Disclaimer: I own neither Halo nor Kantai Collection.

The waiting is always the hardest part, reflected the battleship Nagato as she stood on the pier of Yokosuka. It had been over an hour since she received Tatsuta's message that their expedition had diverted to rescue a kanmusu under fire and were returning to base with Tenryuu in desperate need of repair. She'd occupied herself with some of the endless paperwork on her desk, but with the expedition due back at any moment she, her sister Mutsu, and her assistant Ooyodo had come down to the pier to see how bad the situation was.

She heard Mutsu giggle, and realized she had been tapping her foot on the pier. Nagato sighed. She supposed she should have been used to waiting like this—she certainly did a lot of it as secretary ship—but it never got easier.

Mutsu's giggles abruptly halted; Nagato looked up, and sucked air in between her teeth. Tenryuu looked bad, and the naked concern on Tatsuta's face for her sister only underscored how serious the situation was.

"Mutsu," Nagato muttered. Her sister needed no further instruction. She hopped into the bay to go relieve Tatsuta of her burden. As DesDiv Six watched the pair head towards the docks, Nagato tried to reassure them. "Don't worry; we'll patch her up. She'll be just fine." The destroyers, concern writ large on their faces, nodded as one; Tatsuta's smirk said Of course she will, but her eyes betrayed her relief.

"Is anyone else hurt?" Nagato asked. To her relief, even though Tatsuta sported a couple bruises and the destroyers looked roughed up, the rest of the expedition shook their heads. Banged up, but not enough to impede a mission, Nagato's mind translated. She sighed. "As much as I hate to do this after the fight you guys must have had, we really do need those supplies. I have to send you back out on your expedition." God, she hated the pouting looks destroyers could give!

"That said," she continued, "I really do have to commend you on your work out there. You've rescued a kanmusu in enemy territory, at great risk to yourselves, and returned home. Rest assured, the Admiral will know about your good work. I know you're all concerned for Tenryuu, but trust me when I say that the fact she made it to port means she'll be alright. I'll make sure there will be treats waiting for you when you get back, and you can share them with Tenryuu later today." The smiles and grins on the destroyers' faces never failed to warm Nagato's heart. They saluted and headed back out to sea once again.

Nagato then turned to the newcomer. "Welcome to Yokosuka, I am the battleship Nagato, secretary ship of this base."

The newcomer didn't seem like she understood what Nagato said, but did realize that it was a greeting. She came to attention. "UNSC Harvest. Eff-eff-gee-elle four-one-three."

Nagato raised an eyebrow, and switched from Japanese to English. "Welcome to Yokosuka, UNSC Harvest." She repeated her introduction, then continued, "I'm afraid there are a couple matters I must see to, and I'm sure you require some replenishment. Light cruiser Ooyodo here will show you to the cafeteria, and we can debrief you afterward. Sound good?"

Harvest nodded and thanked Nagato, before she and Ooyodo headed towards the cafeteria. Nagato watched them walk off with a questioning look on her face. As secretary ship, she was more aware of the situation in the rest of the world than most kanmusu at Yokosuka, but she had never heard of a country designation 'UNSC'. The fact that she spoke English coupled with her possession of both a name and a numeric code pointed to an American ship, but she had no idea what an American ship not part of the relief convoy would be doing so far west.

The alpha-numeric code "FFGL" also threw her off. She knew the code "FFG", having coordinated with guided missile frigates of both the USN and the JMSDF, and mused perhaps that the designation was actually "FFG(L)", but no navy she knew of divided frigates into 'light' and 'heavy' categories.

And if her designation was "FFG(L)" that raised even more questions. No navy had raised a kanmusu whose original hull had been laid after the end of 1945. Though some navies had kanmusu whose ships had served into the second half of the Twentieth Century—many of the American carriers, for example—they had all returned with their World War Two loadouts, and to the best of Nagato's knowledge there had been little success upgrading them beyond that. A guided missile kanmusu would be a huge boon…and yet this one had seemingly been just left to die in the wastes of the Pacific.

Nagato sighed. She supposed she could always call Saratoga and ask her some questions later, but for now she had work to do. The American relief convoy will finally arrive in a couple days, and she still had to debrief Tenryuu. She could speculate on the newcomer another time.

UNSC Harvest felt her mouth water. So much food! All recently cooked, a welcome break from shipboard rations!

"Here you go," her minder said. Harvest searched her databanks for a cruiser named Ooyodo and came up empty, but Harvest readily admitted she was far from knowing every ship in the UNSC Navy, or every base for that matter. Even as she started to eat, she realized she'd never heard of a UNSC base named Yokosuka. Pausing briefly (partially to allow her quartermaster a moment to sort the supplies out before stuffing in more) she looked up.

"Ooyodo—is it alright if I call you that?" Receiving a nod, she continued, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but…where am I?"

Ooyodo seemed confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," she paused and took another bite. "I've never heard of a base named 'Yokosuka.' Where are we? What theater of the war?"

Ooyodo blinked. Slowly, she said, "Yokosuka is the major Japanese naval base for kanmusu. It represents the main base in the north-west Pacific." She glanced askance at Harvest wolfing down her meal and continued, "It's rather rare that a kanmusu doesn't know about Yokosuka."

"I've never heard the term 'kanmusu' either."

Ooyodo raised an eyebrow. "Well…you're recently returned, so I guess that's understandable. I'll arrange an orientation package for you." Harvest nodded in thanks, then Ooyodo asked, "Where are you from?"

"Reach," Harvest said automatically, then winced. ONI never looked kindly on sailors talking about how badly the war was going; 'loose lips spread panic' or something of the sort. "I mean I was constructed at Reach. As to where I was based," she paused for a moment, considering her answer. "Jericho Theater, Perseus Arm." She took another bite.

Ooyodo gave a skeptical look. "Forgive me, but I'm not familiar with those places. What's Reach?"

Harvest blinked. Maybe she could understand someone not knowing about Jericho, but…"You've never heard of Reach?" When Ooyodo shook her head, Harvest scoffed. "How can you have never heard of Reach? What backwards planet is this?"

Ooyodo's brow furrowed. She responded levelly, "Earth."

Everything in Harvest's mind came to a screeching halt. "Earth?" A nod. "And you've never heard of Reach." Another nod. Harvest leaned back and looked up, as though she could see through the roof to the sky. "The war's not going well at all, is it?" she asked despondently.

Ooyodo considered her own words carefully. "Large parts of the planet are…contested, I'll admit, but we're making progress."

Harvest nodded slowly, then inhaled the rest of the food on her plate. As Ooyodo's eyebrows rose, she checked in with her quartermaster. She'd need to be really restocked if she was to make a difference.

But her ping to her quartermaster on the status of her rearmament was depressing: one Archer.

You mean all that food only restocked one Archer pod? she asked incredulously.

No, her fairy responded. Not one Archer pod. One Archer. Most of what she took on was far too lean to effectively make the material for anti-ship missiles. One Archer was all that they could squeeze out of it.

Harvest looked back up at Ooyodo. "Not to intrude, but is it possible I can have more?"

Ooyodo's eyebrows rose higher. "That's the usual meal for destroyers at our base. You should be fully restocked."

"It's very light," Harvest replied. "Is there something denser? It would make resupplying much more efficient for me."

"Denser?"

"As dense as you can."

Feeling like she made a decent enough dent in her paper work, and having dispatched Mutsu into town to fetch treats for DesDiv Six, Nagato made her way into the docks. She winced at the sight of the cruiser sitting in the healing waters there. "Tenryuu," she said in greeting.

"Hey, secretary ship," Tenryuu responded. "What can I do for you?"

"Just came to check up on you," the battleship replied. "I'm sorry, but I had to send your sister and the girls back out on their expedition run. I promised them a treat when they returned though," she amended quickly. Tenryuu nodded. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," the cruiser responded bluntly. "My starboard side's pretty well trashed; I'm keeping that arm as still as possible. I don't suppose you can spend a bucket on me?" Nagato shook her head ruefully. "Yeah, didn't think so. But I guess that's what I get for crossing swords with a Re-class."

"What." Nagato's reaction was harsher than she intended, and she regretted the wince she saw on Tenryuu's face. "What happened?"

"That girl was being chased by some destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and a Re-class. I sent Tatsuta and the girls to wreck the cruiser and destroyers while I kept the battleship busy. Got some good hits in on it too, but then it nailed me pretty good."

"And the girls came and saved you?"

"No. That new girl did." She looked up at Nagato. "Secretary ship, that gun the girl carries. It one-shotted a Re-class. It blew her in half. Everything from the waist up; not shot off, just gone."

Nagato, for once, was speechless.

"It didn't sound like a normal cannon either," Tenryuu continued. "Not a 'thud' but a big 'pow'; I felt like I was punched in the gut when it went off, and there was smoke or some contrail from the gun to the target. I've never seen anything like that."

"…I think I have," Nagato muttered. Looking up at Tenryuu she continued, "Early in the Abyssal war, when we kanmusu would still sortie alongside conventional ships. The Americans had some ships with a strange main cannon—a railgun, I think they called it. I remember that contrail and that noise very clearly. But those ships were very few in number, and because the gun was so devastating the Abyssals singled those ships out first. I don't think any of them survived."

"You think the Americans managed to summon one of them as a kanmusu?" Tenryuu read her thoughts.

"Maybe. The ones I remember were very large, but the Americans persisted in calling them destroyers. And though I don't quite recognize the designation, I'm pretty sure the girl introduced herself as a guided missile frigate. But that doesn't explain why you found her in the middle of the Pacific."

"Maybe they got overconfident? Sent her off on her own, thinking she could make it through without trouble?"

"That's not what I mean. The Americans are fighting tooth and nail to secure Hawaii, and we've still got to recover and reorganize from the Midway strikes. Why would they send an incredibly powerful ship to a front unlikely to see any major fighting in the near future when they've got a pressing need for her right on their doorstep?"

Any further musing was cut off when Nagato picked up an urgent radio message from Ooyodo. "Secretary ship, I need you at the mess."

"Cruiser Ooyodo, what is the situation?"

"Well-…Ah-…" Nagato's brow furrowed. Such behavior was very unlike her assistant cruiser. And then came a statement Nagato never expected to hear Ooyodo say:

"Look, you'll see when you get here."

When Nagato arrived at the mess, she understood how Ooyodo, of all people, could be speechless.

Empty plates abounded, as the newcomer wolfed down a meal Akagi would be proud of. Oh, God, not another heavy eater! Don't they know that we're having supply problems enough already? She stormed up to the table.

"Enough! Don't you know how tight supplies are? Aren't you fueled enough already?"

"I never needed refueling," Harvest shot back, much to Ooyodo's consternation. "I need rearming. If the war's already come to Earth, I need every bit of ammunition I can get."

Nagato seized Harvest by the arm and bodily yanked her out of the seat, hauling her across the cafeteria and not stopping until the duo were outside. As Ooyodo walked to join them, Nagato leaned close to the overeater and summoned her sternest expression. "You were fully fueled and ate all that anyway? Are you out of your mind? You are not the only ship on this base!"

"I'm the only one here now, and the Covenant are landing! She said much of the planet has already been overrun!" Harvest gestured to Ooyodo, who stared openly at a destroyer who dared to talk back to secretary battleship Nagato. "Earth—Earth—is under attack and you want to conserve supplies? We might have a week at most until we're through! Once they find what they're looking for they'll just glass the place; this isn't a time for hoarding; this is a time for throwing everything you have at them and getting in as many licks as we can!"

"We'll only have a week if you eat all the food on this base and leave nothing for everyone else! We've been at war for five years and have held our own, thank you very much, and we did so through very careful rationing and management of supplies!"

"What the hell do you mean five years? My namesake was over twenty years ago!"

Nagato took a deep breath. "The Abyssals appeared on Earth five years ago, and the kanmusu and navies of the world have been fighting ever since. Times have been tough, but we've made some real progress in the last few months, which will all go to naught if you deprive an entire naval base worth of kanmusu of supplies!"

This at last seemed to have gotten through to the newcomer, but rather than shamed she only seemed confused. "Ooyodo, what year is it?"

What the hell kind of question is that? Nagato thought, and a shared glance told her Ooyodo thought the exact same thing. "Uh…, twenty twenty-five."

The newcomer stared. "Twenty twenty-five? As in two-zero-two-five?"

"Yes…?"

UNSC Harvest looked wide-eyed from Ooyodo, to Nagato, and back to Ooyodo, before her eyes rolled back in her head as she collapsed in a dead faint.