"Hello?"-Someone speaking/'Hello?' OR {hello?}-Norfolk's thoughts/"Hello?"-Radio comms?/Hello?-?

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."-Einstein

Day 21-24

Norfolk's next hours were filled with less details and events to tell, compared to the first few hours. There were sponatenous bursts of training flights for her bombers, but the picture Norfolk told had begun to paint a picture that became less and less consistent, one that she seemed to be unaware of. Something that only reinforced the idea that she wasn't honest, or that she was entirely something else. but why she passed out, only to wake up in the midst of a contested ocean and then continue on about had left them puzzled.

It was the danger of being unconscious, alone with no buddy to alert you to any enemies on the horizon. Norfolk apparently had been out for a hour of so since, according to her account. she didn't record the sun's position having changed, Then she had apparently spotted and then shadowed a patrolling fleet, only to be forced to run at flank speed once they had turned into her direction spoke of recklessness and failure to take into account that she very much carried a carrier's complenent of her own, Why did she decide to flee when she could have picked them off with a couple of well-planned strike packages? That was just plain idiocy and irrational!

Though, to Norfolk's defense. If she was really truly the actual ship herself, none of the ships before her had been a carrier, and even her today namesake was a light ASW frigate. not a battleship of some kind, She didn't have prior experience. but she handled herself reasonably, Not well. even if hindsight didn't take into account that the idea of being a carrier rather than closing in to fight with cannons was alien to her, but she remained focused. and had pieced together that trying to fight a alerted patrol group, with the threat of submarines still fresh on her mind might end badly for her. She wasn't risking unnecessary actions, either. preferring to instead stay undetected and silent like some kind of stealth frigate trying to practice ECCM silence, to maximize her chances of losing her would-be attackers.

However, the mention of her Prowlers being improvised as anti-submarine aircraft had made the entire room chill in temperature. Norfolk had confirmed that she believed to have spotted what she thought to be enemy submarines at the time, But as it turned out. They had been friendly, And just as it happened, Norfolk had nearly ordered a attack on them with anti-submarine torpedoes mounted on improvised pylons. along with the necessary fire control for them. If she had actually gone through with it, It was very much possible that the submarines could have been very well killed by light torpedoes designed to engage far more modern contemporaries.

Meaning she had declared them to be possibly Siren submarines.

Or meaning Norfolk in her paranoia made an irrational decision and nearly launched a blue-on-blue attack.

Even weeks later after the fact, She was apparently still reeling from the psychological consequences of her actions, But she understood the dangers of being discovered. she was still quiet and composed. No one seemed to doubt that she understood the consequences of what she had nearly done, but she didn't appear to be bringing it up. She had even mentioned the possibility of turning herself in, if it would end the questioning. But it was still a blunder that could have ended the whole thing for her. Instead, it was overlooked, And the whole thing had taken another turn. It was now a story of an inexperienced kanmusu with hesitation tendencies turning into some kind of bismarck-esque tale about sailing alone, attacking another enemy fleet, reckless and bizarre decisions, attempting to evade detection and eventually being rescued.

Courbet held Alice in her arms, and pressed her head close. "Oh, Alice. my poor little battleship." The kiss on her forehead helped, Alice continued to sniff. Strasbourg and Dunkerque didn't invite her at all! Because she was still in construction and not fully fledged yet. It had to be, It hurt too much! Always getting to do all that grown-up stuff and there was NO WAY she could do these! And they hung out on the rooftops and she couldn't jump and why hadn't they invited her? They'd invited Richelieu, and she was a senile woman reciting that book too much! They weren't as strong as her, and neither was Richelieu! Hey! Richelieu was a pastor! They invited her!

What was the point, if it meant being excluded from everything? She had been so excited when she'd first been told. She had been so proud, when she'd been invited to the joining ceremony! She had been so proud when she'd been accepted, and so excited when she'd been assigned to Dunkerque and Strasbourg!

"Alice... Sometimes, you need to stand up for yourself."

"Big sis?" Alice snorted, but a gob still managed to run down her nose. Courbet dutifully wiped it away with a hankerchief.

"You're a very quiet little girl, such a quiet good girl! I didn't think they meant to forget you, It's just, that. Well, sometimes, if someone is too quiet and shy, they just aren't noticed as much, According to your teacher, you just sort of sit in the back. and you hardly say anything."

"But that's no reason at all to just forget about me!"

"Well, Alice. Yes, Yes. it sort of is. If you don't see something, or hear something or know something. How do you know it's there?"

"But I'm there! I'm there all day!" Alice pouted unhappily, her eye brows narrowed.

"Yes. Yes you are! But sometimes, well, sometimes a girl has to kick up a fuss once in a while. Say something, Speak up, or eles... they sort of end up being forgotten in the background, That's all I'm saying. You're a good girl, kind and sweet.. But you could be just a little bit louder sometimes. Kick up your legs! Flash your hand a little, Just a little." The old woman straightened her hair out, it always felt good when Courbet did that. It reminded her of being tickled on her back.

"Hmph!"

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. I wish you could've been a little more social, I mean, you should be gregarious, and sociable and fun, at least. I think you're a very nice girl, but you need to be more outgoing, more sociable. But when you do. It's always something so wonderful and touching. You always seem to be able to say something that moves the other person, And you bring out the best in everyone. You're like a ray of sunshine. But, Alice, you have to learn to be assertive. If you don't have the confidence to stand up for yourself when you're excluded, then no one will ever want to include you." Courbet sighed. "Sometimes, you need to be willing to sacrifice some things for others."

Courbet ran a hand down her back, stroking her hair as she stared at the flowers and the bees. The woman paused for a moment, thinking of this little girl who was just like her. "You know." she said to Alice, "Sometimes, when a person is being excluded, it - sort of - makes them realize what they, themselves, stand for, what they want, and what they want to protect. All this quiet, lonely, little girl stuff, It's - sort of - nice to know it's all still there, even if we can't see it yet.

Looking up at the clouds, Alice watched the clouds move and the sun dim, and found herself wondering if the weather was going to change. Would it rain? Would the sun come out?

"Courbet, I think it's time for you to go." Another woman gently nudged her friend. Courbet nodded and stood up. She stretched and stood up toward her friend, pausing only to pull back her hands from Alice's hair and say, "You know, Alice, you're a very nice girl, and I'm glad you're learning so fast, and all, but sometimes, it's important to be assertive and social, even if it's not always comfortable or easy."

"Haah. Haahh~...Huff..." I moaned in a heavy breath as I ran among with Maury, I nearly lost my footing only to catch myself and continue sprinting in a slow. tired, bouncy motion as my body very much wanted to slow down. While Maury and we had been swimming together as agreed, being her exercise partner was much, much more tiring than i thought. The girl had proved a strong motivator for me, making the whole experience more engaging and fun for me. but when running a marathon? That was the part I didn't like most, While I did have zoomie moments, these tended to be short and brief. and in the moments I did have to speed up into a run for half a hour were the ones that left me sweating my eye balls out.

There was also the problem of my head injury which was causing me a whole bunch of issues, I can deal with trying to dive deeper only to float up. but seeing bright lights and having my head feel like its spinning? That was enough to make it more like a vomit comet in terms of what it did for me and make me curl up into a little ball anddn sigh.

Still, I persisted, and a few days in. I was already making good progress, Maury had even took a interest in my current status. and we shared laughs and a few poor jokes over the bottles of water and sweet cola, The time I could meet her was when I wasn't busy being prodded or just wandering around on-base. and given I don't have much to do in that schedule, fitting her in wasn't really much of a trouble. Of course, I began to take interest in learning new languages, specifically German and Dutch. and I had already began to practice a few words, sentences and such on a app that I had got on.

Remember the feeling weeks ago that it felt like there was a whole library of languages in my mind? Well, I did more research into the matter. Apparently all shipgirls technically were hyper-polygots, from French to Belgian to Russian to Arabic. They had to be in order to explain away their quotes and ability to listen somewhat to foreign-speaking news channels. but listening to them speak... It was like listening to a alien trying to be a human and failing at it, All the shipgirls had these same accents, which was at times funny and even endearingly cute, which kept me from rolling my eyes too hard. But... it was a little unsettling.

A hour later in led to me finding out about the CEFR system, and from a guess. pretty much everyone was A1 to A2 level in terms of speaking because of that heavy accent and the need to listen slowly, but if they did have the time to read. then they were on a B1 level of so.

Hearing Kent speak in Spanish followed by both of us experiencing a slight headache while she was trying to teach me some spanish words was not pleasant, I could've dealt with that, but add in the accent. the lack of pauses and the inability to understand everything she was trying to say followed by me speaking a broken spanish sentence and a couple of words was awful. i can tell you for sure.

"Waitt... Hol-... Mauryyy! You're way tooo fast for me~!"

"Oh, sorry! PT wasn't your high mark. right?" I half fell. half ran down the road, I found myself making something of a X pose while Maury became smaller in the distance. my normally clean sport clothes was ragged from all the physical exercise i had been doing earlier, cooled by subtle climate control skills. I coughed up in exaggeration, briefly staining the scalding, asphalt.

This base was just stupidly hot, Unbelievably hot at its worst. It was over 30C this day. The exercise should have been only a hour long as suggested by Maury, things had clearly changed - or either we had taken a wrong turn somewhere. the foot-burning, shining, blinding part where I was losing my footing wasn't even suggested at all. Even now, the militarized 'town' lit - not with electricity, but with the outlines of all the people there which i perceived as sparks of light in my sixth-sense vision. shining through the wetness and soreness that covered my very senses even at this distance. Add destabilization of the climate by carbon a long time ago, and it was unlikely that the weather would decide to take a break for once.

'W..What's the weather again..?' In these days i had devised some means of reading the weather with magic, basing it off from a game i very much remembered, it wasn't a true replacement for scientific instruments and sensors collecting enviromental data. It wasn't like i had slacked off on reading more irate pseudo-science and fictional magic system books since i was so busy, but without the same pressure to become better. I was taking it slow and steady rather than training myself to death or either accidentally having someone walk in. besides, this skill was good enough for most situations as a means of comfort. Allowing the skill to drain a tiny portion of that pool of energy, The data was compiled. read and gathered as the information flowed to my mind, in my vision. in white english symbols. it read:

Temperature:29-31C Relative Humidity:71%
Pressure:99-104 KPa Wind speed:2-5 mph Feels like:30-32C

'Oh that's just great, Fucking hell...' The only thing i could think of to ask Maury about was what the weather was, which she didn't know, but she didn't seem frustrated at all about it. she paused for a second, and then continued walking. "It's just so hot today, no more. I'm going to get some ice-cream, wanna come?"

"Yeahh!" I spat the word. The heat for me was less than I noticed, but it was still uncomfortable, While the land might be dry. and a good deal of trees removed, the ground deep below still bore significant amounts of water. the evergrowing weariness that both I and Maury felt still plagued us.

"I don't know how i see people, I've lost friends over saying the commander isn't special. so to speak, and they seemed to take offense. If anything, they seemed like that the commander is infallible!" I caught up with her quickly, stepping over a discarded can that someone had forget to put in its respective bin, and began walking alongside her. "But they also drifted away in just days, Shipgirl this. Gossip that, One big exclusive club. and s-some are more equal than others, I don't even know what the others get up to because I've never been i...invited."

"That's so hard to believe!" Maury and we diverted around a speed limit sign, weathered by the hot sun and we rejoined behind the pole. "Even Foxhound would exclude anyone just for being themselves..." She drifted off, remembering her experience of the few glimpses on how Norfolk behaved like and her un-shipgirl-like characteristics. "Well, maybe that's not entirely true. I guess. were you being weird? or more than usual?"

"N-No." I half truthfully, half-liar gritted through my teeth.

"No, I mean yes. They could invite me, But I don't wanna go! I don't know if they would want me - Cruiser who came out wrong? I'd be frankenstein. Nobody wants that." I looked everywhere but at Maury, licking a handful of ice cream off my cone. "Everytime I tried to give them hints, I would never find them at the same day. and as soon as I meet new girls, t-they would just not be there on the next day. Same stuff all ovre again."

"Norfolk..." Maury looked like she wanted to wrap her arm around my shoulder, but it was still too hot. and the glare i sent her when she tried doing that and that I did not seem to want to even look her in the eye dissuaded her. "I know it's not easy for you, but try and have fun. even working together can be fun - a lot of fun, which i think is why you could be great, but... I assure the British always had a way with their humor and satire and..."

"Yeah, Yeah. I know. I get it." I straightened my back and looked at the nearby shop. "It's still a bit early for the tourists to be around, but I guess it's not too early for animals." I wanted to make her laugh too, but I wasn't entirely sure about whether or not she would take the joke for what it was. Especially because I had no idea what would make her laugh, or even what would make her crack a smile. I just hoped it would be something funny. "I'm up for some fish and chips."

"Oh... sure?"

A awkward silence followed, as we ran out of topics to discuss, before my mind settled on a new idea. What about the sirens?

"Hey, what do you think we will find when we take the offensive to the Sirens?" I asked her, hoping that maybe my question would inspire her to start talking again. It seemed like the only thing we had in common, aside from being shipgirls, was a common enemy in question. I hoped that would be enough for her to speak about them.

"I don't know, maybe we could change the tide of the war by that point." Maury vaguely replied. biting into the top of the ice cream cone, In truth. given how lethal modern warfare had became, The sirens couldn't have lasted this long by staying stuck in WW2 tactics and doctrines, I pictured them in my mind, secretly posing as humans. gathering knowledge from public libraries, studying and learning about the Cold war and how armies became ever more dispersed and pulled away in two directions;tactical superiority and mobility, and ultimately the reason they abandoned heavy equipment like the 203mm field guns for NATO, or massive echleon assault momentum for the Warsaw pact countries like giant flocks of multiple tank corps targeting logistics and the C3I chain. and wargaming in secret underground rings and hideouts before causing a unjustified surprise war in a failed knockout blow. How they had the Middle east insurgencies to watch a modern army fare against a unconventional enemy on a cold-war level of technology, to debate and speculate on, But that left the question, how had they not been bombarded into dust...!?

I realized something, Fixed fortifications might be obsolete to the average observer. but even they lived on in the modern age! Why else did the polygonal forts evolve into the Siegfried and Maginot lines, the Czechslovakian mountain forts, The national redoubts of the Swiss. the dispersed airfields of Sweden, The soviet HAS aircraft shelters or the modern Chinese underground airbases and Iranian 10000 PSI concrete that was previously not available during the initial stages of the War on terror? And that didn't even consider the possibility of underground production facilities and cities, Underground. which would surely mean camouflage, combined with bad weather as a form of Matrioshka deception...

"Maury, have you ever heard about the Maginot line and the Atlantikwall?"

"A bit, why?"

I turned my warm, solidly dry face to the union girl. Of course, she didn't have any need for this information. but now that she had to, I began to slowly explain it to her, making sure to avoid any overly technical phrases she might not understand at all, but instead simplified it without being overly reductionist. The Maginot line failed not because it was a waste, but because noone was expecting the tanks to not be bogged down by the trees in the Ardennes sector. that illustrated a keypoint of fortresses, and that was to bog down and delay the attacker. Even the unarmed and useless forts at Metz was a classic example, But it also meant they had to be placed such that the ground had to be absolutely taken quickly or not at all, and that brought siege logistics into question. And the British Rock in Gibralter was supposed to do just that.

And I could hear the roar of a UN transport flying off from the nearby militarized airfield, obscured by the sheer distance as it quickly became a dot in th esky, Perhaps it was carrying important staff and VIP personnal. I wished with all my heart that it would go away.

Given the ground defenses, artillery, air defenses and air support that had to be overcome by each attacker at maximum effectiveness. completed by massive concealment and deception with multiple redundant C3I centers deep underground in a massive defense in depth, Something the Austrian area defense concept managed to succeed in against the Warsaw pact. Of course, The enemy was working with WW2 systems, Systems that had to fire over a thousand shells just to have a reasonable pk of shooting down a guided bomb.. so surely it had to be..

"M-Maury, imagine that their homelands are a vast, continent-spanning stronghold that seeks to be utterly unassailable to everything. Imagine Okinawa, Iwo jima and the Maginot line combined. but ten times the numbers of weapons and defenses, with the ground criss-crossed by trenches. traps, barriers and camouflaged artillery and thousands of aircraft ready to sortie on a moment's notice, D-Do you get the picture?"

Maury didn't answer me, instead she just looked at me quietly before finally speaking up. "It's... it's very similar to Okinawa, yes. I can see that. But as for the Maginot line, I don't think I would be able to make that analogy. But the way you're talking about them sounds like magic... They can't have built all of that in a year. right?"

"Yes, But they had the time to prepare. and modern industry and automation would let them do that." My ice cream was down to the ring now as i began to chew away. flakes decorating my mouth. Shipgirl or not, it still tasted ice creamy and sweetly and filled with goodness to my human mindset. "Truth b-be told, we still aren't even sure what they're capable of. and what more we may know is surely confidential for security reasons. But, have you heard that a P-51 apparently costs hundreds of times less than a modern jet?"

The union girl forced another mouthful of the ice cream cone down. Maybe it was just her, but she had remembered how today's ice cream tasted differently to what they would have served back then even with sugar rationing. And it didn't help that Norfolk was talking about topics that made her memory spin, seeing as she hadn't studied this kind of topic to the same level. Still, she still tried to picture a fifty Mustangs against a Jet, being shot down from out of sight with missiles. robotic arms and machinery assembling enemy fighters and bombers, pre-assembled modular wing by wing, weld by weld like a avalanche of production.

"I-It's hard, I didn't study much or even did that stuff in school when i... was built." She trailed off, before continuing. "H-How do you know this and that so much?"

"Euh... I, I delved i-into it back in my training, i-it was just a hobby of mine!"

"Okayyy..."

"Maury, If they were that vulnerable to bombing, Then they would have been defeated years ago." I exclaimed. absentminded to my surroundings.

"What? I know they're this resilient, but surely they can't be that invincible to really precise bombs and wonder weapons we didn't have back then? Norfolk, If that's true. Then please, tell me!" Maury had stopped to turn her head toward me, again fascinated by this new piece of information and wanting me to go on. With a sigh, I went on.

"Y-You have to remember that construction tech and all the stuff for it was primitive back then. We didn't have anything like computer CAD or massive hydraulic jacks and mobile tools."

"So they can build much faster than... we... did."

"No, but. Maury, Here's the trick I-I think the Sirens have exploited, They were prepared to go u-underground from the very start and camouflage everything while feeding allied forces false information and taking advantage of everything that developed in these decades, kinda like the Yugoslav wars. And i-if they were discovered, then they simply set up a defense screen so dense that i think they could shoot down a fly if they wanted to. Not to mention, Open source intelligence goes both ways. We know their rough location and we even have photos of them beyond what's classified behind closed doors, but at the same time they've learned from our previous wars and had time to grow and develop countermeasures."

Maury lifted her face, understanding where my line of reasoning was going to. "Norfie, Are you saying that they're using modern tech like us. even though they should be stuck in the Second world war period?"

"Think of the fish out of time waking up from cryostasis, M-Maury. You would only use what y-you knew and wasn't cutting edge at the time nor impractically expensive, even guns back then needed a sort of artisan craft to just be reliable, You needed ten people feeding and housing the construction worker. But, I-If you could cut the middleman out. automate them with robots that don't ask to sleep and will work even with their lives on stake, not to mention all the advances we're had back then and just how easy any library or the internet can be accessed today - then you could basically have all the world to learn a hundred years of where previous people have tried, and failed. and you could learn from them... And with automated robots and modular building, even grand fortifications can be cheap on the massed scale if you put enough effort into turning a whole continent into a huge fort."

This was a understatement, As I gulped down my ice cream cone. both of us speculating how the enemy must have survived all the way here today, Something akin to fear gripped at my stomach. They didn't have time travel, But they had survived through a bombardment that made the air campaign of North Korea look like popsicles compared to actual bomb hit statistics. They had persisted and lasted through all that firepower before the retaliation phase entered into a static, low intensity phase. Especially hallowing was the implication that they could sustain their force when that same force counted as 'military soldiers' on a extremely limited population.

If that much was true, I just shuddered subtly in fear, For the second time since i came here, my existential crisis came to the surface at what they could do if they had access to the sort of systems used by the Cold war nations given that even the Coalition was merely containing them and not defeating them Iraq-style, or if they were allowed to grow and expand. like ship-shaped Vou neumann swarms.