slow as she nervously readied her torpedoes and 12.7 cm cannons to deal with any threats that her small hand lamp revealed.
She dodged a particularly gnarled hunk of rebar when a voice seemed to echo from deep within the cavern, bouncing off the slimy and dark concrete walls.
"S-stop!" It began with uncertainty in heavily accented Japanese, Prompting the destroyer to slow herself to an eventual stop.
"um-hello?" Fubuki called uneasily into the dark and rubble strewn tunnel, raising her weapons slightly. "Who's there?"
-xXx-
"I said stop!" The girl cried louder, dropping her Japanese for an, in other circumstances, comically phony southern drawl. She held her cap in her hands, nervously kneading it while giving anxious looks towards the entrance, her batteries trained firmly on the now stationary light source.
"This is-!" She began loudly towards the entrance way "the-" she repeated, whatever confidence her louder speech carried with it faltering with her lack of preparation.
"What's the scariest ship we have?" She quietly and frantically asked her bridge crew, not removing her eyes from the light trickling through the rubble. "Those ones with the 16s that have been coming out so much as of late?"
A chorus of unhelpful squeaks began echoing throughout her bridge. Before with finality, an ensign called out a confident answer.
"I um- I thought it was South Dakota?" She whispered with tense confusion, still toying nervously with the sailor cap that bore her name so proudly
The squeak answered confidently, the fairy crossing its arms with certainty and pride.
"Hello?" The voice called out again, this time joining in in accented English that bounced off the walls. "Are you American?" the voice asked, the light
"I SAID THIS IS THE GOSH-" the girl cried out loudly in her fake drawl, "THIS IS THE GOD DAMNED USS NORTH DAKOTA" she began as confidence grew. "I'VE GOT-". She quickly turned towards her bridge crew, "how many 16s?" She quickly whispered, desperately attempting to continue the charade.
A different excited squeak called out a number.
"FIFTY-" she called out before stumbling over the absurdity of the number, quickly offering an amended answer and an angry glare at her bridge crew, "TWELVE! I HAVE SIXTEEN INCH GUNS, TRAINED ON THIS HERE ENTRANCE COVE. I WILL BLOW ANY JAP THAT MAKES THEIR WAY THROUGH HERE STRAIGHT TO-"
"STRAIGHT TO THE GREAT EMPEROR IN THE SKY!" she finished with growing confidence, still watching the light as it turned around.
-xXx-
"What the bloody hell?" Ardent asked, rubbing her capped head in confusion as she coasted towards her Japanese counterpart emerging from the darkness of the submarine pen. "Bucky, whose Cheerios did you piss in this morning?" the British ship demanded with confusion.
"I never-" Fubuki began, blushing at the accusation.
"S'an expression." Ardent explained aside, "I'm just wondering what the hell you did to get that Yankee yelling at you so much."
"I didnt-" Fubuki began.
"She's just an American, they're all yelling and angry all the time anyways." Akebono angrily dismissed. "It's not like we need more, just leave her in there."
"My agreements aside, we'd probably be in a whole bucketload of shit if we left an allied ship in a cave out in the middle of nowhere." lectured the English ship.
Akebono crossed her arms to add to her disappointed expression but said nothing to disagree.
"Right." Ardent announced, turning towards the cave entranceway. "This is HMS Ardent to USS- uh" she hesitated briefly trying to recall, "USS whoever the hell you are. We're here to bring you home, you can see all you friends and uh-" Ardent scratched her head, mulling over her inability to talk decently to anyone and giving pleading looks for assistance to the other destroyers standing outside before, assistance not forthcoming, finally returning to her previous conversation. "Look just come on out." she pleaded to the darkness of the cavern.
The voice was quiet briefly, most likely considering the implications of a British vessel talking to her. Ardent allowed herself a small feeling of victory.
"Can't fool me you Japs!" The voice called out, the drawl taking on a bit more of a southern belle tone, though slightly and mercifully quieter than before.
The feeling was dashed.
"No, really!" Zubian called from the back, we're all friends now! "The Japs and Jerries and everybody!"
"Y'all have been trying to kill me since I got here. Just stop talking now, y'all are trying to do that Pearl Harbor trickery again. I recall hearing about those peace talks."
"This is going splendidly." Ardent muttered into her palm, adding an eye roll to ensure just about everyone understood how little she wanted to do this right now. "Right, time to fall back to favorite plan."
"But Glowworm and Campeltown are in the Mediterranean." Zubian explained with confusion.
"No. Not that plan," Ardent explained holding up her Union Jack decorated cellphone, "The other one, second favorite."
Zubian thought for a second before her expression lit up "call the Yanks and break for lunch!" she exclaimed excitedly.
"Yes." Ardent affirmed as she plugged in numbers.
"Dutches of the Waves calling port Mosby." the British girl answered upon hearing an answer on the other end.
"Ardent?" called the American voice on the other end, confusion in their voice, though quite welcoming in it's tone, "I thought you were out on patrol?"
"We are, long story, we found one of your gals stuck in a cave."
"Which one?" The American asked, excitement growing. "Is it another one of my sisters." Ardent swore she heard and adorably excited squeal.
An excited American voice began loudly asking about names in the background, joined in by another slightly less loud but still excited tone. Grabbing noises and muffled shouting accompanied the false revelation as Franks fought her sisters off of her phone.
"Mate, there's already like sixty of you, how many more can you get?"
"There's fifty five, which leaves 120 more." she answered proudly, "unless we get one that wasn't finished."
"Holy shit really?" Ardent asked with genuinely impressed surprise.
"Is it not one of my sisters?" Franks asked, the adorable excitement waning from her voice.
"Sorry, no, she says her name is-" Ardent began explaining, feeling surprisng amounts of guilt over her friend's self-administered false hope before realizing she herself had forgotten the Battleship's name. Turning again towards the cave entrance she called out, "What did you say your name was?"
"I-um. I said North-God-Damned-Dakota." the voice loudly responded in what now sounded like a vaguely hillfolkish accent.
"Did you get that?" Ardent asked into phone, heedless of the angry American hiding away in their cave.
"North Dakota?" Franks asked with no small amount of confusion.
"It's what she said."
"I don't know North Dakota. I don't think she was even in the war." "Well, just wait there," Ardent' American friend continued as a small measure of her previous excitement returned "we'll get it sorted once Atlanta finished bailing Iowa out of jail, in the meantime don't hurt her or get hurt."
"Wait- what?" Ardent called into the now dead line.