The Human-Fleet of Fog unification conflict

by Jerricom

Three of the Fleet of Fog's divisions have gathered at Yokosuka to partake in a human outreach programme, years after the events set in motion by the Iona Mental model. They are volunteers; some are enthusiastic, some have motives, some are sceptical. But those who are more than sceptical will not take this radical plan lightly. A conflict is brewing, a civil war is on the horizon.

2. 1) An unexpected visitor

Author's note.

So, I may or may not have forgotten to mention before, but this story does have a certain crossover element with World of Warships, so be mentally prepared for that. It's nothing major, I mean WoWs doesn't even have a plot, I'm sure you'll spot the carry-over ideas from Warships when they appear.

End of author's note.

The Fleet of Fog-Human unification conflict, chapter 1:

An unexpected visitor.

Shells rain down around Ayanami, exploding with angry pulses of red in the water beneath her with such regularity that it seems as though the sea has turned to blood beneath her keel; the little Fubuki-class destroyer has become so thoroughly soaked you might mistake her for a submarine. Her own artillery replies, spewing gouts of blue energy out through the casquade around her, and she's rewarded by the shimmer of a Klein field in the far distance: three hits, and thus far she herself remains undamaged. I have you now, Belfast... "Shikinami! Makinami! Range: seven thousand! I'll pull a 180 and cut in front of you to distract Bellie, and you two blast her back to Brittain with torpedoes! Got it?!"

Two gleeful acknowledgements rise from the ocean behind her; another Fubuki-class destroyer, the Shikinami, is sailing a few hundred metres behind Ayanami and the Yūgumo-class destroyer Makinami an additional few hundred metres behind her. Ayanami ceases fire and goes into a hard turn to port, her stern kicking up a great spray of water and fume as she swings the little destroyer around; each weapon at her disposal opens fire as the three dark blue halos around her expands and rises into the air, completely cloaking the Ayanami and her immediate surroundings in blasts of energy and projectiles glowing hot blue.

On the Shikinami and Makinami revolver magazines are lifted up from the bowels of the two other destroyers and the tops of their torpedo launchers open up; the launchers are loaded with torpedoes shaped a litle like arrows, being wider at the front and rear. Just as Ayanami passes them by, blazing away with great vengeance and furious anger they launch their payloads; they pass the Ayanami's stern by by mere metres, silently approaching their pray in the far distance. The Belfast with its twelve six-inch let loose one more volleys towards the Ayanami and then pull into a hard turn to port herself, her secondary artillery along the sides turning to fire into the water; the turrets partially disassemble and the barrels fuse together in mid-air, lighting up and projecting beams of bright scarlet energy down into the water, boiling it and detonating some of the torpedoes and the rest of them she dodges.

"Nice move, sneaky bastard," Makinami mumbles to herself, grinning from ear to ear. "Damn her and her vigilance!" Shikinami screams at the top of her lungs as their cunning plan is foiled, impotently waving her fist in Belfast's general direction "Numerical advantage, my ass! She's as destroyer-proof as you can make a cruiser!" Her point is emphasized further by Ayanami crying out in surprise as an entire salvo of shells from Belfast suddenly slams into the poor destroyer's Klein field, shredding it and out of the cloudy sky a barrage of missiles soar down towards the destroyer and the pale blue-haired girl standing on top of the no.1 gun turret; when the brilliant flashes of red have ceased she's sitting dead in the water, having slowly ground to a halt, "That's me out of the game," she shouts to Shikinami and Makinami, shaking her head to get some of the water out of her hair, "I don't think this is working, girls."

"Screw that!" Shikinami shouts back, and lets rip another volley of her own five-inch guns out at Belfast, "We can't let Bellie think she's beaten us! You're just sour that she knocked you out!"

"You're not doing much better are you?!" Ayanami screams, leaning out over the edge of the gun turret she's standing on as if trying to get within arm's reach of her sister ship, "Regular high-explosive torpedoes at this range against a cruiser, are you out of your freaking mind?!"

"You're stupid!" Shikinami shouts back at the top of her lungs, but is swiftly cut off from saying anything more as shells start raining down around her instead, and she turns to Makinami behind her, "Screw this! Let's go get her, sis!" Shikinami pulls a 90 degree turn, followed by Makinami, ploughing through the water as they charge the Belfast. Shikinami lets rip her forward gun turret, more out of spite than anything else as two five-inch shells every few seconds isn't going to do much against Belfast's Klein field. Then Shikinami suddenly turns around to Makinami again, "Swing around! We'll separate and fire our torpedoes in a pincer, she'll be unable to dodge them all! Activate your engine boost so we can cover the greatest possible area before Bellie can react!"

"Good plan, let's go!" Makinami replies, still wearing that face-splitting grin, and the two destroyers spread out; the revolver magazines rise up again and reloads the torpedo tubes as the markings covering the both destroyers grow more intense in their glow; the destroyers accelerate to such high speeds that their bows rise from the water ever so slightly, both outrunning the splashes from Belfast's shells that rain down around them. As soon as their launchers are replenished they let their fish loose in wide spreads, filling the ocean with speeding torpedoes. In that exact moment though a warning indicator comes to life up to Shikinami's right, and she only has time to squeal with shock before a pair of missiles break the waves only a hundred metres from her flank, opening up mid-air to become a veritable swarm of small, rocket-propelled grenades. Shikinami's point-defence systems come to life and mount a very short and desperate defence before she's riddled with explosions from fore to aft, a warning message telling her that under normal circumstances she'd been struck so violently there wouldn't have been enough left of her to make the wreck salvage-worthy.

Her embarrassment and indignation doesn't have to last for very long, however, as she can see in the distance how great plumes of water shoot up around Belfast and she too grinds to a halt. Makinami cheers and hops up and down on the roof of her bridge, making the crew inside it glance up worriedly. "We got her, girls! Scratch one cruiser! Yeah!"

"Chew on that one!" Shikinami joins in, shouting as loud as she can out over the water in vain hope that Belfast will hear; she could just gloat over the comms channel as well, but Belfast can easily block her out of it. Shikinami can just imagine Belfast straightening out her silly uniform with indignation and pretending to not care in front of her captain. In the glory of the moment even Ayanami at the back is cheering, clapping her hands together with glee and throwing punches towards the beaten cruiser in the far distance.

A'right, let's hear how Nagato and Kinugasa are doing... Makinami thinks, and opens up a comm link to the Nagato. "Ma'am, we've beaten Belfast around the head with only very minor and inconsequential losses," she begins, to the outrage of Ayanami and Shikinami and her own great amusement, "How's it going, boss?"

"It is going well; the decision to lure Belfast away and leave Warspite with only destroyer escort appears to have been a correct tactic. Well done neutralizing her as well. I imagine you will not make it back in time to see the closing stages of the fight, over."

"Whatever you say, boss," Makinami responds, and turns to call out to Shikinami and Ayanami, "Seems like we've got this one, girls! In spite of you two dragging me down, we've saved the day!"Various enraged retorts are shouted back at her from her two sisters, but all she does is laugh.

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With the first round of the combat exercises finished, the three divisions gather to review the data. There's an air of cheer over the little fleet; Nagato's division had beaten Warspite's, but only just, and while the latter along with Arizona sit down to discuss tactical improvements Nagato calls over her three destroyers.

"Look, you three..." she begins, sitting on her knees on top of her no.1 gun turret so that if Shikinami, Ayanami and Makinami each stand on top of their respective bridge structures they are on roughly the same level, "You all did well today, really, but... Don't you think you could have achieved the same results without taking those losses?"

"Belfast is a pushover!" Shikinami retorts confidently, "She was just lucky! You've said yourself that naval combat is based in part on luck." At this Ayanami's head snaps up and she glares over at Shikinami, snapping, "Oh, can it! You're just salty that you managed to get torpedoed by a freaking cruiser!"

"Shut up! Says the first one to go down!" Shikinami snaps back, pointing an accusing finger over the water at Ayanami. At this point however Nagato raises her hands and her voice enough to carry it clearly across the several hundred metres separating them, "Girls, please! I'm not accusing any one of you, you three all rushed off together, right?"

This subdues the two arguing destroyers, and only tentatively does Makinami speak up after a moment's silence, "But you told us to take out Belfast, and left that part of the plan's execution to us." The two others nod furiously, and Nagato's expression softens; she even breaks into a little smile, "Yes, but you know that Belfast has the Vigilance-type tactical code augmentation installed, an expected torpedo attack like the first one you tried would never have worked."

"What were we supposed to do then? The fact that we hit her with our second attack at all was a fluke…" Ayanami says with a sour expression, arms crossed over her chest. "Hmpf," comes from Shikinami, "You're stupid."

"Come now, don't be like that," Nagato says, smiling down at the pale blue-haired Ayanami, the red-haired Shikinami and the brown-haired Makinami, "All I'm saying is that had you taken a more stealth-oriented approach to your attack you could've avoided damage. Any advantage you give your enemy will work heavily against you, and letting them know from which direction you'll attack is a great advantage for them. Circle her and attack from every side; it'll confuse her and leave her nowhere to run from you."

Shikinami shrugs and brushes a stray wisp of hair from her face and over her left ear, "That's more said than done," she mumbles, sullenly, and the two others nod in equally down-cast agreement. Nagato shakes her head, replying in a calm tone, "But you did not even try, did you?"

"We know what we're capable of and not," says Shikinami; she's avoiding Nagato's gaze by taking a good long while to elaborately clean her glasses. The purple-haired battleship Mental Model knows that's about as white-faced a lie as they get, but decides to not admonish her for it and instead says that, "There's a difference in knowing what you can and can't do, and knowing how to make the best of it. If you three just sit down and think a little more often I believe you would learn a little more from your experiences."

The three destroyers all look down at their feet, then at one another, and then Ayanami speaks up, still with a slightly sullen air but she sounds honest enough, "Okay, we'll remember it. Sorry we screwed up."

"Nothing to apologize for, you did win after all," Nagato replies with a kind little smile, "Now go and practice your artillery crews so you are ready in case you have an encounter with Hoel and Willy Dee later."

Ayanami waves to her two sisters and power up her engines, pulling into a sharp turn away from Nagato; then something catches her eye, like a bump in the perfectly calm ocean, coming straight towards them. Then there's another one, and another one, and another one… She spins on her heel and screams at the top of her lungs out over both the physical ocean and over the fleet's intercom: "LIVE TORPEDOES! EVERYONE GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND MOVE!"

A deafening clamour rises on the intercoms as confusion breaks out, everyone shouting and asking questions instead of moving like she said; being out of harm's way by sheer luck herself, she can only watch the torpedoes, designed for a stealth approach, light up golden as they come close to Nagato, and increase their speed tenfold for the final distance, and Ayanami's torpedo alert goes off, too little too late. But as they close on the massive battleship an aura of purplish energy starts enveloping the ship, starting from the keel and moving over the ship; Ayanami can only hope the Klein field will go up in time to halt the torpedoes.

Then suddenly one of Nagato's rear six-inch secondary guns turns towards the torpedo coming at Nagato's rearmost quarter, looking like it'll impact before the Klein field is up; the gun partially disassembles from its housing, the different parts being held together by bits of energy like electricity arcing between wires, and it fires. The shell strikes the torpedo dead-on, breaking it in two and sending the warhead to the bottom; then the Klein field with a flash comes to fully envelope Nagato and the torpedoes impact with a series of dull thuds that causes the ocean to tremble. When the giant plumes of water send up by the explosions settle, however, Nagato seems alright.

Then there's a tingling sensation at the back of Ayanami's mind, and she's pulled from the Model Space and into the Mental Space, where almost everyone have gathered, in different states of anger and confusion. It very quickly becomes clear, however, that they have just been subjected to a quite deliberate attack.

By another Fog warship.

"Who would dare attack one of their own?! Is this some kinda' sick joke?!" Fargo growls, and stomps past Arizona and Nagato to tower over Ayanami, "You saw the torpedoes first! No idea who launched 'em?" As a response Kinugasa steps up in between Ayanami and Fargo at this, separating the blue-haired destroyer and the chalk white-haired cruiser, and hisses, "She already told you all she knows, Fargo. Calm down!"

"What are we to do about it then?!" Huntington, Fargo's sister ship, shouts from behind Arizona, "I say we sortie against this asshole right now!"

"I agree with Huntington, shockingly enough," Belfast says in much calmer tones, hands clasped smartly behind her back, "We can't let them prepare for another surprise attack."

"What about our wounded then?" says Zulu, one of Warspite's two Tribal-class destroyers, her hair short-cut and purple-blue, "My sister ship Mohawk was almost done in by one of those torpedoes, and Arizona has lost her propulsion! We can't leave them with their asses hanging in the air like that!"

"So, we send half the fleet," Fargo says, a little calmed down now, "Leave a pair of destroyers, a cruiser and the battleships here while a fast cruiser and destroyer force hunt down whoever did this!"

"It's not a terrible idea," Nagato mumbles, deeply sunken into her own thoughts, and Kinugasa steps into the middle of the room with a fiery look in her eyes, "I'll lead that force! I'll take Ayanami, Shikinami, Fargo and Belfast and Hoel with me and we'll find the perpetrator!"

Huntington turns to look at Kinugasa with a deep frown, "Hey, what about me? I gotta' come along as well!" Kinugasa however shakes her head and points at Belfast, "She's the only one here that has Vigilance, and this opponent seem to like torpedo attacks. She needs to come along, and we can't leave the rest without cruiser support."

Huntington sighs in frustration but doesn't argue, and Kinugasa takes a look around the room for further argument, finds none, and turns to the three battleships sitting around the room's little table, "Do I have permission to proceed?" They all nod, and Kinugasa is at once gone, along with Fargo, Belfast, Hoel, Ayanami and Shikinami. Nagato nods to herself and leaves as well, returning to her still-chaotic bridge; she may not have sustained any damage, luckily, but the crew still seem a bit rattled and nervous. Not surprising really, to them the torpedoes struck not half a minute earlier; she's met with the captain's stern gaze as she returns to the Model Space, "What is the matter? Some sort of trick to toy with your humans, hm?!"

Nagato calmly shakes her head, and points out to where the torpedoes came from, "No, this was an attack launched by an unknown party."

"For your sake," the captain says with a finger raised threatenigly towards Nagato, "You better not be lying. A crewman is dead in the defence of this vessel, and I'll have the head of whomever forced his hand!"

Nagato frowns. In the confusion of the attack her concentration must have slipped, "How?" The captain beckons for her to follow as he steps out of the bridge and out on the observation plattform outside; he points down to one of Nagato's rearmost six-inch secondary gun barbettes, "That shot that destroyed one of the torpedoes? The gun didn't fire itself. A man had to activate the disassembling mechanism and then fire the gun manually."

Nagato blinks, and then lowers her eyes. Doing that is stricktly forbidden, the energy keeping the parts together will fry a human alive; however the gun would not have been able to depress enough to fire at the torpedo under regular circumstances. She clasps her hands together and meets her captain's pained eyes, not knowing entirely how to react, but he speaks up first, "I know it's in the job to lose men, but I never expected an assault like this, not now. Pardon me."

"We will find out who did this, captain, you have my word," Nagato says in response, nodding solemnly for emphasis.

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Kinugasa scans the horizon yet again, with every sensor at her disposal. Still nothing. Then she feels a tingle at the back of her neck, vaguely familiar, and she impatiently accepts the invitation; she stands at the edge of the blueish room, and on the opposite side stands a woman slightly taller than her, dressed in a corset, skirt and cloak, a little like a trenchcoat. They are all of a blue that borders on black, in stark contrast to her short-cut blonde hair. Kinugasa humms at the sight, a little surprised and dryly amused. "I must say, I wasn't expecting you to be behind this, old friend."

"You should not look so surprised, Kinugasa. I am a woman of principle. This... This abomination of yours... I thought you were a woman of honour." There's clear disdain in her voice. "Tsk," Kinugasa waves her hand dismissively, "This 'abomination' as you call it has nothing to do with honour. As if you understood honour to begin with."

"No... I've always thought of it as an idiotic concept, and now here we are. We have always hated one another, so let's be honest..." The blonde tilts her head down and to the side a little, giving Kinugasa an 'over-the glasses' look, "Weapon to weapon. You've always wanted it this way, havn't you, like it's supposed to be?"

Kinugasa glares over at the blonde at the other side of the room, nails digging into her palms in rising fury, "And you ambush us, attack my comrades, just to draw me out?! For some personal vendetta? Fog ships have never fought before! Have you no shame at all?!"

The woman only shakes her head, maintaining only the faintest of satisfied little smirks, "This is greater than either of us, sister. I'm just an opportunist taking advantage of a chance to set right an idiot like you without risking a severe reprimand."

Kinugasa huffs out a breath in delicately controlled anger, growls, "We are done here," and then is gone. The blonde remains for a moment, looking out into the vast white nothingness beyond the room, mumbling with a smirk "No peace in our time."

She then leaves the Mental Space and is back on her bridge; looking around, she imagines it full of people in silly hats, and barks out an order at these imaginary people: "Kanonen einlegen! Zeilentfenung: drei und zwanzig tausend! Feuer!" She laughs at the whole idea with disdain as halos of gleaming golden light pulse out from her and surrounds her, bringing to life the engines, the gun turrets, the very hull of her comes to life, along the sides of which along with an Iron Cross gleaming black, gray and gold reads the name: "Admiral Hipper".

End of chapter one.