Flashback
After Jintsu grasped an idea how to use pistol, she sent poor Akashi to the dreamland by knocking her with the magazine butt. After doing so, she grabbed spare magazines with various ammo-type loaded, which Akashi enthusiastically explained while Jintsu just let them passed her ears; She slid all of them into her skirt-pocket. She closed the door before rushing out to expected destination of the two destroyers which she assumed it should be.
When she was at the scene finally; she was shocked that a human student saw all the destroyers' act, if the words about this event slipped through the higher-up, their life were sure to end in a miserable way. However, the action was done; sooner or later the higher-up would know eventually.
In the end, she decided to put her life on the line to extend their life. It was shame enough to use others's life to extend her own; it was against her core as a samurai, and her 2 sisters already passed on so it might not be bad if her life could save those four by shouldered all the sins.
She approached a student: placed iron sight on her, pulled the hammer ready to trig, and poked her target head.
End of Flashback
"What are you doing, ship girl-san? This isn't funny" Yamato tried to figure out what another ship girl's deal, from her orange sailor uniform she might related to Sendai, but Yamato's voice might be too loud as it attracted destroyers' attention.
"Jintsu-san! Kotono-san!" Shigure was at lost of words.
'So, this is the rumor genius Kotono Yamato who Sendai-nee had mentioned before' Jintsu noted.
'So, her name is Jintsu' Yamato remarked.
The previous 1-1 conversation mutated to be group-conversation now. Shigure and Hibiki regrouped behind Jintsu: so curious about the strange object pointed toward Yamato, not knowing what was going on exactly, but at least Jintsu was a trustworthy comrade than the marine time student.
"Shigure-san….Hibiki-san…..Do you know what you've done?" Jintsu started.
"We're well aware of what we're doing, Jintsu-san." Hibiki replied with stoic face but determined eyes, Shigure nodded.
"May I interrupt?" Yamato, who didn't scared from the threatening pistol, handed up.
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Jintsu eyed her carefully for any trick, she allowed her to continue as she sensed no hostility from her.
"What are you trying to pull off, Kotono-san?"
"From my guess; you all seems to broke some Taboo for whatever reasons I don't know, but do you expect to get away easily? You're still wounded, you won't escape too far in your current state!"
"If my younger sister has to be scraped to repair me, then I'm just a sore-loser older sister. I'm better dead with her" Shigure mumbled.
"If she dies,… I DIE TOO." Hibiki murmured.
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The atmosphere got heavier and heavier, neither party: ship girls or the only student spoke up a word.
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"Hey YOU! Drop your gun now, hands up!"
Two armed security-navy pointed their standard assault-rifle to her, they called out to Jintsu who currently pointed firearm at Yamato. They slowly approached the girls while one of them was reporting on a radio.
"Chief..Chief…We got a situation here-"
At that moment, Jintsu, who knew they couldn't escape unnoticed, decided to go loud first in a split second; her aim changed too fast to another guard who didn't think their target would show resistance: a little pressed from her right-index-finger cause the pulled hammer to ram the firing pin, hit the primer of centerfire 9 mm. parabellum , exploded the chambered Jacketed hollow point bullet out of the pistol barrel.
Bang!
First time result of shooting human gun in her life came out to be magnificent; the bullet embedded itself into his neck bone, the bullet head expanded and fractured it, nearly breaking his neck into 2 main pieces, causing him instant death on the spot before his lifeless body slumped.
The fist kill got attention of the radio-reporter; he quickly let go of the radio and tried to shoot, but he was too slow. The muzzle flash from Jintsu's SIG P220 was the last view to enter his vision before his soul upraised to Valhalla.
Bang!
He second shot was not fancy placed as the neck shot, but it was still fatal to human as he suddenly got a hole on his right eyebrow, the JHP punctured almost all the way across his brain.
Ding...Ding…
The empty cartridges touched the ground continuously, the gun fight ended very quicky in just a few seconds. Jintsu frightened a bit as she had just killed human target for the first time, Shigure and Hibiki was also frightened and shocked that Jintsu was able to kill human.
The sound of gun fire stimulated Akatsuki and Yuudachi to awake, Shigure and Hibiki happily hugged them with tear. Meanwhile, Jintu was holding her head with both hands including the sky-aimed pistol, what should they do? Now, no escape plan: and in a few minutes, the scene would be filled up with naval force.
When she regained her composure; she looked around if something could ring her any idea to escape from this place and continued on the run. When she looked at absent-minded Yamato, her hope for Idea got response.
"I'm sorry, Kotono-san. You're coming with us. Could you help us escape in exchange for your safety" Jintsu aimed the iron-sight at Yamato in the same fashion as before.
"So, you take me hostage, aren't you?" she sighed 'Oh GOD! What kind of mess did I get myself into?'
"It may seem that way; I don't want to involve you if I have to. But we're out of option RIGHT NOW! I beg you, please help us!" While her posture remained calm, her eyes radiated sadness and hope.
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'What do I do now?
If I refuse and she shoot me, my Mental Model secret is no more. And I have to clean up this mess by myself! Kill them, then what? Well, it isn't like I care. Musashi and I gain enough experience as human: ready to shake off this fake human life. But I want to depart with Gunzou in a smooth way, which I haven't plan it yet.
If I help them escape, where should I hide them? There are 5 of them! Chihaya house? How could I drag them to Hokkaidou without the police arresting us? My fleet base at Iwo Jima? Well, my vessel is still dock at the island, I need another vessel to transport them...W...Wait!
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Jesus!'
"Excuse me for a moment!" Yamato picked up her cell phone from her uniform-pocket, she dialed a certain number to someone. She didn't distant herself away to show that she had no ill intention.
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After a few rings, it got pick up.
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"What's up, Yamato? Usually, you wouldn't contact us via this channel. Something under cover?" A mysterious voices responded.
"Correct! And I need your help. Are you still at same position after the TEST?"
"Yes, I am. You didn't tell me to move, so I'm still there."
Yamato smiled like she just won a lottery "Perfect! Meet me at the coordinate XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, prepare some living space, I got INTERESTING company."
"As you wish, good bye"
"Bye-bye"
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'Either choices are leaded to expose of my secret, better make use the the current situation. I get live specimen ship girls to study, our Mad Scientist will be pleased.'
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Then, she rang to another person.
"Musashi, how are you?~"
"Onee-chan?...I'm fine. How about you?~"
"I'm alright. More importantly, I must hasten our plan on permanently departure from Chihaya family. I'm going on ahead! You will know the right time to act without my notice for sure, wait for the hint"
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"Are you sure?"
"Certaintly!"
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"Alright! I got your message, Take care! See you soon"
"Bye"
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Yamato disconnected her cell phone, she noticed that ship girls' attention was focus on her: curious, worry, and confuse.
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"Last confirmation, do you willing to entrust your life with me? More importantly, can you all move around with that shabby-body of yours?" Yamato's seriousness and determination could be felt strongly.
Shigure, Hibiki, and Jintsu nodded with light in their eyes as the hostage seemed very confident to prevent their scarping sentence; dazed Yuudachi and Akatsuki were forced to nod as well by their sisters.
"Good! From now on, We're running a Criminal Life!" Yamato smirked
Tokyo bay, Japan
A random-stolen-patrol speed boat cruised toward the designated coordinate; Yamato was in charge of sailing (thanks to the mightiest processing core power, she figured out how to operate the machine in a single quick scan), Jintsu stood beside her with arm crossed (though the pistol in her hand was still pointed to a hostage).
Hibiki, Akatsuki, Yuudachi, and Shigure grouped themselves to discuss about the cause of current issue.
"That's so cruel, poi!" Yuudachi couldn't believe what she had heard about their scarping.
"How can they choose to scrap a lady like me? It's unreasonable!" Akatsuki nearly cried from her near dead experience.
"So that's why we're on the run from the base. Our fate is in her hand now." Shigure gave head gesture to Yamato without the mentioned knowing.
During destroyers' catching-up-event conversation, the light cruiser and top 1 student also held their own talking.
"2 gun shots, 2 dead bodies, missing 5 ship girls: 2 of them already were sentenced to scrap, and missing top 1 naval maritime student; the base is surely busy by now, don't you think?" Yamato hinted.
"I didn't ask you back there because of the urgency, but where will you take us to?" Jintsu required the answer.
"You will know when the time's come, Oh! We reach the meeting point already" Yamato shifted to reverse gear, until the boat came to stop she turned off the engine afterward.
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Suddenly, the dark-green-fog-submarine (I-402) emerged from the sea: surprised all the ship girls.
"A Fog Vessel!" Jintsu shouted.
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After the submarine completely floated alongside patrol boat after emerged; it stayed silenced for several minutes, the girls (exclude Yamato) on the patrol boat felt helpless as they couldn't do anything against the fog ship in their current state, they would die for sure this time.
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Then the hatch-entrance-door of the submarine opened, the girl with long silvery light green hair with strange green one piece robe came out; she created the footing from the patrol boat to her vessel out of thin air.
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Ship girls were still confused of what actually happened and what they supposed to do, Yamato encouraged the group to go on board the fog ship.
"Well…What are you waiting for? Get on board, come on!"
"A..Are you CRAZY!? This is A FOG SUBMARINE, POI! !" Yuudachi shakily yelled.
"How come can you communicate with the FOG?! And who is that girl?" Shigure followed.
Akatsuki sisters stared blankly at the scene, jaws dropped dead.
"I'll explain everything once we reach our final destination. You come this way OR go back to die, it's your choice!" Yamato shrugged before she firstly on boarded the submarine.
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The ship girls looked among themselves.
"At this point, it's up to you to decide your own fate….Anyway, I'm going!" Jintsu clearly declared her intention first before she disappeared into the fog vessel.
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"There's no turning back now. Akatsuki-chan, come with me" Hibiki dragged Akatsuki to the submarine's entrance.
"W..wait! Hibiki-chan, what about Ikazuchi-chan and Inazuma-chan? I'm not going without them!" Akatsuki forced herself to stop at the entrance and turned to asked Hibiki.
"…."
Hibiki didn't answer. Instead, she pressured Akatsuki to obey her. Akatsuki tried physically protest, but accidentally snapped the last straw in her sister's mind.
"COULD YOU PLEASE UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION, AKATSUKI!.!.! I know how you feel! But we don't have a choice now! Choose; will you surely die today, or risking your luck to stay alive by all means?!"
Akatsuki started to crumble from the heavy pressured; she suddenly got support by Shigure, who was coincidently affected by Hibiki's speech. The uncertainty in her mind complete moved by it.
"Don't worry, Akatsuki-chan. We can still meet them, but not now I'm afraid." Shigure smiled.
"Are you sure?" Akatsuki tearly asked.
"I'm not sure either…However, I believe that as long as we're alive; everything can happen." Shigure patted the younger destroyer's head.
After succeeded in convincing Akatsuki to go, she turned her head back to the last person on the patrol boat, Yuudachi.
"What are you waiting for? Come on." She sounded just like Yamato a moment ago.
"Do you mean it, Shigure poi?" Yuudachi still scared of the fog ship.
"Do I look like I'm JOKING!? YUUDACHI! You're my sister, I'm not going to let you go back to die, absolutely not." She steeled her gaze.
Yuudachi obeyed immediately, no one simply messed with Shigure when she was serious.
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Yamato waited at the entrance ladder inside, she saw that all the girls were on board.
"Welcome aboard I-400-Class Submarine, keep walking straight that way and you will find your friend there on the bridge."
"T..Thank you…" Shigure couldn't bring herself to fully trust Yamato as she didn't know the connection between her and the Fog. Still, she dragged Yuudachi to follow the direction.
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Yamato existed the hatch, she walked to the 3-barrel-mounted heavy machine gun on the submarine deck. She positioned herself to operate the gun; setting the sight on the patrol boat.
'Time to get rid of the evidence'
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RATA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!TA!
The heavy caliber gun brought the boat to misery; the bullets mercilessly flied toward it, penetrating, crushing, and disassembling it into sunk-tiny lumps of metal scrap, delete its' existence entirely from the water surface.
When she finished the job, she sealed the hatch and regroup at the bridge.
"The Hatch is seal, TIME TO SUBMERGE!" She ordered her subordinate.
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The I-402 vessel began to submerge and propelled itself to the open sea.
"Set most direct route to Iwo Jima, dept 50 m. but change dept to 100 m. once past Oshima island, constant speed 80 knot."
"Roger that" I-402 acknowledged, processing rings and windows poped up around her.
Ship girls watched in alarm from the Kokatsu table which was full of drink and snack. Yamato and I-402 joined them when finished setting everything.
"Make yourselves at home~" Yamato sucked up a big gulp of Ice Mocca.
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The snack were left untouched; finally, Jintsu, as the senior of the ship girls group, started to extract information from her ex-hostage.
"Kotono-san, could you please explain how you contact the Fog ship? And who is that girl next to you?" She sipped some hot green tea after the question.
"Ah! How rude of me; I-402, introduce yourself, please~"
"Nice to meet you. I'm the Mental Model of this Submarine, I-400-Class Submarine: I-402. You can call me I-402." She introduced with monotone voice and bowed.
"What's a Mental Model" Akatsuki handed up.
"It's the embodiment of the Fog Vessel, you can call it the will of the vessel: just like you ship girls I assume. Our very core of existence reside inside this so-call Mental Model" Yamato explained
Yuudachi sighed, she couldn't bring up the seriousness any longer. She opened the Pocky bag: grabbed a few sticks, and chewed. She let the light cruiser did the serious business. Akatsuki felt a little worry of her situation; but it wasn't like she could do anything about it, she tried to loosen up by eating a chocolate bar while Hibiki was resting on her laps. Shigure observed and absorbed every detail.
"So the Fleet of Fog has evolved? Latest information we have didn't mention anything about Mental Model." Jintsu cought on the conversation even she seemed to forget that she just got sidetrack by Yamato.
"Well, consider that since human have you ship girls. We have been encountering harder time to expel humanity from the sea. So we have to do something to counter, don't you agree? We gain more intelligence and flexibility thanks to Mental Model" She smiled proudly.
"Um..well, why does the fog have to exclude humanity from sea route in the first place? It's too suspicious"
"That's the answer we have to find out about our Admiralty Code, right now we sill search for it, that thing implanted us with this God Damn order since our birth" Yamato spoke with unpleasant voice.
All the fog who gained Mental Model always had a moment of wonder what their existence mean: Where are they come from? What are they? Where are they going? The implanted Admiralty Code order about quarantined humanity from access the sea transport was the only thing to hold their sanity intact. They didn't know what their admiralty code is; even having no idea where to look for, they still searched it.
Shigure listened on and on, but then she recalled something;
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'Did Kotono-san group herself the same as her Fog Friend?! She refered to herself as 'our', 'we''
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She realized this and suddenly spoke up.
"P..Pardon? Kotono-san, did you just refer to yourself the same as her?" She pointed to I-402. "And you talk like you're one of them..I mean The FOG?" Shigure's voice shook.
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Yamato froze!
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"Busted…." I-402 monotone voice nailed her superior with the truth.
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Shigure and Jintsu gasped; Jintsu hand slowly reached for the stolen SIG-Sauer handgun. Yuudachi and Akatsuki stopped chewing their snack as they noticed the sudden change in the atmosphere.
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"You got me there, Shigure-san~" Yamato avoided meeting Shigure's eyes, she scratched her right cheek with index finger in embarrassment.
"Care to elaborate, Yamato-san?" Jintsu bravely required further: slowly placed her grabbed-handgun hand on the table, readied to use any moment. Shigure and she reached the same conclusion about Yamato's real identity without each other knowing. When they pieced all the information together: contact with Fog, knew inside-intel of Fog, could give order to Fog vessel, referred to herself as one of Fog, and especially Her Name.
'Don't tell me...don't tell me that she is-' Their panic thought were interrupt.
Yamato stood up from her seat; she took a few meters distance away from the Kokatsu, her uniform glowed before transform into beautiful-elegant-white-princess-style dress: showing part of her breasts, white boots, white-elbow gloves, head white ribbon.
Ship girls, excluded sleeping Hibiki, WATCHED IN AWE! ! ! !
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"Let me introduce myself-" She paused when she met Shigure's panick eyes.
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She smirked grimly.
"I should say…Allow me to RE-INTRODUCE myself."
Yamato greeted them in very proper-polite-feminine way; she lifted her skirt and curtsied.
"First-Yamato-Class Battleship, Yamato, The Supreme Flagship of Eastern Fog Fleet, please to make your acquaintance" She Strongly, Elegantly, and Arrogantly introduced herself.
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"EHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ? ?"
Yuudachi and Akatsuki sceamed at the top of their lungs.
Shigure fainted.
Jintsu was locked with great awestruck, unable to move an inch.
Hibiki shuddered awake.
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I-402 just tilted her neck.